Stalker in the Shadows (Love Inspired Suspense)

by Camy Tang

  The detective hesitated, his gray eyes moving from Monica to Shaun and back again. “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  Monica’s gaze slid guiltily to Shaun’s. “I didn’t want to file charges.”

  “Did Mars file charges?” Shaun demanded.

  “No,” Detective Carter said. “What exactly did Mars do and say?”

  “Detective, what’s going on?” Monica said. “Are we in trouble?”

  He hesitated again, but his granite expression softened as he looked at Monica, and a small sigh escaped him.

  “Yesterday in Sonoma, Brett Marshall was mugged.”

  Five days after the last envelope of photos, a note finally arrived from the stalker.

  If you do not stop work on your free children’s clinic, I will harm all your investors. You do not want that on your conscience. I will do what I must in order to stop you.

  Monica sat at her desk in her bedroom and watched Shaun read the note that had arrived that morning. As he read, his face became like a steel mask. He tossed the note onto her desk. “He doesn’t directly say he’s the one who mugged Marshall, but he implies it.”

  “And don’t forget Rodney,” Monica said.

  “He said that it was Phillip Bromley.”

  “But he also said he wasn’t sure.”

  She expected Shaun to argue with her, but he instead nodded. “Plus the car must have been going past him pretty fast and he wouldn’t have gotten more than a quick look.”

  A part of her was a bit proud of Shaun for keeping his promise and keeping an open mind about the stalker, rather than being quick to pin it on Phillip.

  “Did you talk to Marshall?” Shaun asked.

  “He was discharged from the hospital this morning, so I called him at home. He said he’s feeling fine, all things considered. He said he had gotten stitches for a gash on his forehead, his nose had been broken, he had several broken ribs, and he had a slight concussion, but he’d insisted on leaving the hospital rather than spending another minute there.”

  “Did the attacker steal anything?”

  “No, he just beat Brett up pretty badly.”

  “Did Marshall see who did it?”

  “He said he didn’t see anything. And the police apparently have no evidence.”

  Shaun paced back and forth. “Are you going to cancel the party?”

  “I have to.” She dropped her head into her hands. The party was to have been in only a couple days, but she couldn’t go through with it now.

  Shaun sat in the chair across from her and leaned his arms on her desk. “How much is it costing you?”

  “The deposit for the caterer and the event hall. A few thousand dollars.” She winced.

  “It’s coming out of your own money?”

  “Of course,” she said, offended. “I wouldn’t ask my father for a loan for this.”

  He raised his hands up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “No, I’m sorry for snapping at you. It’s just…I’m losing so much more than this party. I had to call the investors this morning. I told them that I’d been getting anonymous threats from someone opposed to the clinic, and that one of the investors was attacked two days ago. Several of them automatically pulled out.”

  She’d spent so much time and energy into getting people to commit to this project, to make them aware of the need in Sonoma, and now her plans were unraveling. Was there more she could have done? What should she do to save it?

  “Not all of them, though, right?” Shaun asked.

  “I was surprised because some of them didn’t seem to take the threats very seriously. One investor was annoyed because she’d already flown up here to northern California and was at the Rubart Hotel in Sonoma. She wanted me to go through with the party since she was already here.”

  Shaun snorted.

  “Another investor said he was used to idle threats from strangers who objected to what he’d decided to invest in.”

  “I guess I can see how that wouldn’t seem threatening anymore if it happened a few times,” Shaun said, “but still, I don’t understand that kind of thinking.”

  “It seems reckless, doesn’t it? But then I called Brett Marshall, and the first thing he asked me was if I was going to cancel the party. He didn’t want me to. He was urging me to go through with it because any large project that causes change will have protestors.”

  “Brett Marshall is used to taking risks. He’s been very successful because of that. But he hasn’t had a stalker like you do.”

  “I didn’t tell the other investors about the stalker, but I told Brett. He still thought I should go through with the party. Apparently, he’d had opposition to several of his restaurants before they opened. He had received bomb threats, but for opening day, he just beefed up his security and had suspicious people escorted out. Nothing happened. And this was for each of the last three restaurants he opened.”

  Shaun grunted. “I didn’t know about the bomb threats.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “So are you going to go through with the party?”

  “Absolutely not. Brett spent a good twenty minutes trying to convince me.”

  Shaun looked thoughtful. “I have to admit, his opinion holds a lot of weight since he was the investor attacked because of your clinic. But I think you’re wise to cancel the party.”

  She swallowed the bitter taste at the back of her throat. “I’m not sure what to do next. And what’s even more frustrating is that after speaking to the six investors from the Zoe banquet who could be the stalker, I couldn’t tell if any of them was lying to me.”

  Shaun looked at her strangely. “Did you really expect to?”

  “I’ve always been good at reading people. I guess I’ve been depending on it too much all my life. Yes, I really did think I’d be able to tell if one of them was the stalker, but I couldn’t read anything odd, uncomfortable, or threatening about any of them.”

  “What do you mean? Jason Mars tried to haul you out of the booth.”

