Maritime Caper (Coastal Fury Book 12), Matt Lincoln [good books to read for beginners TXT] 📗

me when I got older. I thought that maybe Holm had a point about retirement before it got that far, but I shook my head and pushed the thought away. No way was I going to retire any time soon, even if that meant they had to force me out like this poor chief.

“So what can we do to help?” one of the officers, Collins, I think, asked me.

“Well, I know there’s some security footage that Jimmy—that’s the security guard’s name—told me about,” I offered. “If some of your guys could go through it, look for anything out of the ordinary, that would be helpful.”

“Of course,” Wallace said, waving in the officers’ direction. “You can head that up, can’t you, Bauer?”

“Sure thing, boss,” the second officer said, nodding to his boss before turning his attention to me. “Is there anything, in particular, I should be looking for?”

“Well, if you could check the footage from last night, say around nine or ten PM, that would be great,” I said almost sheepishly. “Tessa and I were here last night, and… well, let’s just say I had a hunch that we weren’t as alone as we thought we were.”

“Understood,” Bauer said with another nod. “How far back should we look in the footage?”

“I’d say about five months,” I said, thinking this through in my head. “Henry left about four months ago, and Martha says the threats started about three months ago. So five should give us a decent cushion to make sure we’re catching the whole time frame involved.”

Bauer took a deep breath and then let it out slowly.

“I guess I’d better get started, then,” he said, clearly realizing that he had a late-night ahead of him, at the very least. “And maybe stop for some coffee on the way.”

“There’s a log of which employees use their ID cards to open which doors and when,” I added quickly. “The same one we used to discover that we weren’t alone in the library. Looking at that should help you narrow down important days and times to look at, I think. We’re pretty sure they’ve been using Henry’s ID card.”

“That’ll be a place to start, then,” Wallace said, nodding to Bauer. “I’ll allot you some officers to help. The more eyes on the thing, the more likely you’ll be to catch something.”

“I appreciate it,” Bauer said, looking more than a little relieved that he wouldn’t be taking this project on alone.

“I’m afraid for the first month or so, there won’t be much to go off of with the log,” I pointed out. “Since Henry was still here and they couldn’t have used his ID card, most likely. But start with last night and work your way backward. That way, we catch the most recent stuff first, if there’s anything to be found.”

“Understood,” Bauer said, swallowing hard and looking just a bit green.

“You up for this?” I asked him, and he nodded definitively.

“We’re a small operation, Agent Marston, but we know what we’re doing,” Sergeant Wallace assured me. “We don’t get a lot of crime here, and certainly haven’t gotten anything of this nature in a good long time, if that, but we’re well trained and ready to help. Just say the word.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, smiling at each of the policemen in turn. “And I’m sorry that this whole mess has landed in your lap. I’ll do my best to take care of it on my end, so you don’t have much to worry about.”

“Oh, we’ll have enough to worry about, so don’t you mind that,” Wallace chuckled, shaking his head. “Nobody in this town’s going to want to leave their homes for weeks after this mess. A shooting! In the museum, right downtown! We’ll have a lot of mopping up to do with all this and getting the public to trust us again.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said honestly, though this lined up with my impression of the town. It didn’t seem like a lot happened there, crime wise, though it wasn’t exactly a sleepy little place.

“Tourism will take a hit,” Collins muttered. “That’s bad news for all of us around here. The entire economy’s based on that.”

“Now, Collins, don’t you worry Agent Marston about that,” Wallace said, giving the officer a stern look. “His job isn’t to keep our economy going. It’s to keep our city safe from whoever these people are.”

“Right, sorry,” Collins muttered, looking down at his hands in his laps.

“No worries,” I assured him. “It’s a valid concern. But once this all blows over, I think you’ll find that a good crime story is more of a draw than a detractor when it comes to tourism, especially in a museum like that. People will like to think it has something to do with pirates or something.”

“Does it?” Collins asked, his eyes widening as he shot his head up to look at me. There was an excited gleam in his eye now, beneath all the worry.

“I have no idea, but thanks for illustrating my point,” I chuckled, shooting him a grin.

“Good one,” Wallace guffawed, pointing at me, and I had a feeling that this guy would laugh at pretty much anything.

“So you said you talked to Diane, my boss?” I asked him, and he nodded in confirmation. “Were you the ones who went down to the bed-and-breakfast to talk to Paulina, then?”

“Oh, that old broad?” Wallace asked, his face breaking into a smile at the mention of the bed-and-breakfast owner. “Yeah, we spoke with her. She always loves some gossip, and this is the best this town has seen in… well, maybe ever. She’d do anything to get a taste of some more, so it wasn’t hard to convince her to let Martha stay there with you. Collins here will head up the protective detail we’ll have on the place.”

“Excellent,” I said, nodding to the officer in thanks. “We’ll be seeing more of you, then, since Tessa and I are staying there, too.”

“Looking forward to it,” the officer said,