Break-ins and Bloodshed

by Danielle Collins

  “Now!” came Scott’s voice.

  Henrietta flicked the light switch at the same time her thumb jammed the police call button on her alarm app. The alarm went off, causing everyone to cringe, and Scott stepped into the main room, a gun in one hand and his phone in the other.

  “Don’t move,” he said, and it was only then that Henrietta took in the sight before her with some shock.

  Two men lay on the floor surrounded by shattered glass and blinking at the blinding light. Up above them on the grandfather clock sat Sepia, licking a paw. She had a very self-satisfied look on her feline features, and Henrietta suppressed a laugh, despite the situation. She had to have slipped through their legs when they’d gone downstairs.

  “Wha—what’s going on?” the burglar on the bottom yanked off his facemask and the other cursed at him, telling him to leave it on, but the damage was done.

  “Preston, I’m so disappointed in you,” Henrietta said, coming to stand over them.

  “Preston?” Nelson said, coming out of the shadows, followed by Olivia.

  “Nelson? What is going on? Why are you here?”

  “Shut up, dude,” the other masked man said.

  In one swift motion, Scott ripped off the man’s mask and Henrietta saw it was the same man from The Deli.

  “But…I don’t get it.”

  “They knew we were coming,” the other man sputtered out.

  “But, Vance—”

  “Don’t say my name!” The young man—Vance—turned toward Preston as if he were going to punch him.

  “Hey, calm down,” Scott said. “The police are on their way.”

  “You said we’d never get caught. You said it was impossible. You said—”

  “Shut. Up!” Vance said, clearly unnerved by Preston’s willingness to talk.

  “No, Preston, don’t be quiet. Tell us why you would do something like this?” She stepped forward but not too close to the men, just as the sound of sirens began to grow louder. “Why would you ever need to steal other people’s things?”

  Taking the advice of his friend, Preston pressed his lips together and cast his eyes downward. It didn’t matter, though. Henrietta had a feeling the police would be able to work out some sort of deal for him if he told what he knew, informing on his friend. It would seem cruel, but from his show that night, it remained likely that he had not been the mastermind behind everything.

  Silence fell over all of them and the screech of tires told Henrietta that the police were there. It was time to put an end to this whole thing.

  “I’d better go let the police in.”

  Henrietta sat at her small kitchen table, the time reading three o’clock in the morning. Scott sat to her left and Olivia to her right. Nelson had said he felt too overwhelmed to stay and had gone home. Olivia hadn’t wanted to go and had chosen to stay instead, saying that she needed time to process with Henrietta.

  “What a night,” Scott said.

  “You can say that again,” Olivia said. Henrietta caught the look she gave him before dropping her gaze.

  Despite the fact that Olivia hadn’t felt the ability to break up with Nelson that night, Henrietta had a feeling it had begun an avalanche of sorts. She would keep an eye on the poor girl, but she would also let her have her space to figure out what her heart truly wanted.

  Until she did, Henrietta was more than happy to be her friend as well as her boss.

  “Tell me one thing,” Scott said, meeting Henrietta’s gaze. “How could you be so sure that they would come tonight?”

  She offered a thin smile. “To be honest, I wasn’t. But I was hopeful.”

  “Why, though?”

  “It’s something that Preston said without even meaning to.” She thought back to their conversation at Everett’s house. “His father implied that he was gone often—this falls in place with someone who has other things to do as well as other places to be. I assume we’ll hear from the police that Vance has an apartment or something where they planned all of this.”

  “That’s it?” Scott pressed. His thirst for knowledge reminded her of Ralph.

  “No. It was also the fact that he mentioned Canada.”

  “Canada,” Scott said, slamming his hand on the table and causing Olivia to jump.

  “What was that for?”

  “Henrietta asked me to look into travel agencies that dealt specifically with Canada.”

  “And?” Henrietta prompted.

  “I don’t know how you knew, but yes, Vance worked for one in the area as a temporary worker. He was placed there by some unknown temp agency.”

