No Offense: A Novel (Little Bridge Island Book 2)

Molly had never been to a crime scene before. Well, aside from the one at the library the other day.

She’d had no intention of ending up at another one, except that Mrs. Tifton insisted that if all of her friends didn’t come along with her on the boat back to Little Bridge Island in order to help her inspect whatever damage had been done to her home by the High School Thief, she wasn’t certain how she was going to make it through the night emotionally.

The sheriff didn’t look too happy about that, given how firmly he kept his lips pressed together throughout the ride . . . those lips that mere minutes before had been so tantalizingly pressed to hers.

But Molly refused to think about that. This was a serious situation, and she intended to keep her mind focused on the matter at hand, and not at all on the fact that a little while earlier, the sheriff had been holding her so tightly in his strong arms, she could hardly breathe, and kissing her as if his life depended on it.

John had decided that Mrs. Tifton could have one friend with her inside the house during “this difficult time.” The rest had to wait for her outside, so as “not to disrupt the crime scene.”

“And I,” he’d added, “will be the one picking which friend gets to come inside.”

That’s how Molly found herself sitting on one of the pure-white couches in Mrs. Tifton’s living room, taking in the scene around her and trying very hard not to think about the sheriff’s lips.

“I just don’t see how he did it.” Mrs. Tifton was crying, and not for the first time. She’d been wailing this same statement, or something along similar lines, since they’d left Jasmine Key. “I always keep all my doors locked. And I have an alarm!”

It was true. Mrs. Tifton, unlike the thief’s previous victims, had kept all the French doors leading from her beautiful, high-ceilinged living room to her backyard pool locked.

But neither this nor the security alarm appeared to have troubled the thief, who’d merely broken the pane of glass closest to the gilt door handle, reached inside to unlock it, then snatched up whatever he could carry between the time it took for the alarm to begin to blare and the arrival of the first sheriff’s deputies on the scene—which turned out to be seven minutes, John explained.

“Seven minutes?” Molly repeated, throwing an incredulous glance in John’s direction.

But he ignored her. He was busy staring at his deputies—not the crime scene techs, who were busy dusting the door handle for prints, or taking photos of what they believed to be the thief’s footprints in the pile of Mrs. Tifton’s recently vacuumed carpet—a thin young blond woman and an equally thin young man, who’d apparently been first to arrive.

“There were a couple of youths throwing down in the parking lot over at the Coffee Cubano, Chief,” whined the male deputy, whose badge had the name Swanson printed on it. “It took us a little while to get it under control and get over here.”

“Youths throwing down at the Coffee Cubano?” The sheriff raised a single dark eyebrow. “Or was Carmelita giving away free con leches again?”

The young deputies stared down at their shoes, their humiliation so complete that Molly almost felt a little sorry for them.

She also realized why John had allowed none of Mrs. Tifton’s friends but herself into the house. Imagine what Meschelle Davies might do with this piece of information. “Deputies Too Busy Accepting Bribes to Catch High School Thief” was only one of the many headlines Molly could imagine in tomorrow’s Gazette.

“There were no youths throwing down, sir,” the female deputy had the courage to pipe up and say. “But no one was offering free coffee, either. It’s the house alarms, sir. They tend to go off for no reason. Sometimes if the wind blows too strong, they go off. Then we haul ass to get over there, and it’s a false alarm.”

“And was the wind blowing too strong this evening, Deputy Juarez?” John asked in a tone that made Molly thankful she wasn’t Deputy Juarez.

“Well, no, sir,” the deputy responded meekly. “It was a fairly calm evening, weather-wise.”

“Right. Just like I imagine it was fairly calm in the parking lot of the Coffee Cubano. You both wanted to finish your coffees before driving over here to check out what I’m assuming you thought would be another false alarm. But it wasn’t a false alarm, was it?”

Both Swanson and Juarez kept their gaze on the carpet, which, like the couch Molly was sitting on, was pure white, except for several dirty gray footprints that the crime scene techs were measuring, photographing, and tweezing for what Molly assumed were soil samples, though it seemed obvious to her that the dirt had come from Mrs. Tifton’s backyard pool area.

