Molly was puzzled. “We do?” She didn’t see what there was to feel happy about. Their library had been vandalized, apparently by kids who were, according to Meschelle, unstoppable. What was so good about that?
“The girl!” Mrs. Tifton cried. “She’s in the ICU, but she should do just fine. I called the hospital, and they told me so.”
“Really?” Meschelle’s eyebrows were raised to their limits. “They usually only give information about patients to family members.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Tifton said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “They know me there.”
Of course they do, Molly thought, wryly.
“And do you know what else they said?” Mrs. Tifton asked, and went on without waiting for a reply. “They said that she’s Baby Aphrodite’s mother!”
Molly wasn’t a bit surprised, given what she’d seen in the media room, but Meschelle snatched up her phone and quickly hit record.
“Really, Mrs. Tifton?” she asked. “May I quote you on that for an article I’m writing about the abandoned baby for the Gazette?”
“Why, yes, you may!” Mrs. Tifton cried. “You can say that Dorothy Tifton has it on good authority that the poor girl found in the children’s media room of the new library today is the mother of Baby Aphrodite.”
Molly was beginning to get a very bad feeling about all of this.
“Oh, Mrs. Tifton,” she said, sliding from her booth. “I don’t think that’s the kind of news we should be sharing right now. It might hamper the sheriff’s investigation.”
Mrs. Tifton instantly looked stricken. “Oh, dear! I wouldn’t want to do that.”
“It’s fine,” Meschelle said, giving Molly a dirty look. “It’s just the local paper, not the New York Times. I’ll tie it in to the story I interviewed you for, Molly—which, by the way, I’m going to need photos for.”
Molly froze. “Photos?”
“Yes. You know, of you by the bathroom stall where you found the baby, and all of that.”
Molly thought, fleetingly, of both how unflattering the florescent light in the girls’ bathroom was and how disapproving the sheriff was going to be when he found out about the story.
“Don’t worry, we’ll make you look good,” Meschelle said, only partly reading her mind. “I’ll send one of the staff photographers over to the library this afternoon. Okay?”
Molly knew she’d dug her own grave. There was nothing for her to do now but lie in it.
Chapter Eight
John
The day was turning into a debacle. It had started out badly enough, with the discovery of the girl and the vandalism in the library, and it had gone downhill from there. His deputies weren’t too happy with his request that they canvass the entire neighborhood around the old high school for possible CCTV footage of the Sunshine Kids, since they’d “done that already” during previous break-ins and found nothing.
His tech crew was even less happy with his order that they swab and fingerprint everything they’d found in the media room where the librarian had discovered the unconscious girl.
“Everything?” Murray had balked.
“Yes, everything. And don’t forget to match them against that box from yesterday, the one they found the baby in.”
Murray had looked around at the mess in dismay. “Sheriff, most of this stuff is garbage. You want us to fingerprint garbage?”
“Yes, I do.” John didn’t see why he had to explain himself to his own tech crew, most of whom, it was true, had been hired by Rich Wagner, the previous sheriff, and were still loyal to him, even though he’d turned out to be a douche of the first order.
If John wanted garbage swabbed for DNA and also fingerprinted, it was his right to ask for it to be swabbed for DNA and fingerprinted. That’s what these guys got paid for.
Things didn’t improve when John returned to his office to find a five-foot-long plush dolphin sitting in his desk chair.
“Marguerite,” he yelled when he saw it.
Marguerite sauntered slowly down the hall from her office, a cup of coffee in her hand.
“It’s for Baby Aphrodite,” she said, when she saw what he was upset about. “On account of her rising from the ocean waves.”
John thought his head might explode. “I don’t care who it’s for. Get it out of my office.”
“There’s nowhere else to put it. There’re baby toys and boxes of diapers and formula all up and down the—”
“I don’t care. Just get it out.”
Marguerite sighed. “Sure, Chief. What do you want me to do about the bachelor party riding a goat down Truman Avenue?”
“The what?”
“A bunch of guys down here to celebrate their pal getting married found a goat somewhere—unless they brought it themselves—and are now taking turns riding it around downtown.”
“For Christ’s sake.” Was the entire country going insane? “Send Martinez down there to arrest them for drunk and disorderly.”
“Can’t, Chief. He’s over at the bus station checking a suspicious passenger. Could be Dakota. You sent a Be On The Lookout for him, remember?”
“Well, send Reynolds, then. And tell him to get that goat over to the petting zoo, and have the vet come over to check it out for injuries.”
“Got it, Chief.”
“And stop calling me Chief. I’m the sheriff, not the chief of police.”
“Right, Chief. I mean, Sheriff.”
John glared at his computer screen. Sometimes he wondered how he’d managed to become not only a sheriff but also a zookeeper. The population of Little Bridge was so small that it could sustain only a minuscule animal shelter, so overflow abandoned or abused animals tended to end up in the care of law enforcement. It had been John’s decision early on in his tenure as sheriff to begin using an outdoor area of the jail as part animal hospital, part permanent petting zoo. Studies showed that recidivism decreased in individuals who spent time during their incarceration working with animals, so John saw to it that whatever nonviolent inmates he deemed worthy of the privilege were allowed to care for the numerous sloths, snakes, tortoises, alligators, parrots, rabbits, chinchillas, pigs, chickens, ducks, miniature horses, and now, apparently, goats that were housed there.
Did it bother John that the hard-bitten homicide detectives with whom he used to work back in Miami occasionally sent him teasing gifs of himself in overalls and a sun hat, shoveling manure?
Not as much as it bothered him that law enforcement agencies from across the country contacted him almost daily, begging him to take on injured animals they’d found in drug raids or other busts, and that he usually had to say no because his “jail zoo” was already at capacity.
He didn’t think things could get any worse until he went to try on his dress uniform to make sure it fit before the Red Cross Ball.
“Marguerite!” he shouted, staring down at himself in dismay.
Marguerite came strolling in, this time holding a turquoise reusable water bottle in her hand. “Something else wrong, Chief?”
He showed her. “My dress pants don’t fit.”
She was unimpressed. “It’s called aging. It happens to the best of us. Try squeezing three kids out of your ying-yang, like I did. It happens even quicker.”
“Well, these fit last week,” he said, tugging on the waistband of his trousers. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Stop drinking beer,” Marguerite suggested. “My husband stops drinking beer and he drops ten pounds overnight. It’s God’s joke on women.”
“I only drink one beer a night.” John looked mournfully at his reflection in the full-length mirror attached to his office’s closet door.
“Actually,” Marguerite said, taking mercy on him, “you don’t look so bad for your age, Sheriff.” For all she liked to razz him, he noticed she’d been softening toward him, often bringing him an extra café con leche when she stopped at the Coffee Cubano on the way to work (which was probably not helping with his waistline). “Maybe the cleaners made a mistake and delivered the wrong pants. They do it all the time. I’ll look into it for you.”
He relaxed—as much as the tight pants would allow. “Thanks, Sergeant.”
“Don’t mention it. I’ll get that dolphin off your hands now, too, if you want.”
“No.” John glanced at the stuffed animal grinning so maniacally from behind his desk. “I’m starting to like it. Maybe I’ll take it over to the hospital later myself.”
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
After he’d changed back into his regular uniform, John moved the dolphin to a corner and sat down at his desk, then brought up the file on Dylan Dakota. Everything about the kid, including his name, was fake—everything except the very real harm he’d caused to people and property, including the young girl who was currently in the Little Bridge ICU.
Her condition was stable, but if she hadn’t been found when she had, and gotten help, she could have died. Thank God for Molly Montgomery—and no thanks to Lawrence “Larry” Beckwith III, aka Dylan Dakota.