Chapter 3 #3
From her position at the prep table facing the front of the store, with the swinging door between the kitchen and front room propped open by Mary’s brick, she could see anyone enter or leave the store from here.
She was startled out of her relaxed haze when the bell on the front door of the shop rang suddenly. She looked up sharply at the cheerful jingle.
He had on a black shirt this time with a denim jacket over it. He hadn’t shaved today, and dark stubble highlighted the bold line of his jaw. He had the brace on under a pair of jeans this time, but its outline was plain under the faded blue cloth.
She put the last tin of rolls in the proving drawer to rise, wiped her hands on a towel, and headed out to the front room to greet him.
He held a small, folded paper in one hand, and he paused, looking at Grace and then at the four-year-old perched on the stool by the counter. He glanced back and forth between them twice, clearly identifying that the tiny version of Grace, was, in fact, her offspring.
His face displayed a half-second of hesitation and then smoothed out once more. She interpreted that brief look as meaning he hadn’t quite expected what he’d walked into.
“Hey, Reno,” Tessa said warmly. “How’s my future-brother-in-law doing today?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t spoken with Hank today.”
“Ha ha. Very funny,” Tessa retorted. “How are you doing? How’s the knee?”
“It’s coming,” he said evasively. “Dillon told me congratulations are in order for you and Charlotte.”
Tessa beamed, but declined to brag about their big success, saying instead, “Reno, do you know Grace?”
“We’ve met, yes.”
Lily interrupted without warning, asking him, “Are you hurt?”
Grace was mightily startled. Lily didn’t spend much time around men and tended to be quite shy around them.
Not to mention, this one was a big, dark, scary-looking stranger.
She looked over at her daughter and was surprised to see Lily studying Reno intently.
Something about him clearly fascinated her.
He glanced down at the brace under his black jeans. “I hurt my leg a few months ago and had to have a doctor fix it.”
“How did you hurt it?” Lily followed up.
“A bull chased me, and when I ran away, I twisted my knee.”
Lily’s eyes went wide and impressed. “Did it chase you on purpose?”
“Hard to say, but I’m pretty sure it did. Of course, I was waving a big red cloth at it and daring it to chase me.”
If possible, Lily’s eyes went even wider. “Bulls are big,” she said. “And scary.”
“They are. Little girls like you should stay away from them.”
“Does it hurt now?” she asked, circling back to the subject of his leg.
“A little.”
“My friend Malcolm broke his arm and he cried. He had to get a cast.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Reno said seriously.
Grace appreciated him talking to Lily as if she was a real person and not just a toddler to be humored until he could get away from her. Too many adults blew kids off as nuisances that had yet to grow into adults worth being noticed.
“Did you cry?” she asked him.
Reno considered this. “I wanted to, but I didn’t. There were kids watching and I didn’t want to scare them.”
Lily nodded, her curiosity seemingly satisfied, and went back to drawing on a sheet of butcher paper with crayons from the basket of them Grace had pulled out and set her up with at the counter.
Tessa said nothing through the whole exchange. But she did watch Reno and Lily exceedingly closely. Grace wondered, abruptly, did her friend know something about Reno that she didn’t? Or was Tessa just curious to see how he acted around a small child?
Tessa picked up her coffee and said breezily, “Well, I’ll let you get back to doing whatever you were doing before I got here and interrupted.
” Grace recognized by her tone of voice that Tessa was one-hundred percent going to interrogate Dillon later about this visit to the bakery by Reno.
Sure enough, Tessa winked at Grace behind his back as she turned and walked out.
Reno set the folded paper on the counter.
“I came by,” he said, “to tell you the brand of security camera I recommend. It’s not the most expensive model on the market, but it’s reliable and nigh indestructible.
You don’t really need the bells and whistles of the higher cost models since you don’t have a computerized security system to hook it to.
I wrote the name of the manufacturer and the model number down. ”
Grace looked at the paper, surprised. “You came back just to give me a camera recommendation?”
“I did.”
“And you wrote it down?”
He hesitated for a moment as if he was choosing his next words carefully. “Saying it would have sounded as if I was telling you what to do. Writing it out and giving you a sheet of paper means you can take my suggestion or toss it in the trash, and you won’t offend me, either way.”
