This was exactly how Molly felt whenever she got too close to Elijah.
Sergeant Ruiz nodded as if she’d expected this response. “That bad, huh? Remind you of anyone?”
“Well, it’s bad. But I can’t say it reminds me of anyone.”
“What?” Molly asked, her heart now in her throat. “What does it smell like?”
“Very cheap men’s cologne,” Mrs. Tifton said.
Molly had to sit down again. How was she going to handle this? She couldn’t turn Elijah in, of course. He was her patron and she cared about him.
But she couldn’t let him get away with this kind of behavior, either. It was possible he was breaking the law, and hurting people, too. Obviously his parents’ divorce was affecting him much more than his mother had ever suspected and causing him to act out in a completely unacceptable way.
Still, he’d have to be held responsible for his crimes.
But he was only sixteen. Maybe the court would show a little leniency, due to his young age.
“And cigarette smoke,” Mrs. Tifton added.
“What?” Molly looked up sharply.
“I suppose the cologne is to cover up the smell of the cigarette smoke,” Mrs. Tifton went on. “Norman used to smoke Cuban cigars whenever someone gave him one, and that’s a trick he’d use, thinking I wouldn’t catch him. But I always did!”
Cigarette smoke? Not Elijah! He’d never smoke. He was always railing against the kids at his school who vaped in the bathroom—the “vaperoom,” he called it. He scoffed at them for spending all their money on vaping when they could be using it for more useful things, such as video games and pizza.
It wasn’t Elijah. It couldn’t be Elijah.
Unless . . .
Unless he’d finally made some friends, and those friends smoked.
Oh, God.
Sergeant Ruiz dropped the hoodie back into the paper bag and sealed it up again. “Thanks,” she said. “That’s very helpful.”
Molly didn’t see how any of what had just transpired was helpful . . . unless they already had a suspect in mind and knew he smoked and used an excessive amount of cologne. She needed to find out, if only to set her mind at ease.
The problem was, she was fairly certain the sheriff wasn’t going to tell her, any more than she’d violate the privacy of a patron by sharing information about them with him—unless he had a court order, of course.
“I can leave a couple of my deputies to sit outside your house tonight, Mrs. Tifton,” John was saying, “if that would make you feel more comfortable. Or I could stay myself. It’s the least I can do until you can get that window fixed—”
“Oh, no!” Mrs. Tifton, who never liked to be a bother, pooh-poohed this offer immediately. “I’ll be all right.”
“I’m happy to stay the night with you,” Molly offered. Joanne wouldn’t need her until tomorrow, when the hotel would have its usual flurry of Sunday-morning checkouts. And though Sunday was one of the busiest days in the library due to the number of fathers who had child visitation that day, she hadn’t scheduled any difficult programming, such as cookie decorating. She’d learned her lesson after what had happened with Elijah, and of course all the sprinkles she’d found spilled all over the floor afterward. “We could watch a movie together to settle your nerves.”
“Well.” Mrs. Tifton looked tempted. “I have been wishing for a quiet moment together to work a bit more on the invitation list for the library’s grand opening. I keep having this terrible feeling there are people I’ve forgotten.”
“We could do that, certainly.” Molly glanced at John and felt a blush of pleasure when she saw that he was gazing at her with approval.
“That’s settled, then,” he said. “Let me take Miss Montgomery to her place so she can get an overnight bag, and then I’ll bring her right back. And in the meantime, my people will clean up this mess for you.”
Molly blushed even more deeply as she realized John was angling for them to spend a few moments alone together in his car—a huge, gas-guzzling SUV. Not that she’d have expected him to drive anything else.
“Oh, how kind of you,” Mrs. Tifton said, looking delighted. “I must say, the Little Bridge Island Sheriff’s Department certainly provides quality service!”
John, his gaze glued to Molly’s, said, “We aim to please, ma’am.”
Chapter Fourteen
John
The evening might not end up being a total disaster after all. He had Molly Montgomery alone in his car, didn’t he?
Still, there was every chance he could screw it up. It had been such a long time since he dated. He had hardly even tried since he and Christina split, since the local sheriff couldn’t very well be seen on dating apps or hanging around in bars.
