when you let me pick the restaurant that meant I also could order anything I wanted.”
“Fine.” Molly took a thirsty gulp. “Excellent choice.”
“Yeah, I know my way around a wine menu.” Meschelle played with the screen on her phone. “I already ordered a few appetizers for us as well. Is it okay if I record this?”
“Sure,” Molly said, widening her eyes as a server approached with an amply filled basket of flatbreads. “So who or what are the Sunshine Kids?”
“Whoa, slow down, sister. Me first. Why do you want to know so badly? Does it have anything to do with what happened today at the new library?”
Molly broke off a piece of one of the flatbreads. It was still warm from the oven and lightly covered in cheese and slivers of olive. Hmmmm. “I already said I can’t talk about what happened today. I promised the—”
“—sheriff, right.” Meschelle rolled her expressive dark eyes. Molly knew that Meschelle was of West African descent because she’d written about it before in the paper. Her skin was as smooth as silk and she wore her hair braided and piled on top of her head out of deference to the heat. She chose a piece of tomato-smeared flatbread from the basket. “Fine. Tell me about the baby.”
Molly gave what she considered a highly detailed but also touching account of how she’d found Baby Aphrodite. By the time she’d finished, the dozen oysters that Meschelle had ordered had arrived, and Meschelle had eaten four of them. She didn’t look very impressed by Molly’s story.
“What’s going on between you and the sheriff?” she asked.
“What?” Molly nearly choked on the oyster she was swallowing. “Nothing. What do you mean?”
“I mean you talk about him a lot. And then you agreed to pay for this lunch, all because you want to know about the Sunshine Kids.”
“What does my interest in the Sunshine Kids have to do with the sheriff?” Molly felt her cheeks beginning to warm. But that was probably because of the wine, and of course the cardigan.
Meschelle reached into her purse, which was a stylish rattan basket, from which hung dozens of brightly colored tassels. “Here, you can read the story I wrote about them last year for the alternative paper we used to have here. It went under due to people on this island having no interest in reading dissident viewpoints. The Gazette wouldn’t let me write about the Sunshine Kids because they didn’t want the tourists getting wind of them.”
Molly took the sheaf of papers Meschelle handed to her. “Why?” she asked breathlessly. “Are they dangerous?”
Meschelle shrugged. “Not particularly. Just annoying. Your sheriff sure seemed to think so. I interviewed him about them, and he called them, and I quote, ‘The most frustrating group of individuals I’ve ever dealt with in my entire career in law enforcement.’”
Molly flipped excitedly through the pages Meschelle had handed her, noting that there were several full-color photos of Sheriff John Hartwell in uniform squinting off into the distance. He looked handsome, but generally disapproving. It was an expression Molly recognized.
“Who are the Sunshine Kids, exactly?” she asked.
“What they sound like. A bunch of kids.” Meschelle dug into the bowl of mussels in white wine sauce that the server had just slid in front of them. “High school and college dropouts, mostly, from up north who come down for the winter to enjoy our warm weather here in Florida, the Sunshine State. They’ve fought with their family or gotten kicked out of school for whatever reason, and now they’re living on the road, usually in a big group.”
“Safety in numbers,” Molly murmured.
Meschelle gave her a stern look over the garlicky mussel she was lifting to her lips. “Now don’t go feeling sorry for them, Molly. That’s another reason the sheriff can’t stand them—none of them are suffering from mental illness or drug addiction, like so many of the homeless you see in your library.”
“Displaced persons,” Molly corrected her.
“What?”
“At the library we don’t call them homeless. We call them displaced persons.”
Meschelle rolled her eyes. “Whatever. These kids aren’t ‘displaced persons.’ I interviewed a bunch of them for my article, and they all had plenty of cash—including credit cards. They live the way they do by choice. They’re kids, remember. They think it’s romantic—like Jack Kerouac in On the Road. They think they’re sticking it to the man by not paying rent—only they’re not camping. Instead, they sponge off someone else’s electricity and Wi-Fi . . . and mortgage. Read my