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“You’re right.” Wayne looked puzzled. “Was it a friend of yours? Well, not really a friend, obviously. But you know what I mean.”
“I have a key. Della has a key.” She held Wayne’s gaze. “And you.”
“Yep.” Wayne abruptly froze, his mouth hanging open as he realized what Lia was saying. “Hey. You don’t think it’s me, do you?”
Lia held up her hand as Wayne glared at her in outrage. “I’m wondering if someone could have borrowed your key.”
“’Course not.” His voice was gruff. “I always keep it . . .”
Lia studied him as the words dried on his lips. Had he remembered something? “You always keep it where?”
Surging to his feet, Wayne shifted from one foot to the other, as if he was suddenly anxious to be anywhere but there.
“In my pocket, of course.”
Lia frowned. Wayne was a terrible liar, and it was obvious he was trying to hide something. “Always?”
“Look, I gotta take off.” He backed toward the door. “Mom needs the car to go to work.”
With long strides, Kaden moved to block the boy’s path to freedom. “If you know anything, you can talk to me, Wayne. I’m just trying to keep Lia safe.” He gazed down at Wayne with a somber expression. “That’s what we both want, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Where do you keep your key, Wayne?” Lia pressed.
Wayne looked troubled. “I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
Lia rose to her feet and moved to stand next to the boy. “I’m not going to be mad if you tell me the truth. That’s all I want.”
He remained rigid for a long moment, then, glancing toward the grim-faced Kaden, he heaved a gusty sigh.
“Okay, the truth is, I leave the key on the top of the front-door frame.”
Lia stared at him in disbelief. “The front door? Are you serious?”
Wayne hunched his shoulder. “It’s not like I ever use it. Either you or Della are always here when I come in after school and I leave before you lock up. The only time I need it is if you ask me to come in early on Saturday to stock the shelves or if you aren’t here on Sundays when I leave, and I was always forgetting it and having to go back home, so . . .” His words trailed away as a dark flush stained his cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
Lia held up her hand as Kaden’s lips parted, his eyes smoldering with anger. She shared his urgent desire to reprimand Wayne for being so careless. The truth was, she wanted to tell him to leave and not bother coming back. But now wasn’t the time to make any rash decisions.
“Later, we’re going to have a long talk about responsibility,” she said stiffly, holding out her hand. “For now, you can leave your key with me.”
Wayne swallowed hard. “I put it back over the door,” he confessed, then, with an unexpectedly quick movement, he darted around Kaden and scurried out of the office. “I really gotta go. Mom’s boss is going to shit his pants if she’s late again,” he called as he dashed through the store and out the front.
Kaden swiftly followed behind the boy, his shoulders set at a tense angle as he returned to the office with the key in his hand. “Anyone in town could have seen him getting this or replacing it over the door.”
“Yes.” Lia grimaced. “We’re back to the beginning.”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
Kaden dropped the key on her desk. “We were focused on how the intruder got the key to get in, but how did they know we weren’t here last night?”
Lia blinked. “I don’t know.”
“You called Wayne and told him that you were going to Madison and that you intended to close the store for a couple of days,” Kaden reminded her. “And he said he gave Cord a ride to the hospital. He could have mentioned it to his friend.”
“True, but if he was in Grange, Cord couldn’t have been the one to hit me with a brick.”
