Billionaire Mountain Man

"I'm Lieutenant Todd. We spoke on the phone."

I shook hands with him. "Thank you for informing me of the situation, Lieutenant."

"No problem. Now, before I show you the damage and where the guy got in, I do need to ask you a few questions," he said, positioning his notebook to jot down my responses.

"Sure thing, fire away."

"How long have you owned this place?"

"Well, I've been at this daycare for two years, since I moved to Irvine."

"Alright, two years," he said, writing in his notebook.

"No, Lieutenant, I didn't say I've owned this place for two years. Sorry for the confusion."

"I see. So how long have you owned it then?"

"I bought it from the former owner around a year ago."

"So you were first an employee, and then you bought it and took over ownership?"

"That's correct, yes."

"And would you mind providing me with the name of the former owner?"

"That was Mrs. Dianne Satterstrom. She was retiring from the daycare business, and she knew I really loved this place and working with kids."

"Uh-huh. Is the former owner still alive?"

"Yes, Dianne definitely is. She and I meet up for coffee every few weeks. In fact, we just got together about a week ago."

"I see. Alright, and are the parents who bring their kids here generally happy? I mean, do you get along well with all of them? Any recent incidents?"

"Yes, they're all very happy with my daycare, as far as I know. I have a very good relationship with all of them. We haven't had any complaints."

"And there's nobody who has had, maybe, financial problems here? Someone who was behind on payments? Or maybe someone who, I don't know, you kicked their kid out of the daycare because of behavior problems, something like that?"

I shook my head. "No, nothing at all like that. I mean, sure, kids act up all the time – that's what they do, they're kids. I've had to call in parents a few times about their kids' behavior on occasion, but it hasn't happened too many times over the past two years. And in all the cases, the parents involved were sympathetic and non-confrontational, and we solved the issues in a rational way."

"So, nobody was left with hurt feelings, a grudge perhaps?"

"No, definitely not. Everything was resolved on good terms."

He wrote all of this down in his notebook.

"Alright, I see," he continued. "Well, then I guess I can rule out the possibility of the culprit being a parent of one of your kids here."

I nodded. "Yes, definitely. The thought that it might be one of the parents who bring their kids here never crossed my mind."

"Okay, well then it has to be related to a matter outside of the business."

"So, you think this is personal?" I asked. "Not just some random thief looking for valuables to steal?"

"Well, we don't know if anything was stolen; that's why you'll need to have a careful look around. But in my opinion, no, I don't think this break-in was done for financial gain. Come on, let me show you what we've found."

"Alright."

The officer led me over to the side of the building where one of the windows was broken out.