Owen looked down at what she’d dropped.
Shoes.
Shoes weren’t very incriminating.
He threw on the lights to the next dining room and passed through to the back hall, where a cold draft from the broken window had blown the curtains in and out, snagging the rich fabric on the jagged edges of the glass.
Another expense Victoria didn’t need—a new window and new curtains, too. Add to that the horrible mess that covered the floor: pictures torn from the walls, their glass shattered, their frames askew. Owen shoved his sidearm back into its holster and got on his radio, informing the dispatcher across the street that she could let Victoria know it was safe to come downstairs.
He tromped back through to the foyer, where Charlotte had picked up her shoes and was glaring at him with a red face.
“Just what is the meaning of this?” She gestured at him with one sodden sneaker. “Scaring me half out of my wits?”
“Did you catch someone?” Victoria peeked around the corner of the stairwell. “Charlotte!”
“Charlotte?” Paige echoed, descending the stairs.
“Wait, Paige.” Victoria placed one hand on Paige’s shoulder, holding her back. She looked at Owen. “Is it safe?”
Owen scanned the rear dining room and Charlotte before he answered Victoria. “It’s safe to come down, but don’t go in the rear dining room. Not yet.” He turned his attention back to the hostess. “What are you doing here?”
Her face almost as red as her hair, Charlotte held up her shoes. “I came to get my snow boots.” She stomped with one booted foot. “It’s snowing. We’re supposed to get six inches overnight, and I knew I’d need my boots to come to work in the morning.”
“So you came out in the snow to get your boots, and got your shoes covered with snow, so that you wouldn’t have to get your shoes covered with snow in the morning?”
“Yes.” Charlotte nodded as though the explanation made perfect sense.
Owen raked a hand back through his hair, frustrated by the fallout of her untimely arrival.
“I’m confused.” Victoria reached the bottom of the stairs, one protective arm still wrapped around Paige’s shoulders. “If Charlotte came in through the front door for her boots, why did we hear breaking glass below Paige’s room, in the rear dining room?”
“Someone broke in through the dining room window. That was the sound of breaking glass you heard.”
“Where are they now?”
“When Charlotte flipped on the front lights, the intruder escaped around the back of the house. I tried to give chase, but the perpetrator had a head start and a vehicle waiting.”
Paige looked up at him with wide eyes. “They got away?”
“Yes.” The disappointed look on his daughter’s face made him feel that much more defeated.
“Did you get a good look at him? Was it the same bad guy I saw?”
Owen took a deep breath before responding. He felt hesitant to share too much of what he’d learned in front of Charlotte. Whether he liked it or not, her proximity to the recent break-ins was too suspicious. “Actually, Paige, there are some things I need to take care of before we can talk about this.” He turned to Charlotte. “You can head home now, if you’d like.”
“Thank you. I’ve got an early morning tomorrow, and it’s getting late.” She took her shoes and headed out the door.
Owen turned to Paige and Victoria. “And I suppose it’s getting late for you, too. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
“She does. I’ll tuck her in and then I need to see the damage.” Victoria pointed their daughter back up the stairs, and her slender figure disappeared around the bend in the stairway.
Owen took his time looking at the footprints in the backyard. The fleeing intruder had left several deep impressions, though the falling snow was quickly obscuring them. Still, he was able to get measurements and pictures before they disappeared entirely.
Investigating the mess inside proved to be more complicated. Broken glass littered most of the floor. Owen knew the mess would have to be cleaned up before Victoria could allow customers anywhere near the room. But at the same time, he wanted to take his time picking through the pieces in hopes of finding something that might help identify the perpetrator. He also needed to figure out a way to secure the broken window against the cold night air, which wasn’t going to help Victoria’s gas bills any.
The rotten feeling that had claimed him since his conversation with Victoria the day before now felt even worse. The perp had gotten away. His daughter wasn’t safe. He was failing at everything.
He heard Victoria’s soft footfalls approaching, and her gasp told him she’d seen the mess.
Owen didn’t look up from the glass fragments he sifted through. “Do you have anything we can nail over the window to secure it for now?”
“I think there are some boards in the basement.” She sounded a little breathless. “I can look.”
“Do you need a hand?” He glanced back over his shoulder, but Victoria had already left the room.
A few minutes later she was back with boards, nails and a hammer. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”
Owen helped her juggle the materials. “Maybe I should pound them on from the outside. That will save your woodwork, and we won’t have to step across the broken glass.”
“Okay.” Victoria’s voice trembled, and she pinched her full lips together as though struggling not to cry.
That was the last thing he needed. He still hadn’t sorted out what to do about the guilt he felt for making her cry the day before, but it didn’t make any sense to revisit the deal he’d fought so hard for. Paige was supposed to be his—he just wished Victoria wouldn’t cry about it. If she started tearing up again, he didn’t know what he’d do.
He tried to get her mind off the mess. “Did Paige go to bed okay?”
