"Yeah. I guess." As I polished off my mocha, Sandy, the other officer, showed up at our table. Towheaded and boy-faced, he barely looked old enough to vote. He leaned over and whispered in Murray's ear.
Murray winced. "Okay, nobody on Main Street was around last night to see anything. And it looks like your cash register is empty. Do you remember how much money you had in there Saturday night?"
I'd been planning on making the deposit this morning and had prepared the envelope Saturday, before I left. Why the hell hadn't I taken the time to run over to the bank when I left on Friday? Daniel's death had shaken me up but now, in retrospect, leaving all that money in the shop seemed pretty damn stupid.
I sighed, feeling sorry for myself. "At least four hundred .. . maybe five hundred dollars in cash, along with several checks. I think the total on the deposit slip was around nine hundred. I didn't pay much attention, just filled it out and stuck it under the till. I also had an emergency reserve in the drawer underneath the register, five one hundred-dollar bills. Oh, there was also the shop credit card in there. Do you know if everything is gone?"
Sandy nodded. "Yes ma'am, the drawer's empty. I'd advise you to call your credit card company right away to report the stolen card. We've dusted for fingerprints on the cash register, doors, windows, counters, anyplace we might actually find something. Give us another half hour to clear out, and you can go back to your shop." He gave me a shy smile. "I'm sorry, Ms. O'Brien. You had some pretty stuff in there. It's a shame to see this happen." Pausing on his way out the door, he added, "I've been in your shop before; the rubble that the vandals left doesn't seem like nearly enough to account for all your pieces. I think whoever did this stole a lot of your inventory. You might want to see if you can figure out anything obvious that's missing."
As he left, Murray leaned back and straightened her jacket. She still looked odd in civvies during the day, but I was getting used to it. Everybody and everything was changing, which would be fine except that I didn't like the way my life was shaping up all of a sudden.
"Sandy's right," Murray said. "It may seem like there are a lot of broken pieces, but I'll lay odds that the expensive items are still intact and in the thief's possession now. You had some Waterford crystal there, and what—Dresden china?"
I shrugged. "Yeah, that's true. I just got in a shipment that included a hazel-patterned Royal Winton teapot and teacup set. The teapot alone was worth close to seven hundred dollars. Next week, the ladies' china club from Abbots-ford, British Columbia, is due to come through town. They always buy expensive antiques when they're here, so I stock up a week or two before they get here."
Murray jotted something down. "Get me a list of your more expensive items. You never know what we're going to find when we're poking around. It's a long shot but worth a try. Now, has anybody else been giving you any trouble?"
"Well, Daniel Barrington died after coming to see me the other day, but trouble? He wasn't any trouble to me." The fact was, nobody had bothered me lately except... I cleared my throat. "There is one thing—"
"Spill it, girl." Murray drained the last of her latte and wiped her mouth with a napkin.
"I don't know how relevant this is, but Harlow and I went out to dinner last night, and some redneck tried to put the make on me. I got a little mad and sent him reeling into a stack of trays when he wouldn't leave me alone and started to get grabby. He kind of threatened me, but I thought he was just drunk. It couldn't be him, though, could it?"
Murray rolled her eyes, giving me the same look I gave my kids when they were playing space cadet. "I wish you'd tell me these things right off the bat instead of as an afterthought. Okay, let's hear it. All of it." She took more notes while I sketched out the events at the Brown Bear
Bar & Grill and then she folded her notebook again and tucked it in her pocket. "Okay. Call your insurance company. Call your credit card company. Greg will run the prints we gathered through our computer and see if anything comes up. Sandy will interview the neighboring shops, see if anybody noticed anything out of the ordinary. I'll find this Jimbo and see if he has a rap sheet and an alibi. Meanwhile, please consider installing an alarm system before you get all that china from Walter. If I were you, I'd also consider putting in a video surveillance camera."
I hated the thought. I'd moved to Chiqetaw to feel safer, not to get thrust right back into big-city hassles, but it looked like that was quickly becoming a pipe dream. Resigned, I nodded. "You're probably right. This sucks. I lost some pieces that I'll never be able to replace; personal favorites." I took out my cell phone and punched in Lana's number, tersely running through what had happened. "I need you to come in early if possible, as in right now. Dress for cleaning. Bring sturdy leather gloves, I don't want anybody getting cut on broken glass." She said she'd be right over. "Murray, can one of your guys watch the shop until I get back? I'd hate to find that some looter came through while I was home changing."
