Cranberry Bluff (14 page)

Molly cleared the last of the Monday morning breakfast dishes from the table and carried them into the kitchen. Bryce followed, mug of coffee in hand.

“What will the guests think of you being in the kitchen?” Molly said.

“I’m not worried about that,” Bryce laughed. “But if
you
are, we can arrange a clandestine meeting under a water tower or maybe with a bottle of wine and blanket out on the bluff.”

Molly smiled with her back to him. He was breaking down her defenses, whether she wanted him to or not. Not only was he attractive, but he seemed like one of the good guys. It had been a long time since she felt she could trust anyone. It felt good, comforting. For the last few months, she’d wondered if she’d ever be able to trust anyone again.

“I’m just giving you a hard time,” Molly said. “I don’t think the guests will care or even notice. Susie and Dan have their newlywed bliss out in the barn suite, Sadie is undoubtedly on her way shopping again and Mr. Miller is checking out this morning. No one’s concerned with what I do after breakfast. This is the time I usually get my office work done, and after checkout, I run errands. Guests don’t pay much attention to where I am or who I’m with.”

“Any arrivals tonight?” Bryce asked. He emptied his coffee mug and set it on the kitchen counter, leaning over the sink and looking out into the backyard.

“None,” Molly said. “We’ll just have Sadie and the Jensens for the wine hour, since Mr. Miller is leaving this morning. And they all check out tomorrow.”

“Any new guests tomorrow?” Bryce asked. He turned away from the window and leaned back against the counter facing Molly. She felt herself blush. She’d been so caught up in the tension of the bank robbery that she hadn’t realized until now that the other guests were checking out; Bryce was staying a few more days; no other guests were due to arrive until the following week
.
She would be alone in the inn with possible trouble, and not the robber-chasing variety.

“I take that as a ‘no.’ Then I think a dinner out is in order,” Bryce said. “How about tomorrow night?”

“To discuss the case, you mean,” Molly said, though she knew the invitation had little to do with the case.

“Of course,” Bryce said. His voice was calm.

Molly made the mistake of glancing at him. If she hadn’t, she could have missed the teasing grin on his face. The man knew exactly how he affected her. How many women had fallen under his spell in the past? She hated to even guess.

“I was thinking about trying that restaurant called Ocean,” Bryce said. “It seems to be the hip place to go around here.”

“Well, I don’t know if anything around here would be described as ‘hip’ exactly,” Molly laughed. “But Ocean may be as close to ‘hip’ as it gets in Cranberry Cove.”

“You recommend it to guests,” Bryce pointed out.

“Yes, I do,” Molly said, “because of the feedback I receive when my guests dine there. The comments I get help me to recommend restaurants, stores and interesting sites to future guests. I haven’t been to Ocean, but Susie and Dan went there and said it was great.”

“Interesting couple,” Bryce said. “I’ll bet honeymooners make reservations at the inn way in advance.”

“They usually do,” Molly said. “Though Susie didn’t. She only called a few days ago. She told me there was some kind of last minute change in their honeymoon plans. She was delighted I had an opening.”

“I imagine she was.” Bryce’s tone was nonchalant. “Well, some people are quite spur-of-the-moment, I suppose.” Molly barely heard him and passed the comment off as unimportant.

“I keep guest books in the rooms where visitors can write down their impressions of the inn and the area. They write down what they liked, what they’d recommend to other guests. It’s sort of a bed and breakfast tradition. Quite a few visitors have left positive comments about Ocean.”

“I’ll have to keep that in mind and add something myself,” Bryce said. “So far I’m quite taken with some of the charms of the inn itself.”

“You’re speaking of the wine and cheese, I’m sure.”

“Of course,” Bryce said, smiling. “I would come back just for that afternoon social hour. Multiple visits, I believe. In fact, I think I’ll plan to do just that.”

“Return guests are always welcome at Cranberry Cottage Bed and Breakfast.” Molly smiled.

“Maybe some guests are more welcome than others?” Bryce took a step closer to Molly, leaning one elbow on the counter.

Molly closed her eyes as the familiar scent of pine and spice struck her senses.

“Maybe,” she admitted. It was getting more difficult to resist the man with every comment he threw out. Still, she stepped back and pulled herself together.

