“Set an example for the people of your town? I think it is. Especially when they’re doing things like that.” She waved a hand in the direction of the vandalized media room. “That is simply amoral.”
“Hey, now hold on a second.” Unconscionable? Amoral? He wasn’t going to let her stand there and bark SAT words at him like he was one of her patrons. “This wasn’t done by locals.”
Her dark eyes widened. “How do you know?”
“Because I don’t recognize that graffiti. And I don’t recognize that girl. So most likely what we’ve got here is nothing but a bunch of Sunshine Kids—”
“Sunshine kids? What are sunshine kids?”
Damn. So much for getting out of this without doing anything foolish.
“Never mind. Thanks for all your help. If we have any further questions, someone will be in touch. Let me walk you out.”
He held out his hand to escort her down the stairs.
This was yet another mistake. She glanced at his hand, then at the stairs. She was wearing heels, but they were of a sensible height (of course). She didn’t need his help and was miffed not only at the offer, but at his not sharing more information about the crime.
“Thanks, but I can see myself out,” she said, before beginning to descend the steps on her own. “I’ll let you know if I run across any more crimes I can help you solve.”
Then she was gone.
Great. Just great. He’d blown it again. Of course.
Chapter Seven
Molly
Molly sat at her desk going over what she already knew.
Number one: No copies of Into the Wild were listed as checked out. And yet one was clearly missing. Same with Hatchet (only an audio copy was checked out) and Sternberg’s Wilderness Survival Handbook (2016 edition).
Number two: There was no reference to anything called the “Sunshine Kids” on the Internet that made sense in the context that the sheriff had used it.
Oh, there were plenty of cancer societies for children called Sunshine Kids. There were church groups, choirs, and dance troupes with the name.
But she highly doubted any church groups, kids with cancer, choirs, or dance troupes had broken into the new library and had a beer-and-cinnamon-whiskey-fueled pizza party.
So who exactly were these Sunshine Kids, and why did the sheriff hate them so much?
Because he did hate them. She could see the hatred for them burning in his disturbingly blue eyes.
Really, she ought to have been working—there were several large piles of books on the trolley by her desk that needed reshelving.
But she was having trouble concentrating on work when there was such a big, juicy mystery to solve.
That’s what she told herself, anyway: that it was the mystery of the baby she’d found, and her mother—because that poor girl she’d found in the new library had to be Baby Aphrodite’s mother—that was distracting her, and not the tall, blue-eyed sheriff, and the extremely frustrating way he had of not meeting her gaze . . . and then suddenly looking her straight in the eye, and making her feel as if he could see directly into her soul and knew every single one of her secrets.
Except that Molly didn’t have any secrets! Finding Baby Aphrodite had been the most interesting thing that had ever happened to her. She’d never broken the law in her life, with the exception of having smoked a little weed in college. But everyone did that—and marijuana was legal in Colorado, as well as plenty of other places now.
Maybe the sheriff’s ability to make her feel this way was because he was a cop. Cops were supposed to be good at looking at you and making you blurt out your guilt.
But Molly had nothing to feel guilty about—except possibly how much time she spent on Facebook and Instagram spying on her ex and his new bride-to-be. But she’d really gotten much better at that lately. Now she only went on social media when she needed to. In fact, she decided that the best use of her time would be to go on Facebook right now and look for references to the Sunshine Kids.
But she could find none, save for a link on Meschelle Davies’s page that led to a story from an online newspaper that was hidden behind a paywall. Molly would gladly have paid to see what it said, but the paper was now defunct, and none of the links worked.
Molly quickly realized she had no choice but to email Meschelle at The Gazette and ask her for the information.
She was surprised when her phone buzzed a few seconds later. It was a number she didn’t recognize.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” Meschelle said when Molly picked up, “if you’ll give me an exclusive interview about what happened at the new library this morning.”
Molly smiled. She admired Meschelle’s go-getter spirit, even if she didn’t always approve of the mainstream media. It sensationalized violence and barraged children with hypersexualized images of young women (and men, too) just when they were beginning to develop and understand themselves as sexual beings.
