by Emily James
That made it sound like the scene was contaminated before the police cleared it. Still, it seemed like too much of a coincidence that someone spray painted over the front window shortly after a murder happened here. Detective Austen did need to know.
And Claire’s tone made it clear that she didn’t want to ever deal with Detective Austen again. Given how she and Detective Austen would probably rather both chew on old rubber than speak to each other again, it was probably better I made the call anyway.
“You do the search,” I said, “I’ll call the detective. This time.”
“There better not be a next time,” Claire said.
I pulled out my phone, called the police station, and asked for Detective Austen.
The man at the front desk put me through.
“Austen,” she answered.
“I’m one of the women from How Sweet It Is Bakery. You interviewed me about the Bob Jenner murder case. He was our landlord.”
I paused to make sure she had time to figure out who I was since I hadn’t given my name.
“Yes?” she said. There was a hint of excitement in her voice, as if she was hoping I actually did know something about the murder that would make her job easier.
Just the opposite, in fact.
“When we arrived at the building this morning, we found that someone had spray painted our window.”
A pause. The line filled with the white noise of other people in the background. “You called to tell me that your business was vandalized? That’s not my area. I investigate murders.”
I was trying hard not to judge her and not to dislike her. This could be her professional persona. She might be a lovely person in real life and with her coworkers. For Dan’s sake, I hoped so. I hated to think of him having to regularly work with such an unpleasant person.
Or Claire might have gotten under her skin like a splinter that refused to come out, and I was guilty by association. Claire did sometimes have that effect on people.
“It just seemed unlikely to us that a crime would occur at the same place twice so closely together unless they were related.”
Detective Austen made an mmm sound. “This is the mistake that people who like to watch too many crime shows make. Unlikely doesn’t mean impossible. This was very likely a random vandalism.”
Part of me wanted to tell her that I didn’t watch crime shows. I hadn’t even had access to a TV for years until I moved in with Claire. But trying to defend myself wouldn’t get me results. “Have other businesses in the area been vandalized?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Detective Austen spoke slowly as if I would have trouble understanding if she spoke at a normal pace. “I don’t investigate vandalism. I’d recommend you call the front desk and have them direct you to the proper department.”
She hung up on me. What was it with people hanging up on me lately? Didn’t they care that it was rude?
I shifted to face Claire.
“That looked like it went well,” she said. “I did find a way to get the paint off, so at least we’re not zero for two. And since you handled the wicked witch detective, I’ll call and report the vandalism to someone else. We can’t start to clean this up until we’ve reported it and had it photographed.”
I gave her a grateful smile. Somehow talking with Detective Austen had given me a headache.
Worse, my gut told me Detective Austen was wrong. While it wasn’t impossible that the vandalism and murder weren’t connected, the odds seemed to be in favor of some sort of link. I squinted at the words again. Figuring out the connection would be a lot easier if the person who spray painted the windows had taken a little more time to make his or her message clear.
I snapped a quick photo with my phone so I could look at it again later.
Behind me, I could hear Claire reporting the vandalism to another officer. Even if they thought it was worth giving their time to—which wasn’t likely to happen since catching a vandal was almost impossible if they weren’t stopped in the act—they wouldn’t have anywhere to start looking for the vandal if Detective Austen refused to acknowledge a connection.
I glanced at Claire. Whoever had done this was actively hindering my dream. It’d taken me a long time to be brave enough to dream and hope for anything again. Letting some faceless bully stop me now felt wrong and weak. I’d be letting this person take from me what I’d fought for despite the threat Jarrod posed.
And it wasn’t only my dream at stake. It was Claire’s dream too. She’d put so much into this. After all the time we’d spent together, she was really starting to feel like the bossy older sister I’d never had. I couldn’t let her down.
Quitting now, or waiting and hoping this person didn’t strike again, meant giving up both our dreams. We wouldn’t get another chance at this.
If Detective Austen refused to look for a connection, then she left me no choice. I would.
6
The officer who arrived over an hour later squinted at the spray painted writing. He shrugged. “You got me for what it says. It’s not a gang tag, I can tell you that much. Someone tried to write something specific, but it looks like they didn’t know what they were doing.”
Claire and I had surmised that much ourselves already.
The officer stepped back and aimed the digital camera he’d brought at the front of our store.
Claire hovered next to him. “You’re going to collect fingerprints as well, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am, I will.” He snapped another shot from a different angle. “But I have to tell you, unless the prints are already in the system, we’re not likely to catch the person who did this. A vandal who gets away usually gets off free.”
That wasn’t exactly encouraging, but we’d guessed that much as well while we were waiting. It was like when someone smashed a car window, grabbed something lying inside, and ran. The police department didn’t have the resources to follow up on petty crimes, and with no witnesses, they didn’t even have a place to start.
The officer collected fingerprints and even a hand print off the windows.
