Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
The front window hadn’t been fixed, with only some black garbage bags duct-taped to the opening. The wood-paneled Crown Vic was gone. Lucy stared at the building from their parking spot across the street, her stomach sloshing uncomfortably. The police had circled the building and seen the plywood-covered window, and now they were back out front.
“I can drop you off at home,” Cormac told her. “You can work on your pitch. I’ll handle this.”
“No,” Lucy said. “This is my mess. I want to know why Phillips hates me so much. I want to fix this.”
Cormac slid his hand over her neck, tugged her close, and kissed her. When they separated, he leaned his forehead against hers. “Stay close to me,” he said quietly. “Don’t wander off on your own.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
“Is it okay that we’re here?” Lucy asked. “Shouldn’t we let these guys do their jobs?” She waved a hand at the two officers and the detective surveying the building with practiced efficiency.
“There are a grand total of seven officers on Stirling’s police force, Lucy,” Cormac said. “Not all of them are on duty. Ricky knows that after yesterday, if we’re not here, he’s got to assign at least two officers to stick to us. He doesn’t have enough people to do that, but he needs to keep us safe.”
“That was sneaky of you to point out. And a little manipulative.”
Cormac grinned. “Are you impressed?”
“Yes,” she said, because her chest was glowing with warmth even though tension still thrummed through her.
Cormac chuckled and kissed her again, just a quick, soft brush on the lips.
They stepped out and watched the officers tear the plastic bags off the window frame. Detective Ricky knocked some shards of glass out and stepped over them, followed by the two officers in uniform. They cleared the main room, then inspected the bathroom and came out to look at the back wall of the shop.
Cormac stepped into the room, and Lucy followed.
Ricky scowled at them. “You were supposed to stay in the car, McKenna.”
Cormac blinked. “Oops.”
The detective sighed and turned around and got back to work trying to find an entrance to the secret room. If there was a secret room, and the window hadn’t simply been covered up with drywall.
Lucy glanced around the store. She’d been in here a few years ago, but she was seeing it with fresh eyes. Aaron Phillips sold a lot more than just wedding stationery. He had craft supplies and writing implements, journals and diaries. There was a price list for printing costs as well, with only one section of the side wall dedicated to wedding stationery.
“I’m not competing with any of this stuff,” Lucy said, her annoyance rising. “We could have coexisted without any issues at all. Why was he so threatened by me?”
“Holden,” Officer Chrissie called out, jerking her head. On the back wall, next to where the powder room was, was a very faint, almost imperceptible joint.
The detective hummed, and the three of them went to work trying to get the thing open. Cormac was busy watching the police try to figure out the secret room as Lucy drifted closer to the wedding display. Phillips’s work was good, but it leaned more traditional than hers did. As she inspected his samples, her frustration grew.
Why had this man terrorized her? They offered completely different services! He’d gotten a bee in his bonnet about Lucy, and there was no need for them to be enemies at all. They served completely different segments of the market. Her customers wanted a contemporary, modern feel. His obviously favored tradition. They could have coexisted easily. They even could have collaborated!
If this was about business, Lucy didn’t understand what was going on at all.
She picked up one of the invitations displayed on a clear plastic stand, studying the floral design, the swooping gold lettering. It was beautiful, but it looked nothing like her work. Maybe he’d been intimidated? He hadn’t wanted to evolve? But plenty of people loved tradition! There was no need for them to be enemies at all.
Huffing to herself, Lucy went to replace the invitation—and saw a small silver rivet. She frowned.
“I think we can pry it open,” the male officer said to her right. “Cormac—give us a hand?”
“Sure,” Cormac said, his boots crunching on broken glass as he crossed the space.
The little button was strange. It almost looked like one of the screws holding the shelf up, but it was slightly bigger and didn’t have the cross shape where the screwdriver would fit in.
“On three,” the officer said. “One, two, thr?—”
Lucy pressed the rivet and discovered it was a button. Echoing screams and a crash made her jump, and she saw two sets of legs sticking out from an opening in the back wall, with Detective Rick and Officer Chrissie looking on, unimpressed. Cormac had landed on top of the male officer, who was groaning in pain. Cormac scanned the room and glanced back at Ricky. “Clear.”
“Well, at least it worked,” Ricky noted, frowning.
Lucy cleared her throat. “Uh… I think…” Her voice faded to nothing as the detective skewered her with a look. She pointed out the button, which made Ricky arch his brows. He pressed it and watched the latch on the side of the opening flip up, which had allowed the door to swing open.
“Huh,” he said, and he nodded to Lucy. “Good work.” The detective spun on his heels and strode for the opening, disappearing inside. “Wyatt, keep watch,” Ricky ordered from inside, and the third officer stepped outside and took up a post outside the store.
Lucy watched him, then turned back to the secret room. Only hesitating a moment, Lucy went in. She held her breath as she stepped into the darkness, then blinked when someone hit a light switch.
