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