muttered under her breath.
“I see. Can you relay the details to me, ma’am?”
Lena spent the next fifteen minutes going over the details with the deputy as he made vague, disinterested noises. At one point, she heard him slurping on something through the line.
“You know, I called Sheriff Windsor on his personal line. He gave me his card. I want to continue this conversation with him, please.”
Though her tone was polite, she was barely holding it together. The deputy had her going in circles, walking her through the encounter repeatedly.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to send a bus there to have you checked out? Nothing’s too sore or feels dislocated?”
“No, I’m okay, If I could just talk to the—”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, he’s busy tonight. You’ll have to stick with me.”
Lena blew out a breath of frustration.
“I’ll send someone over to check the place out. Hold tight, and we should have someone over there in twenty, okay?”
Before she could agree or disagree, the deputy hung up, leaving her with a ton of dead air.
Her fingers clenched tightly around the phone in her hand, and she quelled the urge to throw it at the wall. At this point, all Lena wanted to do was lie back in a nice, soothing bubble bath, with some soft music and a large glass of wine.
I need to get away, go somewhere exotic. Maybe a vacation was in order. The only snag to that idea was the sobering fact that she couldn’t afford one. She wouldn’t be able to afford anything ever again unless those criminals were dealt with. Lena made her way back to the office and plopped down in her comfy leather desk chair. Closing her eyes, she tried to focus on her breathing as she waited for someone to show up and take her statement, look around the store, take fingerprints, and do what the police were supposed to do.
When a knock sounded from the front door, she nearly jumped under the desk. She took a moment to compose herself. Wiping her slick palms on her pants, she walked into the main area of the restaurant.
A deputy was standing in front of the glass door with a gentle smile on his face. He stepped back as she undid the locks and opened the door wide.
“I’m Deputy Eisenhart. Sheriff Windsor sent me to pick you up. He wants to see you.”
“I thought he was unavailable?”
The deputy shrugged. “I don’t know about that, Miss. I was told to bring you to the station. If you have your car here, you can follow me.”
“All right. But is anyone going to take fingerprints or go over the crime scene?”
The young deputy smiled. “We’ll do a thorough investigation.”
Lena slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder and looked at the man. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Lena
“There has to be something we can do to keep this from happening to me again. I can’t be the only one. Haven’t you heard anything from anyone else?” Lena made her case, sipping on a cup of coffee.
“We’ve heard no complaints from anyone else in the area, and I highly doubt it would be a good thing if I started knocking on doors, calling our townspeople cowards and liars for not reporting any mischief to our offices when we’re not even sure that other shops are getting hit yet. The worst thing we could do here is go off half-cocked, ma’am.”
Lena pressed her lips together and prayed for patience.
“There isn’t much else I can do, aside from taking down your story and keeping an eye on the situation. You don’t have any cameras installed in the place yet—”
“I bought them. I just haven’t had the time to put them in.”
The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Lena. She had been so busy with managing the restaurant and her catering business during the busy season, she hadn’t even had time to safeguard her own holdings by installing the new security system she had bought the day following the first visit from those bastards in her shop. At that moment, her procrastination was biting her in the ass.
“I’m going to tell you again. Without any concrete evidence, there isn’t much we can do. There aren’t any other cases like this out there, and no witnesses. So, until someone else comes forward, or we catch them red-handed in the act itself, all we can go off of is your word, and your word alone.”
Lena threw her hands up in frustration. “That doesn’t make