2
FOR THE NEXT hour, Frankie, Duffy, and Leslie worked to set the bait shop to rights. By the time they were done, Frankie’s back and neck were slick with sweat and her bright blue hair was soaked through. And she was pretty sure she had a rogue cricket creeping under her Attack on Titan T-shirt.
“I’m gonna find the jackass who did this and introduce them to the business end of an embalming needle,” Frankie grumbled, wiping her forehead with her sleeve.
“I’m gonna find the jackass who did this and introduce them to my anchor and some duct tape,” Duffy said, offering Frankie an ice-cold bottle of water from the bait shop cooler.
“I’m gonna find that so-and-so who did this and I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna. . . . introduce them to . . .” Leslie frowned as she tried to find a threat suitable for the situation.
“It’s okay, Mama,” Frankie assured her. “You can’t help it that you’re basically a Disney princess on the wrong side of forty.”
“Smart mouth.” Leslie swatted at Frankie with the dish towel she’d been using to wipe down Duffy’s counter. “Also, y’all owe the swear jar fifty cents.”
“Hold still, you’re gonna disturb the cartoon mice who sing backup for your power ballad,” Frankie told her, dodging her mother’s snapping cloth. Leslie increased the frequency of her towel-slapping and Frankie howled with laughter, diving behind the counter.
This was how E.J.J. found them, sweating, cackling, and covered in cricket bits. E.J.J. cleared his throat pointedly, bringing the laughter to an abrupt halt. Leslie hid the cloth behind her back while Frankie, biting her lip to prevent further giggles from escaping, scooted around the counter.
How did her great-uncle-slash-boss manage to look so cool and crisp in a three-piece suit in the lingering autumn heat and humidity? And manage to look so exasperated and yet amused all at once?
E.J.J. gestured to the tall, barrel-chested man standing next to him. The newcomer was wearing a navy collared shirt and khakis ironed with military precision. He had dark-blond hair and had aviator sunglasses perched on high, sharp cheekbones and a slightly crooked, almost Roman nose. The nose didn’t quite match up with the high forehead and square chin. But somehow the overall effect was very pleasant and seemed oddly familiar to Frankie.
The expression on the stranger’s handsome face was not amused or exasperated. He mostly looked alarmed.
“There was a cricket stampede,” Duffy said, before pinching his lips together.
“Sure there was.” E.J.J. cleared his throat to cover his laugh. “Y’all, this is the interim sheriff, Eric Linden. He’s takin’ over for Sheriff Rainey, gettin’ sworn in on Friday. Frankie, your dad thought he should come by to meet the county coroner.”
The new sheriff took off the aviators and Frankie’s jaw dropped. She could have sworn he’d said his name was Derek, but that club had been really loud.
The new sheriff was the hookup she’d Ubered away from without so much as a “Thanks for the naked memories.”
For the first time in her life, she realized how it felt to experience panic and mortification in front of her family members. “Derek’s” apartment had been sparsely furnished and filled with boxes, but she’d assumed that he was a lonely guy who had just moved in and was looking for company. How in the hell was she supposed to know that he was moving to her town?
“Nice to meet you.” Soon-to-be-Sheriff Linden reached toward Duffy for a manly handshake. Duffy frowned and shook the man’s hand.
“Actually, my cousin is the coroner. I’m just the bait guy.”
“You’re the coroner,” the sheriff rasped, turning toward Frankie. “The one I’m going to be workin’ with.”
“The one and only in these parts. I’m Frankie McCready.”
“Unbelievable,” Eric muttered.
“Don’t worry, Sheriff,” she said, her voice so sweet it bordered on saccharine. “You’re not the first person to have trouble seeing me as a competent professional, and you won’t be the last. But I can present you with a pretty impressive list of credentials and certifications, if it makes you feel better.”
Eric did not laugh. Instead, he glanced at E.J.J. and cleared his throat. “I was hoping we could sit down and go over some procedures for search and rescue, transport of remains, on-call status, that sort of thing.”
“Um, sure,” she said, gesturing toward the funeral home. “We can go to my office, where the air-conditioning is downright arctic.”
“No!” he yelped.
Frankie jerked back from him. Eric’s cheeks flushed. She squinted at him as if she could now detect some underlying crazy she might have missed in her sex-induced haze.
“Uh, actually, I was hopin’ I could grab something to eat while we talk,” Eric said, nodding at the Snack Shack. “It’s been a long day and Mr. McCready said you have the best fried chicken in town.”
If this guy socially flailed any harder, Frankie was going to get whiplash. She didn’t have the heart to tell him her mama had closed the snack stand and cleaned up for the day. She put her arm around Leslie’s thin shoulders. “Well, anything deep-fried, Mama’s the master.”
