when they go off. Ivy has about ten of them, five in the shop and five in the house, and they all keep going off periodically, letting me know to change their batteries. She must have had them installed all around the same time. With our enhanced hearing? The shrieking nearly kills me.”
“Now you have a smoke-detector battery changer at your disposal. If one goes off in the middle of the night, you can get Josh to change it.”
She laughed. “I will. I need my beauty sleep.”
“I’m going to check out the video security.”
“Great. I’m on a safe hunt.”
“I’ll help you look once I’m done with this.”
She started in the office where Maverick was looking at the security video. “I see a couple of pickup trucks driving by when everything is closed.”
“But they’re not stopping?” She looked behind a painting of a mother and her child sitting on her lap. There was nothing but a wall behind it.
“No. I’m watching to make sure no one’s sneaking around the place.” Maverick continued to scan for anything that looked like trouble.
Brooke looked behind three other oil paintings, one of them a vintage painting of a pack of wolves playing with little ones. It was one of her favorites, and she wanted to move it to the house to showcase. She wondered if the painter was one of their kind, since his name was Graythorn.
She looked behind furniture, then checked the floor to see if there was a floor safe, but no luck. “If someone is watching the shop, it will probably be when postal deliveries arrive. What about the bakery? They have tables inside where people can eat baked goods: pies, breads, cakes, sandwiches. Someone could sit there and watch the shop around the time the mail carrier comes.”
“I’ll check the video to see who’s coming in and out of the shop then. When does the mail carrier usually come?”
“Between half past eight and ten. He usually gets here before I open the shop. Sometimes he comes later, depending on the number of packages he’s delivering, especially during the holidays. Sometimes I have an afternoon delivery.”
“I’ll look at those time periods. Josh could ask at the bakery to see if they have noticed anyone who has frequented their shop more regularly lately.”
“Right.”
“No luck finding the safe?” Maverick asked.
“Not in here. I would think my great-aunt would have placed it in the office where she could watch things while the shop was open or somewhere in the house.”
“You haven’t checked the house yet?”
“Off and on. I’ve been busy. Every time it seems I have a moment, something else goes wrong, and I have to fix it.” Or she and Josh were making time for each other.
“We’ll find it. Did you want me to help you look for that now? Or unpack boxes?”
“I really need to work on the boxes with you at the same time so I can learn how much the items are worth. So why don’t you help me find a safe, if there’s one in the shop.”
“Will do.”
Another smoke detector started beeping. He smiled.
“I think that’s in the hallway outside the bedrooms on the second floor.”
“I’ll get it. Got more batteries?”
“I stocked up on them the last time I had to change out one of the batteries. They’re in the third drawer in that chest on the right.”
Maverick grabbed a battery and the footstool and headed up the stairs.
“You sure are handy to have around.”
“Thanks. I’m glad to have a sister-in-law. By the way, will the two of you be getting married?”
“Yeah. I haven’t talked to Josh about it, but I think it would be nice to have a wedding with the pack. I’ve been trying to decide if I should keep Cerise as the name for the shop or change it to Wilding.”
“It’s been here for how many years?”
“Seventy-five.”
“An icon then. I have a question. When Ivy mated your great-uncle, she didn’t give up her surname, right?”
“Yeah. So I’ll probably keep the name the same in honor of my great-aunt and great-uncle. My great-aunt was a feminist early on. Cerise means a bright or deep red color. We’re red wolves and she wanted to keep the name. My great-uncle didn’t have any problem with it.” Brooke moved to the counter to see if maybe her aunt had a safe hidden near the cash register.
“It sounds like a good idea. I think Josh would agree.”
She looked in the drawers for anything important and found an RFID card that would open