It was a tiny room, long and narrow, with a desk shoved against the left wall. On the right, a row of filing cabinets filled the space. A bare lightbulb lit them from above, but there was also a task lamp tipped over on the desk. A few drawers in the filing cabinets were half-open, as if someone had cleared them out and left in a hurry. The walls were covered in old, yellowing wallpaper with a brown-and-orange 70s design. The floor was bare plywood. It was dusty and dank and awful. Directly across from her, a plank of plywood was secured to the wall with screws all around its perimeter. The window.
The police officers had slipped on latex gloves. Ricky pointed to Cormac and Lucy, then pointed to the door. “Stand there and don’t touch anything.”
Cormac looked like he was chewing glass. His jaw worked as he scowled, but he did as he was told. He put his hand around Lucy’s shoulders. Immediately, the tightness in her muscles unwound. She leaned into Cormac’s bulk and inhaled the scent of his skin, watching the police work.
“No explosives,” Cormac noted quietly.
Lucy huffed in agreement. “But it doesn’t look like paper storage.”
“No,” he said, glancing from one end of the room to the other. “It looks like a workspace.”
“Pretty depressing one.”
“Nothing,” the female officer, Chrissie, said, closing the last drawer in the filing cabinets. “They’re all empty.”
“The desk too,” the detective said, kneeling to get a look at the underside. He moved to the plywood-covered window and traced the edge with his fingers, finding nothing. With pinched lips, he surveyed the scene. “It doesn’t smell right,” he said, “but there’s nothing here. Someone’s cleared it.”
Lucy took in the room, and she had to agree with Ricky. Something was off. This wasn’t a space where good things happened.
Cormac glanced out toward the front of the building, noting that Wyatt was still in place. Then he drifted toward the desk and started looking. Cormac was not a man who did well standing still while he watched others work. Lucy saw the moment Ricky opened his mouth to order him back, and she also saw the other man come to the same conclusion as she had. The detective sighed, gave Cormac a pair of gloves, looked at Lucy, scowled, and gave her a pair too, then moved to the filing cabinets to ask Chrissie to help him move them away from the wall so they could look behind.
Lucy snapped the gloves on, part of her feeling silly, the other part brimming with excitement. Then moved to help Cormac with the desk. They hefted the desk away from the wall as the broken lamp slipped on its surface, then set the desk down and glanced behind it.
“What’s that?” Lucy asked, pointing to an item that had been pinned between the desk and the wall. The desk had a back panel made of wood that had warped, so it had bulged against the wall and trapped a flimsy piece of paper against the wall. When they moved it, the paper slipped to the ground.
Cormac reached down, but his arms were too big. He straightened and nodded for Lucy to try. She climbed over the desk and shoved her arm down between the back panel and the wall, wiggling her fingers, smooshing her face against the desk to get maximum length…
Coming up for air, she ducked under the desk and saw the corner of the paper wedged between the baseboard and the back panel of the desk. She used the tip of her glove-clad finger to slide the paper through the tiny gap. Triumphant, she pulled it up to show the three other people crowded around her.
A hundred-dollar bill. She held it between her hands, shoulders dropping. That was it?
Ricky frowned, taking the bill from her. He turned it over so they could see the back, and everyone stilled.
The back of the bill was completely blank.
It took Lucy a second to work out the implications, but she got there a second before Cormac confirmed her suspicion: “Phillips isn’t in the wedding stationery business. He’s in the counterfeiting business.”
The detective sighed, turning the bill over to see the printed side once more. “And he’s not particularly good at what he does. This looks like Monopoly money.”
“Maybe it was a trial,” Lucy said in the grim silence that followed. “A prototype.”
The detective stared at her, lips rolling inward beneath his mustache. His eyes narrowed. “We have a bomb-building arsonist, a counterfeit money business, and a woman who sells wedding invitations. I’m not seeing the connection. Is there something you’re not telling us?”
Lucy was suddenly outraged. “No! I have no idea why they’re after me. All I do is design and sell wedding stationery.”
The detective studied her for a moment, then nodded. Officer Chrissie offered him a clear evidence bag, and he slid the one-sided bill inside.
Suddenly, the space was too cramped. Lucy sidestepped out of the hidden room and leaned against the counter that held the cash register, taking a deep, gulping breath. Cormac appeared at her side, his hand running down her spine. She leaned into him—until his touch stilled.
He tugged a small notebook closer, frowning at the scrawled writing. Then he reached into his back pocket, opened his wallet, and pulled out the name card that Lucy had found pinned to her windshield the day of Camilla’s wedding.
The handwriting matched. Lucy shivered. Aaron Phillips had been at Camilla’s wedding venue that night, close enough to deliver this threat, but no one had seen him. When she glanced at Cormac, his face was set in deep, grim lines. He tucked the name card back into his wallet.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s get some fresh air.” As Cormac led her out of the shop and into the sunshine outside, Lucy rubbed her hands over her arms, but she still felt cold.