“Oh, bless your heart, Marnette, I’m sure we won’t have any confusion as long as you supervise your son,” Frankie said, smiling sweetly. She nodded toward the candy wrapper on the table. Marnette’s eyes landed on it and her face went two shades paler under her makeup. Frankie smirked. Clearly, Marnette was aware of her son’s penchant for tongue-dissolving confectionery.
Marnette spat, “My Jared has never gone near your silly funeral home! Not for years! Ever since the unpleasantness at Uncle Murney’s service, we bury all of our people with Oakerson’s.”
Frankie rolled her eyes. Several people were turning in their seats, staring. This had escalated quickly.
“I’m aware that you don’t bury your people with us. Thank you for saving us the trouble.”
“Just be sure you remember who signs your checks, Frankie. My husband, that’s who.”
Eric’s eyebrows lifted, even as Frankie snorted and sipped her milkshake. “Yes, I will keep that in mind, Marnette. Always a pleasure.”
Marnette turned to Eric, all sweetness and light. “Sheriff, are you all settled in?”
Eric cleared his throat. “Um, yes, ma’am.”
“Well, we hope you make yourself right at home for as long as you’re in office. And that you make friends with the right sort of people,” she said, glancing at Frankie. “Might help you hold on to that office a little longer.”
Eric’s brow furrowed. “Thank you. I’ll think on that.”
“Say hello to your mama for me.” Marnette sneered at Frankie and then flounced away.
“She does not find you to be quirky or delightful,” Eric noted.
“Picked up on that, did you? Good for you.” Frankie shoved her burger into her mouth and took a bite that was larger than was advisable.
“Is it because you think her son is a criminal mastermind?” he said, nodding toward the candy wrapper.
Frankie chewed, and around a mouthful of burger she said, “No, it’s not that. Well, it’s not just that.”
“It’s one of those complicated small-town web things I’m going to need a flowchart to understand, isn’t it? Should I get out my notebook?”
Frankie laughed. “Remember Sara Lee Bolton? The lady who was charged with embezzling funds from the PTA?”
“Yeah, um, happened right before I was brought in. She’s awaiting trial?”
“Well, Marnette is Sara Lee’s cousin, and she’s married to the head of the county commission. And he is pissed because Margot, and by extension the McCready family, is getting credit for the Founders’ Festival going so well and he is not. Everybody knows it was Margot’s planning-ninja skills and magical contact list that made the festival a success after years of it just sucking. Also, Margot is the one who brought Sara Lee’s creative bookkeeping out into the open, which sort of compounds the whole ‘McCreadys casting the Lewis extended family in a bad light’ theme. Add to that, Marnette knows I’m watching her little delinquent son like a hawk, because she has not managed to convince me that he’s as innocent as a unicorn’s sneeze. So basically, that’s three marks against my family in Marnette’s eyes.
“Add to that, the Martins—that’s Marnette’s maiden name—held the homestead right next door to ours goin’ back generations, but they built at a slightly lower elevation, closer to the river. That little difference meant that when the Corps of Engineers dammed the river to make the lake, Martin land was flooded while ours stayed dry. They’ve been kind of bitter over it ever since. Between keepin’ our house and the lake buttin’ right up to the bait shop, Marnette’s great-grandmother claimed we had the devil’s luck or some such nonsense. And after an . . . incident . . . at a service a few years ago, they refuse to have their people buried at McCready’s. They go two counties over to Oakerson’s for funeral services. Because that’ll show us.”
“So, what, it’s a blood feud?”
“No, no one’s died. They’re just very frosty to us in public and make it very obvious that they want nothing to do with our business. And insult us at church-related activities.”
“All this over their land flooding sixty years ago?”
“They watched their home get washed away while their neighbors just continued living in theirs like nothing ever happened. That’s the kind of resentment that builds up. Life in a small town, Sheriff.”
“What was that bit about ‘who signs your checks’?”
“Oh, as the county manager, Marnette’s husband signs my coroner paychecks, just like he signs yours. But it’s not much of a paycheck, to be honest with you. It’s basically gas-and-pizza money. I don’t depend on it like I do my salary from McCready’s. Still, Marnette likes to hold it over my head, like she can have me thrown into the streets if she whispers in her husband’s ear.”
“Well, he can fire you if he wants.”
“Yeah, he can try to impeach me if he can prove gross incompetence on my part, which he can’t. Also, my daddy sits on the county commission, so Vern would have a hard time gettin’ me voted out. Plus there’s the small problem of no one else in the county wanting my job or being qualified for it.”
“As opposed to my job, which apparently everybody thinks they can do better than I can,” Eric grumbled.
“Yeah, but no one here is qualified for your job, either,” she said. “Your only competition is Landry Mitchell, and no one is fool enough to put him in charge.”
Eric shuddered, clearly horrified by the idea of his only deputy taking over the sheriff’s position. Landry was best known for the mishaps he caused for both himself and others, like the time his shoddy porch swing repairs sent his mother to the hospital. Landry was a perfectly nice guy, just not very bright and completely unaware of how underqualified he was for his job.
“So, Jared Lewis. What should I do? Because most of my plans involve elaborate booby traps and YouTube, which I think would be illegal.”