“However,” Molly said, “we’re still on
this
visit and I believe we have a bank robbery to solve.”

“Yes, you’re right about that,” Bryce said. The switch in his focus was immediate.
He must be very good at solving cases
, Molly thought, watching the serious look wash away the former flirtatious manner. She certainly hoped he was.

“We’ll get this figured out, Molly,” Bryce said. “I promise.”

“I hope so,” Molly said. “I hate the feeling I’m on the run when there’s nothing I should have to run from.”

“So is that a yes for dinner tomorrow night at Ocean?”

“Sure,” Molly said. “Why not? And, Bryce…”

“Yes?” He stopped in the kitchen door and looked back at Molly.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Bryce said, smiling as he left the kitchen.

Molly turned back to the sink and began to rinse out coffee cups. Thanking Bryce hardly seemed enough, but it was a start. Hopefully he would be able to help. She was innocent, so she had nothing to hide. There was no harm in trusting him because there wasn’t anything he could find that would work against her.

Molly sighed. Deep in her heart, she had known that coming to Cranberry Cove wasn’t going to end the problems. Still, it had been a good decision. It had given her distance after things fell apart in Tallahassee. Even the few months she’d been running the bed and breakfast had given her a chance to relax and regroup.

She’d been ready for a change, anyway. Fate tended to work in strange ways, one event becoming a catalyst to another. Granted, she would rather have skipped the whole bank robbery scenario. Certainly there could have been less dramatic situations to jumpstart her move. But it had happened the way it had.

Molly finished the last bit of breakfast clean up and moved to her office. She returned a message from the answering machine, an elderly couple looking for a quaint place to stay while starting off on retirement travels. It was one of the things Molly enjoyed most about running the inn, seeing the variety of circumstances that sent people to the area. It was like catching glimpses of personal photo albums. Each stay was a snapshot in time of someone’s life.

She heard someone coming down the stairs, and soon found Mr. Miller standing before her desk, room key in hand.

“Checking out, I see,” Molly said, handing him a receipt she’d prepared ahead of time, along with the traditional copy of Aunt Maggie’s “Cranberry Cottage Cookbook.”

“Yes, I’m leaving now,” Mr. Miller said. He set the room key down and took the receipt. He rejected the cookbook with a quick shake of his head.

Molly picked up the key and placed it in a cubbyhole inside the desk.

“I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay,” she said.

“It was everything I expected it to be,” Mr. Miller said. He clutched his briefcase close to his side. His monotone voice left Molly at a loss for a response.

“Well, then, that’s good,” Molly said, finally.
I think
, she added to herself.

“Thank you,” Mr. Miller said. “I’ll be going now.”

Molly watched him walk to the front door and step onto the front porch. As he turned around to pull the door closed, she was almost certain she saw him smile.
Strange little man
, she thought to herself, not for the first time. She reached for her purse, put on her jacket and left thoughts of Mr. Miller behind as she headed into town to run errands.

Susie rummaged through the bookshelves in the library. Time was running out. Molly could be back from afternoon errands soon. Dan could get bored and come looking for her. Luckily, Sadie had dragged Bryce into town to check out Eleanor’s. And thank heavens that weird guest Mr. Miller was already gone. He gave her the creeps, though she’d never been able to put her finger on exactly why. Probably one of those past life things, she thought. If a person believed in all that malarkey.

She’d been through five rows already, removing each book, shaking it out and replacing it on the shelf. Three rows remained, all of them high above the floor. It made more sense that the money would be hidden on a top shelf, but she’d taken a shot at the lower ones first. For one thing, the most obvious hiding place was often the least likely. For another, she was too short to reach the upper shelves.

Failing to find anything within the lower rows, she poked around the office and kitchen areas, finally locating a three-tiered step stool. She carried it to the library, locked the door and started in on the upper shelves.

Thirty minutes later, she was convinced the library was a dead end. The shelves held books and nothing else. She checked underneath a throw rug, behind picture frames, and inside an antique china cabinet. No hidden compartments, no trap doors.

Susie rolled the rug back down and opened the library back up. Taking the step stool back to the kitchen, she weighed her options. She’d already checked the downstairs guest rooms, though they’d never been a serious consideration. Hiding anything in a room where strangers would come and go made no sense. Even the library was a long shot. But it had deserved a chance just because of the sheer number of possibilities.