“No, Chief, it wasn’t.” Only Juarez had the courage to reply. “Sorry, Chief.”

“Go write up your reports,” the sheriff said in a stern voice. “And quit calling me Chief.”

Dismissed, the two young deputies hurried away, their heads hanging in shame. John turned his attention back to Mrs. Tifton, who was huddled on the couch beside Molly, sipping a cup of tea, her poodle, Daisy, on her lap. Mrs. Tifton had insisted on making everyone tea, a special herbal blend she’d brought back with her from a yoga trip to India. So far everyone had declined except for Molly, who hadn’t wanted to be impolite.

“So what exactly are we missing here, Mrs. Tifton?” John asked.

“Well, like I told the other officers, I’m not really entirely sure. I know I left my iPad right there.” She touched the low glass coffee table in front of her and Molly, where the tea service sat and where there were several large glossy art books. “And of course now it’s gone. And Norman’s camera—it was a very expensive Leica—it’s gone from the bookshelf over there. And I don’t see my sunglasses. But perhaps I was wearing my sunglasses. Molly, was I wearing my sunglasses? Perhaps they’re in my bag—”

“You were wearing your sunglasses.” Molly laid a gentle hand on the widow’s shoulder. “Remember? You put them on at our table when the sun was in our eyes.”

“Oh, right!” Mrs. Tifton set down her teacup and opened her evening bag, which was on the couch beside her. “Yes, here they are. So he didn’t take my sunglasses. But my iPad and Norman’s Leica are definitely gone. Oh, that’s so upsetting. Norman loved that Leica. You can’t get them like that anymore. It was one of the first digital kind, but pocket-sized. It still worked quite well.”

John nodded and wrote something down in the weatherproof notepad he always seemed to carry, even on nights he was attending a charity ball. Molly tried not to notice how strong his hands looked, or imagine how those hands might feel on various parts of her body.

Fortunately she was spared from these very unprofessional thoughts by another officer she didn’t recognize—this one an older woman with thick dark hair coiled in a tight bun at the nape of her neck and a different-colored uniform than the others—entering the living room from one of the open French doors. She was carrying a paper bag.

“Chief,” she said. “We might have found something.”

The sheriff snapped his notebook shut. “Now that’s what I like to hear. What have you got, Marguerite?”

John stepped across the room to speak with the officer, whose nametag read Sergeant Ruiz. Molly didn’t want to look as if she was eavesdropping, but she also didn’t want to miss a single part of the first criminal investigation in which she’d ever taken part (obviously the search for Baby Aphrodite’s mother didn’t count because she’d already been found and she was clearly not a criminal).

So she asked Mrs. Tifton brightly, “More tea?” and before the old woman could respond, she leaped up to refill her cup, putting herself in a perfect place on the far side of the coffee table to listen to the officers.

“Found it out back,” Sergeant Ruiz was saying in a low voice, opening the paper bag and showing whatever was inside to the sheriff. “It was hanging from some of the bougainvillea along the homeowner’s fence.”

John nodded. “Maybe when he was making a run for it, it got snagged.”

“Would make sense that he’d leave it behind, rather than risk getting caught.”

“But it could be hers.” John nodded at Mrs. Tifton, who’d answered her cell phone (it had been ringing nonstop as news of the break-in spread across the island, and the widow couldn’t be persuaded not to answer it). She was twittering once more about how fortunate it was that she’d taken Daisy with her to the ball, since who knew what that nasty thief might have done to the poor animal if he’d found her there, all alone and defenseless (although Molly had once seen Daisy lunge at a chicken at the library, so she wasn’t entirely sure how defenseless the dog actually was).

Sergeant Ruiz shook her head. “And what, it blew off a wash line? Didn’t see a wash line, and this isn’t really her style. My boy’s got one just like it. This is menswear.”

“One way to find out,” the sheriff said with a shrug, and took the paper bag from her, turning just as Molly was lowering the teapot back onto the coffee table. They almost collided.

