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“You bet. Give me another call if somebody doesn’t show up in the next ten, fifteen minutes or so. And don’t touch anything.”
“Yeah, I watch television. I know that much. I’ll wait outside with Chester until Riley can get here.”
“It’s freezing, darlin’. You can’t wait outside in this weather and neither can that dog. He’s not as young as he used to be. The chief won’t care if you grab a chair inside and sit down until he can make it, just as long as you keep Chester close so he doesn’t go mucking around the crime scene.”
Too much restless energy zinged through her for her to sit calmly and wait for the police, so she remained standing in the doorway, horrified all over again that someone would be so malicious. Stealing from her was one thing. They could have the money and her computer, she didn’t care about that. But why make such a mess? This blatant vandalism was intended to gouge and wound—causing trouble for trouble’s sake, something she had never understood.
Why would someone want to be so hurtful? And why her? She tried hard to be kind to most people she came in contact with. Sure, she had a few disgruntled customers at the store who seemed to think it a crime that she expected to make at least some profit for all the resources of time and energy she poured into String Fever. But she couldn’t imagine any of them being so vindictive as to trash her store just for the fun of it.
She forced herself to do a little of the circle breathing her best friend, Alex, was always trying to convince her to practice and shifted her gaze out the wide store windows at Hope’s Crossing’s Main Street. The morning seemed gray and cheerless, a dreary sort of day. Even though it was mid-April, spring took its dear sweet time arriving in the Colorado high country.
The weather forecasters were predicting a late snowstorm would be moving in later that evening. The ski resort would appreciate a few more inches for the diehard skiers who opted to spend their spring break hanging on to the last struggling days of winter instead of heading to the beach. By this time of year, she was heartily sick of more snow, but at least a little fresh powder would cover the tired, gray piles out there.
Despite the cold and the promise of a storm, she could see a pretty good Monday morning crowd at the Center of Hope Café across the way. She’d noticed the same story at Dog-Eared Books & Brew.
Of course, none of those shoppers would be heading her direction anytime soon, not with the Closed sign still firmly turned in the doorway.
The thought had barely formed in her mind when the door behind her opened with a musical chime. Claire opened her mouth to explain the store was still closed and then shut it again, her spirits sinking even more.
Her fun and exciting morning only needed this, she thought as she watched her ex-husband’s new wife burst through, looking pert and cute and glowing with pregnancy hormones.
“Hi, Claire!” Holly Vestry Bradford chirped, beaming the smile her orthodontist father had worked tirelessly to perfect as she unbuttoned her red wool peacoat and stamped snow off her black UGGs.
Chester grunted and plopped onto his belly, never a big fan of Holly’s.
“Um, this really isn’t a good time,” Claire began. She wasn’t at all in the mood to be sociable right now, especially not to Holly, who seemed to bring out the worst in her, despite her best efforts.
“Oh, my word!” Holly exclaimed. “What happened in here?”
Claire had made a firm policy for the last two years—since Jeff moved out and put an official end to their marriage that had been broken for much longer than that—to be as gracious as she could stand to Holly. “I think we were robbed,” she said, without a hint of the sarcastic retort she wanted to make.
“Oh, no! Have you called the police?”
“I just did. They’re on the way.”
“Oh, Claire. I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t know which she disliked more: the sense of invasion from the robbery, contemplating the endless work putting the store back in order, or being on the receiving end of Holly Bradford’s pity.
“I’m sure everything will be okay. My insurance should cover any losses. But I have to ask you not to touch anything, okay? We can’t mess up the crime scene.”
“Crime scene. That sounds so scary! Right out of CSI: Miami! Where’s Horatio?”
Was she ever this young when she was twenty-five? Claire wondered, then answered her own rhetorical question. No. By then, she’d already been married for over a year, had given birth to Macy and had been working two jobs to put Jeff through medical school.
“I’m sorry things are in such disarray.” She tried on a smile and found she still had one or two in reserve. “Maybe you can come back later today after I’ve had a chance to start cleaning things up.”
“Don’t you worry about that. I didn’t need anything urgent. I guess Macy probably told you about our crazy shopping trip to Vail, didn’t she?”
