“Don’t mind her,” Xavier said.
We crossed the courtyard back to the west wing. My tablet chimed. I glanced at it. The cameras had come online.
“I have to go.”
“Really?” Xavier ducked a little to look at my face. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I had a nice time,” he said. He sounded like he meant it. Maybe he did.
The thing was, I kind of had a nice time too. Sure, he said some questionable stuff, but he tried to have an actual conversation with me, and that didn’t happen every day. And he tried to protect me from his cousin. I didn’t need any help, but it was kind of endearing. Also, he told me that his grandmother and Mikel had something to hide.
“I had a nice time too,” I said.
“Then we’ll do this again, right?” he asked. “Say yes, Catalina.”
He said my name. “Yes. We’ll do it again.”
I went inside, ducked into one of the conference rooms across from the suites, and checked the feed from the cameras one by one. All of the suite cameras were functioning. I switched to the hummingbird cameras outside. One, two, three, four . . . nine? There should only have been six. I tapped the feed from camera seven. It showed a sitting area on the west side, just outside the building. Camera eight covered the path on the east side from which Xavier and I just came. Camera nine was installed at the top of the fountain. Bern must have wanted additional coverage.
Xavier was walking toward his cousins.
My cell phone rang. I recognized the number. Valentina’s House Catering. Oh no. No, no, no. Arabella was in charge of the menu. If they were calling me, there was a problem.
I answered the phone. “Catalina Baylor.”
Valentina’s voice sounded in my ear. “We’ve had a tiny, little, itsy-bitsy problem. Someone broke into our restaurant.”
Crap. “I’ll be right there.”
Chapter 5
Valentina’s House Catering was in New Braunfels, a very German town in the middle of Texas. We had interviewed larger catering firms from Austin and San Antonio, but Mrs. Rogan decided she trusted Valentina’s and so that’s who we went with.
I parked in front of an old brick building. Leon got out of the passenger seat. Arabella was still in school, and today she was crash-writing a two-thousand-word essay, which was assigned to her a month ago and which she had started this morning. Leon was my battle buddy for this mission and he was thrilled.
“Cake shop,” he said.
“Yes.”
Leon let out a long-suffering sigh. “Are you sure that I’ll be enough? These places can get pretty rough. You walk into a cake shop and then some gunslinger tells you, ‘You ain’t from around here, partner,’ and the next thing you know, you’re in the middle of the street, your horse is dead, the bad guy’s got your girl by her hair, and you’re down to one bullet.”
“What is going on in your head?”
“It’s a dark, lawless place, Catalina. So dark.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a small restaurant and bakery. Most of their money comes from catering, but they do have a small cupcake shop about two blocks down. Four full-time employees, besides the owner. They hire waitstaff for large events.”
“So, we’re hiring someone, and they’re hiring someone? Who is screening the waitstaff?”
“We are hiring the waitstaff this time,” I told him. Rogan had given me a nearly unlimited budget and I made sure to hire waiters with great references. “This is the only place Mrs. Rogan trusts to cater, so we did what we could to secure the location. Rogan’s people installed an excellent alarm and security system.”
“I thought you said they discovered the break-in this morning.” Leon eyed the building.
“Yes, they did.”
“So, they didn’t arm their excellent alarm system?”
“Let’s find out.”
Most of the building inside was taken up by a large kitchen. Long metal prep tables stretched across the floor in two rows. On the left two industrial-size refrigerators stood against the wall, along with three large sinks, a dishwasher, and a row of ovens. Next to them a door led to a narrow room with two equally large freezers. Straight ahead, directly opposite the entrance, another door offered access to a large pantry. A row of windows in the wall on our right flooded the space with natural light. It was a clean, uncluttered space. The air smelled faintly of sour wine.
Valentina jumped up from her chair when we entered. A white woman in her midthirties, her short blond hair had a streak of wild purple in it. Her glasses kept sliding down her nose and she kept pushing them back up. Red blotches stained her cheeks. She was clearly stressed out and on the verge of tears. Her XO, Carlos, a solidly built man in his fifties, with black hair and bronze skin, stood next to her, hands on his hips.
“They broke in last night,” Valentina said. “Three of them in dark hoodies.”
Leon nodded at the first window on our right, with the windowsill stained with grey fingerprint powder. “Is that how they came in?”
“Yes,” Carlos said. “We open the windows a lot to air the kitchen out.”
“Did the alarm not go off?” I asked.
Both Valentina and Carlos looked like they wanted to fall through the floor.
“The wireless sensor on that window keeps going off randomly,” Carlos said.
“Why didn’t you notify us that the sensor was malfunctioning?” I asked.
“It didn’t seem like a big deal. It’s a very small window. We usually bypass it,” Valentina said. “Otherwise it goes off in the middle of the night.”
“It’s kids.” Carlos growled, his face turning dark red. “Probably tried the window, figured out we forgot to lock it, and crawled in. I bet it’s that idiot Hudson. Him and his sidekick are always in the park across the street. Up to no good. They sit in the park, drink beer all day, and look for trouble to get into. When I was their age, I had a job. I had responsibilities. I—”
I had to cut him off before it turned into a full-blown lecture about kids these days. “What did they take?”
Valentina grimaced. “Champagne. They took a case of it. Probably all they could carry. It’s heavy. And they smashed the rest.”
“Two hundred and fifty bottles, two hundred and twenty dollars per bottle,” Carlos spat.
Fifty thousand dollars’ worth of champagne. All gone.
“Damn. Sucks for you,” Leon offered helpfully.
Valentina looked green.
“Do you have the security footage?” I asked.
A minute later, I watched three figures in dark hoodies with bandannas over their faces spray the security cameras with whipped cream, which they found in the fridge.
“We don’t usually use canned whipped cream,” Valentina said. “The client had specifically requested it for her bachelorette party. We didn’t ask.”
The sounds of champagne being smashed came from the screen. I glanced at Leon. He nodded.
I rewound the recording. “Look. They get through the window and they go straight to the fridge. They knew that the window would be unlocked and bypassed, and they knew right where the whipped cream was.”
“What are you implying?” Carlos asked. His eyes bulged. “I know everyone who works here. I vouch for everyone who works here.”
Humans dealt with risk by pretending it didn’t exist. Even though thousands of people died every year in car accidents, we still got into our cars and drove every day. We built illusions of safety around ourselves and believed them or we would go insane.
A home was one of those vital illusions. It was our shelter, the place where we let our guard down. Nothing bad was supposed to happen to you in your house. When our warehouse was attacked by mercenaries, it felt like my world was cracked open. It made me feel weak and helpless.
Valentina and Carlos were feeling helpless now. The financial loss was crushing, but the violation of their kitchen was likely worse. This was a small business. The employees were probably more like family than hired help. They spent a lot of time together in this kitchen, making delicious food and beautiful cakes. Someone had smashed all those happy memories to pieces. The idea that one their own might have done it was too much.