  “He was angry about his wife and Brett, not the clinic. He didn’t strike me as threatening at all when I spoke to him about the project. He only went berserk when I mentioned Brett Marshall.”

  The two of them sat in thoughtful silence for several minutes. Finally Monica said, “I’m starting to think that maybe the stalker isn’t one of my investors at all.”

  “What do you mean? He knew about the party.”

  “Maybe he’s close to one of my investors and found out about the invitation from that person.”

  Shaun sighed. “So he could be anyone. One of the investors’ friends, family…”

  “However, he definitely went to the Zoe banquet. Otherwise, why would I have smelled the cigarette scent in the cloakroom? But it doesn’t mean I actually talked to the stalker about my clinic. He could have happened to overhear me talking to one of the twenty people I spoke to about it.”

  “We could call the event coordinator and get the guest list,” Shaun said slowly. “But it’ll be tedious to go through all the names, and there’s no guarantee we’ll find anything.”

  “It’s worth a shot.” Monica reached for her cell phone. “I can’t think of anything else I can do now. I think I have Carol Uzaki’s number.”

  But before she could pick up the phone, it rang. The Caller ID said it was Brett Marshall. “Hello.”

  “Monica, I have great news for you, but first you’ll need to give me the list of investors you were going to invite to your party.”

  “Why? Besides, several of them have already dropped out of the project.”

  “Then they’ll be missing out.”

  Monica frowned, which made Shaun frown at her. “What do you mean?” she asked Brett.

  “I’m not in any shape to go to a party in a few day’s time—”

  “Brett, I already canceled my party.”

  “I know, and I understand your position, but I don’t like someone else trying to dictate to m
e how I spend my money, especially when there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for why a free children’s clinic shouldn’t open in Sonoma.”

  “I told you, this stalker might have targeted another free clinic worker in L.A. Who knows what’s going through his mind?”

  “I understand why you had to cancel, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do something. So next week, I’m hosting a party for your investors at Rock Love restaurant.”

  TEN

  As Shaun glanced around the banquet room, he felt the danger in the air like the shimmer of heat that rose from hot asphalt on a July day.

  Twenty-three investors had agreed to attend the party despite being told about the anonymous threats Monica had been receiving. Apparently, Brett Marshall’s attitude about protestors wasn’t uncommon. Several of them had received letters of protest and criticism for various projects they’d invested in, although few of them had actually been threatened the way Marshall and Monica had. Of the six investors Monica had met at the Zoe banquet, only Marshall and Phillip Bromley had come tonight.

  Shaun sidestepped a waiter, one of twelve who had been hand-selected by Marshall himself. They wore distinctive uniforms so Marshall could pick them out of the crowd and so he would notice if any of the wait staff was someone he didn’t recognize.

  Marshall had also hired several security guards to prevent strangers from entering the back room where the party was being held, and while the cooking staff was extra busy with both the regular restaurant patrons and the party, Marshall had refused to hire new staff that he or his chefs wouldn’t recognize.

  Shaun had to admit that the man had given this party a great deal of forethought. Shaun and Monica had offered suggestions for improving security, but most of the ideas had come from the restaurant owner himself.

  Still, Shaun couldn’t shake the way his skin crawled as he surveyed the room. It had been a business casual event, but most of the men wore expensive Italian suits, and the women were in deceptively simple short dresses that probably cost his entire year’s salary.

  He’d grown up in this world of wealth, but he’d gladly left it behind to join the border patrol. He’d become just Shaun O’Neill there, not the son of a hotel mogul.

  However, Monica moved through this world with ease. Not that she was snobby or that she flaunted her father’s wealth, but she wore her finery with the comfort of a woman who had attended many parties with her father and sisters, or sometimes in her father’s place when he had had his stroke. She walked with grace and elegance as she approached an investment banker to speak to him.

  Shaun was here for her—not to fit in with these people, not to be her right-hand business partner, not to work the party. That’s all she wanted from him, and she trusted him completely.

  So he better earn her trust.

  He’d memorized the faces of the waitstaff, and as he scanned the people mingling together and the few tables along the walls, he didn’t see anyone who shouldn’t be there. He’d gone with Marshall’s security guards to check each of the tables and make sure there hadn’t been any mysterious packages left, but the guards knew what they were doing, since they’d had to do a similar drill for each of Marshall’s three restaurants that had received bomb threats.

  He had matched each of the guests to the guest list as they entered, but he was beginning to wonder, like Monica did, if the stalker wasn’t an investor, but someone connected to an investor who had been invited. In fact, maybe it had been an investor who pulled out last week after Marshall was mugged, and so the stalker didn’t even know about this party.

  The sense he had of a threat didn’t go away as the evening progressed. When the salads started being served, he slipped away to the kitchen.

  He watched the cooking staff like a hawk. He also watched the main courses be plated, but nothing seemed unusual.

  He approached Marshall’s chef, Tracy, who had been put in charge of the party menu. “What’s for dessert?” Shaun asked her.