“She might have mentioned it.” Twenty or thirty times. Her twelve-year-old daughter adored her stepmother. Why wouldn’t she? Holly was the big sister Macy had always wanted. She was fun and young and hip. Holly had read all the Twilight books and had MySpace, Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Claire tried hard not to resent their bond. Macy loved her mother, too, although sometimes she didn’t act very much like she did as she tested her wings on her way to adolescence.
“That girl is a shopping maniac!” Holly gushed. “Jeff just cut us loose with his credit cards while he and Owen went snowboarding and Macy helped me buy a whole new maternity wardrobe. When we got back home and I started opening all those bags, I realized what I really need now are some killer accessories to distract people from my big fat belly.”
Right. Although she was five months along in her pregnancy, Holly could still probably fit into a size 4 pair of jeans, at least if they were low cut.
“You know you look beautiful, no matter what you’re wearing. But new jewelry is always nice.” Particularly when it was handcrafted out of the pricey Venetian glass beads Holly liked, the ones that netted String Fever a healthy profit. “I’ll be glad to help you with some ideas after the store opens later today, if you don’t mind coming back.”
“No problem. I’ve got nothing else on my schedule today.”
Oh, that she could say the same. Claire summoned another smile. “I’ll try to call you after the police clear the store for me to reopen.”
“You’re so sweet to me. Thank you so much, Claire.”
Before she quite knew what she intended, Holly grabbed her in a hug and Claire had no real choice but to endure it and even hug her back a little before she quickly eased out of the embrace.
She didn’t really dislike Holly. The situation was just so awkward, living in the same town with her and Jeff, bumping into each other all the time, sharing concentric circles of friends.
No matter how much Jeff claimed Holly had nothing to do with his unilateral decision to leave the marriage and no matter how much Claire knew she bore equal responsibility for the problems and the distance that had grown between them those last few years, Jeff had started living his little cliché—dating the young, beautiful receptionist in his orthopedic surgery practice—just a few weeks after their divorce was final. He’d married her six months after that and now they were starting their own family.
Whether Claire liked the situation or not, they were all three coparenting the children. When Owen and Macy were with their father, Holly was a major influence in their lives and for the sake of her children, Claire couldn’t afford to be bitter or spiteful. Nor could she move away from Hope’s Crossing, not when she had a business here and not when Macy and Owen needed their father in their lives more than just on weekends.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Holly asked. “Maybe I should stay with you while the police come. You know, for moral support.”
“That’s really not necessary,” she started to say, but the last word was barely out when the bells on the door chimed out again. She and Holly both turned at the sound and despite everything—especially whatever shred of good sense she had left—the day suddenly seemed far less bleak.
The town’s brand-new chief of police stood in the doorway, dark-haired and gorgeous and almost ridiculously male looming over the glittery beads strewn across the floor. He wore jeans and a light blue dress shirt and tie and beneath his unzipped official Hope’s Crossing Police Department parka, she saw a badge flash on one hip and a handgun at the other.
The chief took a long look around at the carnage and shook his head slowly. “What am I going to do with you, Claire? I turn my back for fifteen years or so and just look at the trouble you get yourself into.”
In spite of everything, she had to laugh. Apparently Riley hadn’t lost his uncanny ability to tweak that weird sense of humor her mother had been talking about. He stepped toward her, his arms wide, and without even thinking, she walked into them. Unlike Holly’s brief embrace, this one was warm and familiar and completely natural, and for the first time all morning she felt as if she had something solid to hang on to.
Too soon, he eased away to study her and she was suddenly painfully aware of every single one of her thirty-six years and the two kids and divorce she had in her back pocket.
“You look terrific, Claire. How long has it been?”
She never could resist that smile, even when he was only her best friend’s annoying kid brother who thought his sole purpose on earth was to taunt and tease and basically do his best to drive her and Alex crazy. This little flutter of attraction couldn’t be appropriate, not with all the water that had flowed under their respective bridges. Especially not when her life and her store were in crisis.
“I’m not sure. A few years anyway. That’s what happens when you head off to the coast and leave everybody behind.”
“Word on the street is that you finally dumped Dr. Idiot. About damn time. You were always too good for him, even back in the day. I don’t know what you ever saw in a little weasel like him.”
