If Molly felt like the morning after she’d found an abandoned baby in one of the old library’s public bathrooms started out a little too well, it was because . . . well, it did.
Molly had stayed up even later than usual the night before—without having had to, as there were no late check-ins expected at the Lazy Parrot—and logged on to the Little Bridge Island Facebook community page, where she carefully corrected all the miscommunications about the baby who had been found.
As the person who’d discovered the baby, Molly felt she was the one most qualified to attest not only to the infant’s correct sex, but also to the exact manner in which she had been found.
So she posted that it was most definitely a little girl, not a boy, who’d been found on the toilet—in a box, not a bag—and that she was a lovely little thing who deserved to be kept in everyone’s thoughts, and not referred to as a trash-bag baby.
Furthermore, Molly wrote, rising to flights of fancy that might not have occurred to her had she not finished off the better part of the bottle of wine Joanne had opened, it struck me as if this beautiful baby girl were rising from the waters of Little Bridge much in the way that the Roman goddess of love, Aphrodite, rose from the waves of the sea. Thus I believe that we should call this sweet little baby Aphrodite, because not only did she rise from the sea, but as residents of this island paradise, don’t we all wish her nothing but love? Yours very sincerely, Molly Montgomery, Children’s Library Specialist
Sitting back after posting this, Molly watched in satisfaction as the likes began to pour in, slowly at first, then more and more quickly.
Perfect. Her job was done. The baby’s new name—and a fine one it was; she’d have to thank Mr. Filmore later for the inspiration—was fixed. Aphrodite it would be from now on. A little highfalutin for a tiny baby, but much better than Trash Bag!
As she crawled wearily into her huge four-poster bed—all the beds at the Lazy Parrot were four-posters, just as all the rooms came with enormous Jacuzzi tubs and their own coffee makers and mini fridges—she hoped she hadn’t done anything that might jeopardize the sheriff’s case. He hadn’t explicitly told her not to give out the details about how she’d found the baby (in a trash-bag box, etc.).
Then again, he clearly needed her help. He couldn’t even crack the case of the High School Thief, which to her looked as if it might be one of the simplest crimes in the world to solve. Was Molly seriously supposed to believe that out of the six—or was it seven?—burglaries so far, there hadn’t been a single image of the thief captured on home-security footage? Surely at least one of the homes possessed a video doorbell camera.
And what about fingerprints? Or footprints? Had no one thought of looking for these? Or for stray hairs (that did not, of course, belong to any of the homeowners or their friends) to run through the national criminal DNA database?
Oh, well, she thought tiredly, turning out her light and snuggling down with Fluffy, the large ginger cat that lived at the Larsons’ hotel, yet did not belong to them. He had just shown up one day, begging for food, and so they’d begun feeding him, and now he slept every night with whichever of the hotel occupants allowed him inside their room first, which more often than not was Molly.
Everything would be all right if I were in charge, Molly thought to herself. One day the sheriff will realize this and thank me.
For the first time in as long as she could remember, she didn’t check Ashley’s Instagram, or switch on the television to watch her true crime shows, but instead fell fast asleep, Fluffy curled into a tight, contented ball beside her.
The next morning, it appeared as if she might have been correct: everything seemed as if it were going to be all right. She was able to grab a quick breakfast from the buffet—without running into the Filmores, who’d slept in—before rushing off to the walk-through of the new library with its donor, Mrs. Tifton.
To Molly, Mrs. Tifton consulting her on nearly every decision having to do with the new library’s children’s wing was like a dream come true. According to Phyllis, Mrs. Tifton had always been a voracious reader, and had frequently mentioned to anyone who’d listen that she found Little Bridge’s small public library lacking in adequate shelving space for romance, Mrs. Tifton’s favorite choice of reading material.
So when Mrs. Tifton’s husband of thirty-nine years passed away from a heart attack and turned out to have left her more than one hundred million dollars in cash, annuities, life insurance, and real estate holdings—a fortune no one in Little Bridge, least of all his wife, ever suspected he possessed—no one was too surprised when she donated a large portion of her sudden fortune to the construction of a new library.
The library board agreed to purchase the building—a beautiful though rundown example of classic revival architecture—which had once been the Little Bridge High School. A new, modern high school had been built years earlier after the discovery of asbestos in the halls of the old one, which had sat empty and decaying for more than fifty years until Mrs. Tifton and her fortune came along.
