Evie
“What the hell?”
I walked in the door and looked around my store in confusion. Someone had knocked over a bookshelf, sending books to the floor in a messy heap. Two other shelves were still upright, but most of their contents were on the floor. Had I been robbed?
I moved behind the check-out area. The two cash registers and computers were still in place, although they didn’t have any money in them anyway. I wasn’t an idiot. I kept all the money in a safe in the back office.
The back office...I headed there and was relieved to see it looked untouched. A glance at the storeroom across the hall showed it was also fine. I heard water running and headed into the customer restroom. The faucet was running full blast, although thankfully the water was all going down the drain and not on my tile. I looked up and saw that someone had wrote “get out!” in what looked like lipstick on the mirror.
I texted Emma and Dawn to share the news. They were my ride-or-die friends, and we shared everything.
Evie:OMFG someone was in the shop last night!
Dawn:Were you robbed?
Evie:Not that I can tell.They knocked a bunch of shit off the shelves and left the water running in the bathroom. Oh, and there’s this.
I attached a picture of the bathroom mirror and the lipstick message.
Emma:Call the cops!
Evie:Why? You know they don’t do shit.
Emma:Call them, or I will. What if they come back and hurt you?
Evie:You know I hate cops.
My father had been a cop. He’d also been an abusive male-chauvinist asshole who I’d cut ties with as soon as I was old enough to be out on my own. If my asshole father wasn’t enough to make me hate cops, the way that the local cops in the town I grew up in did nothing when my mother called them after one beating too many had cemented my hatred of the boys in blue. A couple of years after I left home my mother had finally left him, taking my sister Teresa with her.
Dawn:Evie, it’s your business. Besides, you’ll need documentation of a police report if you have to file an insurance claim.Do it, and text us later and let us know how you are.
Evie:Fine. I’ll talk to you later.
I looked around once more before calling the non-emergency police line.
“Chief Wilson is in the area Ms. Fontenot, I’ll send him over now.”
“Thank you.”
Five minutes later a burly man in a blue police uniform strode into my bookstore like he owned the place. I looked up at him and caught my breath. Good Lord, he was a fine looking man.
He looked like he was in his early fifties, same as me. He was tall, at least several inches taller than my own five foot eight height, with broad shoulders, biceps that strained against the thin blue fabric of his police uniform, and legs like tree trunks. He had hair that was somewhere between brown and blond, cut short and threaded through with silver, a short salt and pepper beard covering his sharp jaw, sensuous lips, and those damn reflective sunglasses cops loved to wear. Then he removed the glasses, sticking them into the collar of his uniform shirt, and revealed curious brown eyes flanked with long brown eyelashes.
“Miss Phone-ten-not?” He asked, mangling my name as he read it off his cell phone.