“Yes, Mrs. Cheeseman?” she asked.

“Oh, Miss Molly.” Mrs. Cheeseman steered her five-year-old daughter, Bella, back toward the play table. “There’s something wrong with the last stall in the girls’ room. The door is locked, but no one is in there. I couldn’t see anyone’s feet, and no one answered when I knocked.”

Molly forced a smile onto her face.

“Of course, Mrs. Cheeseman,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

Molly had already sensed from Mrs. Cheeseman’s expression that it wasn’t a lack of toilet paper or liquid soap that was upsetting her, but something of a more dire nature. The average citizen would probably be surprised to learn how often librarians—many of whom had masters degrees—were called upon to dispose of diapers or unclog toilets, though this was not listed anywhere in their job description. It usually happened because no one else would do it. The cleaning staff at Molly’s library, for instance, stated that union regulations would not allow them near biohazardous materials, which all bodily fluids were considered.

Therefore, if a diaper was not properly disposed of, Molly, as head of her department, was usually forced to dispose of it herself, since she could not bear asking a subordinate to clean up for her any more than she could bear the mess.

The fact that the door to the stall was jammed told Molly that they were facing a DEFCON 2–level diaper situation, or possibly worse. Worse could include an intoxicated or sleeping displaced person. Little Bridge Island was a charming resort town in South Florida, known for its year-round warm weather. . . .

But that same warm weather drew a large indigent population who occasionally used the restrooms of the local library for purposes for which they hadn’t necessarily been designed.

Molly’s fake smile disappeared the moment she hit the girls’ room. She winced at her reflection in the large mirror above the three sinks beside the hideous orange metal bathroom stalls, surrounded by equally hideous orange tiles that had not been updated since the nineties. She’d been working so hard all morning to set up her program, she hadn’t yet had a chance to check her mascara, which had flaked and given her raccoon eyes.

It didn’t help that since moving to Little Bridge she’d been staying up way too late—even when she didn’t have to—watching true crime shows, eating ice cream in bed, and trying not to go on Instagram and look at the photos her ex’s new fiancée, Ashley, had posted of their engagement party. Molly couldn’t believe that Eric had gotten engaged already. Should she write to Ashley and warn her what she was getting herself into? It was possible she had no idea the kind of person Eric truly was. It had taken several years for Molly to find out, after all.

But what if Ashley knew and liked that kind of thing? What if she couldn’t wait to quit her job and spend the rest of her life cooking and cleaning for Eric (as it had turned out he’d expected Molly to do)?

Molly should have been relieved at her lucky escape. Instead, she had dark circles under her eyes and had somehow managed to smear white cookie frosting across the front of her new blouse. There appeared to be some in her hair, as well.

Oh, God. Maybe she really was turning into a cliché of a spinster librarian, like her sister was always saying. She didn’t even have the guts to call the cops on a child.

But how could she? Part of her job was to help and protect children.

And anyway, spinsters were cool. The word descended from the late Middle English and originally meant a “woman who spins,” a respectable occupation for any woman, and one that was usually so profitable, the woman needn’t marry at all if she chose not to. It was only later that the term became derisive.

“Hello?”

Molly was sure she’d heard a noise . . . a sort of snuffling sound, similar to a sob.

There was, of course, a third reason the stall door could be locked: not someone passed out or trying to hide a mess about which they were embarrassed, but a child—a child sitting on the toilet, her little legs too short for her feet to reach the floor. Molly occasionally found one sulking—sometimes even reading—in the stalls when she went to check the restrooms before locking up at night.

When asked why they chose to sit there instead of in the (admittedly well-worn) furniture provided for this purpose in one of the reading rooms, the answer was always, “I wanted to be alone.”

How well Molly understood the sentiment.

“Hi, it’s Miss Molly, the children’s librarian,” she said in a gentle voice through the stall door. “I don’t want to disturb you. I just want to make sure you’re all right. If you say you are, I’ll leave you alone.”

No answer. Just another faint snuffle.

