Chapter 9 #2
“Did you go back to check it after breakfast?”
"No. I was too scared,” she confessed.
“That’s just as well. You haven’t disturbed the scene."
“As in a crime scene?” she choked out.
“To be determined. Clint’s waiting for us inside.”
"Reno, will Lily be safe at her preschool today?"
"Yes. When I called Clint to tell him something had happened at your house that you didn’t want to talk about in front of Lily, he sent a deputy to spend the day across the street from the preschool in an unmarked car.
The teacher was informed, and she’d already given the deputy a copy of the pickup list for all the kids.
Nobody who isn't on the list is getting near that building.”
She drew a breath that filled her lungs all the way for the first time since Lily asked who came into her room.
"Let's go talk to Clint," she said.
Wheeler took one look at Grace's face and came around his desk before she said anything. His expression was as grim as she’d ever seen it. And he’d been there when she and the other WoWS were told their husbands hadn’t made it out of the fire.
The sheriff held a chair for her in front of his desk. "Sit."
"I'd rather stand."
"Sit anyway. You’ve been running on pure adrenaline for a while and you’re going to crash soon. Best to be off your feet when that happens."
She sat.
Clint and Reno traded grim nods, then the sheriff said gently, “Tell me what happened."
She told him.
"Has she ever been wrong about a small detail like that?"
"No. She’s smart and observant. She was clear about putting the stuffed cat on the floor beside her bedside every night."
Clint nodded, accepting her certainty. “Let’s go have a look for ourselves, shall we?”
Lily and Reno piled into the back of a black SUV with no police markings, and the sheriff drove them to her place.
Grace led them down the short hall to Lily’s bedroom.
She stepped inside and said instantly, “The window’s been opened.”
“How do you know?” Clint asked.
“Every night I make sure the blackout curtain is tight against the window frame all the way around. Lily hates light coming in through it for some reason having to do with bad fairies riding moonbeams. At any rate the curtain is hanging loose below the window frame. I always fold up the bottom few inches and lay them on the windowsill.”
Wheeler crossed the room and looked at the window.
He looked at it for a long time without touching it.
Then he stepped back, he took out his phone, and snapped photographs of the window and stuffed orange cat lying on the bed below Lily’s pillow.
He opened the blackout curtains and took more pictures of the windowsill.
Grace said in a strangled voice, “Lily always puts her stuffies on the pillow. She’s fastidious about it. Cinnabun . . . that’s the stuffed orange cat in question . . . is on the mattress below the pillow.”
Reno said evenly, “It’s possible Lily moved the cat this morning.”
“I watched her get out of bed. She picked up one of her stuffed seals and didn’t touch any of the other animals.”
“Was she alone in her room at any time after she got up this morning?” Reno followed up.
“No. She went to the bathroom and came straight to the kitchen for breakfast. I didn’t let her go back to her room after she asked me who moved her toy. I had a load of clean clothes in the dryer and got some of those for her to wear today. Neither of us have been in here since she got out of bed.”
Reno moved to stand beside her, not touching her, but right beside her, shoulder to shoulder. And honestly, his being there was the difference between her remaining upright or crumpling to the floor.
“Let’s check outside,” Wheeler said calmly.
They went outside.
The sheriff crouched under Lily's window, flashing a bright light on the ground.
He took a couple more pictures, then he stood up and said, quietly, "Print of a boot.
Size eleven or twelve. Fresh in the dirt under the window.
Almost certainly the same boot print we found Saturday night behind your bakery.
" He added, “Did you see anything missing from your daughter’s room just now?”
“No.” Grace heard her own voice from somewhere outside her own head. "He was in my daughter's room?"
"I don’t think he went in. The disturbed dust on the sill says he reached in. Probably just far enough to pick up the cat off the floor and set it on the bed."
"Why?" she blurted.
"To tell you he could."
Grace put her hand on the wall because it had become, in the past five minutes, the only thing in the world sufficiently real to hold her up.