  “I don’t get it,” Olivia said.

  “I believe we’ll uncover that Vance is a very skilled hacker and computer technician. I think he used his knowledge of those traveling to Canada along with his skills to place and then trace the cameras he and Preston—and at one point Mary—planted to plan their heists.”

  “Oh, that makes sense.”

  “Of course it’ll have to be proved with evidence,” Henrietta said. “But I think there should be some sort of trail left. Right, Scott?”

  “So what happened to Mary?” Olivia asked, her forehead pinched in concern.

  “Hopefully, we’ll uncover the answer to that from either Preston or Vance.”

  The clock on the stove ticked to a quarter to four, and Henrietta stifled a yawn. “I think we should all go home and try to get some sleep.”

  “It’s been a long case,” Scott observed. “And a long night.”

  “Olivia, do you need a ride home?” Henrietta asked.

  “I’ll take her,” Scott offered, his expression hopeful but not overly so.

  “Thank you, that would be great.”

  They stood and Henrietta walked them to the door. She watched them walk down her back steps and climb into Scott’s car. It was in that moment that she hoped beyond hope that something would come of the two of them. Perhaps it was her intuition or her romantic heart, but she saw what could be not only a wonderful friendship but a beautiful relationship, if they could see it for what it was.

  Sighing, she closed the door and locked it. Sepia waited for her, sitting in the middle of the hall with the same smile of satisfaction propping up her whiskers.

  “You meddled tonight,” she said to the cat. “And I thank you for it.”

  In true cat-fashion, she turned around and padded down the hall without a backward glance.

  13

  The sounds of live Celtic music wafted in through the open door. With the fire blazing in the hearth, Henrietta didn’t mind the open door. It welcomed customers more fully and allowed in much of the atmosphere from outside.

  “Things are going well,” Olivia commented.

  “More than,” she agreed. They had done a good business from the time they opened until now. Things were slowly starting to taper off, but that was to be expected. Most people came in waves. She expected to see more in the evening for the lighting event. They strung white lights up all around the town and turned them on at dusk. It would be a truly beautiful sight.

  She had made the decision to stay open for that, having Scott string up white lights on the front of the shop as well as the fence lining the street. It would be fun to join in the festivities, and a bit like a fresh beginning for the fall and winter season.

  “There you are.”

  She looked up to see Ralph framed by the light from outside. His grin spread across his rough features, and she felt her heart squeeze at the sight of him. It was a feeling of familiarity as much as it was a connection to a long-standing friend. Those types of friends were few and far between, and she was thankful—so thankful—in that moment for him.

  “Care to stroll through the streets with me?” he asked, offering her a jaunty smile.

  She laughed and looked over at Olivia. “Go,” the woman said, “I’ll be fine here.”

  “Thank you,” she said, accepting Ralph’s arm.

  “Are you disappointed?” she asked when the
y were outside.

  “That the teaching gig was a sham? Yeah, a little.” He sighed, and she wished she could have changed the outcome for him. It was only when he got into Seattle that he’d discovered there were no reservations and no conference under the name he’d been given. Since the ferry had closed down for the night, he’d been forced to take the long way back to Heart’s Grove, which got him into town about the same time Henrietta went to bed.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said with good humor. “I mean it. It really got me thinking.”

  “About?” She accepted a sleeve of kettle corn and waited as he paid the vendor.

  “I really do want to teach, so why am I waiting for people to ask me? I’ve put out a few applications to different conferences and conventions. I’ll have to wait to see what they say, but I’m hopeful.”

  “Ralph, that’s wonderful!”

  “Thanks.” He beamed, and they stopped to look at a tent of blown glass. “Now, are you going to ask?” he said when they walked away.

  “Ask about what?”

  “What I know about the case?”

  Her heart thudded in her chest. “You know something?”

  “You betcha I do.” He grinned and led her to an empty bench next to a building.

