“I would, but I don’t think he’d like the long hours I spend sitting in the car. It’s not so bad during the warmer weather when I can have the windows open, but it’s a bit miserable during the winter. Of course, with his fur coat, he may be more comfortable than I am.”
They both looked down at the German shepherd, who was busily sniffing his master’s shoes. He seemed to sense their attention, and after a moment, he looked up at them, his mouth open in a happy pant. David chuckled.
“I’m going to go say hi to Candice and let these two crazy pups out back. Should I start setting the table then?”
“Sure. I still have to finish the sauce, and the chicken breasts just went in the oven, so it will probably be about half an hour before we eat. There’s no need to hurry.”
“Just let me know how I can help.” He brushed by her, then paused and turned back. “I love you, by the way.”
“I love you, too,” she said, smiling. Their honeymoon may be over, but their lives together were just beginning, and Moira couldn’t wait to see what life had in store for them.
CHAPTER THREE
* * *
Over the next few days, life settled back into its normal rhythm. At home, she and David and the dogs lived the sedate life of a happy family, and at the deli, she slowly got back into the swing of things and caught up with everything she had missed while she was gone. When Cameron asked for a couple of days off to spend time with a relative out of town, she was more than happy to give it to him. She had been looking for an excuse to pick up some full shifts at the deli, but hadn’t wanted to take over a shift that had already been scheduled since most of her employees needed the money. Cameron, who she had learned a few months ago was very well off, probably wouldn’t have minded, but she had agreed not to treat him any differently than the others.
Tuesday was her first full day of work after getting back from the honeymoon. She rarely asked her employees to take on twelve-hour days, but she didn’t mind doing so herself on occasion. With the breakfast hours beginning at seven in the morning, that meant it was still dark when she left for the day. With a thermos full of coffee to help her wake up, she spent the drive to work going over the recipe for crepes in her head.
Normally, the deli offered mini-quiches for breakfast. Over the past year, they had experimented with a huge variety of flavors and styles, but Moira was ready to try something completely new. It wasn’t until she had tried some crepes from a street vendor in Paris that she had come up with the idea for crepes. Like quiches, there was a lot that she could do with crepes, and they were quick enough to make that they could even take custom orders.
Humming happily to herself, Moira unlocked the back door, glancing up into the security camera that David had installed there as she did so. It looked a bit dirty — her to-do list for the week would have to include cleaning all of the cameras and double checking all of the other security equipment. Most of it had been installed over a year ago, and it hadn’t been checked since.
She went through the familiar routine of preparing the deli for opening. It didn’t take her long to count out the register, put a pot of coffee on, and pull the chairs down. Soon all that was left to do was to flip the sign over and unlock the door. It was time to start cooking.
Half an hour later, she pulled a freshly baked batch of feta cheese and spinach mini quiches out of the oven and set them on the counter next to the bowl of batter for the crepes. She had made a couple of crepes and played around with fillings for her own breakfast, and had a good idea of what she was going to offer the customers. Her favorite had been the blueberry cheesecake crepe, but she wanted to make sure her customers had a couple of options. The crepes would be best freshly made, and it would be easy enough to let her customers build their own.
With the quiches out of the oven and cooling on a rack and the two pots of coffee on the warmer, it was time to go unlock the door and welcome her first customers of the day in. She enjoyed working the breakfast shift; her customers were usually on their way to work or school, so they rarely stayed to chat, but for many of them this was the highlight of their day. A lot of them stopped in every single morning, so over time she got to know them just as well as her regular lunch and dinner customers.
“Welcome to Darling’s DELIcious Delights,” she said as the first customer, a middle-aged, bald man, walked in. He was a regular, someone who had been coming to the deli since the day it first opened. “Hi, Luis. Our breakfast special today is a plate of freshly made crepes with your choice of filling and a complementary cup of coffee. I suggest the blueberry cheesecake filling, which is made with locally grown blueberries, but all of the options are good. What can I get you?”
“What you just mentioned sounds like it will hit the spot,” he said. “I love this place. You’ve got something new every day. I never get tired of it.”
She smiled. That was exactly what she liked to hear.
Meg came in to help with the afternoon shift just as Moira was putting the finishing touches on the big pot of lobster bisque soup, their soup of the day. She was overwhelmingly pleased with the success of the crepes, but after just one morning, it was evident that she was going to need to begin having two people there for the breakfast shift. Trying to juggle making crepes and managing the register all on her own hadn’t been her most brilliant idea.
“Hey, Ms. D,” Meg said. “How’s it going?”
“We’ve been pretty busy so far today,” Moira told her. “That might change if the weather guy was right, though. We won’t have as many customers this evening if it starts to snow.”
