Chapter 5
Thinking of the danger Selena could have put herself in by following that black car, Daniel finally got ready for bed.
Unfortunately, they had lost the Mazda anyway, but he was glad she’d been safe.
But he couldn’t quit thinking about it and worried they could recognize her car when she had followed it, that she had called the police on them, and that they would give her trouble.
Before he went to work in the morning, he would drop by her shop and pick up a drink for her from Silva’s shop since he was getting himself one anyway.
He just wanted to start his day by seeing her.
He called to ask her what she would like, just in case she had already stopped over there and ordered herself a drink.
“Morning,” he said over the phone. “I’m delivering special drinks from Silva’s tea shop if you haven’t had a chance to get one.”
“Oh, that would be lovely. A cranberry tea and a scone, if that would be all right.”
“You got it. I’ll be right over.” He dropped by Silva’s tea shop and picked up drinks, a scone for Selena, and a pumpkin muffin for himself.
She unlocked the shop door for him. She was wearing sneakers, jeans, and a T-shirt featuring a wolf sitting in the middle of a pile of fallen leaves, one sticking to the top of its head. She looked cute and whimsical, and he liked the look. Before this, she had mostly been dressed up.
She was unpacking more boxes, and he spied the stack of folded ones. “Do you want me to take these to the recycle bin?”
“Yes, thanks. I was going to do it last night, but I was so tired.”
“I’ve got it.” He carried the boxes out to the recycle bin and saw Silva coming out with a stack.
“Now if only I had a mate who would do that for me.”
Daniel laughed, then returned to the shop. “Do you need me to help you unpack the remaining boxes before Brett comes by to take pictures for the paper?”
“No, thanks. Roxie offered to drop by and help, just in case I’m not done by then.”
“Okay, good. Well then, I’m off to work.”
She slid beside him, her lips brushing his cheek, her arms wrapping around his shoulders. "Thanks for getting us breakfast."
His fingers traced her spine as he pulled her close. "Promise me you're done with midnight detective work, trailing unknown cars in the dark of night.”
“You didn’t catch him, did you? See, if I had continued to follow him, you might have.”
“No, it’s too dangerous. We learned that they’ve already hit two vehicles. We figured it’s a case of road rage. If they had caught you following them, no telling what they would have done.”
“All right. I won’t follow the car if I see it, just report it to you.”
“That’s just what I want you to do.” Every time he saw Selena, he wanted to see more of her. He certainly didn’t want her to get hurt by this business.
He drove off to work, thinking about inviting her over to his place for dinner. She might want a home-cooked meal. She had to eat somewhere because the hotel she was staying at didn’t have a restaurant. He couldn’t offer lunch as he didn’t know what he would be in the middle of at work by then.
As soon as he walked into the sheriff’s office, Peter said, “I hope you told Selena not to follow that black Mazda if she sees it again.”
“I did. I just can’t understand how it could have vanished.”
“He knows the roads as well as we do.”
“That’s what I was figuring. A wolf then?”
“I don’t know. The thought had crossed my mind. As to other news, I got a call from the manager of the Silver Town rental storage units about a break-in. I’ll need you to check that out.”
“Do you know who rents the unit?”
“Selena Rivers. Her household goods are in there, so you’ll need to have her inventory them to see what, if anything, was taken. I hate to report that some things were broken.”
“Just Selena’s storage unit was broken into?”
“It seems odd, as if she were targeted for some reason. Or they could have gotten spooked and left before breaking into any other unit. But hers is in the middle of a row, which makes me think they went after only hers.”
“What about security camera footage?” Daniel asked.
“All knocked out before the perps hit her unit.”
“Hell.”
“Yeah. It’s not the welcome we want newcomers to Silver Town to have.”
“I’ll give Selena a call and get right on it.”
“I figured you would want the case. Good luck.”
Daniel tried calling Selena, but it went to voicemail. He’d wanted to know if she wanted to meet him at the storage unit or for him to pick her up. She was probably so busy, she didn’t hear her phone. He got into his SUV and drove to her shop.
Selena was hanging more sweatshirts on the carousels when the shop door opened. She’d left it unlocked for when Roxie arrived, but the three drunken men who had gone to the Silver Town Tavern the night she had dinner with Daniel sauntered in instead.
