“What?” she asked. “What is it?”
“Do you have a tissue in your bag?” he asked.
“I think so. You never go to a wedding without tissues.” She opened her bag and felt around inside until her fingers closed around one. “Here you go.”
He reached out in the darkness and took it, then walked to the car, using the tissue to cover the handle as he opened the car door and reached inside to turn on the headlights.
Vanessa stared at the ground, then at the car door. “Grady, is that…”
“Yeah. Glass. Someone’s broken all the windows out of the car.”
“What…?” She stepped closer.
“Don’t. I don’t want you to step on anything else.” He held a hand out to stop her. “Let’s go back to the police station and get someone over here.”
“I can’t believe this.” She felt stunned. “This whole night has turned into one big nightmare. My shop, your car…”
“My rental car.”
“This is such a quiet town, this is just crazy, that someone would break into Bling and someone else would vandalize your car.”
They were nearing the edge of the lot, and in the dim light, she could see him shaking his head.
“I’m not so sure it was someone else,” he told her.
“You think the same person did this? The shop and the car?”
He nodded.
“Damn. That is the most bizarre coincidence, isn’t it?”
“Stop and think, Ness. First your shop, then the car you were riding in? Uh-uh.” His jaw was squared, and for the first time since she’d met him, he was angry. “No coincidence there, babe. I think someone’s trying to send you a message.”
He opened the front door of the municipal building and held it for her to enter.
“What’s that supposed to mean? What kind of message?”
“I’m not certain, but I’m guessing it isn’t a love note.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“You should be scared,” he told her. “You have every reason to be scared.”
“Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe it isn’t what you think. Maybe it’s kids, just out causing mischief.”
“What happened in your shop is more than mischief. The smashing up of the car? Coming immediately after the break-in? I don’t think this is the work of mischievous kids. Whoever did this is angry, and that anger is being directed at you for some reason. You must have really pissed off someone.” He took her by the hand. “Which way is the police department?”
She pointed to the hall on the right. As she did so, Sue walked out of one of the offices. Seeing them, she said, “Did you forget something?”
“No. We’re here for round two,” Grady told her.
“Round two?” Sue raised her eyebrows.
“Someone took a sledgehammer or something equally heavy and knocked out all the windows of my car while we were at the shop.”
“Son of a bitch…” Sue’s eyes grew wide. “What are the chances of that?”
“Yeah.” He nodded wryly. “Go figure…”
Chapter 11
HAL’S still not answering his phone,” Gus told Vanessa, “so I’m going to take a ride over to his place, let him know what’s going on.”
“Don’t do that, please. Right now, he’s probably sitting in the Inn’s bar, catching up with old friends who came to the wedding,” Vanessa pleaded. She had a sinking suspicion of just which old friend Hal might be catching up with, and if that was the case, she really didn’t want to know. “Anyway, there’s nothing he could do tonight except worry.”
“Or he could be home, sleeping soundly,” Grady offered. “In any case, Vanessa is right. You’ve got two people out there going over the car, two people over at Vanessa’s shop. You probably don’t need Hal, too. At least for now.”
“All right,” Gus said. “We’ll let it go until the morning. But you just pray that this guy”-he pointed across the parking lot toward Grady’s bashed-up rental car-“is done for a while.”
“If he has any sense at all, he’s got to be thinking that he’s pushed his luck enough for one night. He did get away with the break-in without anyone seeing him, but…” Vanessa said.
“Not so sure about that. We’ll be canvassing the neighbors in the morning,” Gus reminded her. “Right now, we don’t know who saw what.”
“True enough,” Grady agreed. “But he walked away from that and from the car without getting caught. This guy is no amateur. He picks and chooses his time and his target, but he’s also opportunistic. He hit the shop when half the town was at the wedding, and he hit the car when everyone was focused on the burglary. Now, I’m pretty certain that the break-in was planned in advance, but vandalizing the car… that couldn’t have been planned. He’d have had no way of knowing that you’d be with me, in that car, and that the car would be parked in the lot down here, but he took advantage of the opportunity. If we believe that he’s targeting Vanessa for some reason-and I believe that he is-he must have seen her get out of my car, possibly when he was finished at the shop.”
“Why would he have even been back near the lot? If he’d just burglarized Bling,” Vanessa wondered, “wouldn’t he want to be far away?”
“I think he wanted to watch-which is another reason I think this is personal. Look, there’s that long dark section of the road out there. He could have been hiding just about anywhere. He’d have watched the police cars head for Charles Street, and he’d have known that was the focus of everyone’s attention. So while the breaking glass would have made noise, there wasn’t anyone around to hear it. Steffie was gone by then, and she was the last one who’d have been in that area of the parking lot, other than Ness and me. Once we were drawn to the shop, he had the lot to himself.” Grady paused to think.
“Or,” Vanessa suggested, “he hit the shop because it looked like exactly what it is: an upscale women’s boutique that does a good business.”
Before Grady could counter, she continued.
“As far as the car is concerned, who’s to say it wasn’t a couple of kids taking a shortcut from the park through the parking lot?”
“What park?”
“On the other side of the trees that run along Steffie’s, there’s a small park. The generally accepted shortcut to Charles Street is through the parking lot.”
“It’s possible,” Grady conceded, “but that’s not what my gut’s telling me.”
“Is your gut psychic?” she asked.
“Instinct, then.” He tried to explain. “I spent nine years in law enforcement. After a while, you develop certain instincts, and you learn to trust them. Yes, it’s possible that Bling was targeted because it looks like a shop that brings in shoppers with money, and is likely to have a few dollars in the cash register at the end of the day. But don’t many shop owners now make their deposits at night? Do you usually leave money in the drawer when you leave?”
“No,” she admitted. “I usually lock it in a safe that I have hidden or I take it to the bank. There was money in the shop last night, though, since I wasn’t going to be there to lock up or to make a deposit.”
“How many people knew that?” Gus asked.
“Just the person who locked up last night, and me. I might have mentioned it to Steffie, but that isn’t something she’d discuss with anyone else.”
“I’m going to have a few officers walk the area from Charles Street through the parking lot and down to the playground, just in case he dropped something or left something behind,” Gus told them. “The more I think about it, the more I’m thinking you’re right about the path he took down toward the parking lot. I think he hit the shop, hid somewhere close by while he waited for the call to come in here so he could watch us answer it. He had to know that in a town like this one, a crowd would be gathering to see what the commotion was, then he’d stroll on up and blend in.” Gus was thinking it all through. “I agree with your friend here, Ness. He wouldn’t have expected to see you get out of that car, but after he did, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to give you just a little more to think about. Besides, with you walking around down on the dock, then in the parking lot, you might have ruined his chance to sneak up to Charles Street, catch the action. That could have pissed him off. First thing in the morning, when it’s light, I’ll have that area gone over with a fine-tooth comb. No telling what they might find.”