Chapter 7 #2
“What made you decide to go to the police?” Laurel asked.
“I didn’t go to them initially. I mean, what was I going to say?
Someone is anonymously sending me Starbucks gift cards and my favorite tea, and I’m freaked out about it?
It was mostly just a feeling of…something being off.
Then one day I ran into a police contact of mine at the post office when I went to pick up my mail.
There was another package. He saw my face and asked about it. ”
“Fisher,” Ty concluded.
“Yes.”
He finished passing out beverages to everyone else. “How exactly do you know him?”
Not Detective Fisher. Just a surname. Paisley wondered if he recognized that shade of green he was wearing. “Joel is one of the instructors from the citizen’s police academy I took last year.”
Ty frowned. “Why did you go to a citizen’s police academy?”
“Book research. I thought it would help me make some connections with actual law enforcement who would let me pick their brains for plot purposes. Which it did. I got a friend in the crime lab out of it, too.” She shrugged.
“Anyway, I told him I had the heebee-jeebees, and he said he’d open a case, just to be safe.
I really appreciated the fact that he didn’t tell me I was crazy.
When the package turned out to be a Funko Pop!
Jessica Fletcher, I was back to thinking I was just paranoid. ”
“The chick from Murder, She Wrote?” Ivy asked.
“Yeah.”
“You always loved that show,” Ty murmured.
“Still do. I watch reruns when I can’t sleep, which I’ve probably mentioned on social media at some point or other. It was, in a sense, thoughtful. But more came. One here. Two there. And then, a couple of weeks ago, I got the first mailed directly to my house.”
“Somebody found out your home address,” Sebastian observed.
“I don’t use a pen name. A determined person with reasonable computer skills can find it.
But nobody ever has before. It freaked me out, so Joel had Rico—he’s my pal in the crime lab—go over it, but there was no trace evidence that could lead anywhere.
He said that since there weren’t any overt threats and no actual laws had been broken, there was basically nothing he could do.
I got home from that conversation to find another one sitting on my doorstep.
No address at all. Just placed dead center of my welcome mat.
That one was the collar I found on Duke.
After that, I decided it would be prudent to get the hell out of town. ”
Ty crossed his arms and glowered. “You should have told me.”
“Growling at me about it isn’t going to change the fact that I didn’t, so stop.”
Ivy narrowed her eyes. “It’s odd. As you say, nothing seems overtly threatening, but it sounds like each one has gotten a little more personal.
Like the sender is saying ‘Look, see, I know you.’ And certainly, the switch from the P.O.
Box to showing up at your house would have been worrisome on its own.
But it’s a gigantic leap to go from packages, to breaking in, to finding you here.
There’s frustration in the action. You clearly weren’t behaving in the way the sender wanted or anticipated. The question is, what do they want?”
“I think the more immediate question is whether she was followed directly or tracked.”
Paisley felt the blood drain from her face again as Ty’s words sank in.
She hadn’t had time to think that far. “I don’t see how I could have been followed directly.
It would have taken time to get into the house to retrieve the collar.
And I spent nearly an hour driving around the city before I even left town, just in case someone was watching. ”
He made that growling noise again, and Paisley just pointed at him in warning. “I felt stupid when I did it.”
“Clearly your instincts are better than your logical brain. Give me your phone. I’ll check it for tracking software.”
Harrison and Sebastian rose. “We’ll sweep her car.”
Paisley wondered how exactly this had become her life, where three highly trained former Rangers were suddenly in charge of her personal security.
Laurel shoved to her feet. “Well, clearly not charring dinner is going to be on us. Come on, ladies. We’ll all think better with food.”
Ivy stood, too. “Just keep the onions away from me. The smell has been turning me green.”
Paisley looked up from digging in her purse for the car keys.
“Since when? You’re the only person I know who loves French onion soup as much as I do.
” Her gaze zeroed in on the ginger ale in Ivy’s hand instead of the beer everyone else was drinking and realization dawned.
She hadn’t imagined it possible to smile after the events of the night.
“Seems I’m not the only one with some ’splaining to do. ”
“It’s subtle, but you can just see the scratches here.”
