Amara pulled the door firmly closed, ensuring the bolt settled into place. She turned the lock, frowning as she made a mental note to remind Jean to be more careful when coming and going. As she returned to the floor, she passed out extra tokens as a courtesy to the customers who'd lost their gaming streaks with the outage, and everyone was appeased and happily playing again within minutes.
Jean walked in with a large tray full of cheese fries and other cheesy items. "Who ordered these again?"
Amara handed her the order slip with the names and locations of the customers. "Hey, did you leave the back door open earlier? All the power went out in here."
"Really?" Jean's brows lifted. "No, I haven't used the back door today."
"It was definitely weird, but I was able to get it back on pretty quickly," she confirmed. "But yeah, just make sure you keep that door locked."
The rest of the shift went by with no incident until Jean was putting on her jacket and getting ready to clock out. "Uh…Amara?"
"What?" She turned to look at the young girl, then followed her gaze to the three police officers walking through the front entrance of the arcade. "Uh oh."
"Should I stay?" Jean asked.
"Did you commit a crime?" Amara joked. "No, go on home. I'll talk to them. I'm sure it's just a complaint from Kisses and Karats again."
Jean rolled her eyes and gave a small chuckle before clocking out on the payroll app on her phone and then waving goodbye.
"Can I help you folks?" Amara asked as the police officers reached the counter where she was standing.
A tall man with a thick mustache tipped his hat to her. "Ma'am, we're here about the incident next door."
"Okay, we told him that we'd try to be quieter, but we can't control our customers. They're not being rambunctious or disorderly or anything. They are just playing." Amara waved her hand toward the room, indicating her gaming customers. "He didn't need to call the police on us."
A female officer standing to the mustachioed man's right frowned. "No, ma'am. This is about the robbery earlier today. We need to ask you a few questions."
What? "Wait…there was a robbery?" Amara's mind immediately went to the open back door, and she quickly scanned the arcade, trying to see if she could spot anything missing. Her stomach sank at the idea of having to make a report to insurance. Her rates were already insanely high, and this was just going to skyrocket them. "What was taken?"
"Not here, ma'am," the woman continued. "Next door. Over fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry was stolen from the back room at Kisses and Karats earlier today. Were you not aware of that?"
Her eyes went wide. "No! That's terrible. Is everyone okay?"
Despite her feelings toward her obstinate neighbor, she would never wish something like that on any small business owner.
The officer pulled out a notepad and a pen. "No one was injured, but we'd like to see any security footage you have from today, as well as anything suspicious you might have witnessed."
"Oh, uhm…I don't actually have any security cameras in here. The mall does in the main hallways, so, you know, I figured why double up on that expense?" Heat rose to her face, and she wondered if her explanation sounded as stupid out loud as it did in her head. In trying to minimize her monthly expenses, that hadn't seemed like the most important thing to focus on, but now she was second-guessing that decision. "I did find the back door unlocked earlier, though. That was strange. It's never unlocked or left open, and my employee said she hadn't used it all day. Nothing was missing from our back room.” She frowned. “I guess I could double check more thoroughly."
"Why don't you go do that," the officer agreed. "Officer Powell will come with you and we'll take a look around, if that’s okay."
"Sure, help yourself." She gestured to the store floor. "Just don't try to beat my Ms. Pac Man record."
Her joke fell flat as the hairy-lipped officer frowned at her. "We're working, ma'am."
"Right, uh…okay, well, this way." Amara headed toward the back room as the female police officer followed close behind. The room was pretty small, and not exactly the picture of organization, but it was pretty easy to see that everything that was supposed to be there was there. "Nothing seems to be missing."
"What happened there?" Officer Powell pointed to the circuit breaker that she'd left open to remind herself to test each switch later and label them.
"Oh, the power went off earlier. I guess the fuse box blew, but I flipped the switches, and it came back on pretty quickly. I just need to label them, because that's never happened before."
"The power went off?" The officer's brows raised, and she pulled out her notepad and a pen. "What time was this?"
Of course, that was something that they would have wanted to know about. She couldn't believe she hadn't already mentioned that. "Uh, around one o'clock, I guess? Lunch time, for sure. But it was very quick."
"I'm going to need you to write a statement about all of this." Officer Powell handed her a form. "Do you have a pen, or do you need one?"
"I have one," Amara said, grabbing one off the back table. "Uh, sure. I'll just fill this out now."
The officer stood stoically and watched as she began writing.
She didn't have much to say, but she repeated the information she'd given the officers and then included her contact information before handing the form back to her. "Here you go."
"The store owner next door would like to talk with you as well," the officer commented as they headed out of the back office.
Great. She secretly groaned but gave a tight-lipped smile. "Sure thing."
Dealing with the Hallmark playboy was the last thing she wanted to do today.
Chapter Two
Valentino
"Mr. Rossi?" A female police officer walked through the front entrance of Kisses and Karats Jewelry store with a shorter woman tailing behind her.
He looked up from his laptop, which was sitting out on the glass display case as he worked on filing a claim with insurance for today's robbery. Valentino Rossi had been the owner of this franchise location for six years, and never once had there been a break-in until today—three days before his biggest money-making day of the year, Valentine's Day.
"Any news?" he asked the officer. "Insurance says I need a case number from you guys."
Officer Powell handed him a document with the information he needed. "We're still conducting interviews of potential witnesses. This is Amara Hart, owner of Rad Retro Arcade next door."
Val's eyes lifted to the woman standing slightly behind Officer Powell. He hadn't paid much attention to her before. The name was super familiar given how many times he'd called over there and asked her to keep the noise to a minimum, but not once had he actually met her in person, and she was nothing like who he'd pictured.
Not that he'd really spent much time picturing her at all, but the woman in front of him was wearing a sleeveless sheath dress that stopped right above her knees and a flannel sweater was tied around her waist. She wore black and white sneakers, and her hair was multiple shades of pink, purple, and red streaking through platinum white, falling across her shoulders and down her back just enough to partially obstruct the colorful tattoos covering the upper half of one of her arms.