Sure enough, as the bad weather moved in, fewer and fewer customers came through the door. It was a slow enough day that Moira did something she rarely had a chance to do while she was working these days; she read. Meg pulled a stool up to the counter next to her and flipped though her phone, glancing up occasionally when a strong gust of wind made the windows rattle.
Moira was just about to suggest that they close early for the day when a customer walked in with a blast of icy air at his heels. He wrestled the door shut before approaching the register. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, and his hood was pulled low over his face, with a ski mask on for good measure. The deli owner didn’t blame him; the snowstorm that they had been promised was turning into a full-blown blizzard, and the winter vortex had covered the entire state with frigid temperatures. It was going to be a rough day for anyone who had to be out and about.
“Hi,” she said. “Welcome to Darling’s DELIcious Delights. What can I get you?”
“I don’t know.” The man came closer to peer at the chalkboard, where the day’s specials were written. “How about everything in the cash register?”
In one smooth motion, he pulled a gun out of his pocket and held it steadily at Moira’s chest. She froze.
“You, put down the phone,” he said, nodding at Meg. “Don’t try anything. Keep your hands on top of the counter, where I can see them.”
Out of the corner of her eye, the deli owner saw her employee do as she was told.
“And you, open the register. Now.”
Moira didn’t hesitate. The money wasn’t worth getting shot over. She opened the cash register and began pulling bills out. She handed them over, then reached for the change.
“Not that,” he said. “You can keep the coins. But give me your ring.”
She touched her wedding ring and breathed in sharply. The band of metal meant more to her than all of the cash in the drawer did. It was the symbol of her and David’s love, and their promise to be together for the rest of their lives.
“Hurry up,” the man snapped.
Reluctantly, Moira slid the ring off her finger and placed it in the man’s gloved hand. She had the feeling that if she didn’t, the rest of her life might not be very long at all.
“Both of you keep your hands up,” the man said as he slid the ring into his pocket and began backing away. “Nice and easy now.”
When his back touched the deli’s front door, he turned around, shoved it open, and ran outside. In no time at all, he had vanished into the falling snow.
CHAPTER FOUR
* * *
As soon as the man had gone, Moira ran across the room to the front door and locked it. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest. They had just been robbed at gunpoint, and the criminal had gotten cleanly away. She didn’t care about the money, but the thought of her missing wedding ring made her feel like crying.
Taking a deep shuddering breath, Moira turned to her employee. “Are you all right, Meg?”
“I’m fine, Ms. D,” the younger woman said. Her face was pale. “What do we do?”
“I’m going to call the police,” the deli owner said. “Can you start turning everything off and cleaning up the kitchen? We’re closing early.”
Meg nodded. Seeming glad to have something to do, she pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen. Alone in the main room, Moira collapsed onto a stool and rested her head in her hands. That had been one of the most terrifying experiences in her life, and that was saying something. There had been no warning whatsoever; the day had gone from perfectly normal to deadly in the blink of an eye.
After taking a moment to gather her nerves, the deli owner pulled out her phone and dialed the local police station. Once she had told her story to the dispatcher, she hung up and left David a voicemail, doing her best to reassure him that there was no need to worry. She and Meg were both all right, and the robber was long gone.
After that, there was nothing to do but wait. Normally the Maple Creek police had a quick response time, but she knew that it would probably take them a little bit longer than usual to get there thanks to the bad weather and dangerous roads. It was frustrating to know that every minute she waited meant that the guy who had held her at gun point was getting further and further away.
“Ms. D?”
Moira turned to see Meg standing in the kitchen doorway.
“What is it?”
“I was thinking — didn’t the cameras catch that guy?”
“The cameras,” Moira said, shaking her head in amazement. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that myself.”
The crook had been wearing a ski mask, but still, video footage of him would be useful for the police. A good recording would give them the man’s height, an estimate of his weight, and might even catch something, such as a scar or injury, that could help identify him. Going through the footage would at least give her something to do while she was waiting.
The deli owner pulled the stool up to the counter and sat down with her phone. She could access the cameras from an app that David had installed, and did so now. The camera footage was stored for a week at a time, before being erased automatically to make room for new footage. She could also watch a live feed, which was what she clicked on now.
“What the… what’s going on?” she muttered. The live feed was completely black, but she wasn’t getting any error messages. She wasn’t the best with technology, and had no idea how to figure out what was going on. Was the internet down? Or maybe the cameras were dead. It had been a while since she had checked them, but somehow she couldn’t imagine that they had all gone down at once.
Moira peered up at the camera over the register and was surprised to see that it looked dirty, just like the one by the back door had that morning. Frowning, she pulled the stool over to it and climbed up. Someone had sprayed black paint over the lens. What she had thought was dirt, was really just flecks of paint that had misted over the front of the camera’s casing.