She picked up the paper.
It was the make and model of a wireless security camera with several installation notes written in a neat block print below it in black ink. At the bottom, in the same block print, were the words cheap and good.
“I appreciate it,” Grace said sincerely.
“My pleasure.” He looked at her in concern for a second. “Anything else weird happen around here?”
She considered him for a beat too long.
“What happened?” he demanded.
She didn’t want him to make a big deal out of it, but she also sensed he would push until he got her to tell him what had happened earlier. So, she sighed and told him about the man claiming to be from the water company and about her follow-up call to the county utility office.
He listened without interrupting as she relayed what Mary had told her and how they usually propped open the back door during the day with a brick.
His face the same thing it had on Tuesday, when it shifted, very slightly, from the talking to a stranger mode he’d come in with to a more personal, more intimate, mode whose name she didn’t know.
His gaze remained locked on her the entire time she spoke. He didn’t show any reaction in his expression, nor did he write anything down. She got the distinct impression he was memorizing every word she said and would be able to recite them again, hours from now, word for exact word.
When she was done, he asked evenly, “Did you take the brick out of the back door?”
“That’s it, right there.” She pointed at the brick now holding open the door between the front room and kitchen.
“Is there a deadbolt on the back door?”
“Yes.”
“Use it.”
“I do whenever the shop’s closed. The fire marshal requires the deadbolt to be unlocked during business hours so people can escape through it in case of fi . . .” She broke off, shot Lily a quick look, and instead of the word fire corrected to, “In case of an emergency.”
She continued explaining, “The door locks automatically from the outside at all times, no matter if the deadbolt is unlocked or not. Unlocking the deadbolt only makes it possible to go out the back door from the inside.”
“Mm.” He said the syllable like Dillon, but higher up in his throat. Dillon’s Mm was lower, more skeptical in tone overall, but it was the same family word. Brief amusement at the Steele family quirk flashed through her.
“I might have overstepped, but I called a locksmith over in Apple Pie Creek. He’s coming here tomorrow to change the bakery’s locks.”
“Why?” Grace blurted.
“I’m eliminating possible means by which someone gained entrance to your establishment to leave that rosemary.” He sent her a surprisingly agonized look and said low, “Please. Humor me. It’s a little thing, and I’ll sleep better knowing you’re the only person with access to the bakery.”
He seemed genuinely concerned for her safety. Which was sweet of him, if entirely unnecessary.
“This is Cobbler Cove. Nothing bad ever happens around here.”
“Rose’s Diner was broken into at Christmas,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but that was just some kids causing trouble.”
“They took a bunch of cash and small appliances they could pawn. Am I correct in assuming you have both cash and small appliances in this shop?” he asked, looking at the cash register and espresso machine pointedly.
“The sheriff caught the kids who robbed Rose. They won’t be robbing me any time soon.”
“They’re not the only bored teens in the valley looking to get their hands on some quick cash,” he replied.
He made a good point. Again. She gave up trying to argue him out of being worried about her or her store.
With a glance at Lily coloring away at the other end of the counter, he asked quietly, for adult ears only, “Does Clint Wheeler know about the fake utility man?”
“I’m not going to bother the sheriff with something that small. Nothing happened, after all. Some guy walked in and talked briefly with my employee. Yes, he lied about who he was, but he caused no trouble, did no harm, and left. What is there to report?”
“Documenting activities before they escalate to the level of a crime is a great way to prevent crime from happening in the first place. Plus, it lets the police know to patrol a little more often past your store for a couple of weeks, keep a closer eye on this place after hours. If something were to happen, they’d be aware of the situation and be able to respond quickly.
Also, they would have a better idea of what they were walking into if they had some background information about what’s been going on. ”
“You make several good points,” she conceded.
“Thank you,” he replied.
He didn’t push. Which she reluctantly appreciated. She thought about it for a moment longer, then sighed, and pulled out her cell phone.
She called the sheriff’s office. Told the dispatcher she wasn’t reporting a crime, exactly, just some odd events at the bakery she wanted on the record.
Could a deputy come by when one was free?
The dispatcher asked her to hold. Then a different voice came on the line.
Sheriff Wheeler’s. He said he’d be over in ten minutes.