“Yeah. I locked our apartment door. She has her cell phone under her pillow. I don’t think she really understands what happened—just that she got to stay up past her bedtime. I’m more spooked than she was.” Victoria looked up at him. Though her words sounded as if she was trying to be lighthearted, he could see real fear behind her brown eyes.
“Let me go out and put these boards up. I’ll be right back. Don’t clean up this mess just yet, but I would appreciate it if you could look over the pictures and see if you can tell if anything is missing.”
“Sure thing.”
Owen trudged outside and managed to secure the boards with a fairly tight fit to the window frame. It wasn’t the most energy-efficient patch job, but it would keep the snow out.
When he came back in, Victoria held a framed picture in her trembling hands. The glass was cracked, but it didn’t appear that the photograph inside had been damaged.
Owen looked at the smiling woman in the picture and felt his heart give a dip. “Your mother?”
Victoria nodded. “She was the head pastry chef here for eight years, until her cancer made her too weak to work.”
“We were in the fourth grade.” His words came out as a whisper. He didn’t need to be reminded of how much sympathetic pain he’d felt when Victoria had suffered that loss. He’d never known anyone who’d lost someone they loved so much. He couldn’t fathom the kind of pain she must have felt. In many ways, he realized he still didn’t understand it. His own mother had been much older when she’d died, and though he’d loved her, she hadn’t been the center of his universe as Victoria’s mother had been to her.
“Paige will be in the fourth grade next year.” Victoria set the picture reverently on a table. “I think of all the things my mother taught me—about baking, about life—and it makes me wonder—” Her voice caught, and she looked up at the ceiling as though she could see straight through to wh
ere her little girl slept.
Owen looked up, as well. He knew what Victoria needed to hear, but if he admitted it to her, could she use it against him to make a case for keeping her daughter?
He watched a tear trickle down her cheek.
Mush—that’s what he turned to every time those brown eyes cried. He’d been angry enough the day before to resist the tug of her tears, but he’d felt so bad ever since that it didn’t take more than one tear this time.
“You’re doing a great job with Paige.”
“Right. With our home being broken into, and Paige almost walking in on a robbery in progress—and who knows how I’m going to make this month’s mortgage payment and pay for this.” She pointed to the broken windows, and the curtains that had been shredded by the broken glass, which hung limp now that the wind had been blocked.
Owen took a tentative step closer. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Sure.” Victoria nodded. “Just like it was okay when my mom got sick? It was her dream to buy this place. She actually had made plans—she had a savings account built up and everything. But then she ended up spending it all on medical bills. I thought I could make her dream come true, but look at the mess I’m making.” Her gaze fell to the broken glass littered across the floor.
“You didn’t make this mess.”
“No, I didn’t. But I’m the one who’s got to clean it up.” She looked at him with red-rimmed eyes. Her strained voice dropped to a whisper. “What is God doing?”
The faltering hitch in her voice made Owen catch his breath. Reaching for her, he slid one arm across her shoulders, surprised when she didn’t fight him but instead settled her cheek against his shoulder. His first thought was the somewhat shocking realization that Victoria still wore the same perfume she’d worn in high school—the same enthralling scent that had so beguiled him when they’d first dated.
“God will see you through,” he assured her automatically, though his words felt like hollow platitudes. What did he know about overcoming adversity? When Patrick had died and Victoria left him, he’d pretty much stuck his head in the sand. In a lot of ways, it was still there.
Wrapping his arms a little more securely around her, Owen felt himself drawn back in time to the days when he’d held Victoria and dreamed they’d be together forever. She’d felt just right in his arms then. In spite of all that had come between them, he still found himself wanting to hold her close to his heart.
It was strange, because he knew she didn’t belong there. This was the woman who’d kept his daughter a secret from him.
So why couldn’t he resist her? Was it because he was weak, or just foolish? Obviously he still hadn’t learned his lesson when it came to letting Victoria get close to him.
She sniffed back her tears and looked at the mess on the floor. “Is it okay if I start sweeping, or do you still need to investigate?” She didn’t question his reassuring words. Probably because he hadn’t managed to make them sound very reassuring.
“I took pictures of the crime scene.” Owen stepped back, releasing her, chastising himself for instantly wishing she was still in his arms. “Let me help you.”
“I’m sure you’ve got to get back to work.”
“They’ll call me if they need me. Who knows, we might find an important clue.” He wasn’t about to leave her. Not now, not like this, with her dining room—and her faith—in shambles.
EIGHT
Victoria tried to focus on sweeping up every last shard of glass, instead of letting herself dwell on the nastiness of what had happened. She wished she could sweep away her problems as easily as clearing away the glass that littered the floor.
Besides being forced to work alongside the man who was planning to take her daughter away, there was the ongoing onslaught on her business. So many irreplaceable pictures had been ruined. She prayed they wouldn’t be damaged beyond repair. And in the background of all those material questions, she couldn’t seem to sort out the why behind it all.