Eric reached across the table and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, which was awkward, because she was in the process of dipping another onion ring in ketchup. “You will do nothing. I’ll take care of it. You just stay out of trouble, for the sake of both of our jobs.”
Frankie leaned back slightly. She realized this was the first time since moving to Lake Sackett that Eric had voluntarily touched her. It was rare that anyone local, much less a man, touched her or told her that they were taking charge. Most people assumed that because of her job, she was suited to unpleasant tasks. Her family had a tendency to take those tasks out of her hands because she was so “fragile.” Seeing someone strike a pleasant balance between the two moved her more than she expected. And because she was not ready to feel anything but wary disdain for the good sheriff, she stared pointedly at their joined hands.
Eric glanced down and realized he was millimeters away from a ketchup manicure. He cleared his throat and released her hand, resuming fiddling with his spoon.
“So you believe me? Inadmissable candy evidence aside?”
“Well, I’ve found that parents generally don’t get that aggressive over false allegations about their children,” he said. “So I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. I’ll come out and take a look around. If I see anything unusual, I’ll open an official case file. And if I feel like the situation warrants it, I’ll talk to Jared and his parents.”
“If, if, if—if a bullfrog had wings, it wouldn’t bruise its ass,” Frankie told him.
“I think you mean, ‘thank you’?”
“Thank you,” she repeated, then smiled sweetly as she picked up her burger. She nodded toward his bowl. “Aren’t you going to finish your lunch?”
“I’m not very hungry. I think I’ll get back to the office.”
Frankie glanced around the crowded diner. “You ashamed to be seen with me?”
Eric followed her eye line. She noticed that several people were watching the pair, some less obvious than others. Frankie rolled her eyes. Before dinnertime, her mama would have people calling her, asking whether the sheriff was cou
rting Leslie’s only child. Oh well, she hadn’t given her neighbors something to talk about in a while.
Eric cleared his throat. “No, it’s just we’re not really at a lunch-sharing stage in our relationship.”
“We don’t have a relationship,” she reminded him. “We barely have an acquaintance, despite previous events, which seemed to affect you a lot more than they affected me.”
“Hey,” he shot back, glaring at her.
“You have to agree it’s made our workin’ relationship more than a little awkward,” she said, shrugging.
“Right.”
“So, you ever going to tell me why you moved out here?” she asked. “We get visitors from Atlanta, not full-time transplants.”
Eric shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s none of your business.”
“If you’re wondering, this is why you don’t have any friends,” she told him.
“A woman took time outta her day to stop into this diner and cuss you out and you think I’m the one who has problems makin’ friends?”
“Fair point,” she admitted, nodding at his bowl. “Finish your soup.”
Eric grumbled, poking at his half-eaten lunch.
“I’ll call Ike.”
Eric cut his eyes toward the kitchen. Ike pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at their table.
“The friends you do have are scary,” he told her.
“Yep.”
FRANKIE STEERED THE van through the inky blackness of a moonless Georgia night. She’d meant to drive straight home after lunch, but she’d been called out on the case of a fifty-eight-year-old who’d had a heart attack in the middle of a family reunion. Paul Harner’s family had rented a remote cabin off Copperback Bay for the occasion. Unfortunately, it was so remote that he passed away before Naomi could arrive with the ambulance to help.
And unfortunately for Frankie’s afternoon, the Harner family didn’t get less argumentative after the death of their beloved patriarch. She’d spent the rest of her day fending off one brother declaring total control of the situation and an aunt from insisting she receive the only copies of the official coroner’s paperwork. It seemed that Mr. Harner had quite a bit to leave to his family, and they wanted their hands on it as soon as possible. It was behavior Frankie had dealt with before, but that didn’t make it any less exhausting.
Getting Paul out of the rental cabin had taken hours, and then the family tried to follow her into the mortuary, making it take even longer to process him. It was good that she knew the curves of these hills like the back of her hand, because she was this close to nodding off behind the wheel. All she wanted was a shower and a bowl of the Brunswick stew her mama would have waiting for her. And then maybe two or three episodes of Jessica Jones. It would take that long for her brain to wind down enough to sleep.
What she did not want was to pull the van onto the McCready compound only to find Lana “Divorced out of the Family but Won’t Take Her Own Damn Maiden Name Back” McCready’s dented purple El Camino parked in front of Duffy’s cabin. And as the topper to an already exhausting evening, the she-beast herself was sauntering out to that tacky-ass car, waggling her fingers at Frankie’s headlights.
Throwing the van into park, Frankie rolled her eyes and dropped her head onto the steering wheel. She was not prepared to deal with this bullshit. Lana had married Duffy right out of high school, a hasty decision based on a false “pregnancy scare,” the timing of which Frankie always considered suspicious. Lana was the only person who had ever made Frankie’s mama utter the word bitch. Leslie had prayed over it later, but still, she’d meant it.
Leslie’s breaking her curse policy had a lot to do with Lana’s throwing Duffy aside for his best friends—yes, friends, plural—filing divorce papers, then trying to sex-bait him back into a relationship when she realized that neither one of her affair partners planned to marry her.
