by Terry Spear
“Yep, that’s what the police try to tell you.”
His eyes widened. “You have a lot of experience with police interrogations?”
She scoffed. “I’ve been in a couple of car accidents over the years, neither of which were my fault. Somehow, the investigating officer always makes it seem like it’s your fault. Once, I was accused of stealing a blouse from a store when I had paid for it. The real culprit got clean away, while the store cop made me return to the store and have the clerk identify me as the thief. You should have seen the look on the clerk’s face. Of course it wasn’t me. I had my bag and the receipt for the blouse and had just purchased it, so she recognized me as the one who had paid for the merchandise. The woman who hadn’t? She was long gone.”
“Did you plead your rights to the store cop based on all the amendments?” He sounded half-amused.
Brooke wasn’t amused. “The clerk cleared me. You, on the other hand, haven’t.”
“Great cocoa,” he said, “by the way.”
“Peppermint mocha, and if you drink it down the right way, it is.” She left the kitchen and began to turn on the Christmas music, store lights, and Christmas lights.
“Do you know any male wolves in the area? Besides me? Or my brother?” the detective asked, following her. “You didn’t say whether you lived alone or not. Instead, you misdirected the conversation when you asked to see my ID.”
She smiled, remembering the ploy and how it had worked. “I live alone, and no, I don’t know any other male wolves. No female wolves either in the area.” She paused to look at him, frowning. “By the way, do you have security cameras at your ranch?”
“We sure do.” His dark eyes held her gaze.
“You didn’t catch anyone stealing a calf from the ranch on the video?” She couldn’t believe a police detective who had security cameras hadn’t figured out who the real thief was from the outset.
“No. The video was tampered with.”
“Oh wow. Now that’s something I know nothing about.”
“I considered you had an accomplice.”
She cast him an annoyed look. Someone rang the doorbell at the front of the shop, and she went to get it. It was the mail carrier. She answered the door and smiled at him. He was an army veteran who had served in Iraq and could be a younger version of actor James Earl Jones. He didn’t wear glasses, but he had the same neat mustache and the same infectious smile.
“It’s just like Christmas every day,” she said.
The mail carrier smiled back. “Speaking of Christmas, I heard about the reindeer at your shop. I wish I could have seen that and taken a picture for my kids.”
She signed for the four boxes, astonished that she was still getting merchandise that her great-aunt had purchased before she died. She couldn’t believe the boxes from Gulliver’s estate hadn’t arrived yet.
“Next year, I’ll actually schedule to have a reindeer here. You can bring your kids and have them pet the reindeer and take pictures,” she told him.
“Or you can always drop by and see the reindeer at the ranch. They love visitors.” Josh gave him a business card.
Brooke was surprised the detective had business cards on him for the ranch.
“Thanks, I’ll do both.” The mail carrier said goodbye, and Brooke saw Sarah Burns, the owner of the bakery across the street, bringing her the baked goods she had on standing order while Josh carried the boxes inside.
Josh shook his head. “Man, if he didn’t look like James Earl Jones.”
“He’s got a great voice too.” Brooke smiled at Sarah. “Good morning, Sarah. Thanks so much for delivering the scones and cookies this morning.”
Sarah’s black hair was graying, her full cheeks red from the cold, and she was wearing an apron that had Sweet Treats, the name of her bakery, on it. She was just like her baked goods—as sweet as could be—and had welcomed Brooke with treats as soon as she took over and reopened the antique shop. Sarah had been so glad the shop had remained in business, because Brooke’s customers often visited her bakery, and Brooke loved to buy baked goods from Sarah’s shop.
“I had a moment and thought I’d run these over.” Sarah glanced at Josh. A hot and sexy treat, but definitely not sweet.
Josh gave Sarah a big smile. Looks could be deceiving.
Sarah looked like she was waiting for an introduction, but Brooke needed to get ready to open the shop—and didn’t Sarah have customers to take care of? She opened her shop earlier than Brooke did.