Reno said grimly, "Clint, tell me what happens next."
"Grace goes back to my office to make an official statement. You stay here until a deputy gets here because somebody is going to be on this house until we catch this guy.” Wheeler looked at her. "Have you thought about who might be out to harass you like this?"
"I found something this morning. Probably means nothing. It's a piece of paper with a few words and dates on it in Liam’s handwriting. I got a . . . feeling . . . about it. That it’s about something secret he was working on before he died."
“What kind of secret,” Wheeler asked quickly.
“Something to do with his military career.”
Wheeler glanced over at Reno. “Her husband was a navy SEAL.”
Reno’s eyes lit with comprehension.
To her Wheeler said, "Bring the note. We'll talk about it back at the office."
She nodded.
Reno held the back door open for her on the way out of the house.
She passed close enough to him that the sleeve of her cardigan brushed the front of his shirt, and she registered, in the very small part of her brain that was still functioning, that he smelled like soap and coffee and the faintest hint of motor oil, which was odd for him.
She filed it away and continued outside to Wheeler's truck.
Velma did not say anything when they walked back in.
She did, however, set a fresh pot of coffee on a tray in Wheeler's office with three mugs upside down beside it. Grace didn’t have any more since she’d reached the point where caffeine was going to make her teeth chatter.
She set the cookbook on the edge of Wheeler’s desk and carefully took the paper out.
She unfolded it on Wheeler's desk.
"Sam Vela is a SEAL. He was Liam's swim buddy on the teams. The dates are from the summer before Liam died. I’ve never heard the word Tigris before. But I know Sam, and he’ll tell me what he can."
"You have a number for him?" Wheeler asked.
"In my phone."
"All right. I’d like to set up a call to him on the secure phone with you and me in the room. I would also like Mr. Steele here, if you trust him, and I’d like Cooper Lawton to be here. He was an army Ranger and may hear things Sam doesn’t say.”
Grace nodded. “I’d like to have Reno be there. And Cooper’s a good idea. Sam might feel more comfortable knowing there’s another military man on the call.”
Wheeler said, "The most likely outcome of tomorrow morning's call is that it gets us exactly nowhere. Mr. Vela may have no idea what the note means, or he may not be able to tell us what he does know. He may also tell us the note has nothing to with what’s going on here in Cobbler Cove. I want you to know that going in.”
Grace nodded.
Reno commented, “It’ll be good news if he thinks that note has nothing to do with here.”
“How do you figure that?” Wheeler asked.
Reno shrugged. “Means we’re looking in the right place for answers. It’s a local problem.”
She looked down at her hands clenched on her knees. Huh. They’d stopped shaking in the past few minutes. It felt good to have a plan of action. And if anybody knew what Liam had been up to, it would be Sam. They’d been like brothers.
Wheeler and Reno exchanged significant looks, and it was Reno who cleared his throat to speak.
"Grace, you cannot sleep alone in that house tonight with Lily."
She saw where he was going and didn’t know what to say.
“The sheriff’s department is gonna be spread thin keeping an eye on your store, your house, you, and Lily. So, it makes sense for . . ."
"I can’t ask you to . . ."
"You're not asking me. I'm telling you I’m not letting the two of you be alone. Either I sleep at your place or you sleep at mine.” She opened her mouth automatically to say no way, but Reno cut her off gently.
“Someone reached through your daughter's window and intentionally let you know he’d done it. He’ll escalate matters next time.
Do something else. Something more direct. "
"How long are we talking here?" She looked back and forth between Wheeler and Reno.
Wheeler fielded that one. "Until we catch whoever’s doing these things, Grace."
She sat there for a minute, considering the impossible. Reno sleeping under her roof for the foreseeable future. She would feel better with a big, strong man nearby. And she wouldn’t sleep a wink if she was worried about Lily’s safety.
"Okay," she said heavily. “But I have one condition.”