Everything had been going so well back on Jasmine Key until Larry Beckwith III, aka Dylan Dakota, had come along and ruined it.
And it had to have been Beckwith who’d broken into Mrs. Tifton’s house. Beckwith was slim enough to fit into a size small hoodie and also smoked. It wouldn’t surprise John if he’d taken to wearing cologne, too, probably from a bottle he’d stolen.
John had known the mope was still in town. He’d known it. He’d sensed it. His only question was, Why? Why was Beckwith still hanging around on the island instead of fleeing? He had to know John was gunning for him.
Oh, well. There was no accounting for the stupidity of the common criminal.
Although the Larry Beckwith John knew wasn’t stupid—he was cunning. Too cunning to stick around somewhere after committing the kind of crimes he had this time in Little Bridge.
Something was different. If only John could figure out what it was.
Molly was sitting very upright and proper in the passenger seat beside him as he drove her to the hotel where she lived (and worked), her gaze glued to the road. Her profile looked very delicate and feminine against the dark car window beside her. She was being unusually silent, but he could understand that. What had happened back at the widow’s house had probably frightened her.
He cleared his throat.
“It’s very nice of you to offer to stay the night with Mrs. Tifton.”
She turned those huge dark eyes to look at him. “It’s nice of you to offer to sit outside her home, as well. We couldn’t very well let her stay there alone after what happened.”
“Of course.” They were getting very close to the hotel, which was really only a couple of blocks away from the widow’s house. That was one of the few problems with Little Bridge: Everything was only a couple of blocks away. This was an advantage most of the time, but not during situations like this: their ride wasn’t going to last very long. But then he had the ride back to Mrs. Tifton’s to look forward to. “But you really don’t have to worry about him coming back. The High School Thief, I mean.”
The dark eyes seemed to grow even larger, but that might have been a trick of the streetlights beneath which they were passing.
“So you think it was him? The High School Thief?”
“Well, it’s the same M.O.”
“Except for the break-in. I thought the High School Thief only sneaked in through unlocked doors.”
“That’s true.” John didn’t want to say what he really thought—that it was Beckwith, and that he’d done it as a huge “eff you” entirely to John, to ruin his evening at the Red Cross Ball, his attendance at which was known island-wide, because that would sound conceited. What kind of law officer went around thinking that criminals committed crimes for the sole purpose of annoying them?
But it could not be denied that some criminals did, in particular sociopaths like Beckwith.
“We’ll have to wait until my tech crew has finished processing the scene, and see what they come up with,” he said instead.
This made Molly swallow hard and look away.
“But I am really certain it’s him,” John hurried to assure her, sure now that he’d been right: she’d been frightened back at the house. “And he never hits the same place twice—certainly not in the same night. So you and Mrs. Tifton will be totally safe. Besides, I’ll be right outside—”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that.” She gave him a tight little smile. “Here we are.”
He hadn’t even noticed that they’d reached the Lazy Parrot, a large Victorian mansion not unlike Mrs. Tifton’s home, only this one had been converted into an inn. He pulled into the single parking space outside the hotel, marked with a hand-painted sign that read “For Lazy Parrot Guest Drop-Off/Pickup Only.” Parking spots were at a premium on the island. Many of the fights John and his deputies broke up were over parking spaces.
Molly was already undoing her seat belt. “Would you like to come in and wait while I get my things?”
Was this an invitation to her room? He had no idea. But he wasn’t about to turn it down.
“Sure,” he said, and put the car into park and followed her.
Like many houses in Little Bridge, the Lazy Parrot was much larger on the inside than it appeared from the outside. Once they’d gone through the lobby—an old-fashioned foyer, complete with an (unmanned, at this hour) front desk—and sitting room, they reached the gigantic backyard, lush with subtropical foliage, in the center of which sat a large, sparkling swimming pool, lit up turquoise blue. The air was heavy with the scent of chlorine and night-blooming jasmine. All of the guests, as well as the hotel owners, appeared to have retired for the evening. He and Molly seemed to be the only two souls alive, save for some frogs he could hear croaking near the hot tub.