Page 22 of Wolfish
“Right.” She was being stalked again, which totally unnerved her. “They broke my jack-o’-lanterns in the shop and then when Roxie entered the shop, they took off. I’m sure they were afraid you were coming because they wouldn’t let me take your call.”
“Roxie, I want you to leave,” Daniel said.
“But I was going to help Selena get ready for picture taking.”
Daniel was calling in the new incident to Peter. Then he said to Roxie, “I need to take Selena to the storage unit to see if anything is missing. I don’t want anyone here who is unprotected in case the men return. I’ll help her with the rest of her merchandise.”
“All right, but if you need more muscle, my brothers can provide it,” Roxie said.
“Thanks, Roxie,” both Daniel and Selena said.
Selena was glad that Daniel was also concerned about Roxie’s welfare.
Then Roxie left, and Selena locked up her store.
“Has this anything to do with you following them?” Daniel asked, sounding worried.
“You know that case that I told you about where my distant cousin was murdered by her ex-husband? Those were the man’s sons.”
“Ahh, hell. So they believe you’re responsible for putting their father away in prison.”
“Yes. He’s appealing his conviction, but it’s a solid case. I doubt he can get off.”
“So what do they want you to do about it?”
“They didn’t say. I suspect they weren’t sure what to do. When you called, they wouldn’t let me answer it. I told them you were a deputy sheriff and that you were coming to see me. So I think that spooked them.”
“Good. But I hated to learn they were here, harassing you.”
“Do you think they’re the ones who broke into my storage unit?”
“Yeah. We’ll have to match up their scents with the men in your shop, who were the same ones I confronted. Your storage unit was the only one broken into, and they tampered with the security cameras, disabling them, so we don’t have any surveillance footage. But smelling their scents at the location will be enough.”
“Great.”
“On a brighter note, do you want to have dinner with me at my place tonight?"
She smiled. “Yes. I would love it. That’s the problem with staying at a hotel without a private kitchen or a restaurant. You have to leave the hotel to eat out all the time. So a home-cooked meal would be great.”
“How about beef stroganoff made from scratch?”
“Yes, it sounds delightful.” She was glad he could cheer her up after the confrontation with the brothers.
They arrived at Selena’s storage unit, where yellow crime scene tape had been strung up. The bastards had broken a set of her mother’s dishes and rifled through files, probably looking for documentation to discredit her testimony on the witness stand.
“I’m sorry about the dishes.”
“There wasn’t any reason to break them.” Her eyes misted with tears. “But I definitely smell the three men’s scents.”
“Yeah, it’s them.”
She noted another box of files had been taken, related to other cases. They probably had gotten spooked about staying too long at the storage unit and figured they would look through the files somewhere else, where they wouldn’t get caught.
“One box of files is missing, but nothing related to their dad’s case.”
“Why not take the box of files that has their dad’s case in it?”
“I imagine they were nervous about being caught and quickly rifled through it, but didn’t see it. So they left it behind.”