“Oh, that’s your mama?” Eric glanced back and forth between Leslie’s low-key, earthy beauty and Frankie’s aggressively colorful appearance. And somehow, he looked even more uncomfortable, which was quite the trick.
“Leslie’s my mama and Duffy’s my cousin,” Frankie explained in a tone that was probably a little condescending. “E.J.J. is my great-uncle, but really my honorary grandfather. My daddy runs the office side of the funeral home. Uncle Stan drives the hearse. Duffy’s mama runs the bait shop with him and books fishin’ charters. We’re a real family operation.”
E.J.J. clapped a hand on Eric’s shoulder, which made him startle a bit. “So, you’re gonna have to be careful callin’ for a ‘Mr. McCready.’ You’re bound to get more people answerin’ than you want. Might as well switch to a first-name basis now.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a funeral home and bait shop before,” Eric said as Frankie led him down the dock toward the snack stand. Leslie followed at their heels, and if Frankie knew her mother, Leslie was trying to mentally calculate how long it would take her to warm up the fryer and cook enough chicken to fill Eric up so he’d stop being so damn skittish.
“Oh, it’s not that unusual around here to combine businesses that don’t quite match up. One family member has business space all set, another has ambitions, and next thing you know, you’ve got a place like ours. McCready’s just started earlier than most. After World War I, during the flu pandemic, my Pawpaw John asked his brother, Earl Jr., if he could move his expanding coffin-building business into the back of Earl’s bait shack.”
Frankie was making a story of it, using the “tall tales” voice she normally used exclusively on school visits or while trying to freak out the macho types at the Dirty Deer. Eric seemed to be one big exposed nerve. He needed a bedtime story to settle him, badly. Judging from the rings she could see under his eyes now that his sunglasses were off, he needed a nap, too. And she couldn’t do what she’d done to get him to sleep the last time, not with her family within ten feet.
“Earl was selling worms, homemade lemonade, and sandwiches right here on the shore, and making a pretty good go of it. And he and his wife, Kate, got along real well with John and his wife, Ellie. The Spanish flu epidemic hit us hard in 1918. People needed caskets a lot more than they needed cabinets, and Ellie had a talent for helpin’ their neighbors through their grief. Their kids added to the business and their kids added more to the business, and now, here we are.”
Leslie had ducked around them while Frankie was talking, nimble on her feet after years of working on those docks. She unlocked the doors to the Snack Shack, turning on the lights, the AC, and the fryer. She began prep work without even thinking, taking chicken out of the brine she’d prepared that morning, rinsing it, and dredging it through seasoned flour.
Frankie motioned for Eric to sit at the early-Coca-Cola-themed bar. He slouched against the red vinyl stool as if the weight of the world came with him.
“So, what brings you to Lake Sackett, Sheriff?” Frankie asked, attempting to keep her tone casual. “It’s pretty odd for someone without ties to the area to try to get hired on with the department, much less lead it. Hell, you can’t get hired on at the jerky depot unless three generations of family can vouch for you.”
Frankie didn’t feel the need to comment on the fact that there was no way the county commission could promote from within. Local residents didn’t feel safe with Lake Sackett’s lone deputy trolling their neighborhoods at night with firearms, unsupervised. Deputy Landry Mitchell once shot himself in the foot while getting out of the shower.
He sighed as if weary of answering questions. “I was just lookin’ for a change of pace. A fresh start.”
“From where?” she asked, as if she didn’t have some clue.
“Atlanta PD,” he said in a tone that invited no further chitchat.
“Are you from Atlanta originally?”
“Yes. How often do you work with the sheriff’s department?”
It seemed the introductory period of their meeting was over.
“Not often,” she said. “I don’t contact you unless there’s a death I consider suspicious, which is pretty rare. You don’t contact me unless there’s a hunting accident or something like that. I’m the only operating morgue for fifty miles. Any important postmortem tests, beyond blood alcohol or gunshot residue, I send to the state police crime lab. I have a friend there who occasionally puts a rush on things if I promise him some of my mom’s divinity candy.”
“How long have you been county coroner?”
“I took the job about five years ago, when my uncle Junior, the previous coroner, passed away. But he trained me himself, even before I graduated from mortuary school. I’m fully licensed, qualified, and duly elected.”
“You ran unopposed?” Sheriff Linden asked.
“No one else wanted the job,” she said with a shrug.
“How old are you?”
“Nunya,” she said, smiling sweetly.
“Nunya?”
“Nunya damn business. Didn’t your mama ever teach you it’s rude to ask a lady her age?”
He frowned at her. “Not in a professional setting, no.”
“Well, it’s rude.”