“Oh, you have some more customers,” Brooke said, motioning to a car that had just parked in front of the bakery.
“Oh, so I do.” Sarah smiled at Josh again and hurried off.
Brooke knew Sarah wanted to know if Josh was becoming an item in her life. No. Way. Sarah had asked about Brooke’s status in the beginning, curious to know if she was engaged or married to anyone, and Brooke had to tell her no on both accounts.
“If you don’t mind, we can carry the boxes into the office this way,” Brooke told Josh as she relocked her front door. She might as well put him to work if he was going to bug her while she was trying to get ready to open the shop.
“Sure.”
“It’s something my great-aunt purchased.” Brooke frowned. “These are from Colombia.”
“Yeah?”
Brooke began opening one of the boxes. “I purchased some boxes of stuff at an estate sale in Phoenix. The assistant, a Mr. Lee, said my great-aunt was worried she’d purchased some things from someone in Colombia who wasn’t reputable.”
“Do you mind?” Josh motioned to the box.
“Go ahead.” As soon as she opened a box, she gasped. “Ohmigod. There are remnants of white powder in the box. Do you think there are drugs inside the hand-decorated clay sculptures?” She pulled one of them out of the box to examine it.
Josh glanced into her box while he opened his. “Uh, yeah. Hell. I’ve smelled it before—courtesy of my heightened wolf sense of smell. Powder cocaine. Humans can’t smell it, so I had to be careful not to let on I could tell from a whiff of it. There’s a tiny bit of white powder in this box too. I’m sure your great-aunt wasn’t selling it—”
“Which means someone will be coming for it.”
“Exactly! I’ll get ahold of the DEA special agent I work closely with.” Josh immediately got on his phone. “Hey, it’s me, Ethan. I’m at Cerise’s Antique and Gift Shop, and we’ve got a situation.” He explained what was going on. “Since Ivy Cerise was one of ours, she wouldn’t have gotten into this with the intent to sell. We need to make sure the new owner—Ivy’s great-niece, Brooke Cerise—isn’t implicated in any wrongdoing. We also need to ensure that if the drug dealers come for their stash, we take them into custody and keep her safe.”
Was Ethan a wolf too? He had to be if Josh was telling him her great-aunt was one of theirs. That would be good news.
Josh made another call, and when he ended that, he told Brooke, “DEA Special Agent Ethan Masterson is gathering all the necessary people to handle this. They’ll want to catch these guys trying to take possession of the boxes.”
“Is Ethan a wolf?”
“Another red wolf like us.”
“Oh wow, that’s great. So what are we going to do?”
“I suspect we’ll have company as soon as you open the shop. Most likely the drug dealers have been watching for the delivery. They’d want to grab the boxes before you sold the clay figures to customers.”
“What about my customers?” Brooke immediately worried about their safety and couldn’t believe her great-aunt had mistakenly gotten involved in the shipment of illegal drugs.
* * *
“Everyone’s safety is tantamount. The DEA will want to catch these guys and trace the shipments back to where they originated, but not at the expense of civilians. I’d send you home, but I don’t want yo
u to get into trouble on the way over there.” Hell, Josh wasn’t sure what to do. He sure didn’t want Brooke in the cross fire. “Do you have an interior room with no windows where you can hide?”
Brooke folded her arms and looked cross with him. “I’d prefer turning into a wolf.”
“Right. I know how you feel, but they’ll be armed with guns and who knows what else. A wolf wouldn’t stand a chance. Not to mention that we have law-enforcement agents coming who will be human.” He got a call from Ethan.
“Hey, Josh, the house in back of the shop is Ms. Cerise’s, right?”
“Yeah.”
“The DEA wants to set up there. We’ve got agents moving into the area, but they don’t want to spook the drug dealers.”
“I’ll make sure it’s okay with Brooke and get the keys to the house.” Josh relayed the request to her.
“Uh, yeah. I guess.” She sounded like she wasn’t happy with the prospect.