The new Norman J. Tifton Public Library, though not quite finished, had already been restored to its former nineteenth-century glory, but with all the modern amenities: multiple media/movie rooms; plenty of free parking; two auditoriums; a children’s and teens’ wing; cheerfully lit reading rooms with large, comfortable chairs; a café; meeting rooms; study carrels; digital facilities; and of course enough shelving for all manner of genre fiction.
Sometimes Molly couldn’t believe her good luck—especially now, going on a walk-through of the new building with Mrs. Tifton. They were accompanied by Richard Chang, the building’s architect; the district’s councilwoman, Janet Rivera; Meschelle Davies, a reporter from Little Bridge’s local newspaper, The Gazette; and of course Mrs. Tifton’s toy poodle, Daisy.
But Molly still felt special. It seemed too good to be true.
Which meant, of course, that it was.
It wasn’t until they reached the second floor of the twelve-thousand-square-foot building that Molly realized something was wrong.
“What’s that smell?” Janet asked.
“Oh, that,” Mrs. Tifton said, waving a small hand dismissively. “I know, isn’t it awful? All that drying paint.”
“That isn’t paint,” Molly said. She loved eating and knew her food smells. “It’s pizza.”
“That’s impossible.” Richard Chang was looking down at his phone. Richard never went anywhere without his overly large phone in his hand and his overly small glasses on his face. “Nobody’s been here since last week. All the work is done. We’re just waiting on the final inspections and certificates.”
Meschelle, the reporter, dutifully jotted this down.
“But.” Molly realized the smell was coming from the new children’s media room, the double doors to which were both closed. “It really smells like pizza.”
“Oh, well,” Mrs. Tifton said, brightly. “Maybe the crew had pizza last week.”
“And didn’t properly dispose of the leftovers?” Richard scowled behind his artistically framed eyeglasses. “That’s not like them. They’re normally very—”
He broke off as Molly pushed open the doors to the media room.
As soon as she stepped inside, she saw that she’d made a massive mistake. She ought never to have gone in there—at least, not while being followed by the donor and a reporter from the local paper. Quickly, she moved to shut the doors behind her, but it was too late. Daisy, Mrs. Tifton’s little dog, darted between Molly’s legs, making an eager beeline for the source of the odor.
“Daisy, no!”
There was nothing else Molly could do. She slammed the doors closed, shutting Daisy up inside the media room with all the boxes of leftover pizza someone—or more likely, quite a lot of someones—had left behind, then leaned against them, blocking Mrs. Tifton’s—and Meschelle’s—view into the room through the glass panes.
“Let’s go back downstairs,” she said, plastering a fake smile on her face. “I just remembered I forgot my bag.”
“What?” Mrs. Tifton smiled up at her. The widow was quite small in stature but made up for it by being pleasantly curved, often reminding Molly of a bouncing ball because of her seemingly boundless energy. “No, you didn’t, silly girl, it’s on your shoulder. What’s in there that you don’t want us to see?”
“N-nothing,” Molly said, quickly. “I just—I—”
Molly didn’t normally stammer, but what was behind the media room doors wasn’t something that a sweet woman like Mrs. Tifton—let alone a reporter, who would doubtlessly blast it all over the front page—ought to see. Molly wished she hadn’t seen it herself.
Fortunately, Janet Rivera had also seen what Molly had seen, and hurried to help.
“Mrs. Tifton, I don’t think the paint in that room is dry,” Janet said. “Why don’t we let Richard show us the meditation garden downstairs instead? We can check to see if they got that powderpuff tree you asked for.”
“Oh, the powderpuff!” Mrs. Tifton’s voice rose in delight as the councilwoman took her by the arm and steered her back toward the stairs. “I do hope they found a pink one. Let’s go a take a look.” She glanced back at Molly. “You’ll follow along, won’t you? And bring that naughty little dog of mine?”
“Of course, Mrs. T,” Molly said. “I’ll bring Daisy right down to you.”
Mrs. Tifton nodded, smiling. “Thank you.” As she followed an ashen-faced Richard to the stairs—because he, too, had seen what Molly and Janet had seen—Molly could hear the older woman murmuring, “I don’t know what’s gotten into that silly dog.”
Molly knew exactly what had gotten into the dog. She also knew exactly who she was going to have to call about it.
And she wasn’t looking forward to it.
