Page 28 of No Offense

But Pete wasn’t a local. A native New Yorker who also happened to be an avid windsurfer, he’d come to Little Bridge on vacation a dozen years earlier, surfed the reef once, and decided to cash in his return ticket.

To say that he was eccentric would be an understatement, but he’d never lost a case... except against Beckwith.

“I’m a gangster.” Pete handed John his beer.

“I didn’t know this was a dress-up party.”

“It’s not.” Pete was drinking a bottled craft beer. John wondered, as he often did, what was wrong with regular beer. “My admin told me it was, though, and that everyone was supposed to dress like it was the Roaring Twenties. Turns out she got some bad intel.”

“Oh,” John said, and sipped his beer. It wasn’t that bad. “It’s good to see you here, Pete, even if you do look sort of stupid in that outfit.”

“Same to you, John. What’s the latest with your mortal enemy, that Beckwith kid?”

“The latest is that we can’t find him. But we will.”

Pete sipped his own beer. “You know he has to be long gone by now.”

“I don’t think so. Those Sunshine snots don’t believe in wasting fossil fuels traveling by car. They only ever travelby bus and I already sent all the bus companies Be On The Lookouts for him, so he’s not getting out of here that way. Same with TSA and the ferry companies.”

“Oh, come on, John. That kid could easily, at any time, slip onto a private boat and sail right out of here, and none of us would know.”

“Fine.” John drank some more of his beer. “You’re probably right. Boat’s the way he’s going to go. But what good is it going to do him? I’ve got his prints all over that media room. I sent the mug shot from his previous arrest, for the MTV house thing, to every law enforcement agency in the state. Wherever he goes, someone’s going to nab him for something, and eventually he’ll end up back with me.”

Pete shook his head. “For what? All you’ve got on him is vandalism. You’ll need more than that if you intend to keep him.”

“He took that girl’s baby, Pete,” John said, staring ahead at nothing. “He took it, and he left the mother to die.”

“Well, prove it. Prove it, or—”

“Sheriff!” John was pounded hard on his back by someone and nearly spilled his beer. “You gonna beat everyone again this year in cornhole?”

John turned to see several city commissioners, a former mayor, and Randy Jamison, the city planner.

“I’m gonna try,” John said, in a falsely jovial tone.

He disliked all of them, because as far as city safety went, they were corrupt and also incompetent.

But for Jamison, the city planner, who turned down every request he received that might lead to low-incomehousing being built, John reserved special contempt. The island had been overcrowded before last year’s hurricane, but now it was even worse.

Jamison seemed interested only in allowing projects to move forward that might line his own pockets (Jamison’s son-in-law owned one of the island’s only plumbing businesses), not ones that could help reduce overcrowding and therefore crime.

“Ha-ha,” cried Jamison, who was smoking a cigar—Cuban, John could tell. “Last year I damned near kicked John’s butt in cornhole, didn’t I, Pete?”

But John was no longer listening. That’s because, over the city planner’s shoulder, he’d seen something. Not just something, but someone. It was Molly Montgomery, standing in the buffet line, looking magical in a black dress that shimmered when she moved.

What was she doing here? He hadn’t expected to see her. Now his heart was unaccountably racing at the sight of her. The last time he’d seen her, he’d made a fool of himself, getting so upset over her talking to that film crew from Miami, and then admitting that he’d come to the library in search of how-to-dance books and DVDs.

But why did he care what she thought of him? She was only a citizen. A very attractive citizen, it was true, especially in that dress, which wasn’t formfitting at all, but still clung to her body in such a way—

“Hartwell!”

John turned to look at Jamison, who had evidently asked a question to which he hadn’t replied.

“What?”

“I asked how it’s going with the search for Baby Aphrodite’s mother.”

“Oh,” John said, noticing that Molly Montgomery had reached the end of the buffet line and was moving with Mrs. Tifton toward one of the outdoor tables overlooking the sunset and the beach. “Fine. Just fine.”