“Anything. Name it,” Reno said quickly.
Instead of answering him, she looked over at Wheeler. "Tell Reno not to do anything brave."
Wheeler smiled briefly and looked over at Reno. "Don't do anything brave. Got it?"
"Yes, Sir. No heroics."
She left shortly after that, and Reno walked her out.
"Grace? Thank you."
"For what?"
"Letting me look after you and Lily.”
She nodded mutely and climbed into her car. She headed for the bakery to do some very belated baking, desperate for some semblance of normalcy to return to her life.
Reno rang her doorbell at exactly three o'clock with a black canvas duffel slung over one shoulder, a paper grocery bag in the other hand, and a toothbrush sticking out of his shirt pocket.
Grace smiled a tiny bit at the silly sight of the toothbrush.
He set the duffel inside the front door and followed her to the kitchen to set down the grocery bag.
"I figured you didn’t get a chance to think about supper tonight, so I shopped.
" he said. "I hope you and Lily like steaks, potatoes, and green beans. I got a container of strawberry ice cream, too because Lily mentioned loving strawberries last Saturday. I also got eggs and bread for breakfast tomorrow. Just in case.”
"You went grocery shopping?" she asked blankly. "In the four hours between leaving my house and getting here?"
"In the four hours between leaving your house and getting here, I bought a junker car at Boone's, helped him move it into the bay facing your bakery, sat in a meeting at the sheriff's office about a thing that’s not your bakery, made my brother promise he would leave his phone on all night so he’s reachable around the clock, and packed a duffel. I also went grocery shopping.”
“I’m exhausted just listening to that list,” she responded.
“I am not, under normal conditions, capable of doing all of that in four hours. Today I was motivated."
She handed him the spare house key. "Don't lose this."
"No, Ma'am."
"Guest room is down that hall, second door on the left. First door on the left is the bathroom. Lily’s room is across the hall from yours, I’m across from the bathroom. And Lily’s sleeping with me until this is over."
"Good," he said quietly.
Their gazes met in shared understanding. They both would do whatever it took to keep Lily safe.
He carried the duffel to his room, and she heard him open the drawer in the dresser that she’d cleared out for him.
She went out to the back porch and carried a mug with a teabag steeping in it.
She watched the dock at the bottom of the lawn, the one Liam had built. The boards were changed to silver, and she noted idly that it needed sanding and sealed soon. Not that she had the time or know-how to do it. Liam had taken care of all the repairs and renovations around the cottage.
The lake was a deep blue today with a fringe of green emerging where the water met the shore. The reeds signaled that winter was over for good and spring was well and truly here. She couldn’t find it in herself to be happy about it today.
The pre-school teacher walked Lily out to the car, and gave Grace a small, encouraging smile. Grace drove home, not really listening to Lily’s chatter, and took her inside the cottage.
Lily made it three steps through the door and stopped dead.
"Mommy, someone’s here.”
"We have a visitor. Mr. Reno is going to be staying with us for a while.”
“Why?”
Crud. She hadn’t thought up a good excuse to give Lily.
But just then, Reno stepped out of the kitchen and said cheerfully, “Thanks for letting me stay her while my knee heals, Princess Lily. Going up and down stairs hurts my knee, and fortunately, your house doesn’t have any, so your mom offered to let me sleep in the guest room for a little while. ”
Lily considered this gravely, then nodded in approval at this change in the configuration of her kingdom.
"Does you like strawberry ice cream, Mr. Reno?"
"Not only do I like it, I brought some with me today."
Lily’s face lit up. ”I’m glad you’re here, then!”
He grinned as Lily took his hand and dragged him toward the kitchen, presumably to swindle him into giving her some ice cream before supper. Grace shook her head as she watched them go.
She felt her shoulders drop for the first time since Lily asked who moved her stuffed cat at six AM.
I'm trying, Liam, she thought. I'm really trying.