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“What the hell?”
I walked in the door and looked around my store in confusion. Someone had knocked over a bookshelf, sending books to the floor in a messy heap. Two other shelves were still upright, but most of their contents were on the floor. Had I been robbed?
I moved behind the check-out area. The two cash registers and computers were still in place, although they didn’t have any money in them anyway. I wasn’t an idiot. I kept all the money in a safe in the back office.
The back office...I headed there and was relieved to see it looked untouched. A glance at the storeroom across the hall showed it was also fine. I heard water running and headed into the customer restroom. The faucet was running full blast, although thankfully the water was all going down the drain and not on my tile. I looked up and saw that someone had wrote “get out!” in what looked like lipstick on the mirror.
I texted Emma and Dawn to share the news. They were my ride-or-die friends, and we shared everything.
Evie: OMFG someone was in the shop last night!
Dawn: Were you robbed?
Evie: Not that I can tell. They knocked a bunch of shit off the shelves and left the water running in the bathroom. Oh, and there’s this.
I attached a picture of the bathroom mirror and the lipstick message.
Emma: Call the cops!
Evie: Why? You know they don’t do shit.
Emma: Call them, or I will. What if they come back and hurt you?
Evie: You know I hate cops.
My father had been a cop. He’d also been an abusive male-chauvinist asshole who I’d cut ties with as soon as I was old enough to be out on my own. If my asshole father wasn’t enough to make me hate cops, the way that the local cops in the town I grew up in did nothing when my mother called them after one beating too many had cemented my hatred of the boys in blue. A couple of years after I left home my mother had finally left him, taking my sister Teresa with her.
Dawn: Evie, it’s your business. Besides, you’ll need documentation of a police report if you have to file an insurance claim. Do it, and text us later and let us know how you are.
Evie: Fine. I’ll talk to you later.
I looked around once more before calling the non-emergency police line.
“Chief Wilson is in the area Ms. Fontenot, I’ll send him over now.”
“Thank you.”
Five minutes later a burly man in a blue police uniform strode into my bookstore like he owned the place. I looked up at him and caught my breath. Good Lord, he was a fine looking man.
He looked like he was in his early fifties, same as me. He was tall, at least several inches taller than my own five foot eight height, with broad shoulders, biceps that strained against the thin blue fabric of his police uniform, and legs like tree trunks. He had hair that was somewhere between brown and blond, cut short and threaded through with silver, a short salt and pepper beard covering his sharp jaw, sensuous lips, and those damn reflective sunglasses cops loved to wear. Then he removed the glasses, sticking them into the collar of his uniform shirt, and revealed curious brown eyes flanked with long brown eyelashes.
“Miss Phone-ten-not?” He asked, mangling my name as he read it off his cell phone.
“It’s pronounced ‘fonn-ta-noh’.”
He looked between me and his phone, frowning slightly like he thought I was messing with him. He really had the cop look down: a mixture of stern and arrogant.
“I’m Chief Jake Wilson,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
He reached forward to shake my hand. It was the weirdest thing, but it felt like everything inside me stilled the minute our hands touched. Except for the skin on my hands, which felt warm and tingly everywhere it touched his. He looked up and met my eyes, looking almost as confused as I felt.
After just a touch too long, we both pulled away.
He cleared his throat. “I understand you’ve had a break-in?”
I showed him around, pointing out the things that were messed up. He checked the locks on both doors, confirming what I already knew: no one had tampered with them. As we moved through the store, he made notes in a little notepad that he pulled out of his pocket.
“Do you think you left a door unlocked?” he said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Are you sure?” His tone was patronizing, and it raised my ire.
“Both doors were locked when I got here,” I said firmly, giving him a hard look.
“And they didn’t take the computers or the cash registers? That’s weird.”
“I don’t keep cash in them anyway, but I agree that it’s strange. But there’s also this.”
I led him into the restroom. “The water was running, but I turned that off. And this message was on the mirror.”
He frowned. “That looks personal. Do you know anyone who would want to harm your business?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t have enemies.”
We wandered back to the front of the store.
“Well, there’s not a lot to go on here,” he said. “But I’ll file a report.”
He turned as if to leave, and I looked at him incredulously.
“Not a lot to go on? Can’t you dust for fingerprints? Take pictures? Do anything?”
“I said I’d file a report,” he said mildly. “There’s no sign of a break-in. This looks like some kind of a prank to me.”
I threw up my hands. “I knew it was a waste of time to call you. I should know better than expect cops to actually do their damn jobs.”
I stalked away and started pushing on the shelf that had been knocked over, trying to get it upright again. It didn’t budge until Chief Wilson came over to help.
“I got it,” I snapped, but he ignored me. Which was probably good, because honestly, it was too heavy for me to move by myself.
I glanced out of the corner of my eye, noting how his biceps bulged with the effort. It was too bad he was a jerk and a cop because Chief Wilson was one fine specimen. Shaking my head, I started reshelving the books, ignoring him.
He stood there awkwardly before finally saying, “Give us a call if anything else happens.”
I turned to him and gave him my best glare. “If anything else happens, I’ll investigate it my own damn self instead of wasting time with you.”
I wondered if it was possible to buy fingerprinting kits online. I’d check into that, as well as security cameras. It wasn’t something I expected to need in a town where half the people didn’t even lock their doors at night.
“Now we don’t need you going all Nancy Drew on us,” he said sternly. “You leave the police work to the experts.”
“Yeah, I’m super impressed by you experts,” I practically spat at him. “Now get the hell out of my store!”
With one last stern glare, he turned on his heel and headed for the door.