Vera jumped when there was a knock at the door and peered through the peephole, feeling relieved when she saw the police uniforms. She opened the door with the chain on first to be safe though.
"Hello?"
"Are you Vera Gilmore? I'm Detective Miller and this is my partner Detective Glenn. Do you mind if we come in?"
They both flashed their badges and they looked legit so Vera undid the chain and stepped aside so they could enter the apartment. She gestured for them to sit down at the table and ended up wringing her hands as she told them everything she could remember.
They asked specific questions she didn't always have the answers to as she went and she felt her anxiety spike. She didn't have any proof of who had done this, did she?
They wanted to know things like the pizza chain that the pizza came from and she could remember that much but it was a huge chain. How would they be able to track down who did this with such minimal information? You could drive past three or four of those franchises in less than thirty minutes.
They took the flowers with them when they left to see if they could track down who had bought them despite there not being any tags. The wrapper they came in had been replaced with generic paper.
Vera let out a heavy sigh once they were gone. Was she even safe in here? She had those extra security precautions so no one could get in but that didn't explain how whoever was doing this knew her pizza and flower preferences or where she lived.
Where she worked was one thing because the address of the shop was on her business cards but, even so, whoever this was shouldn't have known about her habit to stay behind after hours working. How would they have known that if they weren't watching her?
They had also wanted to know the names of all of her dates and the men she interacted with recently to see if any of them could have done this. They couldn't to her knowledge.
The only men she really knew and talked to recently were her landlord, clients, or the guys she occasionally asked for help moving things in the restaurant next to the shop. She didn't want her professional life to be ruined because of this.
The detectives said they were going to look into the building's CCTV footage and any from the strip mall where she worked first to see if they could catch whoever it was on camera. She really hoped that worked.
How had this happened? She followed all of the guidelines she could about keeping herself safe and still ended up with a stalker.
One wrong move was all it took. One wrong interaction to get some creep stuck on her and no one else. What had she done? Smiled? Laughed? Said something nice? Was she supposed to just be a horrible, bitter person in the hopes of protecting herself?
Vera pulled her knees to her chest and rested her head on them as the shock had finally worn off enough to cry. How had this happened? Why? What was she supposed to do?
What if her stalker came after her when she was alone in the shop and couldn't protect herself? What if they damaged her merchandise or she got hurt? She didn't have anyone to rely on now that Tilly was in such bad shape.
She was about as alone as she could get. Alone and afraid.
Was this what the stalker wanted? To get her alone and afraid and then come swooping in like some sort of hero to save her? Or was this a genuine but incredibly misguided attempt to court her?
Vera had read articles about stalkers. How some of them did it because they wanted to have power over their victims and others did it because they sincerely believed women who didn't know them were in love with them.
Considering this one knew what she liked…she was leaning toward the latter. She had been idly wishing for a boyfriend the other day but not like this.
She didn't want someone who was too much of a coward to approach her normally to be interested in her. That was the last thing she wanted! She was normally a strong, independent woman who didn't need a man but right now she wished she had someone to protect her. Or comfort her at the very least.
Vera hadn't had anyone to comfort her in a long time. She dealt with Tilly's decline on her own because there hadn't been anyone else around but even that didn't compare to this.
Sadness and fear were both negative emotions but the latter was more powerful. She could handle being sad on her own but being afraid on her own was a different story. She found herself jumping at every tiny noise for the rest of the night and hardly got a wink of sleep.
The next morning she covered up the dark circles under her eyes with makeup as best she could and headed out to do a consultation before opening up shop. Every time the bell rang indicating a customer had arrived she just about jumped out of her skin before pasting on a customer service smile and speaking as cheerfully as usual.
Vera was a pretty cheerful person in general but she didn't want to be cheerful right now. She wanted someone to hold her as she cried, rub her back, and tell her that everything would be alright.