“My store isn’t open yet.” The closed sign was lit up. She suspected they had an ulterior motive and had no intention of shopping in her store. Her body chilled with anxiety.
The sandy-haired man picked up a porcelain jack-o’-lantern from a box that had an old-world mottled appearance.
She had five of them and really thought they would go well in the shop.
Her gun was in a locked drawer behind the counter so she couldn’t reach it.
Her phone was in her pocket, but she was afraid to pull it out and escalate a confrontation with the men when they refused to leave.
Then her phone rang, and she fished it out of her pocket. Daniel. Just who she needed to speak to.
“Don’t answer it,” one of the darker-haired men said.
“If I don’t, he’ll assume something is wrong.”
“Don’t. Answer. It,” the man reiterated.
The sandy-haired man walked around the store, still carrying the jack-o’-lantern, and she knew he had no intention of buying it.
“What do you want?”
“You had your boyfriend force us out of the Silver Town Tavern the other night,” the man said.
“He’s a deputy sheriff. He did that of his own accord.” She didn’t believe that was the only reason they were here.
“You put our dad away for life.”
Now she understood. It had to do with one of her forensic cases. Who would even have thought someone would come all the way from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to harass her in Silver Town?
“Who is your dad?”
“Benny Whittington.”
The ex-husband of her distant cousin. She’d been murdered in cold blood because of a contentious divorce. Instead of just dividing the property they had together equally, he wanted all of it and ended up in prison for life, getting none of it.
“I only shared the facts of the case concerning a forensic analysis of the murdered victim’s bones.
The detectives pieced the rest of the case together.
” But she had proven the ex-husband had injured her multiple times, with the injuries healing, but traces of the damage still showing.
Which was why she had finally left him, and he couldn’t handle it.
Selena did not doubt their father’s guilt.
“Her boyfriend is likely to check on her when she doesn’t answer her phone,” the other dark-haired man said.
When she observed them closer, she thought the three of them were brothers.
But they were all human. Her distant cousin would have been a wolf and would have had to have been their stepmother.
She had never heard of her cousin before.
There was never any mention of Benny having sons in the news reporting on the case, and they were never seen in the courtroom.
Maybe that’s why the boys had no empathy for her death—she was just the stepmother. She had only married Benny two years earlier, and the men appeared to be in their thirties, so she wouldn’t have raised them.
The blond-haired guy smashed the jack-o’-lantern on the wood floor, where it crashed and broke into a million pieces, infuriating her. Then the youngest man grabbed one, too, and smashed it, as if he had to prove he was tough, too.
She wanted to smash both of the men!
“Your dad can appeal his conviction.”
“He is, no thanks to you.”
Roxie came to the front door, and the men hurried out the back door. Selena rushed after them. They got into the black Mazda with the damaged fenders and tore off. The hit-and-run vehicle.
“What in the world happened here?” Roxie asked as Selena returned to the shop and locked the back door.
Selena frowned at the broken jack-o’-lanterns. “Don’t touch them. They’re part of a crime scene.”
“What?”
Daniel drove up, parked, and headed inside the shop. At once, he saw the broken pumpkins. “What has happened here?” He pulled her into his arms and gave her a warm embrace.
She appreciated it after what she’d been through. “Three men came into my shop. The same three men who arrived drunk at the Silver Town Tavern.”
“And I chased them off?”
“Roxie did. But they’re also the ones driving the black Mazda. They drove it down the back alley to stay out of sight.”
“Hell. Your storage unit was broken into. I came to get you to inventory what, if anything, was damaged or stolen. I haven’t been there yet.
But if they’re driving the black Mazda and it was outside the gates of the storage units, were you getting some things in there?
” He gave her a tighter squeeze as if protecting her from the threat.
“Yeah. I grabbed the box of clothes that you carried into the hotel later and saw the Mazda.” She hugged him back, so glad he was here and that Roxie had scared the men off. Though she wished they had been arrested.
“So they knew which storage unit you had rented.”
“Right.” She was being stalked again, which totally unnerved her. “They broke my jack-o’-lanterns in the shop and then when Roxie entered the shop, they took off. I’m sure they were afraid you were coming because they wouldn’t let me take your call.”
“Roxie, I want you to leave,” Daniel said.
“But I was going to help Selena get ready for picture taking.”