“What do you think was the motive here, anyway?” she asked Owen as he tossed shards of broken glass into a wastebasket.
“It’s hard to say. Considering that your last break-in was on a Sunday night, too, maybe the same party thought they could get another hefty take. Has your new safe arrived?”
“Not yet.”
“So they might have been looking for another safe in the wall. This wall has a large empty space behind it.”
“The chimney runs behind there.”
“That explains the space. If a thief didn’t know about the chimney, it stands to reason they might look for a safe behind the pictures. Whatever they were looking for, I don’t think they had time to find it.”
Victoria agreed. “I was too busy to get the deposit made on Saturday, as usual, but I took the money up to the church. Pastor Peter arranged for me to put it in the church safe—the same safe where they keep the Sunday offering.”
“How many people know it’s there?” Owen asked.
“Just me and the pastor, and the treasurers who oversee the safe.”
“Charlotte doesn’t know?”
Victoria froze, then slowly started sweeping again. “No, she doesn’t. That doesn’t help her story, does it?”
“I don’t like to think she would be involved in this, but I would have caught the intruder if she hadn’t turned on the lights when she did.”
“So what do you think, then?”
“She might have been working with a team, waiting to give the signal if they needed to retreat.”
“A team?”
“Assuming we’re dealing with the same party that robbed you last week, yes, there would have to be at least two people involved. Last week the robber was a man. This week it was definitely a small-framed woman. Both the visual I got on the retreating perp and the footprints I found outside prove that.”
Victoria leaned back and took a deep breath. “So, you think this is some kind of organized assault against me? There haven’t been any other targets in town?”
“As far as I know, you’re the only one who’s experienced this kind of activity.”
She wanted to remain strong, for her own sake and for her daughter, but Victoria couldn’t shake the feeling of terror that began to choke her as Owen spoke. “So they’re coordinated?”
“Yes.”
“And they’re determined?”
“It would seem so.”
A whimper of fear escaped from her lips. “What are they going to do next?”
Owen couldn’t take it any longer. Yes, he still felt bitter toward Victoria for hiding Paige from him, but the woman was folding under the pressure. Whatever lies she may have told him in the past, he couldn’t stand back and watch her suffer—not when he knew his own inability to catch her intruders had complicated the situation for her. It didn’t feel right to keep his distance from her when she was hurting. It felt right only when she was in his arms.
He wiped the dust from his hands and took a step closer to the trembling woman. “I’m sorry this has happened to you.”
“I just don’t understand. Who did this? And why? Does it have something to do with Olivia’s murder? With the secret baby?” She sniffled.
Owen picked up a napkin from a nearby table and handed it to her, moving closer in case she decided she needed to cry on his shoulder again.
“Thanks.” She wiped at her tears but didn’t move any closer to him. Obviously she was wary of the feelings between them, too. “When Detective Delfino was staying here, he asked to have Olivia’s room. Then it was ransacked. I know you guys concluded that the guy from Boston was behind that, but what if there’s something in this house? What if— Wait.”
Victoria looked at the pictures and blinked, her eyebrows scrunched up w
ith thought. “You asked if Olivia ever gave me anything. Well, she did.” She crossed the room to another wall and plucked down a picture that was hanging in the corner. “I had forgotten all about this.”
“What is it?” Owen stood close to Victoria as they both peered at the picture. There was the scent of her perfume again, tempting him to pull her close. It took him a few seconds to focus his thoughts.
“Olivia wanted me to hang this picture on the wall. She said she wanted to feel like she was a part of this town. At the time I thought it was a strange request, but I didn’t see any harm in it.”
The picture showed two smiling figures standing on a cliff side overlooking the sea. “This shoreline isn’t near here, is it?”
“No. This was taken in Ireland—I guess about twenty-three years ago.”
“Who’s the man in the picture? He looks familiar, but I can’t place him.” Owen studied the smiling face that seemed to taunt him with its anonymity. Shaggy dark hair hung to his eyes, but Owen was sure he recognized the man’s jovial smile. But from where?
Victoria tapped on the glass. “Olivia said this is a picture of her parents, before she was born. This man is Olivia’s father. Her mother died a couple of years ago.”
“What happened to her dad? I feel like I’ve seen him before.”
“She said she had no contact with him when she was growing up. In fact, she made a big deal about never having known him, about missing growing up with a father figure in her life. She stirred up Paige to want to find out who her father is.”
“Has Paige asked about me?”
There was that guilty look back in Victoria’s eyes. “Yes.”
Owen thought about pushing further, demanding Victoria allow him to tell Paige sooner, but choking guilt grabbed him quickly. He’d told Victoria he’d ease into getting to know his daughter first.
Besides, he was on duty. He was supposed to be investigating the robbery and Olivia’s murder. “Did Olivia ever mention her father’s name? Does he live in Ireland?” Owen looked at the man in the picture, the smile that seemed to mock him with its namelessness. “I feel like I’ve seen him before. Like it’s a clue.”
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