Molly hadn’t been hired to babysit or clean, but most days, she found herself doing both in some capacity. It was the price she paid in order to do what she loved for a living.

So, with a sigh, she dropped to the restroom floor—ancient linoleum, but mostly unstained, since the cleaning crew mopped it every night—and peeked beneath the foot-and-a-half-wide gap between the bottom of the stall door and the floor.

There was no one in the stall.

There was, however, a fairly large box of industrial-sized trash bags sitting on the toilet seat. The snuffling seemed to be coming from inside it.

Molly’s heart began to pound with excitement. Her first thought—ludicrously, she realized in retrospect—was Kittens!

Someone had left a box of adorable kittens for her to find in the bathroom.

Why not? Everyone knew that Molly loved cats, and she’d been lobbying for a resident library cat ever since her arrival. The only reason the rest of the staff had vetoed the idea was because of the move. It made sense to wait until they were in the new building.

Still, it wouldn’t be her fault if someone decided the library was the perfect place to leave their cat’s litter.

Swiftly, fantasizing about what she was going to name the kittens—of course they’d keep only one; it was difficult to rationalize having more than one library cat, with the number of patrons claiming dander allergies—Molly slid beneath the stall door and awkwardly climbed to her feet, then peered into the box.

But instead of the adorably fluffy black-and-white or even orange tabby kittens that Molly was expecting to see, she saw a doll swaddled in a blue-and-white beach towel.

Oh, no, she thought, lifting the edge of the towel to get a better look at the doll. I’ll have to find this doll’s owner. She’s going to miss her—

It was only when the doll moved that Molly realized what she was truly seeing.

And suddenly, for the first time in her career, she found herself calling the police because of a child.

Chapter Two

John

Sheriff John Hartwell was having lunch at the Mermaid Café when the call came through.

Specifically, he had been trying to decide between a Harpooner—a half pound of Grade A ground beef with bacon, grilled onions, and your choice of cheese—or a Mermaid chopped salad.

Obviously the salad was the healthier option, though he wasn’t entirely sure about the blue cheese and bacon.

What he really wanted was the signature bone-in rib eye over at Island Steak House, but they weren’t open for lunch, and besides, Doctor Alvarez had warned him that he needed to start eating cleaner. His weight was fine, but his cholesterol wasn’t, and if it continued on this trajectory, the doctor had said, he’d soon have to go on medication.

What John hadn’t mentioned to the doctor was his suspicion that it wasn’t his eating habits that were causing his cholesterol levels to go up, but stress. Like the recent spate of home burglaries over by the old high school—not so unusual given that half the island’s residents neglected to lock their doors at night (or at any other time).

Even his living situation was stressful—more stressful, in fact, than being the youngest sheriff in the history of Little Bridge, or the bar fights he frequently had to break up over at Ron’s Place. John would happily take a drunken brawl over being a single parent to a teenage daughter any day.

“Hi, Sheriff.” Bree Beckham, the Mermaid’s most popular waitress—thanks to her bright pink hair and even brighter smile—came up to the counter to wait on him. “What’ll it be today? Burger?”

John looked down at the menu and sighed. Who was he kidding? He was never going to eat a salad, not even one with locally caught shrimp.

Bree seemed to sense his dilemma. “How about the fish sandwich?”

Well, that was a nice compromise, just in case the doctor was right. “What’s the fish today?” John asked.

“Yellowtail,” Bree said, with an approving nod at John’s caution. “Caught fresh this morning. We can fry, blacken, or grill it for you.”

John was saved from having to grapple with this decision—obviously he’d prefer it fried, but neither his daughter, Katie, nor his doctor would like this—when his radio crackled.

“Chief,” Marguerite, over at the station, said. “You at the Mermaid?”

“’Scuse me, Bree,” John murmured, and lifted the hand radio on his shoulder to his mouth. “Yes, I am, Marg. And stop calling me Chief. What’ve you got?”

“Sorry, Sheriff. Craziest thing. We just got a call about a baby being abandoned in one of the bathrooms over at the library. EMTs are already on their way, but—”