She assured me they'd keep an eye open until I returned, and we all headed out. The day was shaping up to be prime headache material.
THE INSURANCE AGENT arrived shortly after I returned from changing clothes. He photographed the damage so we could begin the daunting task of matching inventory lists to missing china. While it was impossible to tell which pieces had been stolen and which had been trashed, from the debris I began to see what Sandy had been talking about. The bags of broken china and pottery weren't full enough to account for even two-thirds of my stock. I should have been able to recognize the remains of the Waterford crystal, but there weren't any in sight that even vaguely matched the delicate lead glass. Whoever had vandalized my shop had also stolen a good deal of merchandise. Maybe they'd trashed the rest to make it hard to tell what was gone.
By early afternoon, we'd cleaned up the worst of the mess and I took a break, putting in a call to Safety-Tech, the town's premiere security monitoring company. They promised to have someone come over the next day to install a system. Then I called Marvin Eyrland, who owned a glass company down the street. He came right over and measured the windows. To tide us over until he could replace them, he kindly brought back a huge plywood board and affixed it across the broken front panes.
"I can't thank you enough," I told him.
"No problem," he said. "This is sick. Whoever did this ought to be throttled. I should be able to get the pane cut by tomorrow afternoon and installed before closing. You wanted safety glass?"
I nodded as he flipped his order book closed and waved good-bye. After he was gone, I wandered around the shop, unable to speak. So many bare shelves. Every time I looked over at the NFS cabinet, a lump formed in my chest. So many lovely pieces, including a few passed down to me by my nanna, were either stolen or ground to dust and rubble. One way or another, most of my inventory was gone.
The girls and I'd been working for a couple of hours when Randa came through the door, towing her friend Lori behind her. She gaped at the empty shelves and the bags of trash that littered the floor. "What happened?"
"We were robbed last night. Whoever did it, tore the shop apart." I leaned on my broom and wiped a trail of dust off my forehead. There was still so much to do; vacuuming was high on the priority list, and hauling the bags out to the Dumpster in back.
Randa's gaze flickered up to mine. She threw her arms around me and gave me a long hug, then turned to Lori and whispered for a moment. Lori waved briefly and took off, and Miranda waded into the mess, looking for some way to help out.
I put in a call to home and managed to catch Kip while he was having an afternoon snack. "We need you right away, please. Take your bike so you can get here quicker, and don't dawdle." He showed up in twenty minutes.
The kids pitched in without complaint. Kip, after his initial spate of questions, grabbed a dust cloth and started wiping down the shelves. Miranda carefully ferried what stock remained unbroken into the bathroom, where Cinnamon washed the dust away. Lana dried the pieces and brought them out to me where I took over, arranging them on the newly cleaned shelves. Promptly at five-thirty, I placed the last plate on the shelves and dusted off my hands on my jeans.
"We're done." I stood back. The sparse dappling of china against the lemon chiffon walls sent my confidence spiraling in a nosedive, and I dropped into a nearby chair, trying to ignore the gash that tore through its upholstery. None of the tearoom furniture had made it through intact. "Look at that. Barely enough stock to make a decent window display."
Miranda patted me on the shoulder. "It'll be okay, Mom. It'll be okay. Aren't you supposed to get some plates or something as a little gift from Mr. Mitchell's mother?"
The "little gift" was actually going to be quite an infusion of expensive china and crystal; but right now everything seemed pale in comparison to the damage the vandals had caused to my shop. I wanted to wring their scrawny necks. I'd worked so hard over the past two years, building the Chintz 'n China piece by piece, managing to garner enough reputation to keep us going. Now that the shop was taking off, some son of a bitch had come along and shredded everything I'd accomplished.
I looked up at Randa. Her dark eyes were filled with worry, and I realized that she could see through my bravado. I gave her a painful smile. "That's right, hon. Everything will be okay. It just hurts to think that someone could come along and destroy so many beautiful things— everything I've worked for—in one night."