“The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can get your shop open, as long as we don’t have a major crime scene to deal with. I’ll need the keys to the house.”
Brooke fetched the keys and told him what the security code was.
“Don’t let anyone into the shop. I’ll be just a moment. Lock the door after me.”
“I will.”
“Don’t let anyone see you inside the shop.” That was one problem with having a glass door and big glass display windows. Josh left through the back door, waiting until she locked it after him.
He hurried to the house, unlocked the back door, and went inside, praying Brooke didn’t get hurt while he was gone. After he turned off the security alarm, he unlocked the front door. The special agents hurried inside and questioned him about the layout of the shop.
Hell, he didn’t know how it was laid out except for the kitchen, the main room where her checkout counter was, the office where they’d taken the boxes, and the bathroom on the first floor. He had no idea about the rest of the shop.
“You stay here, Detective,” the man in charge said. “We’ve got this now.”
“Hell, no. The shop’s owner is in the store right now. I need to be there for her.”
“You should have brought her over with you.”
“And worry someone might be watching for her to leave the shop from the back? No way.”
“You get her out of there and stay out of the way.”
“Sure thing.” Josh wanted to be involved. He was involved. He was the first law-enforcement official on the scene, but this was the DEA’s case. He headed back over to the shop, and as soon as he found Brooke in the office, he said, “Come on. The DEA’s taking over, and we need to return to your house.”
Glass broke at the front door of the shop, and Brooke swore under her breath. “That glass is beveled and—”
“Go to the second floor and lock yourself into one of the rooms if you can.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll make sure they don’t go up the stairs. Just…go.”
She let out her breath and hurried for the stairs. The door opened to the shop while Josh was texting Ethan: Someone’s breaking into the shop through the front door. Now!
Josh suspected the DEA agents were planning the operation, getting agents in place, trying to do this the safest way possible.
As soon as three men entered the shop, throwing the door open and rushing in Josh’s direction, he slipped into the office and called Ethan. “Brooke is upstairs in a locked room. I’m downstairs in the office, to the right of the back door and down the hall. That’s where the boxes of drugs are. Three men are entering the shop.”
Josh hid behind the desk, his gun readied if the drug dealers came into the office to get their drugs, as all hell broke loose. Men were barging through the back door and front door of the shop shouting, “DEA agents! Get on the floor now!”
“Don’t do it, man!” one of the agents shouted.
Then there was a scuffle. “Hands behind your back! Now!”
As soon as Ethan entered the office, Josh straightened. “Did you get them all?”
Ethan was wearing a bulletproof vest, his badge on the front and DEA printed on the back, with jeans, boots, and a black shirt. “I had to chase one outside and take him down, but the rest had entered the shop. These are the boxes of cocaine?” Ethan turned his attention to the boxes.
“Yeah.”
The agent went to field-test the drugs while a police officer read the arrested men their rights. Every one of them had been carrying guns.
Josh left the office to check on Brooke while the perps were being hauled off. He ran up the stairs and found the room where the door was locked and knocked. “Hey, Brooke, it’s me, Josh.”
She unlocked the door and threw her arms around him and hugged him hard. He was so surprised, it took him a moment to respond. He embraced her back, wanting to reassure her everything was fine. “It’s okay. They got them. The drugs will be confiscated and taken to a DEA lab for testing.”
“What if they think my great-aunt was involved in the drug-dealing business? That it wasn’t just a mistake on her part? What if they confiscate any cash we have for the business?”
Josh looked down into Brooke’s tearful green eyes and felt her pain. “They might take Ivy’s computer if they think it might have any clues about the origin of the drugs or anything about the people who sold them to her.”
“She didn’t have one.”
He smiled down at her. “Then not that. How much cash do you have on hand?”
“One hundred dollars. It’s in the cash register.”
He smiled again. “One hundred dollars is no problem. On the bust we made last month, a woman had $300,000 in cash. That’s the kind of money they’re looking for.”
“No, nothing like that.”
