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door, something’s not right.” She took off in the direction of the kitchen while I crouched to greet Chablis and Merlot as they came into the foyer. Both of them were wide-eyed, their coats puffed out in fear again. Was that because there’d been another break-in? Or just because Morris and Candace had been inside looking around?
    I took Chablis in one arm and drew Merlot close with the other. “What has been going on here, you two?”
    Merlot was quickly done with cuddling and went off in the direction Candace had gone, watch-cat that he is. I soothed Chablis for a few more seconds, then picked her up and closed the front door with my foot. I wasn’t surprised that Morris had gone back to his squad car.
    I found Candace staring at the new control box. Or what used to be a control box—and now was a mangled mess.
    Candace looked pretty disgusted.
    As for me, I was stunned. The alarm must have gone off and made someone very angry to do this much damage.
    “I’ll need my fingerprint kit,” Candace said. “I’m guessing someone took a hammer to this after they picked your back door lock.”
    “How can you pick a lock that has a dead bolt?” I said.
    “All you need is a thin, strong piece of metal and a pin tool for a basic dead bolt like yours. Happens all the time.”
    “I need to start researching criminal behavior rather than cat trivia,” I said. And make sure I was hooked up to both the police and Tom Stewart’s security service. Doubly safe was obviously the way to go.
    Chablis jumped out of my arms, but didn’t run off. She leaped onto the kitchen counter, her blue-eyed gaze switching from me to Candace and back to me as if to say, “What are you two planning to do about this situation?”
    But I had no answer. I was bewildered. “Why would this person break a window one time and then enter through the back door the next?”
    “You’re assuming the same person did this. Never assume.” She might as well have added, “Haven’t I taught you anything?”
    “Oh,” was all I could manage.
    “Course the perp could have seen all your brand-spanking-new cameras and thought they could hide their identity better coming through the back door. Breaking a window is a whole lot quicker than picking a dead bolt, but bad guys adjust to the circumstances.”
    The microphone attached to Candace’s uniformed shoulder spewed static, and then I heard a female voice say, “We got a house fire at 808 Westwood Drive. Children in the home. All units respond. All units respond.”
    “Sorry.” Candace whirled and sped out the back door, yelling, “I checked and there’s no intruder here now, so you’re fine. Just try not to touch anything that might be evidence. I’ll call you.” She disappeared.
    I was alone with my cats again. Alone and worried about human children who needed help in a burning house. Plus I was a little frustrated. I understood why Tom couldn’t get me hooked up to the police station when he finished the job at one a.m., but I sure wished he’d been able to do so this morning. He probably felt entitled to sleep late after working into the wee hours. Just my luck.
    I took a calming breath and then remembered the cameras. They weren’t connected to the alarm box. And unless this malicious person had smashed all my cameras, too, I might find something important on my computer. Yup. My cell phone feed was limited, but the computer kept the recordings of everything.
    I hurried to my office. Merlot loped ahead and beat me there, with Chablis not far behind. Whatever had gone on apparently hadn’t upset them as much as last time, and I was thankful for that.
    Both cats jumped on the double-stacked barrister-style bookcases to get a good view as I sat at my desk. It was set catty-corner to the case—and it needed to be catty-corner so the kitties would have a place to watch me. Otherwise they’d plant themselves on top of the hard-drive tower or the other tall bookshelf. But Merlot wasn’t