“Forget it. I need to call the cops and have something actually done.” I hung up, cussing loudly.
“Wow,” Max said, still standing in the office doorway. “I’ve never seen you get angry like that.”
“Advice Line says nothing happened,” I snapped. “How can they say that? Look at this place. If someone had the time to do this, and the motion sensors never went off, what the hell kind of service am I paying for?”
Max nodded obediently.
So I called the cops.
Again.
And it turned out to be the same officers from yesterday.
Their coats and hats were wet when they entered the shop, both hesitating at stepping into the sea of bricks.
“Good morning, officers,” I said, making my way toward them.
The woman took her hat off. “Mr. Snow. Should we put your shop on our list of routine check-ins?”
God, I hoped she was joking.
“Ha….” I cleared my throat and squinted in the harsh lighting to read her badge.
Bridge? No, Brigg.
That’s right. I recalled her name now from Christmas.
“What seems to be… happening here?” Brigg asked.
“I wish I knew,” I answered, motioning vaguely at the area around us. “When I got here this morning, there was a brick outside the front door. And as you can see, the shop was full of them when I opened up. But the doors were locked, the alarms never went off, and the gate was down.”
She put her hands on her belt. “I see.”
“I have footage of my cameras getting blacked out just after four this morning. Someone, I think from out of the frame, spray-painted the lenses. They must have come in through the back, but my alarm company is insistent that they never received any indication of trouble.”
The officers looked at each other.
“And I’m inclined to believe it wasn’t a ghost,” I added dryly.
“Do you have anything to report as missing?” Brigg asked.
“No, nothing,” I said, shaking my head.
“Can you show us the back door?” Lowry asked.
“Sure.” I turned and carefully made my way through the aisles toward the back of the building. I unlocked the door and pushed it open to reveal the chilly but mostly dry alley I shared with Beth Harrison of Good Books.
I stepped out first, shivering. The alley was odd and connected our shops together, but it wasn’t insulated from the weather by any means. I looked up and down, hoping to find some obvious evidence as to who was trying to remodel my shop. Like footprints, or wheelbarrow tracks, or a signed and notarized letter from the guilty party….
“Well,” Brigg started, examining the door’s lock. “Not broken, no sign of forced entry. Is your landlord doing any sort of work on the building?”
I resisted the urge to be a smartass, and before coffee, it hurt like hell to keep the knee-jerk response to myself. “Uh, even if he was, don’t you think someone would have triggered the alarm?”
She nodded absently, pondering the information available. “You’ve got a mystery on your hands, Mr. Snow.”
“Looks like.”
“We’ll file another report,” she continued. “Someone clearly has trespassed, but with no security footage and the fact that nothing was taken, there isn’t much for us to investigate, you understand.”