A whoop-whoop from outside caught her attention, and she climbed down off the stool just as someone knocked on the deli’s door. She could see the red and blue flashing lights of a police car through the snow. The deli owner hurried over to unlock the door and let Detective Jefferson in.
“It’s been a while since I’ve answered a call here,” he said. “It’s nice to see you again, though of course the circumstances could be better. Is everyone okay? No injuries?”
“We’re fine,” Moira told him. “It was just me and Meg here, thank goodness. He had a gun, but it didn’t go off.”
“Can I have a description of the person?” he asked. “I’ve got a couple of officers in a cruiser outside, and they’re going to drive around and see what they can find. Visibility isn’t great, but it’s worth a shot.”
“He was about my height, bulky, and was wearing a dark green jacket with a hood and a ski mask. He had on leather gloves. Driving gloves, not work gloves.”
The detective spoke into his radio, replaying the information to his men. “What did he take?” he asked when he had finished.
“Some money from the cash register. Probably about two-hundred and fifty dollars. And my wedding ring.”
He looked up from his notepad and winced. “I’m sorry. We’ll do everything we can to catch this person and get you your money and ring back. Did he take anything else?”
“No,” the deli owner said. “But there is something… all of the security cameras have been blacked out.”
Jefferson raised an eyebrow. “Now that’s interesting. That means the robbery here wasn’t random. It was planned.”
“But why would someone want to rob the deli?” she asked. “Two hundred and fifty dollars can’t be worth the risk of going to prison. We never keep much cash in the drawer, and we don’t have a safe. He can’t have expected to get much.”
The detective tapped his pen on his lips, thinking. “How much is your wedding ring worth, Ms. Darling?”
She told him, feeling the empty spot on her finger with her thumb as she did so. She had just gotten used to wearing the darn thing, but it already felt like a part of her was missing.
“It might be a long shot,” said the detective, “but there’s a possibility that’s what he was after. Have you told anyone else how much it was worth, or posted pictures on social media?”
“Well, our wedding pictures are online,” Moira said. “Candice is the only one, other than David, who knows its worth. She wouldn’t have anything to do with this, though.”
“No, no, I know she wouldn’t,” he assured her. “But it’s possible that she told someone else, someone who wouldn’t have any qualms about breaking the law to get something that’s worth a few thousand dollars. This isn’t the first case we’ve had where expensive items have been taken during a robbery. There was a similar crime in Lake Marion a couple of weeks back, and the perp was never caught.”
“Do you think it could be the same guy?” she asked.
“There’s no way of knowing for sure yet,” he said. “Now, I’d like to take a look at the cameras and see your security footage. If we can figure out who blacked out the cameras, then maybe we’ll be able to figure out the robber’s identity. You and Meg just sit tight. I’ll want to talk to her before she goes home; just send her out when she’s ready.”
“I hope you catch him soon,” Moira said. “It’s bad enough that he stole my wedding ring, but I’m afraid he might really hurt someone if he keeps doing this. If he points that gun at enough people, sooner or later, he’s going to pull the trigger.”
CHAPTER FIVE
* * *
“Here you go. Coffee, cream, and half a packet of hot chocolate; just how you like it.”
Moira took the mug from David and held it in her hands. Sugar and caffeine; just what she needed.
“Thanks,” she said. “You’re wonderful.”
“So are you.” He sat down next to her and put an arm around her. “You handled the robbery perfectly. A lot of people would have panicked.”
“I don’t feel like I did anything right. He got away. When it was happening, I was too scared to do anything, but now I feel like I should have tried to stop him. He was probably the same guy who was involved with the case you’re working on right now. He’s already robbed two places; I’m sure he’ll strike again.”
“You definitely should not have tried to stop h
im,” David said, facing her. “That’s how people get shot. Better to let him take the money. Your life is so much more important.”
“But he got my wedding ring, too,” she said. “I hate that he took it.”
“You can always get a new ring,” he said. “But I can’t get a new you.”
She sipped her coffee, touched by what he was saying, but still struggling under a feeling of anger and helplessness. She had never liked being a victim, and she hated the thought that she had just done nothing when faced with a thief. Rationally, she knew that David was right. An unarmed middle-aged woman would have no chance against a man with a gun.
“There’s no rush, but when you’re ready, can you go over it with me again? I want to know everything — like you said, this man is more likely than not connected to my case. If I can track him down, I’d be able to get your wedding ring back, and solve the case for my client. It’s always nice to kill two birds with one stone.”
A Quiche To Die For: Book 17 in The Darling Deli Series Page 2