A Bride Before Dawn. Sandra Steffen

      She glanced up and snapped his picture, too. “What can’t you believe?”

      “It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile. He obviously has good taste in women.”

      She wished she didn’t feel so complimented.

      “Would you like to hold him?” he asked.

      She ached to. “Maybe some other time.”

      There was a moment of awkwardness between them. They weren’t a couple anymore, and neither knew what to say. After a few more seconds of uncomfortable silence, Noah picked the baby carrier up by the handle, an effortless shifting of muscles and ease, and said, “I guess I should get this little guy home.” He slipped the strap of the diaper bag over one shoulder then started toward the back door where he’d entered ten minutes earlier.

      Lacey slid her hand inside her pocket. Reassured that her nest egg was still safe and sound, she glanced into the shadowy corners around the room. Goose bumps popped out up and down her arms all over again.

      With her camera suspended from the strap around her neck, her key in one hand and the bowl of spaghetti in the other, she hurried after Noah, locking the door behind her as she left. While he wrestled to secure the car seat properly in the seat of his truck, she started up the stairs.

      “Lacey?” he called when she was halfway to the top.

      She glanced down at him. “Yes?”

      He was looking up at her, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. “I’m glad you’re back. Orchard Hill hasn’t been the same without you.”

      She didn’t have a reply to that because she wasn’t sure how she felt about being back. She climbed the remaining stairs and let herself into the apartment. After putting her camera and the spaghetti away, she stood for a moment catching her breath and willing her heart rate to settle into its rightful rhythm.

      When Noah was gone, she went out again, locking that door, too. She cut through the alley and emerged onto Division Street.

      Orchard Hill was a college town of nearly 25,000 residents. Three seasons of the year, the downtown was teeming with activity. Now that most of the students had gone home for the summer, Division Street had turned into a sleepy hometown main street. That didn’t keep her from looking over her shoulder this afternoon.

      Her first visit was to the electronics store three blocks away where she studied the wide assortment of cell phones before choosing one she could afford. Her first call an hour later on her prepaid, bare-bones cell phone was to the Orchard Hill Police Department. After all, it was one thing to be unafraid of things that went bump in the night and another thing to ignore evidence that somebody had gotten into a locked tavern and slipped out again with barely a trace.

      Lacey knew how a shadow felt.

      She’d waited an hour for the police cruiser to arrive. Now she wasn’t letting the man in blue out of her sight.

      She’d shown Officer Pratt the sleeping bag and cue stick, and explained the situation as best she could. She answered his questions then remained an unwavering six feet behind him as he checked the perimeter of the tavern inside and out.

      A tall man with thinning gray hair, he didn’t seem to mind having a shadow. He painstakingly rattled windows, inspected sashes, jiggled locks and shone his silver flashlight into corners, behind doors and inside both restrooms.

      After examining the doors and dead bolts and finding that nothing seemed to have been disturbed, he returned to the pool table where the narrow sleeping bag now lay. “You’ve never seen this before today?” he asked.

      Lacey shook her head.

      “Are you sure you didn’t give out any keys to anybody? An old boyfriend, maybe?”

      He was only doing his job, so she answered his question. “I had new dead bolts installed after my father passed away. Nobody has a key except me. I know I locked the doors yesterday because I had to unlock them this afternoon before I could get in.”

      He turned the narrow sleeping bag upside down and gave it a little shake. A plastic bottle of water rolled out, across the floor. With a great creaking of his hips and knees, he squatted down to reach it. Hauling himself back to his feet, he unscrewed the top.

      “Do you wear pink lipstick?” he asked, holding the bottle toward the light.

      She shook her head and took a closer look, too. The clear plastic bottle was half-full. She recognized the brand of sparkling spring water as one sold locally, but the pale pink shade of the lip print around the top didn’t look familiar to her at all.

      “Frankly,” Officer Pratt said, “I’m stumped. Nothing inside the tavern has been taken, broken, meddled with, defaced or damaged in any way. Judging from the size of the sleeping bag and the pink print on the bottle, it’s safe to assume we’re dealing with a female. I don’t know how she got in and out, or why. The windows are all intact and the locks appear secure. It looks to me as if we have a Houdini on our hands. I’d call it breaking and entering, except nothing’s been broken. Other than the sleeping bag and water bottle, there’s not even any evidence that an actual trespassing has occurred. It feels more like a mystery than a crime, doesn’t it?”

      He capped his pen and closed his book, obviously finished here. She followed him to the door, where she said, “Then you’re not going to do anything?”

      “There’s nothing more I can do,” he said. “I’ll make a note of your call and the subsequent findings for my report, and I’ll have a patrol car drive by periodically if it’ll make you feel better. Call the department if you notice anything else or if she comes back, but I don’t think she will.”

      She thanked the policeman for coming. After he was gone, she put the cap back on the bottle and started to gather the sleeping bag into a heap for the trash. Something made her stop short of the trash can.

      She hadn’t heard any news reports about recent serial killers wearing pink lip gloss and sleeping under pool tables. Officer Pratt said it himself. The entire situation felt more like a mystery than a crime.

      Crimes were frightening, but mysteries were, well, mysterious. The goose bumps that had been popping up all over her body dissolved. Rather than throw the items away, she shook out the bedroll and refolded it, then put it back where she’d found it under the pool table, the bottle of water with its cap screwed on tight beside it.

      After cataloging everything in her mind, she turned out the lights and locked the tavern’s back door. As she climbed the stairs to her apartment, she wondered if Officer Pratt was right, and whoever had visited the tavern was long gone, never to return.