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Quinn pulled open the glass door, just managing to keep it from slamming back shut. The clean, cold sea breeze fluttered lace doilies and rustled the pages of old books. “Do you have some place you can stay tonight?”

“I’m staying upstairs. In Uncle C.’s apartment.”

Quinn grimaced. “Maybe not a great idea.”

Andy’s heart sank. “You think someone’s going to try again?”

“It wouldn’t be smart.”

Before Andy could respond, Quinn added, “But most criminals aren’t smart.”

“Okay, but the truth is, I still don’t know what’s going on. You’ve come up with a completely different theory than the police, and it’s pretty much based on guesswork.”

“Informed guesswork.”

“Maybe, but aren’t the police going by informed guesswork?”

Quinn’s smile was grim. “One hopes. But informed guesswork is based on experience. I don’t know how much experience Millard has with crime that doesn’t involve drunks or delinquents.”

That was Andy’s fear as well. The problem was, hedidn’thave a safe place to stay. Well, there was Clark’s lukewarm offer of sanctuary, but Andy would almost rather risk life and limb.

As if reading his thoughts, Quinn said, “I’ll tell you what worries me. We have no idea what the intruder was after. But whatever he was after, he was willing to try for it a second time.”

Andy swallowed. “Yeah, that occurred to me too.”

Quinn continued inexorably, “And whatever it is, he’s willing to kill to get it.”

Chapter Six

On that happy thought, Andy closed the door behind Quinn and locked it.

He did not watch Quinn walk away. Did not try to follow his journey down the wind-blown, rain-speckled street. He turned his attention to more pressing matters, and considered the rickety old lock in the rickety old doorknob.

Never mind picking the lock. A couple of good shakes of that doorknob would probably give anyone entrance to the shop.

It was too late to head over to the hardware store now, but first thing tomorrow, he would buy and install new locks for the doors and windows. Historical significance be damned.

Of course, they were all assuming that the same person had tried twice to break into Time in a Bottle, and that might not be accurate. Even if the first break-in had been planned and a particular item in the shop targeted, the second break-in could have been exactly as Ruthanne theorized: a crime of opportunity. Someone, believing the shop to be unattended, had tried to get inside for whatever illegal purpose.

True, it was quite a coincidence that in fifty years no one had attempted to burglarize the shop, and now there were two separate tries in two days, but coincidences did happen. Just look at the coincidence of Quinn Rafferty returning home at the same time that Andy showed up.

But was that actually coincidence or just terrifically lousy timing?

Andy returned to the back office. The Robert W. Jones antique floor safe was backed against the wall in the corner behind Uncle C.’s desk. Hiding in plain sight.

The safe was twenty-two inches wide, thirty-three inches tall, on wheels, and about as heavy and uncooperative as a babyelephant. The wheels were not in good repair, and moving that hefty storage box would require at least two people, probably three—and the joke would be on them because the safe never had more than one hundred dollars inside. Andy knelt and gave the dial a couple of tentative twists. He fully expected that in four years the combination would have been changed, but nope. A couple of turns of the faded dial, and the latch clicked.

Andy let out a breath and pulled open the heavy door.

At first, he thought the safe was empty. The small cubbyhole at the top of the narrow wooden shelves on the left was locked, but it had always been locked. According to Uncle C., the key for the compartment had been missing when he’d purchased the safe. The small row of open shelves on the left appeared to be empty. Then Andy noticed something rectangular and flat lying on the carpeted floor of the safe. He reached in and drew out an old book bound in brick-brown cloth stamped with gilt letters which read:Treasure Island.

Wow. He’d nearly forgotten. But this had been one of his favorite books growing up. Uncle C. had first read it to him, and he could still remember his uncle’s thin, ascetic face in the lamplight, that little twinkle in his eyes. He would only have been in his forties then, but he’d seemed elderly to six-year-old Andy.

“I have only one thing to say to you, sir … if you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!”

Andy grinned. Yes, he remembered the book, and those early visits with Uncle C., very well.

A crisp, white envelope was tucked beneath the front board. The envelope was stamped with the logo of Pratt & Penby, Uncle C.’s lawyers.