About thirty seconds too late, Claire remembered with a mix of horror and a tiny, petty secret amusement she knew she ought to be ashamed to entertain that Holly was still hovering around. With an inward wince, she shifted to direct his attention toward the other woman.
“Oh. Riley, um, have you met Holly, Jeff’s new wife? Holly, this is Riley McKnight, former town hellion and now the new chief of police in Hope’s Crossing.”
With her color high and her mouth pursed, Holly looked as if she might have been choking on an 8-millimeter rounded bicone.
“Sorry, ma’am.” Riley offered an apologetic smile, even as he held his crossed fingers behind his back so that only Claire could see. “Claire’s an old friend and I’m afraid I spoke without thinking.”
Holly didn’t seem to know how to respond, whether to defend her spouse or let the awkwardness of the moment pass. She looked ruffled and insecure and terribly young, even though Riley at thirty-three would only be eight years older.
Finally she must have decided to ignore him completely. Instead, she spoke in a stiff voice to Claire. “I guess you don’t need me to stick around, then?”
“I think I’ll be okay.” Now she was ashamed of that brief moment of small-minded amusement. “Thanks, though. It was really, uh, great of you to offer your moral support, Holly. I’ll let you know when the store opens again and we can start working on those accessories for your new maternity wardrobe.”
“Don’t worry. We can do it another day. I guess I’ll see you tonight at Owen’s play, then? Jeff and I can save you and Macy a seat if you want.”
She supposed she deserved that little dig, intentional or not, the reminder that Claire would be arriving at the annual Spring Fling pageant at Hope’s Crossing Elementary with her twelve-year-old daughter as her date while Holly would be comfortably ensconced next to her handsome and successful orthopedic surgeon husband.
“Thanks, but I don’t know what time I’ll get there.”
“We’ll save a seat for you guys anyway. I’m sure Macy will want to see me wearing one of the new sweaters we bought.”
“No doubt,” Claire answered calmly. “I’ll see you later, then.”
As soon as Holly left the store, Claire managed to shrug out from under Riley’s arm, trying not to notice how much colder she felt away from him. Her store had been robbed, for heaven’s sake. This wasn’t exactly the time for a warm, fuzzy happy reunion.
“Donna Mazell told me when I phoned dispatch that String Fever wasn’t the only store that was hit during the night.”
He nodded, even as he reached down to scratch Chester’s jowls. “Apparently the town’s criminal element had itself a busy Sunday night. At last count, four businesses were burglarized.”
“I have a security system. Why wasn’t the alarm tripped? The security company should have responded.”
“That’s a good question. I’m going to take a guess here that you’re with Topflight Security.”
“Yes.”
“I’m thinking it might not be a coincidence that every other business that was hit in the night also happens to be with Topflight Security. That’s just one of the angles we’re going to be working in our investigation.”
She frowned. “Surely you don’t think someone there had anything to do with this?” The owner of the security company was a friend and she couldn’t even contemplate that he or any of his employees might have been involved.
“One of the good things about being away from town all these years, I guess, is that I can come back without a lot of preconceptions. Right now I don’t know what to think. We’re looking into the possibility that their computer system had been hacked to allow someone access to the businesses without alerting Topflight, but we don’t know yet. At this point, we’re just adding everything to the pot and we’ll sort through it later. What time did your store close yesterday?”
“During the shoulder seasons in the spring and fall, we stay closed on Sundays. It could have been robbed at any time from Saturday night to this morning.”
“Let’s take a look at the damage. Have you figured out what’s missing yet?”
“My office computer is gone. It was a fairly new iMac I bought only about six months ago. The drawer for the cash register was emptied, but I only keep about fifty dollars in change there overnight. I took care of the night deposit myself Saturday before I went home.”
She was grateful for that at least. The weekend had been crazy, between running Owen to his dress rehearsal and her mother asking her at the last minute to pick up a couple of prescriptions for her, but she clearly remembered going to the drive-up at the bank and dropping off the deposit.
“Did they take anything else?”
“To be honest with you, I haven’t looked very carefully. I didn’t want to mess up the evidence.”
“Go ahead and walk through, see what else might be missing.”
