“The police.”
“What?”
“Right. You won’t believe this, Brit. Somebody vandalized my house. Everything…is covered…with…graffiti,” Lori sputtered as she described the scene.
“Shit! You gotta be kidding,” Brittany snapped. She threw her clippers to the ground and grabbed hold of Lori’s arm. “Nobody’s inside, right?”
“No, but it’s a mess in there. Did you hear anything last night? See any suspicious-looking people hanging around?” Lori wanted to know.
“No. Nothing. As I said, Janice and Tom came over for dinner. We had the outdoor speakers turned up pretty loud while we were on the patio. They left about ten. Must have happened after I went inside. I didn’t hear anything unusual.” Brittany glanced back at Lori’s house. “Did they kick in the back door? Break a window?”
“I don’t know…I didn’t look to see…” Lori stopped, turning around to focus on the black and white patrol car with whirling red and blue lights that swept up to the curb and jolted to a stop.
Pushing her cell phone into her uniform pocket, she approached the tall black man who unfolded his towering uniformed body from the squad car and hooked his thumbs into his holster belt. “Officer. Thanks for coming so quickly.” Lori rushed to welcome the policeman.
“Detective Clint Washington,” he told Lori, without extending his hand. He surveyed her house with inquisitive eyes, seemingly already on the case and primed for action. “What happened here?” he asked, listening as Lori described what she’d discovered on her return home.
“Let’s check it out,” he stated with calm authority, striding off. His long legs devoured Lori’s brick-paved walkway in five giant steps, leaving Lori and Brittany to tag along behind.
Once inside, they went into the bedroom, and then checked the master bath. “We do have a few good fingerprints, here on the edge of the basin,” he told Lori. “That’s encouraging. I’ll get the crime scene investigation team out here right away. You can go ahead and sweep up the broken glass, but don’t touch the paint smears, okay?”
Lori nodded in relief, hoping the prints might help the police catch whoever did this.
“Are you sure nothing of value was stolen?” Washington asked after he’d inspected the rest of the damage and determined that the vandals had cut the wires to Lori’s alarm box and broken a window in the dining room to get into the house.
“Certain. Nothing is missing, I checked everywhere I could think of,” Lori assured him. She watched him open a pad of forms and begin to fill one out.
“So this was for kicks?” Brittany snapped in disgust. “I can’t believe some damn sicko would do this just for fun.” Brittany directed her anger toward Detective Washington, whose shoulders leveled off at the top of the petite woman’s head. “That is some crazy shit, you know?” she blurted out.
Lori cut her eyes at her friend, warning her about her language. Back in the day, Brittany’s startling potty mouth might have been a ratings winner when she was playing a rebellious teenager on a television sitcom, but that kind of language was definitely out of place when dealing with the police.
“Oh, excuse my language, detective,” Brittany muttered. “But I’m sure you know what I mean.”
“Unfortunately, I do,” the policeman agreed, turning intensely serious eyes on Brittany. “This kind of vandalism happens all the time. It’s June. School just let out. Kids with too much time and too little to do wind up pulling stunts like this for kicks. Just last week, two streets over, we had the same kind of thing—only red paint that time.”
“So what are the police doing about it?” Lori demanded, fear now shifting into outrage. “Can’t you catch the punks who are ruining the subdivision before they strike again?”
“You’re just one of many on my watch. The kids will slip up, and we’ll catch ‘em, but in the meantime, keep your eyes open for any suspicious activity. Might want to get a dog. A barking dog does a good job of scaring prowlers off.”
“A dog?” Lori rolled her eyes and pressed a finger to the company name embroidered on her blouse. “As you can see, I’m employed by Globus-Americas. I travel all the time. No way can I take on the responsibility of a dog.”
“Well, then, a more effective alarm system might help,” the detective suggested, handing Lori the police report to sign.
With a sigh, Lori signed the paper, took her copy and then escorted the officer out. As she watched him drive away, she felt discouraged and very uneasy. “I doubt the police will ever catch the punks who wrecked my house,” she said to Brittany as they turned and walked up the driveway.
“He sure was fine,” Brittany murmured, ignoring Lori’s comment.
“Fine?” Lori’s head whipped around. “What are you talking about?”
“Detective Washington. Big feet, long legs. A killer smile. Umm, he’s got it all going on.”
Lori punched Brittany on the shoulder. “Get outta here! You’re checking out the brother when we need to be pushing him to do his job? Brittany Adams, you need to quit.”
“Hey, my radar is always on, and he was one good-looking black dot on my screen. He’s obviously well employed and wasn’t wearing any rings.”
“Girl, please,” Lori sighed in frustration. “The last time you got involved with a policeman, you wound up chasing the guy out of your house with a pot of hot coffee in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other.”
“Nat Chavis was FBI, not local,” Brittany defended. “And it was a mug of hot coffee, not a pot.”
“Whatever,” Lori quipped. “All I remember is that he treated you like a suspect and you snapped when you found out he’d bugged your cell phone.”
“Nat was a fool…he underestimated my intelligence,” Brittany said calmly, chin raised. “But this Detective Washington, now, he looks like a man with good sense.”
Lori paused at her front door and pinned her neighbor with a warning expression. “Let’s just hope he uses his good sense to get the fools who trashed my house.”
Brittany came up beside Lori, nodding. “But…as the handsome, intelligent, hopefully single detective said, one police car can’t be everywhere all the time. If thieves and vandals want to get in, they’ll find a way.”
“Yeah.” Lori grimaced in agreement. “I get the impression that we’re kinda on our own.”
Brittany grunted. “Well, I’m not gonna put bars on my windows and doors to keep some punk-ass kids from spray painting my living room, and I refuse like hell to buy a gun. Just my luck I’d wind up shooting the mail carrier in the ass.”
“Unfortunately, it all comes down to making it hard for someone to get in,” Lori observed, her mind turning back to what the officer had said. What you need is a better alarm system.
“Brit, I gotta go,” Lori quipped, giving her neighbor a quick wave goodbye.
“Need any help cleaning up?”
“Naw. I’ll sweep up the glass, but I’ll have to leave everything else until the crime scene investigators are finished. I’ll be over later. Save me some ribs.”
Inside her house, Lori reached into her skirt pocket, removed Ramón’s business card and stared at it, her heart lurching in her chest at the thought of hearing his voice and seeing him again. She picked up the phone, pressed in two numbers, but then stopped.
“I’ll call first thing in the morning,” she decided, not yet ready to trust her voice. Not ready to betray her feelings for a man who was quickly winding his way into her heart.