She shook her head. “I run a bakery and sell flowers. I haven’t had a cross word with anyone in this town in years.”
Wheeler set his pen down. “Couple of practical matters. The deadbolt on your back door . You using it?”
“During business hours, no. The fire marshal . . .”
“I know what the fire marshal says. Use it after hours, every night, no exceptions. Maybe think about rekeying the locks. And you should think about putting a security camera over your back door.”
Grace smiled in spite of herself. “Mr. Steele has already given me a recommendation for a good camera at a reasonable price.”
Wheeler nodded. “Get it installed sooner rather than later. If anyone shows up here who isn’t a face you know, you call me directly. I don’t care if they’re behaving perfectly well or not. I want to hear about any strangers. You’ve got my cell phone number?”
“I do,” she said.
He picked up his hat. “I’ll be in touch. And, Grace?”
“Yes?”
“You did the right thing calling me. Don’t second-guess yourself for being cautious. I’m telling you right now you’re not being paranoid. Caution is the thing that lets us do our job before something big happens instead of after.”
He nodded at Reno on the way out, and the door closed behind him. Grace stood there feeling a combination of alarm and relief. Alarm because the sheriff hadn’t laughed off the odd events, and relief that she’d taken Reno’s advice and called Clint.
Speaking of Reno, he was standing there, staring at the door Wheeler had just gone through, utterly still. As if he was thinking hard about something he didn’t want to say out loud.
“Finally, he said, “The deadbolt has to be unlocked during business hours per the fire marshal, which means anyone who walks through your front door has an unlocked back door they can exit through. Correct?”
She hadn’t quite thought about it in those terms. The thought made her stomach feel wrong. “Correct.”
He said, in a voice she could tell was deliberately casual, “With Cooper in Arizona and the department spread thin, I’d like to come by here the next few nights and keep an eye on the place after you close up. Park out front, walk around the building every hour or two, make sure nothing happens. I won’t get in your way.”
She stared at him. “Reno, that’s . . .”
“Please hear me out. I may be a cowboy with a busted leg, but I’ve got nothing to do in the evenings and my eyes work fine. There’s not gonna be anyone watching the bakery in between a few police drive-by’s unless someone volunteers to do it. I’m volunteering. That’s the whole of it.”
She tried to find a polite way to refuse. Her resistance to the idea was formed out of pride and that fact that she would never ask a near-stranger to sit outside her shop all night while she went home to her comfy bed and slept.
But she couldn’t get any of those things out of her mouth because, and this was the part she was struggling with most, she was relieved.
“Just for a night or two,” she heard herself say.
“Until Cooper gets back. Or until whoever’s messing with the bakery gets bored and stops.”
“And you’ll go home in the morning? Promise to get some actual sleep?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He held her gaze the way he had when he told her not to come to work alone before sunup. He was, she registered, dead serious.
“All right,” she said.
“All right,” he agreed.
She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
“Reno, do you usually tell the people around you what they ought to do?”
“I try not to, as a rule. But if I’m worried about someone I care about, I would be remiss if I didn’t speak up, don’t you think?”
“I suppose so.”