“You know I can’t do that,” Molly said. “The sheriff asked me not to.”
“Well, then, I guess you’re never going to find out what you want to know.”
“How about this,” Molly said, glancing at her watch. “I’ll take you to lunch anywhere you want to go, and give you an exclusive interview about finding Baby Aphrodite, in exchange for you telling me what I want to know.”
“Hmmm.” Meschelle seemed to consider this. “People do love an abandoned-baby story, so long as the kid’s okay. Lunch today?”
“Today.”
“Anywhere I want to go?”
“Anywhere you want to go.”
“You got a deal. Meet me at Cracked in half an hour.”
Molly swallowed. Cracked was one of the trendiest—and most expensive—restaurants on the island. It featured oysters and stone crab claws (when in season); thus the high prices.
“See you there,” Molly said, and hung up.
It didn’t take her long to wrangle coverage for her desk. Phyllis was at yoga—she never missed a Thursday—but Henry promised to watch over the children’s section so long as Molly was back before two thirty, when school let out and the troublemakers—meaning Elijah Trujos—began showing up.
One of the many reasons Molly loved Little Bridge was that everything (except the airport) was within walking distance, and so she’d been able to sell her car. She biked or walked everywhere, and was looking forward to the day when this would result in a noticeable change to her fitness. So far, it hadn’t, possibly because she’d gone from living at a mile above sea level to three feet above it, so she was actually exerting herself less on Little Bridge, despite exercising more. She still arrived at Cracked breathless and sweaty, most likely because of her stupid cardigan.
“Hi,” she said, sliding into the posh leather booth in which Meschelle was already seated. “Sorry I’m late.”
“No worries.” Meschelle slid a wineglass filled with a golden beverage, its sides frosted with condensation, toward her. “I went ahead and ordered a bottle of sauvignon blanc. I assumed when you let me pick the restaurant that meant I also could order anything I wanted.”
“Fine.” Molly took a thirsty gulp. “Excellent choice.”
“Yeah, I know my way around a wine menu.” Meschelle played with the screen on her phone. “I already ordered a few appetizers for us as well. Is it okay if I record this?”
“Sure,” Molly said, widening her eyes as a server approached with an amply filled basket of flatbreads. “So who or what are the Sunshine Kids?”
“Whoa, slow down, sister. Me first. Why do you want to know so badly? Does it have anything to do with what happened today at the new library?”
Molly broke off a piece of one of the flatbreads. It was still warm from the oven and lightly covered in cheese and slivers of olive. Hmmmm. “I already said I can’t talk about what happened today. I promised the—”
“—sheriff, right.” Meschelle rolled her expressive dark eyes. Molly knew that Meschelle was of West African descent because she’d written about it before in the paper. Her skin was as smooth as silk and she wore her hair braided and piled on top of her head out of deference to the heat. She chose a piece of tomato-smeared flatbread from the basket. “Fine. Tell me about the baby.”
Molly gave what she considered a highly detailed but also touching account of how she’d found Baby Aphrodite. By the time she’d finished, the dozen oysters that Meschelle had ordered had arrived, and Meschelle had eaten four of them. She didn’t look very impressed by Molly’s story.
“What’s going on between you and the sheriff?” she asked.
“What?” Molly nearly choked on the oyster she was swallowing. “Nothing. What do you mean?”
“I mean you talk about him a lot. And then you agreed to pay for this lunch, all because you want to know about the Sunshine Kids.”
“What does my interest in the Sunshine Kids have to do with the sheriff?” Molly felt her cheeks beginning to warm. But that was probably because of the wine, and of course the cardigan.
Meschelle reached into her purse, which was a stylish rattan basket, from which hung dozens of brightly colored tassels. “Here, you can read the story I wrote about them last year for the alternative paper we used to have here. It went under due to people on this island having no interest in reading dissident viewpoints. The Gazette wouldn’t let me write about the Sunshine Kids because they didn’t want the tourists getting wind of them.”