Page 22 of No Offense

“No, you may not. Whoever left it meant for the baby to have it, not you. Listen, honey, I don’t have time for dance practice today, I have an actual crime to solve.”

Katie snorted. “Oh, as opposed to a fake crime like all those burglaries that keep happening around town?”

He glared at her, not finding the joke funny. “Exactly. In fact, the two might be connected. So if you could just scoot on home—” Then something dawned on him. “Hey, wait a minute. How did you even get here?”

She rolled her eyes. “Duh, Dad. Uber.”

“You Ubered?”

“Yes, Dad, Mom set up an Uber account for me. She said it was the least she could do, considering how busy you are and the fact that she isn’t around and you’re the one who has to drive me everywhere. Remember?”

He did dimly remember discussing something along those lines with Christina, and even agreeing to it.

But now, seeing the plan in action, he did not like it one bit.

“I don’t want you alone in cars with strange men you don’t know, especially dressed like that.”

“God, Dad.” She rolled her eyes, as she did at nearly everything he said these days. “Could you be more nineteenth century? All of the drivers are superprofessional because they want a good rating and tip. And besides, you’ve been teaching me self-defense since I was five. Can we just drop it and get to what’s important? How am I going to teach you to dance if you don’t even show up to practice?”

He thought about this, and how woefully underqualified he was to raise a teenage daughter. He wondered if the parents of the girl Molly Montgomery had found in the new library had felt the same way, and if that’s how she’d ended up in her current predicament. Had she gotten pregnant and run away (or been kicked out of the house), or become pregnant while on the road? Was Larry Beckwith III aka Dylan Dakota the father of her baby? Was he the one who’d put that newborn in an empty trash-bag box and left her in a toilet stall for Molly Montgomery to find?

If he was, John would find a way to make his existence here on earth a living hell. Once he was in jail, John wouldassign him to beachcombing duty, making sure he was out there in his bright orange coveralls raking up seaweed in the blinding sun every day from sunrise to sunset.

Molly, he thought, would know all the right things to say to Katie. Molly was a children’s specialist. It said so, right on the signature line of that Facebook entry she’d written, instructing the entire town to call the infant Baby Aphrodite.

“I have an idea,” John said, smiling suddenly at his daughter, who’d gone sulky at the implication that she wasn’t old enough to handle Uber on her own and was now picking black polish off her nails and letting the flakes fall onto his floor, a habit he found irritating.

She did not look up from her nails. “What.”

“Let’s go to the library.”

This made her lift her head in astonishment. “Why would we dothat?”

“They have books to teach you how to dance, don’t they?” He was already getting up from his chair. “And videos.”

Katie did not stir from her seat. “Dad. They have videos online. For free.”

“Everything is free at the library, too. You just have to apply for a card. It’s my fault, really, I should have gotten you one a long time ago. Let’s go.”

Katie unfolded herself reluctantly from the visitor’s chair. “This isn’t about you wanting to check out books on how to dance. This is about the Baby Aphrodite case, isn’t it?”

He glanced at his reflection in the mirror, just to make sure his hair was all right. He’d had it cut recently over atthe barbershop—regulation length—but you could never be too sure. It was streaked with gray here and there—depressing, but only to be expected with a teenage daughter and a job like his—but otherwise, he thought he looked okay.

“No, no,” he said, tightening his tie. “I really want to learn, Katie. And you know books are the best way to learn anything.”

She was unimpressed. “If you need to do something for the case, Dad, all you have to do is say so. Especially if it’s for Baby Aphrodite. You know the whole town is backing you on this one. Not like the High School Thief, who some people are thinking of as a kind of Robin Hood.”

He threw her a startled glance. “They are?”

She picked up her backpack and shrugged. “Well, yeah. He robs from the rich—the people who live in that area—and the naive—who else would keep their doors unlocked? I heard some of them keep the back doors by their pools wide open to let in the night air. They’re practicallyaskingto get robbed, if you ask me. And the thief only takes little things, like sunglasses and wallets and laptops and stuff. He never takes things that hold sentimental value, like jewelry.”

John frowned at her. “Some people feel quite sentimental about their wallets, Katie, and their laptops, too, especially if they have financial information on them and haven’t backed them up.”

She rolled her eyes—again—and gave another shrug. “Well, what kind of idiot doesn’t back up their computer?I’m just saying, kids at school think the thief is kind of cool.”

On this disheartening note, they left the sheriff’s department, but only after John issued a firm warning that no one was to touch the stuffed dolphin in his office, to which Marguerite replied with a weary “Whatever you say, Chief.”

The ride to the old library was unpleasant, since the middle and elementary schools in the area were also just letting out, so John and Katie were caught in what counted in Little Bridge as a traffic jam—an extra two minutes sitting at the stoplight, waiting for people to make their turns. Everyone was on their best behavior, however, because they saw the sheriff’s vehicle behind them, and John didn’t catch a single one of them failing to use their turn signal, something he knew would not have happened had he been back in their old neighborhood in Miami.