Claire let out a sigh long enough that it seemed like it should have taken more air than she could have held in her body. “Most of those prints probably belong to the police.”
“Probably.”
The officer packed up his kit and took Claire’s statement. She made sure only her name went on the police report. It wasn’t like I was actually a witness to anything. My inclusion wasn’t necessary, and it spared us the fake-name problem.
He finished writing and ripped a sheet off his clipboard. “You can give this copy to your insurance company for your claim.”
He climbed back into his cruiser.
Claire glared at the paper in her hand as if it’d been the one to offend her. “There’s no money in the budget to pay the deductible on a claim.”
We technically had a buffer built into our plans. The problem was that if we spent it on getting the paint professionally cleaned off, we wouldn’t have what we needed if we encountered a problem with the opening that we couldn’t handle ourselves. “How long would it take for them to send someone to take care of this?”
Claire folded the police report into a precise square and slid it into her pocket. “There’s no time in the budget to wait for them either.”
Filing an insurance claim meant waiting for them to process the claim and then waiting for a spot in the schedule of whatever professional cleaner they contracted with. If that took anywhere near as long as receiving the check for my destroyed food truck had, we’d be opening with questionable words emblazed across our windows for sure. “I guess we’re putting in sweat equity then.”
“I think there’s a ladder in the back,” Claire said. “We’d better get started. I have a whole list that we need to complete if we want any hope of opening on schedule.”
An hour later, opening with the graffiti still on the windows was sounding like a better idea every second. We’d only finished the first word, and
my arms felt like they were no longer attached to my body.
Below me, Claire paused and kneaded her lower back. “I clearly need to add more squats, bending, and kneeling exercises into my routine.”
That might have prepared her for this, but probably not. Claire was fit from her daily workouts, but she was also twenty years older than me. We just weren’t created to abuse our bodies as much the older we got.
My legs trembled slightly from bracing myself on the ladder without using my hands. I climbed down. “Do you want to trade for a bit?”
Claire glanced at the ladder and shuddered. “No, thank you.”
I wiped my forehead on my sleeve. Normally I’d have loved such a beautiful fall day, but today the sunshine just added one more layer of discomfort to what we needed to do. “What was supposed to be on the list for today?”
Claire shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”
Which was as good as saying that this might be the straw that broke the camel’s back or the nail in the coffin or the multitude of other clichés that said we could only endure so much before our plans couldn’t recover in time for the opening.
“Excuse me?” a young male voice said from the other side of where Claire stood.
I jumped, and Claire straightened out of her slumping posture. We both turned.
How tired and worried about the bakery was I that I hadn’t even heard someone approach? That wasn’t like me. Or maybe it was becoming the new me. I seemed to be sleeping a little more soundly at night as well, if how rested I now felt in the morning was any indication.
Still, it’d been a good thing I hadn’t been up on the ladder when he spoke or I might have spent the rest of the day in the ER from a fall. Then we really wouldn’t have been able to open on time.
The young man took another step toward us. He looked like he was in his late teens, with strategically mussed brown hair. His form was tall and lanky in that way that some young men had when they were still growing in spurts. His cheeks weren’t entirely smooth, but he didn’t look like he’d be able to grow a beard worthy of Duck Dynasty either.
He pointed at the three words of graffiti we still had left. “I could finish that for you.”
Claire planted her hands on her hips, a sure sign that she was mentally assessing our budget.
“I wouldn’t ask for much.” His words tumbled out over each other as if he could see Claire preparing to send him on his way as well. “Consider it a trial run. And if you’re happy with my work, maybe you’d consider hiring me on even part-time once you open.” He looked away as if he was too embarrassed to meet our eyes for the next part. “I really need the work. I’m trying to save for college.”
My heart felt like it cracked a little. I knew what that felt like, to want something and not have the money to achieve it. To not know if it would ever be possible. Claire should understand that too.
I held up a wait here finger at the young man and pulled Claire far enough away that we could discuss it.
“Surely we can find something in the budget to hire him to finish this.”
Claire glared at the rag and bucket of water she’d been using in a way that made me think she wanted to kick them over. “We’d have to use some of our emergency-fund money.”
“If graffiti doesn’t count as an emergency, I don’t know what does. We need to be spending time on what was actually on the list for today.”
Claire looked over at where the boy still stood. Spend money we didn’t have or be almost guaranteed to miss our opening day—the war was written all across her face.
She turned back to face him. “How much would you want?”
7
Claire added more paint to her roller. Apparently, moving from cleaning off the graffiti to what needed to be done within the store was like the proverbial out of the frying pan and into the fire. But at least I wasn’t on a ladder out in the hot sun.
And the fresh paint was already making a huge difference in how bright and clean the space looked.