So far he’d resisted the marriage but not the sex.
Lana climbed behind the wheel of her car and sped off, making sure to gun her engine so the other McCreadys knew she was leaving at one in the morning. Classy.
Frankie slid out of the mortuary van. Duffy ambled toward his front door in bare feet, jeans, and an old Bulldogs T-shirt, drinking from a long-neck beer. Seeing Frankie, he disappeared back into his cabin and emerged with another bottle.
“For heaven’s sake, McDuff,” she said as he handed her the beer. “Why do you keep doing this to yourself? I will not handle your funeral when whatever alien parasite Lana’s harboring bursts out of her chest and eats you.”
Duffy lounged back on his porch swing, wearing a strange expression somewhere between sheepish and smug. “Lana was feelin’ down because she got passed over for a promotion at the Jet Ski dealership. She just needed someone to talk to.”
“Talk.” Frankie snorted. “Right. She’s a real conversationalist. Talk of the town.”
“Who pissed in your Wheaties?”
She took a swig from her beer. “Sorry, it’s just been a long day.”
Duffy patted the swing seat next to him. “Yeah, Mom told me about the video cameras. Do you really think the Lewis kid’s back to his old tricks?”
“Duff, if I knew how to teach him that lesson . . . I would probably be in jail.”
“You’re going to end up in jail anyway if you keep pokin’ at the sheriff the way you do,” Duffy told her.
“I’m not pokin’ at him. I actually managed to have two conversations with him today without one of us yellin’. I mean, he did lose consciousness, but that wasn’t my fault. I’m just tryin’ to understand what’s goin’ on in that man’s head. How in the hell did an outsider with his attitude get appointed to a job in Lake Sackett?” she asked, flopping down on the porch swing. “I can’t find anything on him on the Internet, other than at one point he worked for the Atlanta PD. He’s not on Facebook or Tumblr or Twitter or even Myspace. What kind of person has no digital footprint at all? It’s like he’s in the witness protection program for cranky law enforcement officials.”
Duffy propped his feet up on the porch railing. “Have you asked your dad?”
“He says he can’t discuss official county commission business with me and I should stop asking him. He also started locking his commission meetin’ materials in his safe at the office, which I find insultin’.”
“Maybe the sheriff doesn’t have a story. Maybe he just wanted a quieter life at a slower pace with fewer crazy people.”
Frankie thought about it for a second. “Nah, that can’t be it. Can we stop talking about my professional difficulties and go back to your romantic jackassery?” she asked. “When are you gonna leave Lana in the dust and start datin’ someone you might be able to bring home to your mama?”
Duffy snorted. “I can’t bring anyone home to my mama. For their own protection.”
“I just mean someone you can have a future with that doesn’t involve high-test antibiotics.”
“You want to have some difficult conversations? Because we can talk about the fact that for the third month running, you have failed to tell your parents that you want to move out of their house.”
“Well, it’s not my fault that Margot moved into Marianne’s cabin before I could tell anybody I wanted to move in!”
“The apprentice apartment at the funeral home is open, now that Stan’s moved back to his cabin. Why don’t you move in there? It’s a bit tight, but you’d have your own space for the first time in your life. Or, hell, move into one of those apartments on Langham Drive. They’re always turning over. There’s no rule that you have to stay here on the compound. It just makes things easier for everybody.”
“I was worried about my parents freaking out over me moving into the cabin next door. Do you really think they’d accept me moving all the way into town? Or worse, living at the funeral home, without another soul for miles? What if I pass out? What if I get sick? What if I don’t have someone there to remind me
to eat a deep-fried grilled cheese every four hours?”
“I accept your point, but not your bitter tone,” Duffy said, grimacing.
“I’m sorry, Duff. I know I sound like a spoiled brat, complaining that my parents love me too much and want to spend too much time taking care of me. I love them. I’m proud of them. I like spending time with them. But I think I would like that time even more if there was less of it. I’m just frustrated with the situation and feeling it today in particular. Most damn-near-thirty-year-olds don’t have to plot this much just to move out on their own. I hate that I have to approach this like it’s some military maneuver. Adults shouldn’t feel like they have to ask permission to be adults. Then again, a real adult probably wouldn’t ask permission. A real adult would just do it.”
“Try not to take it personal, Frankie. You know your parents just worry about you.”
“That doesn’t make it okay. Their worrying isn’t going to keep me healthy. It’s not going to keep me safe. What’s the plan here? Am I going to be a forty-five-year-old woman whose retired mother still leaves labeled Tupperware meals in the fridge? What’s it going to take for them to finally feel like they don’t have to watch over me twenty-four/seven?”
“Well, my parents seemed to see me as an adult after I got married.”
“Yeah, because only an adult capable of making his own dumb-assed decisions could fuck up his life that bad.”
“Easy.”
“We both know I’m about as far from getting married as your mama is from winning a Pillsbury Bake-Off. I don’t think I’m the marrying type. And I’m not going to drag some innocent bystander into this just because I’m not strong enough to tell my parents I don’t want to live with them.”
“At this rate, they might try to get you to stay in their house even after you get married,” Duffy said. “Make one of those multigenerational-home deals.”