Molly felt as if her blood had run cold. She forgot not only her tiredness but also the warm, happy feeling that she’d been hugging to herself all morning. She certainly wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Where did you get that?” she heard herself asking Elijah, through suddenly numb lips.
He looked down at the camera. “What, this? My dad left it in a box of stuff when he moved out. I know it’s kind of old, but you’re the one who’s always telling me I need to get more involved in stuff. One of those kids in It turned into like the town historian or something. I know you loaned It to me because of the comedian character, but that other guy was kind of cool and I was thinking maybe I could—”
“Give me that,” Molly said, and snatched the camera from him.
“Hey!” Elijah looked shocked. “What are you doing?”
Molly examined the camera. Just like the one that had been stolen from Mrs. Tifton’s house the night before, it was pocket-sized and also digital. It looked very old—and very expensive.
Molly reached out, seized Elijah by the arm—noting he was wearing a black hoodie, but that meant nothing, didn’t it? Tons of kids his age wore them, even on a tropical island—and steered him toward her desk, even though rule number one of being a librarian was that you never, ever touched a patron unless they were in immediate danger or in need of medical assistance.
But Elijah was in danger, and also in need of immediate assistance . . . just not the medical kind.
“Hey, Miss Molly,” Elijah said, allowing himself to be dragged. He looked more amused than indignant. “What gives?”
Molly pushed him into the child-sized chair beside her desk. “Where did you get this camera?” she asked him again, perhaps a little too intensely.
“Whoa,” he said. “I told you. It was my—”
“Your dad’s, I know, you said that. Does he still have the receipt? Can you prove he bought it?”
“How should I know? Probably not. He bought it, like, a million years ago. What’s wrong with you, Miss Molly?”
Molly wondered herself. John had assured her last night that there was no way the High School Thief was in high school. He’d all but sworn he knew who the culprit was and that an arrest was imminent.
But here was Elijah, carrying a used, older Leica like the one stolen from Mrs. Tifton’s home, and smelling—there was no way around it—like the men’s fragrance section of a department store. He reeked.
He did not, however, smell of cigarettes. So that was one small mercy.
“Where were you last night around eleven o’clock?” she demanded.
“Where was I? Where I always am when I’m not here or at school—at home, playing Call of Duty.”
“Can you prove it?”
“What’s all this with having to prove it?” he asked. “What’s going on, Miss Molly?”
Molly sat down behind her desk, feeling suddenly tired and defeated. Not even the memory of the sheriff’s kiss or the hopeful promise of their steak dinner could buoy her spirits.
“The High School Thief struck again last night, Elijah,” she said. She probably wasn’t supposed to be sharing this information, but it would be public soon enough. Meschelle Davies would see to that. “He robbed Mrs. Tifton—you know, the lady who donated the money to build the new library? And one of the things he took was her dead husband’s old Leica camera. It was one just like this.”
Elijah looked down at the camera in Molly’s hand, not understanding. “So? What does that have to do with me?”
“Elijah, you were literally in here the other day bragging that you were the High School Thief.”
“Oh my God, Miss Molly.” He started to laugh. “Don’t tell me that you believed all that!”
Molly glared at him as he clutched his stomach, doubled over in laughter. “It isn’t funny, Elijah,” she said. “There are people in this town—people who work in law enforcement—who might, given the preponderance of evidence, come to think of you as a suspect.”
“Preponderance of evidence!” Elijah was laughing so hard that he had tears in his eyes. “Oh, Miss Molly!”
Now Molly was genuinely irritated. Some of the mothers—and even some of the fathers—were beginning to glance over at them in curiosity. Even worse, Phyllis Robinette—the woman responsible for Molly’s good fortune in finding this job in the first place—was volunteering over at the main desk (as she did most days, when she didn’t have yoga) and had noticed the commotion. She frowned at them.
“Cut it out, Elijah,” Molly whispered urgently. “It isn’t that funny.”