  “Well? Tell me!” she said, overly excited.

  They sat down, and Ralph made a show of looking around them to make sure they weren’t being overheard. She laughed at his antics but waited patiently.

  “I heard from my guy at the station this morning.”

  “Don’t make it sound like you went on some covert mission,” she said teasingly. “You had coffee with him and he filled you in.”

  “All right, so we had coffee and pancakes, but he told me the outcome of the interviews.”

  “And?”

  “Turns out that it happened much like you thought.”

  She had called Ralph the next morning after sleeping in, only to find that he’d been asleep himself. She’d told him what had happened and he was shocked, assuring her that he would find out what happened when his friends could tell him. She again marveled at how useful it was that he’d once been a detective and still had friends at the station.

  “They met online through Preston’s gaming community. I guess they started talking in a secured chat room after it came out that both Vance and Mary had criminal backgrounds.”

  “Birds of a feather.”

  “Flock together,” he finished. “But, in Preston’s case, it was his need for money.”

  She held up a hand. “Money? But his father… His community?”

  “Daddy was getting ready to cut him off completely, though he’d already cut off most of his spending money. And his online community was losing steam. Much of his advertising was switching to other online communities. He was actually spending so much time gaming, he forgot about the business side of things.

  “Anyway, turns out they began planning this whole thing a year ago. The cameras and everything. Vance even had a way to hack into security cameras of the home so he could see their codes, and then all they needed to do was place a camera inside.”

  “It really is brilliant,” Henrietta said, though she hated to admit it.

  “It would have been if Mary hadn’t messed up so many times. She had a record with breaking and entering as well as petty crimes, but apparently, she didn’t quite have the work ethic that Vance did.”

  “You mean—”

  “Yes, she was the one who made the sloppy mistakes, and Vance got tired of it.”

  “So it was murder.”

  Ralph shrugged. “According to Preston, yes, but he wasn’t there to witness it, so it may be hard without full evidence.”

  “So it had to be Preston’s DNA at the crime scene, since both Mary and apparently Vance have records?”

  “Yes. They’ve confirmed that with a simple cheek swap from him.”

  “They were planning on going to Canada, weren’t they?”

  “Initially, yes. I guess Vance had connections there that could then get them out of the country.”

  “So sad. You know what first made me suspect Preston?”

  “He’s a leech?”

  “Ralph,” she said with a forced disapproving look. Her merely shrugged. “No, it was the fact that his father’s house had been robbed. Granted, I knew that the biometric safe would be nearly impossible to get past, but it was the fact that nothing of Preston’s was stolen. There his rooms were, down the hall in his father’s house, and nothing was taken? None of his expensive computer equipment? That was suspicious to me. And then making the connection to the patch only brought things into clarity. It’s odd that the very thing they did to take suspicion off of themselves cast the true blame.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m glad the criminals weren’t too smart,” Ralph said.

  They took in the sights around them—the townspeople and tourists alike walking up and down the streets, laughing and talking. It was the perfect picture of a town in autumn and accented by the scent of cinnamon and sweet apple cider. It was the perfect way to end a confusing case.

  “Henri,” Ralph said, looking over at her.

  “Yes?”

  “Please tell me you’re not going to go out with that Everett fellow out of pity.”

  It was the very last thing she’d have expected Ralph to say, and it caused Henrietta to burst out laughing.

  “What?” he finally said when she had calmed down enough to take in a breath.

  “I wouldn’t do that. You know me better than that.”

  He shrugged. “Just had to make sure.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, standing and offering him her hand. “I don’t intend on dating manipulative men nor do I plan on coming across any more mysteries for a long, long time.”

  Ralph grinned. “I think you can hold yourself to one of those things.”

  Thanks for reading Break-ins and Bloodshed. I hope you enjoy the story. If you could take a minute and leave a review for me, that would be really appreciated.

  The third story in the series is called Lights Out at the Lighthouse and will be released soon. Keep an eye out for it on Amazon.

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