Читать книгу Her Amish Protectors - Janice Johnson Kay - Страница 13

CHAPTER FIVE

“IF YOU’LL ALLOW US to search your car, I see no reason you have to be present while we’re doing this,” Ben said.

The woman sitting in the back room didn’t even look at him. She’d gone deep inside; if he weren’t watching carefully, he wouldn’t have been able to tell she was even breathing. Horrified, he wondered if this was how she’d escaped a second bullet during the hours when she’d pretended to be dead.

“You wish,” she said coldly.

“What?”

“I’m staying.”

Ben almost stepped back, in case icicles had actually formed in the air. “Why?” he asked.

At last Nadia’s head turned, and her gaze was the furthest thing from icy. Her magnificent eyes burned. “I intend to document every bit of damage you and your men do.”

He might have taken offense, except he couldn’t deny damage did sometimes occur. He knew of instances where a search left a house trashed. He’d never allow that, but in an old building like this, boards might have to be pried up. In the shop, the bolts of fabric sat on some kind of wood base. They had to be hollow, which meant his team would need to look inside however they could. Display quilts would be lifted or removed from walls in case Nadia had added a safe or cubbyhole beneath one. Damn near every possession she had, upstairs and down, would be handled. He couldn’t help feeling some dismay when he looked at the hundreds of bolts of fabric. This space would be a nightmare to search. He’d remind people to wear gloves to avoid dirtying fabric that would then have to be cut off the bolt and discarded. And there were the quilts he now knew were each worth hundreds to thousands of dollars.

“My team will be here any minute.”

Nadia turned her head away and stared straight ahead, although he knew she wasn’t focused on anything. She couldn’t see out to the alley through the large window, because a filmy blind covered it.

For just a minute, he looked at her straight back, squared shoulders and the pale skin and delicate vertebrae on her nape, visible beneath a heavy mass of gleaming dark hair confined in some mysterious fashion. Her complete stillness disturbed him anew. He couldn’t see her forgiving him for this.

He had to do his job.

Teeth clenched, he left her, reaching the front of the store to see his sole crime scene investigator about to rap on the glass door. The couple officers Terry Uhrich had trained to assist him were only a few steps behind. Ben let them in.

“Ms. Markovic has chosen to stay,” he said in a low voice. He nodded toward the back. “She’s in there.”

Uhrich didn’t look happy. “You told her to keep out of the way?”

“I think she understands.” Her sense of dignity wouldn’t allow her to do anything so crude as to physically obstruct the searchers. But they would, one and all, end up ashamed of themselves for intruding so unforgivably. Ben remembered her horror at the idea of a man studying her sleeping, nearly nude body, and knew what he was doing to her was worse. Did he really believe he was doing what he had to? Or was that simplistic crap, justifying the fact that his investigation had gone absolutely nowhere? Right this minute, he was at war with himself.

They started with her car, parked in the alley, in case she changed her mind and decided to flee. Ben, of course, remained inside with her. Terry decided then to do the apartment, undoubtedly hoping Nadia would take refuge in it once they were done.

She followed the three men upstairs, Ben trailing behind, and stood in the middle of the living room with her arms crossed, glaring at each man in turn as they searched her kitchen cupboards, refrigerator and freezer and antique buffet holding dishes. The two officers pulled out the refrigerator; one crawled beneath her table while the other lifted each chair to peer beneath the seat. Cushions were removed from the sofa and armchair, and both were turned over in case wads of money were stuffed between the springs.

Ben was tempted to help, just to speed up the process, but his role as lead detective was to make sure the search was thorough, clean and fell within legal parameters. Anyway, what was he going to do? Sift through her lingerie? Study the contents of her medicine cabinet and bathroom vanity? All he’d do was make any future conversations with her even more difficult. Instead, he had to watch as she lost every shred of privacy and yet clung to both dignity and fury.

Mercifully, his men managed to finish up here without doing any damage. They even, more or less, put everything back in place. The relative care they took didn’t make Ben feel any better. His gut roiled as they continued with the necessary task.

The downstairs took hours. Just the peculiar closet beneath the stairs consumed an inordinate amount of time. It was jammed with plastic totes, all labeled, but each had to be opened, the contents examined. Nadia had installed cupboards and open shelves in the back room for some storage, but she needed most of the space for the quilt frame and to hold classes, so she had to live with the inconvenience of the oddly shaped closet. It must be a pain in the butt when she needed to find something that wasn’t right in front.

Once they moved on to the store proper, Ben stepped into the hall where he could see the proceedings and Nadia while also making phone calls and checking email. He learned exactly how much money she had in checking and savings accounts, as well as an investment account. Given her mortgage, he doubted she had enough put away to allow her to hold out six months if sales in her store tanked. Not at all to his surprise, there had been no suspect deposits.

Suddenly, she exclaimed in anger and anguish, “You can’t put those on the floor! Do you know the work that went into them?”

Ben hustled into the store to see Officer Ackley straightening with an armful of quilts, expression chagrined. “But...we have to take them down, ma’am.”

“Lay them carefully over a row of fabric, or hand them to me and I’ll find a place to put them temporarily. This one was made by Ruth Graber. Do you know her?”

Ben knew of her. The elderly Amish woman had lost her husband last fall. As it happened, the county sheriff, Daniel Byler, had married Ruth’s granddaughter Rebecca in November. Who knew how many more quilts she’d make? Ben had also seen the tiny price tag pinned to the one Officer Ackley had been about to drop onto the floor. $2,800. He cringed to imagine a dirty footprint in the middle of an intricately hand-quilted white block.

He stepped forward to take the quilt from Ackley, making a point of twitching the tiny price tag into view. The officer’s eyes widened.

Watching, Terry Uhrich shook his head and went back to inspecting walls.

Ben turned to find Nadia had resumed her rigid stance. Unfortunately, she’d crossed her arms, plumping her breasts above them. He had trouble dragging his gaze from the sight.