She tried to put herself in Molly’s place to figure out where she might have hidden the money. It was a long stretch for a clever sleuth-slash-criminal to get into the mindset of a plain office girl who took advantage of a fluke opportunity. What kind of mind would be capable of switching gears so quickly, aside from hers, of course? Ah, there it was. They had more in common than physical size.

Susie had a sudden, sickening thought. Was it possible that Molly had been in on it from the start? That would mean that Al had set her up. No, after all the years she’d worked for him, she couldn’t believe he’d do that. She was too valuable to him for future work. And, from everything she’d seen of Molly, the girl just didn’t have it in her. How it was that she’d caught Bryce’s attention was beyond comprehension.

The wave of bitterness that accompanied that thought filled her with renewed energy. She made a quick pass through the inside of the inn again. Wherever Molly had hidden the money, it wasn’t inside.

Susie slipped out the front door and down the pathway to the Cottage Suite. Cracking the door open, she heard Dan’s snoring before she even stepped inside the room. She pulled the door closed and looked through the back garden. Unless she wanted to start digging up the ground, there was no place to search.

She circled around the back corner of the building and checked the electrical box. That was pointless, she realized as she shut the cover. No one would hide money where a meter reader would find it. Moving along, she rolled a large potted container to the side, checking for a recessed area beneath it, but to no avail. Two additional potted arrangements yielded the same thing: nothing.

Which is when she came to the wooden tool shed, halfway between the front and rear yards. The tiny, nondescript side yard was so insignificant that she had missed it completely.

Glancing around, she reassured herself she was alone. Shrubbery blocked the view from outside the property, and the shed was too low to be seen from inside the inn. And the shed was small. She’d be able to search it quickly and still have time to freshen up before the wine and cheese hour.

She wasted no time pulling the latch to the side and opening both doors. Inside the shed, two rows of wooden planks held garden tools, while bags of fertilizer and potting soil lined the floor. A shovel, rake and hoe leaned against the right hand corner. A spray bottle for water hung from a hook inside one of the doors. It was a ridiculous place to hide money, which made it a perfect place.

Susie ran her hands along the top shelf, shifting tools from side to side, but found nothing below or behind them. The lower shelf yielded the same result. Flattening her palms under the shelf, the wood was smooth to the right and center, but her hand struck a lump of tape, to the left. She fiddled around the tape with her fingers until it peeled back. Her hopes soared as she felt a metal object beneath her fingertips, thinking it might be a key to a safe. But those thoughts deflated just as quickly when she pulled it out and found it was a common house key. Of course Molly would have a spare key hidden. She was just that sort of obnoxious, organized personality.

Susie replaced the key, attempting to press the tape against it securely, but it didn’t hold. The key tumbled and fell behind the bags of fertilizer. Frustrated, Susie reached down to retrieve it and froze. The key balanced on the handle of a box. Gardening tools, perhaps? Seed packets? Or could it finally be what she was searching for?

She retrieved the key, placed it on top of the lower shelf and lifted the box out from behind the bag. Setting it on the ground, she paused before opening it. If it contained nothing but miscellaneous supplies, she’d wasted more time. The entire trip could even have been pointless, worse than pointless, really, considering she’d had to deal with Dan all weekend.

The plastic slide latch was easy to pull aside. Not even a lock on the box, Susie mused. How foolish. Even worse, it was discouraging. The likelihood of money being hidden, but not locked up, was slim. But as she lifted the lid and inspected the interior of the box, she gasped. Bundles of hundred dollar bills were carefully stacked side-by-side below an empty, upper tray. She had been right all along. Molly was the thief.

Susie needed to think quickly. She could try to move it to the car while Dan was still napping. No, that wouldn’t be smart. Anyone could see her walking to the street. Besides, she needed to take advantage of finding the money at Molly’s, as she had planned all along. Once Molly was found with the money, the case would be solved and she could shop to her heart’s content with the rather large portion that wouldn’t be recovered. Not only would Al be off her back, but Molly would get what she deserved.

Playing it safe was the best bet. She latched the lid on the box, replaced it behind the bag and scanned the interior of the tool shed. Everything looked the same as when she first entered it. Leaving the stash, she closed up the shed and returned to the barn suite. She’d return later to siphon off her share.