Someone started to tromp up the stairs. Ethan poked his head into the room. “We’ll need a statement from you both…” He paused and smiled broadly at Brooke. “I’m Special Agent Ethan Masterson.” He shook her hand. “If there’s anything you need”—he reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card and handed it to her—“don’t hesitate to call me. I knew Ivy Cerise, and I know she wouldn’t have distributed the drugs. Do you have any idea how she got in touch with these people?”
“No. Well, a Mr. Lee of Phoenix, Arizona—a Tibetan wolf—said he purchased a Tibetan urn from my great-aunt, and she told him she was afraid she might have dealt with the wrong people. She must have purchased the boxes of sculptures shortly before her death. He told me not to have anything to do with purchasing pottery from Colombia.”
Ethan jotted down the information. “I’ll check into it and see if he knows anything else. I’ll be discreet.”
“Thank you. My great-aunt didn’t want Mr. Lee to tell anyone about it, but he worried the dealers might contact me about purchasing more stuff. Still, he didn’t seem to know anything more than that, or I’m sure he would have told me.”
“Thanks. We’ll be clearing out. I’ve got to help take this stuff out of here. I’m afraid you won’t get the clay sculptures back. They’ll have to be broken to get to the contents.”
“That’s no problem. If it helps put these guys in jail and keeps this off the street, that’s all that matters.”
“We’ll wrap up things here then.” Ethan shook her hand, gave Josh an evil smile for being there first to protect the she-wolf, and headed down the stairs. “Let’s get this wrapped up and get out of here,” he said to his men.
“Are you ready to go downstairs?” Josh asked.
“Yeah. We need to lock up the house and set the alarm if everyone’s vacated the place.”
“Let’s do that, and then we can open the shop for business. Are you going to be okay?” he asked her.
“Sure. I just hope that was the last of it and there aren’t a
ny more boxes of the stuff coming this way.” She shook her head. “It’s a good thing my great-aunt wasn’t here to deal with this on her own. Thanks for being there for me. I’m not sure I would have handled it as well as you did. Even if I had called the police, I suspect they wouldn’t have gotten here as fast as they did when you called them.”
“With a potentially volatile situation on your hands and the promise of making a big drug bust, I’m sure they would have.”
“If they’d thought I knew what I was talking about. You have more credibility.”
Brooke and Josh checked over the house and found it was empty. She set her security alarm and locked it, and they returned to the shop.
Ethan had waited for them before he left, and Josh was glad about it, since glass had been broken out of one of the panels. “I knew Josh would get right on it when he had a moment, but in case he didn’t have a chance, I called to have one of our people come out and replace the glass in your door,” Ethan said. “He should be here within the hour, about the time you open the shop. I sent George a picture of the glass, and he said he’ll match it the best he can.”
“Thanks so much, Ethan.”
He inclined his head, smiled at her, saluted Josh, then left the store.
“Do you have a broom and dustpan? I’ll sweep up the glass,” Josh offered. He thought Brooke seemed a little dazed.
“Thanks. I’ll get them.” She soon returned with the broom and dustpan and handed them to him.
In the meantime, he examined the door, but the only damage was to the glass panel the man had broken to reach in and unlock the door. Josh cleaned up the mess, and Brooke brought a tall kitchen wastebasket to empty the broken glass into.
“I’m going to wait until George gets here to replace the glass, and then I’ve got to do some investigating concerning Jingles’s case, if you think you’ll be all right.”
“I will be.” She took a deep breath. “I just need to get another cup of peppermint mocha.”
Chapter 5
Josh needed to ask the businesses down the street about their security videos to see what he could learn about the stolen reindeer, though he’d hang around longer if Brooke needed him to. Luckily, he didn’t have any more serious cases this morning, having cleared the last one before he dropped by to see Brooke. He was damn glad he had. He was worried about her and how she was feeling. She fixed him another mug of peppermint mocha, and they took a moment to relax before George arrived to replace the window.