Claire swiped the roller over the wall with a precision that only she could bring to painting. “I’m surprised the new owner hasn’t contacted us about rent. I’m going to call them today and see if I can convince them to take the same deal. I doubt it, but I need to try.”
“I wouldn’t bother,” the young man’s voice said from close behind me.
I dropped my paint brush. It landed with a splat on the old sheets we’d laid down, barely missing my socks.
We’d left the door open to air out the paint fumes, but that kid must have ninja training. His movements were unnaturally quiet.
I picked up my paint brush and turned around.
He set the bucket and scrub brush near the display counter. “If it was me, I wouldn’t. Worst case, you have to pay a couple months’ back rent once the new owner figures out you haven’t been paying anything. Best case, you get a couple months’ free rent.”
He shrugged like the logic was obvious.
To most people, it might have been. But Claire and I were Christians, which meant we were supposed to live in a way that would please God. Neither of us were perfect, but I, for one, didn’t want to be one of those people who claimed to be a Christian and then lived like everyone else in the world. Too many people who called themselves Christians turned others away from God by their bad behavior.
I laid my brush across the top of the paint can. “I wouldn’t feel right doing something like that. We wouldn’t be any better than squatters then.”
“Besides,” Claire bent down and tried to move some spilled paint from the sheet back into her paint pan—we had just enough to do what we needed to, “a stunt like that would probably cost us the chance of convincing the new owner to make the same deal.”
The young man crossed the distance between them and held the pan for her. “You got some kind of special deal from the last owner?”
“We did. We—” Claire froze, her gaze fixed on a spot on the far wall. “Please tell me that clock is wrong.”
Both the young man and I swiveled to face the clock. I pulled out my cell phone. The time matched.
“It’s accurate.”
“Crap.” Claire straightened up so fast she almost tipped the whole paint tray over. “I still need to make a supply run for the appetizers for this weekend’s wedding. If I don’t get there today, it’ll be almost impossible for me to have everything prepared and do what we need to here.”
We’d been hired to cater a small wedding where the bride and groom were only doing appetizers and a cupcake tree rather than a sit-down dinner. I’d been making edible flowers every day leading up to today because I planned to bake the cupcakes fresh the day of the wedding and add the decorations right before delivery.
Claire wouldn’t make it to the store in time to buy what she still needed if she also had to make calls to figure out who our new landlord was.
Helping Claire with the phone call so that she could buy what she needed gave me a good excuse to contact the landlord’s next of kin. That seemed like as reasonable a place as any to start figuring out who had enough of a grudge against him or their family to keep vandalizing the store even after he was gone. Since the vandalism happened after his murder, hopefully his family would want to help and be willing to talk to me about it. Now that the criminal had acted twice, it gave us twice the evidence, even if Detective Austen didn’t think so.
I took the paint roller from Claire’s hand. “Go. I’ll clean this up and then call our former landlord’s business number. Hopefully someone will answer and be able to give us the name and number of whoever our new landlord is.”
Claire looked down at her paint spattered clothes and made an oh well gesture with her hands. She grabbed her purse and speed walked out the door. If I was lucky, she’d remember to come back for me afterward since we’d driven her car here. Claire could sometimes be a little hyper-focused.
The young man flopped a wave at me and headed toward the door as well. The window
s he’d washed were so clear I wouldn’t have guessed they ever had paint on them.
“Wait. Don’t you want your pay?”
He looked back over his shoulder. “I’ll be back tomorrow to see if there’s any more work you need me to do.” He glanced around the room that it’d taken us as long to paint as it had for him to clean off the seemingly permanent spray paint. “If you have another room that needs painting, for example.”
We did still need to paint the restroom and the kitchen, if we had enough paint left.
He was out the door before I could even ask his name. It was a good tactic. If we’d paid him, that would conclude our agreement, and we might decide not to give him any more work. If he waited to get paid, he risked us not paying him, but he also had a reason to come back. He could find us in a position like today where we had too much to do and not enough time or energy to do it. He was a smart kid, I’d give him that, even if he was a little odd.
And I must be getting old if I was thinking about a teenager as a kid.
I finished the two-foot section of wall that was left and then cleaned everything up. We couldn’t waste anything, so that had to be done before I made my phone call. If the call took a while and the paint hardened, I’d have to face the wrath of Claire. Not even Dan with his years on the police force and working undercover wanted to do that.
With everything put away, I dialed the phone number we had for our former landlord.
“Jenner Developments,” a voice that sounded like it belonged to a middle-aged woman said. She also sounded congested, as if she’d been crying.
I needed to choose my words carefully. The poor woman was probably grieving her boss if he was a good one and potentially worrying about her job. This was the part I always struggled with when someone who seemed like a good person died. What had he done to end up murdered?
“I’m from How Sweet It Is, and we recently signed a rental agreement with Mr. Jenner. I need to get in touch with whoever will be taking over his business.”