  “Why, want to sneak a taste?” She paused to wink at him, then continued wiping the edge of a plate and sending it out with a waiter. “Since you’re one of the guests, I suppose you can eat yours early. They’re chocolate macadamia nut mousses in the fridge.”

  He entered the massive walk-in refrigerator and quickly found the two trays of mousses sitting on shelves, one on top of the other. Dark chocolate mousse, dotted with macadamia nuts, had been swirled into decorative glass bowls, with a stick of white chocolate stuck into each mousse at an angle.

  But as he surveyed them all, he noticed something odd.

  In between several mousse bowls were clear droplets of water on the stainless steel tray. There wasn’t anything on the shelf above the top tray of desserts, so the water hadn’t dripped onto the tray from something else. But also, the water drops were on both trays, not just the top one. And mousses weren’t clear, so it couldn’t have come from the desserts themselves.

  Shaun stepped out of the refrigerator and glanced around. The rest of the cooking staff raced around to serve the restaurant guests and didn’t pay any attention to him. And then he noticed that the back door to the restaurant lay only a few yards to his right. The produce was delivered every day and it wouldn’t make sense to have to carry it more than a few feet from the delivery door.

  But it also meant someone could walk into the kitchen, then into the refrigerator, and then leave without being noticed.

  Maybe he was being paranoid. Maybe it was only water. How would the stalker know that those mousses were for the party?

  He went back to Tracy. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Can it wait?”

  “No.”

  She sighed and turned to him. “What is it?”

  “When did you make the mousses?”

  She looked up as she thought. “Around two this afternoon.”

  “Were the trays wet when you put the mousses on them?”

  “Wet?” She blinked at him. “No, they hadn’t been used. I got them out of the storage cabinet.”

  He led her into the fridge and pointed out the water. She looked up at the empty rack above the desserts, and also at the ceiling of the refrigerator. “Maybe condensation from the ceiling…?”

  “But it’s on both trays. It would make sense if the water was only on the top tray, but it’s on the bottom tray of desserts, too.”

  Tracy’s lips narrowed as she surveyed the water drops. “Brett told me about the threat to the investors, but do you really think…?”

  “I don’t know. When I was working for the border patrol, I tasted cyanide and arsenic. Cyanide was bitter and acidic, but arsenic dissolved in water didn’t taste like anything. It was just like water.”

  Like the drops on the trays.

  “So you think someone came in and dosed all these mousses with arsenic?” Tracy asked.

  “Or something. They could have used a dropper, and if they were working fast, some of the poison would have dropped between the bowls.”

  “But I’ve been in the kitchen all afternoon. I didn’t notice anyone coming in here to tamper with the desserts.”

  “The kitchen’s been busy because of the party. Would you have noticed if someone snuck in from the back door? It would only take a second or two to get from the door to the refrigerator.”

  Tracy shook her head, but she heaved a frustrated sigh. “Then what do I serve for dessert?”

  Shaun didn’t have an answer for her.

  “Never mind,” Tracy said. “I’ll think of something. Let’s throw these away first.”

  “No, we have to keep them, but maybe we can put them away someplace where no one will eat them. I’ll find a way to get them tested to see if they really were poisoned.”

  “I suppose it’s better to be safe than sorry.” Tracy grabbed one of the trays and led the way out of the fridge. “I was here when they were checking for bombs the day the restaurant opened. There are some crazy people out there.”

  Shaun followed her, carr
ying the other tray. “Where should we put these?”

  “Nowhere in this kitchen. You don’t want anyone accidentally sneaking a bite. Can you put them in your car?”

  They laid the trays in the back of his Suburban, then returned to the restaurant.

  “You need to tell them dessert will be delayed,” Tracy said. “I’ve got to come up with something.”

  Shaun entered the banquet room and approached the podium at the front. Monica had everything set up for the presentation she was going to give later in the evening, including a microphone that fed into speakers placed along the top of the walls.

  Shaun turned the mike on and cleared his throat. “Excuse me, folks.”

  The room hushed, and Monica turned to look at him with wide eyes. He tried to smile to assure her, but it only made her look more frightened.

  “The chef asked me to tell you that dessert will be delayed a bit,” Shaun said. “I know most of you are almost done with your meals, so maybe Monica can begin her presentation a bit early?”

  Several guests clapped as Monica rose and approached the podium, her smile fixed on her face.

  “I’ll explain later,” he murmured to her before walking back into the sea of tables. He positioned himself near the back of the room, standing against the wall.

  As she began her presentation, Shaun wasn’t surprised when Marshall left his seat to stand next to him. “What happened?” he asked in a hard voice.

  “I think the dessert was poisoned.”

  “Impossible. I didn’t hire any temporary help for the kitchen staff.”

  “It would still have been easy for someone to get into the fridge from the back door and dose the desserts. No one would have seen them.”

  Marshall stood tall and rigid next to Shaun, his eyes on Monica. “Where are they?”

  “In my car. I’ll have them tested.”

  “You better be right. I don’t like being told someone is messing with my restaurant.” He left Shaun to sit back down.

  Messing with his restaurant was the least of his worries. If they’d eaten the desserts, within thirty minutes, they might all have been dead.