movements erratic, Thorne complied. Once the gun was out of sight in a drawer, Sherri breathed easier. Civilians and firearms were a bad mix, especially when the civilians didn’t show proper respect for a deadly weapon.
“I take it you didn’t shoot out your own window?”
“Don’t be absurd!”
That was better. Nothing like a little righteous indignation to snap someone out of a pity party. Now maybe she could get some straight answers. “Any idea who did?”
“No. An intruder, I thought. But I didn’t see any sign of one.” He shook himself like a dog shedding water and managed a glum smile. “Lucky for him, whoever he was.”
“Sit tight,” Sherri advised. “Let me take a quick look around. Then we’ll talk.”
It didn’t take long to confirm that no one else was in the shop. The back door was still secure. The lock on the front door didn’t look as if it had been tampered with. “Was this open?” she called to Thorne.
“No. I unlocked it right after I called you.”
A closer inspection of the bullet hole in the window convinced Sherri that the shot had been fired from outside. Whoever had been responsible for the damage was long gone, and since no one had come out of any of the nearby houses or called her to report anything out of the ordinary, it was a good bet there had been no witnesses.
She paused to study what was left of the Tiny Teddy, then eyed the window again. The bullet had passed right through the toy. After a short search, she found what she was looking for embedded in the back 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.”
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