Page 37 of Allegiance
Lena
“There hasto be something we can do to keep this from happening to me again. I can’t be the only one. Haven’t you heard anything from anyone else?” Lena made her case, sipping on a cup of coffee.
“We’ve heard no complaints from anyone else in the area, and I highly doubt it would be a good thing if I started knocking on doors, calling our townspeople cowards and liars for not reporting any mischief to our offices when we’re not even sure that other shops are getting hit yet. The worst thing we could do here is go off half-cocked, ma’am.”
Lena pressed her lips together and prayed for patience.
“There isn’t much else I can do, aside from taking down your story and keeping an eye on the situation. You don’t have any cameras installed in the place yet—”
“I bought them. I just haven’t had the time to put them in.”
The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Lena. She had been so busy with managing the restaurant and her catering business during the busy season, she hadn’t even had time to safeguard her own holdings by installing the new security system she had bought the day following the first visit from those bastards in her shop. At that moment, her procrastination was biting her in the ass.
“I’m going to tell you again. Without any concrete evidence, there isn’t much we can do. There aren’t any other cases like this out there, and no witnesses. So, until someone else comes forward, or we catch them red-handed in the act itself, all we can go off of is your word, and your word alone.”
Lena threw her hands up in frustration. “That doesn’t make any sense. Do you seriously think I’m making this up?”
The sheriff stared at her, pushing up his hat as he maintained eye contact. “No, I don’t. But we don’t have enough to prove anything concrete. There are no markers on the money we might find to indicate it was yours and taken from this establishment. And we can’t go hunting down every biker in town. Youmustunderstand that.”
She nodded mutely and swallowed past the thickness in her throat, fighting back tears.
“I’m sorry about all this,” he said in a low voice.
“One of the men hurt me. He almost broke my damn arm and slapped me across the face. That’s assault, isn’t it? You can do something about that. I want to file a complaint.”
Sheriff Windsor took out a notepad. “We can take your statement. You can give us a description of the perpetrator. Maybe one of us will recognize him.”
“His name is Cougar. He had it stitched on his leather vest. The other guy was his brother. They’re in a motorcycle gang.”
The sheriff looked startled. “How do you know that?”
“They were both wearing leather vests with patches on them. The first time they came in to
shake me down, I noticed the name on the back of the vests when they left. I had no idea whatMCmeant. Last night when I went to the grocery store, I saw some guys wearing the same type of vests, and I was going to write down the name, but they kept staring at me, and it spooked me.”
“Why didn’t you mention any of this the first time?”
“I was so shocked and upset about the whole incident, I didn’t remember the name. Like I told you, I didn’t even know what the initials stood for until last night.”
“What’s the name of the club?”
Rubbing the back of her neck, she tried to remember the name, but her mind was a blank. Pursing her lips together, she shook her head. “I don’t remember. I keep wracking my brain, but nothing’s coming up.”
“You didn’t see the name tonight?”
“They weren’t wearing their vests this time, but there can’t be too many motorcycle clubs in town. I’m sure their club is one of the bad ones.”
“You’d be surprised. A lot of people are in biker clubs.”
“These guys, and the ones at the grocery store last night, looked like thugs, not the kind of people who’d go out riding on the weekend.”
Windsor smiled. “There are quite a few guys in different motorcycle clubs who look like they belong in prison, but they’re decent people. Anyway, why don’t we start with a description of these two characters.” He glanced down at his notebook. “Start from the beginning.”
After she was done regurgitating for the fourth time what had happened in her shop earlier that night and what the men looked like, exhaustion washed over her. She had to grip the arms of the chair to keep from keeling over.
The sheriff slipped his pen into his front pocket and closed the notebook before catching her gaze. “I can imagine this must be hard for you. I want you to know that I’ll do everything in my power to make it easier on you, but right now, my main focus continues to be showing up within the next two weeks to catch them in the act. Once that’s established, we’ll have enough evidence to turn it over to the DA’s office, and we can start getting the money they took back to you. Does that sound good?”
Lena nodded, thanked the sheriff, and pushed up from the chair. There was nothing left for her to do but wait until the lowlifes came back in two weeks. One thing was for certain: the next time they came back, the security system would be up and running. She just hoped the sheriff, or one of his deputies, would be able to catch them in the act.