Ty crouched down, examining the minute signs of lock picking Joel Fisher pointed at with a pencil. “That’s the only signs we’ve got?”
The detective straightened, crossing his arms. “There’s a partial footprint by the back fence, but with all the rain we had a couple days ago, any tread is entirely obscured.
We can’t even get a good estimate on size.
Only prints on the door are Miss Parish’s.
Officers canvased the neighborhood, but nobody reported seeing anything. ”
“Maybe there will be something more inside. You haven’t been in?”
Tall, with a rangy build and a craggy face that spoke of a lot of time outdoors, Fisher shook his head. Ty pegged him around mid-forties, though the job had added some years to that.
“Wanted to wait on Miss Parish and her key rather than doing any more damage or potentially obscuring evidence.”
“Any more damage? Did they ransack my house?” Paisley’s voice shot up half an octave.
“No, no!” Fisher soothed. “We didn’t see any evidence of that through the windows. But we didn’t see any need to bust in the door either.”
“Oh. Well, can we go inside now and see whatever there is to see?”
He held out a hand toward the gate that led back around to the front of the bungalow. “After you.”
Together they trooped around and up the steps to the front door.
It was a hell of a different experience than the last time Ty had been here.
That night, the only thing on his mind had been the miracle of running back into Paisley after all these years and finding his way into her bed. He was in mission mode now.
Once she’d unlocked the door, he laid a hand on her shoulder. “Let us go in first and sweep the place. I don’t expect anybody to be here, but just to be safe.”
Fisher stepped into position, and Ty opened the door. The alarm tone countdown sounded as he slipped inside.
“Alarm’s still set.”
Ignoring his order, Paisley ducked around him and made a beeline for the panel on the wall, punching in a code to disarm it.
“If they came in the back door, why didn’t the alarm go off for the intruder?” Were they going to find the collar she’d received exactly where she left it? Had there been a duplicate just to freak her out?
Paisley bit her lip. “Um…there’s no sensor on the back door.”
“What do you mean there’s no sensor?” Fisher demanded.
“Well, there was originally, but I kept forgetting about it and setting it off when I let Duke out in the morning, so I had it disabled.”
Ty stared at her. “Are you kidding me?”
Her cheeks flushed. “You know I’m not a morning person.”
He and Fisher exchanged a can-you-believe-this look, and Ty filed that under things to deal with later. With a shake of his head, he resumed the sweep.
No one was in the house. Nothing had been ransacked.
Fisher holstered his service weapon. “Is anything missing?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see anything right offhand. The electronics are still here.”
“Whoever broke in didn’t come for electronics,” Ty pointed out. “Where did you have the collar stored?”
She led them to a back bedroom and opened the closet. “Since I started getting creeped out, I put everything in this…” She trailed off, rising to her toes and running both hands along a shelf. “The box is gone. Everything I still had was in there.”
“And yet nothing looks disturbed,” Ty observed. “Almost like somebody knew exactly where it was.”
Fisher rocked back on his heels. “Did you tell anyone where you were keeping the stuff?”
“No. Almost nobody knows about the problem at all.”
Ty didn’t like it. Last night they hadn’t found a tracker on her phone or car or anywhere in her things. But if the perpetrator was close enough to lay hands on the dog, he could have removed it. It’s what he would’ve done.
“Maybe there are cameras. Bugs. Something that would’ve told our perp where to look.”
“Cameras!” Paisley crossed both arms tight over her middle, her cheeks going pale. She was just getting one hit after another.
Wishing he’d kept the idea to himself, Ty curved his hands around her shoulders, aware of Fisher’s speculative gaze. “It’s just another avenue to check. Why don’t you go on and start packing?”
“Yeah, okay.”
They waited until Paisley had made her way down the hall.
“She’s going back to Eden’s Ridge?”
He knew what Fisher was asking. Much as he wanted to stake his claim, he needed to be a cop here first. “She’s got friends there. Let’s search the place.”
An hour and a half later, Fisher screwed the last air vent cover back in place. “Nothing. Hopefully that’ll put Paisley more at ease.”
“Maybe. But if someone broke in to take the evidence, it wouldn’t be hard to pull any surveillance equipment as well.