The thieves hadn’t touched the locked glass-fronted cabinet where she kept the pricier Czech crystals Donna had been talking about and some of the handcrafted Venetian glass, or some of more valuable finished jewelry pieces either she or Evie had made or she sold on consignment for her customers. It was still intact. She did see three empty hooks on the wall where she had hung a few of the less valuable custom necklaces she had created. One good thing about that—she would instantly recognize her own pieces if the thieves were stupid enough to flaunt their loot around town.
She walked through the retail section of the store and the workroom where she kept beading equipment for her customers to use on-site—bead boards and looms, reamers, cutters. Nothing else appeared to be missing.
She headed into her office last and suddenly gasped.
Riley was there in an instant. “Whoa.” His gaze sharpened on the wedding dress still hanging in the protective bag, both slashed to tatters with what looked like a pair of her own scissors from the workroom. “Now that’s interesting.”
Interesting? She could come up with a hundred different adjectives and that particular one wasn’t among them.
“That’s a designer wedding dress,” she moaned. “I’ve had it for only two days so I could customize the beadwork on the bodice. It was a huge commission.”
A commission she could now see imploding—along with possibly the store’s entire future. “Who would be so destructive?”
“Wild guess here, but maybe somebody who’s not too crazy about the bride. Who did the gown belong to?” he asked.
“Genevieve Beaumont. The mayor’s daughter.”
Her grand society wedding to the son of one of the region’s richest bachelors was still eight months away. Maybe Gen would have time to order a replacement gown between now and then and Claire could still have time to finish the beadwork.
Or maybe the somewhat spoiled bride-to-be would decide to sue Claire for every penny she eked out of the store, for whatever breach in security had potentially ruined Genevieve’s big day.
Chester nudged her leg with his head and she wanted to sink to the floor in the middle of all those spilled beads, gather him in her arms and indulge in a big, soggy pity party. The emotions clogged her throat and burned behind her eyes, but she blinked them back and swallowed hard. She had no time to indulge in tears, not now when she had such a mess to clean up—and especially not in front of the new chief of police, for heaven’s sake.
“This is a nightmare. It makes no sense. Why just destroy the dress when they didn’t even bother to take the crystals? They’re worth a fortune.”
“I don’t know the answer to that yet. But I promise you, Claire, I’ll find out.”
Riley might have been an annoying little pest when he was younger and a hell-on-wheels troublemaker when he hit his teen years, but all she had heard over the years from Alex and the rest of his family indicated he had shaped up from his wayward youth and truly found his calling with police work.
Most people in Hope’s Crossing seemed to think the town was lucky he had agreed to give up his life as an undercover detective in the Bay Area to come back, although she had heard rumors there was discontent in the police department over his hiring.
“Tell me what else I can do to help you, then.”
“Just sit tight while I finish processing the scene. Maybe you and your dog here could head over to Maura’s place for coffee or something. I might be here a while.”
“I’d rather stay, if you don’t mind. We’ll do our best to keep out of your way.”
“Not a problem. I’m glad to have the company, I only wish it were under better circumstances.”
For the next hour, she had a front-row seat as Riley worked the scene—collecting evidence, lifting fingerprints, taking photos.
It was a bit of a jarring dichotomy trying to reconcile the pain in the neck she remembered with this wholly competent officer of the law. Mixed in there was the wild, angry teenager he’d been after his parents’ divorce, but by then she’d been living in Boulder for college and had only heard everything secondhand about his drinking, smoking and more.
The Riley she remembered was the one who had hidden a voice-activated tape recorder in his sister’s room during one of Claire’s frequent sleepovers at the McKnight home so he could overhear what she and Alex talked and giggled about.
Their conversation had inevitably centered around boys, of course, because they were probably twelve or thirteen at the time and beginning to be obsessed with the opposite sex. Claire had just started to notice the smartest, cutest boy in the grade ahead of her, Jeff Bradford. Alexandra at the time had been enamored with the quarterback on the freshman football team, Jason Kolpecki.
They had talked long into the night about their current crushes with no clue that Riley, the sneak, had recorded all of it—and then threatened to share the tape recording with the boys in question if they didn’t meet his demands, a mortifying prospect.
