A Wee Christmas Homicide. Kaitlyn Dunnett

wall of the shop. Very carefully, she pried the bullet loose and popped it directly into a small ziplock bag. Only then did she take a closer look at it.

      The police academy didn’t spend a lot of time on forensics, so Sherri wasn’t an expert on firearms. For major crimes, officers called in the state police. Sherri could see that the bullet had been only slightly squashed by its impact with the wall. It was a small caliber, but she couldn’t be certain if it had been fired by a handgun or a rifle.

      Frowning, Sherri tucked the bag into the inner pocket of her uniform coat and focused her full attention on Gavin Thorne. He was not a pretty sight—bed hair, no shirt, sagging sweatpants that undoubtedly revealed a butt crack when seen from the back, and bare feet. He had a painful-looking bunion on one of them.

      “I take it you were upstairs asleep when this happened?”

      He nodded. “Something woke me. I didn’t realize it was a shot until I came down here and saw the bear.”

      “What made you think you should check on things?”

      “I don’t know. Just an uneasy feeling, I guess. I came down, saw the bear, got my gun out, and checked the shop. Then I called you.”

      “Ever think keeping a loaded firearm in a toy store might not be such a great idea?” She had nightmares about her own son, Adam, finding her gun and thinking it was something to play with, and she kept hers unloaded, secured with a trigger guard, and well hidden when she was off duty.

      “Man’s got a right to protect his property,” Thorne insisted.

      “You’re missing the point. What if one of your customers got hold of it. We have gun locks available at the police station if—”

      “What the hell does me owning a gun have to do with a vandal shooting my bear?” Agitated, he rose from his chair to tower over her. “It wasn’t this gun he used!”

      Sherri didn’t back up, but she did drop the gun safety lecture…for the moment. “Did you see anyone?”

      “No.”

      “Hear anything else suspicious?”

      “No. Well, maybe a car.”

      Sherri continued to question him, making him repeat everything twice, until she was satisfied he had nothing left to tell her. Then she gave the chief of police a call. It would be up to Jeff to decide how to proceed.

      He heard her out in thick silence broken only by the occasional yawn. “Question the neighbors,” he instructed when she wound down.

      “Now?”

      He chuckled. “Not unless you want people calling the town office to complain about police brutality. Start making the rounds once it’s reasonable to expect folks to be awake.”