” He’d have preferred to do an electronic sweep rather than a manual one, but he didn’t have access to that kind of equipment now, and in all likelihood, their stalker wouldn’t have access to the kind that would be easy to hide.
“Come on. Do you really think that’s what happened?”
“You have a better theory?”
Fisher shot a glance toward the front of the house, where Paisley had disappeared, and dropped his voice.
“I’m just saying, it’s awfully convenient that I tell her I can’t do anything with what I’ve got so far, and we suddenly have a big jump from mailing shit to dropping off a package in person, to alleged breaking and entering, to someone following her. Why the escalation?”
“You’re suggesting she’s making this up?” If that’s where this guy’s head was, no wonder there’d been no progress on her case.
“I don’t want to think that. I really don’t.
I like her. She’s a sweetheart. But I know she’s frustrated as hell with the lack of progress, and I’ve gotta look at the facts in front of me: The alarm didn’t go off.
The scratches on the back door could just be from regular use.
And Duke wasn’t actually hurt, right? All we’ve got is her word that the collar came from here. ”
Bristling on Paisley’s behalf, Ty drew on the control he’d learned as a soldier. “She’s not lying to try to spark more action out of the police.”
“Like I said, I don’t want to think that. But Occam’s Razor, man. What you’re suggesting just seems like a lot of cloak and dagger shit that’s more like something out of a book or movie when, up to now, the whole situation has looked like a simple case of an over-obsessed fan.”
“The simplest explanation isn’t always the right one. I was with her when she saw that collar. She was legit terrified someone had gotten to her dog.”
“How do you know she’s not a stellar actress?”
“Because I’ve known her for more than twenty years. She wasn’t faking. I don’t know what’s going on or why, but I’m not discounting any possibility yet.”
“Fair point. Please don’t assume I’m not taking this seriously. I am. Have from the start. But you have to admit, there’s not a lot to go on.”
“No.” And if this had been anyone else, he might have shared the same concerns. But this was Paisley. “What about the mugger?”
“Unrelated, as far as we could tell. It was months before she started getting packages. And why would some guy start with an attack on her person, then switch to something so low-key as random packages? Doesn’t fit.”
Ty nodded in acknowledgment. “I’d appreciate if you’d send me copies of your file. Maybe a fresh set of eyes will help.”
“Of course. Whatever I can do to help. And I’ll make sure to have patrols continue in the area. Though with the damned back door not hooked in, I don’t know how helpful that will be.”
More than done with Fisher, Ty straightened. “I’ll take care of it.” He’d be plugging a number of other holes in her security before they left town.
“Good. I’ll feel better knowing she’s got a properly secured house. I’ll send that file as soon as I get back to the station.”
“Appreciate it.”
After Fisher left, Ty went in search of Paisley. She sat in her office, hugging a pillow and staring at nothing.
“Paisley?”
“What if someone’s been watching me all this time, Ty? When I thought I was alone? Do you have any idea how disturbing that is?”
“We didn’t find any evidence of that or anything else.” He felt bad enough for mentioning the possibility to her. He sure as hell wasn’t offering up his theory that there might have been something that had been removed.
“I’m not sure it makes a difference either way, at this point. My home, my sanctuary, has been violated. I don’t know how to get over that.”
“With time and answers. Meanwhile, you’ll be safe with me.” He’d make sure of it. “How’s the packing coming?”
She lifted haunted eyes to his. “I’m basically done. It’s all in the foyer.”
Ty glanced behind him, expecting to see a small mountain.
But there were only a few boxes and more stuff for Duke.
Was she trying to pack light, or did she expect this to be a short cohabitation?
With everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, she probably didn’t know what to think.
Hell, neither did he. He just knew he’d do whatever he had to in order to keep her safe.
“How about packing up any food that’s going to spoil? We’ll take that back with us, too. I’ll load this in the truck.”
She rose from her chair with none of her usual buoyancy.
Her light had gone out, and he hated seeing it.
Nothing should ever dim that light. Short of hunting down the one harassing her, what the hell could he do to give back that spark?
It wasn’t like he could just flip a switch. Hell, he knew that better than anybody.
She’d need time and support. He was determined to give her both.