She thought she recovered nicely by smiling, hoisting the teapot high, and asking, “Tea, Sheriff?”

He looked at her with a comical expression—comical to her, anyway. His mouth was twisted as if he were trying not to smile—this was a serious situation, after all—but his blue eyes were alight with humor.

“Thank you for the offer, Miss Montgomery, but not right now.” He turned toward the homeowner. “Mrs. Tifton, this was found just now in your backyard. Does it look familiar to you?”

From the paper sack, he withdrew something black, using the pen with which he’d been scribbling in his notepad so as not to taint it with his DNA (or so Molly assumed). It took her a moment to realize that the object was a hoodie.

A black hoodie, exactly like the one Elijah wore nearly every day, despite Little Bridge Island’s heat.

Her heart seemed to skip a beat.

No. No, it wasn’t possible.

“What is it?” Mrs. Tifton asked curiously. “Is it a shirt?”

“It’s a hoodie,” Sergeant Ruiz said. “A men’s hoodie, size small.”

Mrs. Tifton shook her head in bewilderment. “No, that doesn’t belong to me. Or Norman, either. He wore a large. And he’d never have worn such a thing. He liked big, baggy, short-sleeved shirts. And he never wore black. And of course I donated all of his things to the Salvation Army a while back. They were so grateful. They really do need men’s clothing, you know.”

John allowed himself to smile this time. It was a kind and patient smile.

“That’s nice to know, Mrs. Tifton,” he said. “Do you know anyone else who might wear a shirt like this?”

Elijah, Molly thought to herself, feeling a little sick. Elijah wears a shirt like that. But it can’t be his. He’d never do a thing like this.

Except that he’d bragged that he was the High School Thief.

“Not really,” said Mrs. Tifton. “But I suppose I could. I do have an awful lot of friends, especially now that Norman has passed. He didn’t like to socialize much, but now that he’s gone, people have been so nice to me, and I get so many invitations—”

Molly wondered if John was sharing her same thought: that Mrs. Tifton was receiving so many invitations because she was the wealthiest widow in Little Bridge, and everyone wanted her to donate to their cause. But this seemed an ungenerous sentiment and would probably never occur to the sheriff. Mrs. Tifton was also unfailingly bubbly and sweet, which was also why she was so popular.

“—it seems rude not to accept them, so I’ve met so many people, especially young people who might wear a shirt like that. All those young men with the Little Bridge Theater Company, for instance. But you don’t think one of them—?”

“Not at all,” John said mildly. “It was just a thought.”

“Let’s try this,” Sergeant Ruiz said, and, taking the pen from John’s hand, brought the hoodie closer to Mrs. Tifton. “Would you mind taking a sniff, please, Mrs. T?”

Mrs. Tifton looked surprised . . . but she couldn’t have felt half as surprised as Molly, who never in all her crime viewing or reading had heard of a victim being asked to sniff a suspect’s garment. What on earth was wrong with the Little Bridge Sheriff’s Department?

“Smell it?” Mrs. Tifton’s surprise had turned to bewilderment.

“Yes.” Both Sergeant Ruiz and Sheriff Hartwell wore expressions of perfect seriousness. “The olfactory sense is one of the strongest,” Sergeant Ruiz said, “and sometimes scent can trigger memories that we might otherwise have forgotten or have even suppressed.”

Mrs. Tifton glanced uncertainly at Molly, who could only shrug. “It couldn’t hurt,” she said. Except that inside, of course, she was quaking. What if it smelled like Elijah? Mrs. Tifton had never met Elijah—that Molly knew of—but his scent was very distinctive. He doused—doused—himself in body wash and cheap cologne every morning, believing the constant barrage of media advertising that told him and other young males that this would make him more appealing to females. So far, it hadn’t worked. In fact, it seemed to have had the opposite effect.

So her heart was hammering when Mrs. Tifton gave a little laugh and said, “Oh, well, fine,” leaned forward, and sniffed the hoodie.

Molly thought her heart would explode when the widow instantly reared back, wrinkled her nose, and cried, “Ew!” then said, “Oh, my,” and fanned her face.

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.”