“But it is,” he said, wiping away his tears. “The fact that you’d believe I was the High School Thief. Oh, Miss Molly. You really are one of my favorite people ever.”
Molly had had about all that she could take. She set down the camera and reached for her telephone. Elijah continued to laugh. “Wait,” he said, chuckling. “Who are you calling? I know it’s not the po-po. Not Henry again. Please don’t say Henry.”
“No.” Molly didn’t have to consult her directory to dial. She knew the number by heart. “I’m calling your mother.”
All the humor drained from Elijah’s face. Most of the color did, as well. “Oh, Miss Molly,” he whispered. “No.”
Chapter Sixteen
John
John couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this happy. He whistled “My Favorite Things”—the Coltrane version, not the one from the movie his daughter had liked so much as a kid—as he fried up bacon and eggs for breakfast.
He didn’t have to worry about anyone nagging him for eating such fatty foods, because Katie had spent the night with a friend from her dance team and wasn’t due to return home until noon. He had the house to himself to do whatever he wanted.
And what he wanted to do was eat breakfast and think about Molly Montgomery, at least in the short amount of time he had before he had to get back to the office and figure out how to catch Larry Beckwith III.
It was as he was thinking about Molly Montgomery and the impossible softness of her skin that his cell phone rang. He glanced down at the screen, irritated by the interruption, then saw that it was Peter Abramowitz, the state’s attorney. He picked up before the second ring.
“Pete,” he said. “What’s up?”
“You tell me what’s up.” Pete sounded as casual and good-humored as always. Like any true surfer, he didn’t get wound up about things that didn’t matter, which was one of the reasons John liked him. “What happened last night?”
“Beckwith hit the Tifton house.” John chewed on a piece of bacon. “Least, I’m pretty certain it was Beckwith. I’m still waiting for Murray to get back to me with prints. But I’m sure they’ll match. I’ve got every officer on staff out combing the island for that little twit. We’ll find him, and when we do, I need you to nail him to the wall this time. I don’t care what kind of big-deal lawyers his father brings down from the mainland, I want you to put the screws to—”
“I’m not talking about that.” Pete was laughing. “I already know about that. I’m talking about you and the librarian.”
John stopped chewing. He felt suddenly cold, even though Katie kept the air-conditioning at a meticulous seventy-five degrees, far too warm for him. But his daughter, like many in her generation, was ever conscious of wasting precious resources, frightened for the planet and its imminent demise. “What do you mean, me and the librarian?”
“The new children’s librarian. The one you were macking on last night at the bar on Jasmine Key.”
Macking? John had to take a hasty swig of coffee in order to wash down the bacon, on which he’d nearly choked.
“Don’t think I didn’t see you.” Pete was practically crowing. “Everyone did. You couldn’t have been more obvious.”
“We were not macking,” John said, when he could finally speak. “Miss Montgomery—Molly—is a very kind, intelligent woman, and we were merely—”
“Jesus Christ!” Now Pete was hooting with laughter. “I’m messing with you. Not that we didn’t all see you two kissing. But I think it’s great. How long has it been since you’ve been on a date? Not since you and Christina split, right? And before that, what was it, high school? Hasn’t Christina basically been the only woman you’ve ever—”
“All right.” John was on his feet, his breakfast and Coltrane forgotten. “We don’t need to go into the details about that. Especially since nothing happened last night. I got the call about the Tifton place and took Molly home.” He didn’t feel it was necessary to fill his talkative friend in on the details about what had happened after he’d taken Molly home. “End of story.”
“But you’re gonna see her again, right?” Besides being an excellent attorney—the Beckwith case aside—Pete Abramowitz was a good and supportive friend. He’d never missed a Snappettes performance since Katie joined the team, and had brought every single one of his relatives—including his elderly mother—to the jailhouse zoo when they visited Little Bridge for the holidays. Why, yes, that is a convicted felon holding a lop-eared rabbit on his lap. Go ahead, you can pet it. “You like her, she likes you, yadda yadda yadda?”