The frown deepened as he changed the subject. “I’ve been looking around the office for records on the violent crimes and suspicious deaths over the last few years and haven’t been able to find anything.”
Frankie winced. “Yeah, that was part of the reason Sheriff Rainey was ‘encouraged’ to retire. There was a bit of a rodent infestation in the evidence room, and it spread to the rest of the courthouse. Word got out that the sheriff was basically a hoarder, but the kind whose hoard leaks into his office. He’d take things into evidence and tell the owners they got lost in processing. He got the reputation over the years for being a bit of a klepto, but it turned out he just tossed the stuff into the evidence room and, God’s honest truth, lost it. Same with files, tickets, court reports, basically anything that came across his desk. The whole thing had to be turned over to the state police for an audit. The only thing that saved our collective butts was the fact that we don’t have a lot of crime here in Lake Sackett. I can work up a report on the suspicious deaths over the last decade, but I can tell you right now that it boils down to two incidents. A suspected poisoning in 2014 that turned out to be a wife who didn’t know how to refrigerate pork products properly. And last year, we had a moonshine still explode, taking out three members of the Gibbs family. Generally, any nonnatural death in these parts involves someone operating a boat, ATV, or vehicle that they have no business operating. Most of the time, beer is involved.”
Frankie paused to watch him take a sip of her mama’s sweet tea, prepared the proper Southern way by stirring real sugar into the boiling water so the sweetness mixed evenly throughout the tea. (If Mama caught you with a packet of Splenda and an unsweetened tea, you better be diabetic, because otherwise, you were getting smacked with a spatula.) Maybe he would show some sort of personality reacting to the tea. Maybe she could get some hint, something to help her figure this guy out.
Eric swallowed several mouthfuls without pause and set the glass on the counter. No response. No wince. No smile. Maybe this guy was a robot? Frankie leaned back on her stool and checked the back of his neck for a bar code. Nope. It was probably on his ass. The apartment had been pretty dark.
“Don’t suppose you know anything about the drunk drivin’ stats?” Eric asked.
“That’s where you’re gonna have to talk to your deputy, Landry Mitchell,” she said. Eric winced and she added, “I see you’ve met Landry.”
“Yeah, I don’t hold out a lot of hope there,” he muttered as Leslie slid a plate of golden fried chicken in front of him. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Leslie’s smile was almost as sweet as her iced tea. “You eat every bite, now. You look like you could fall over if the wind blew too hard. Frankie, honey, I’ll see you later. You two catch up on your business.”
Eric nodded and dug into his chicken. Leslie shut the door behind her, and Frankie whipped her head toward him. “What in the living hell are you doing here?”
“I’m as surprised as you are, and I’m getting the impression I’m just about as thrilled to see you as you are to see me.”
“Excuse me?”
“What kind of person just runs off in the middle of the night without so much as a shake on the shoulder and a ‘Hey, I’m leaving, you might want to lock your dead bolt’?”
“Are you unfamiliar with the one-night-stand procedure?” she asked. “It’s ‘I came, I saw, I got out with as little fuss as possible.’ Not ‘I came, I saw, I neglected to mention I’ll be followin’ you to your hometown and workin’ in a close professional capacity with you for the foreseeable future.’ ”
“It didn’t strike you that I’m a person with feelings and I might not like bein’ treated that way?”
“Most of the guys I deal with appreciate a low-maintenance approach.”
“Well, that tells me a lot about you.”
“Oh, do not even start trying to slut-shame me, bud. I do not apologize for having a healthy sexual appetite.”
“Hey, I saw the panic in your eyes when you realized who I was.”
“Yeah, because I also happen have healthy boundaries between my family and said appetite.”
“So where does that leave us?” he asked. “Other than me havin’ no interest in a second ‘date.’ ”
“Oh, thank you for the clarification,” she shot back. “And I have no flippin’ idea. Look, we’re adults. These things happen. People have sex with people they don’t know that well, and then lifelong relationships don’t develop as a result. There’s no reason we can’t have polite, professional interactions from here out. Can we start over?”
He sighed. “I suppose.”
“So, are you from Atlanta originally?” she asked again.
“Yep.”
She frowned at his lack of basic conversational etiquette. “Do you have people there?”
He took a big bite of chicken. “Nope.”
“Have you always wanted to be a cop?”
“Yep.”
Okay, Frankie could appreciate the appeal of the strong, silent type, but this was verging on rude.
“Did you have any more questions for me?” she asked.
“No.”
“Alrighty,” she said, nodding and pressing her lips together. “Well, I have been on my feet for about twelve hours. I’ve got three people to prep in the mornin’. And after this scintillatin’ conversation, I’ve had about all the fun I can stand.”
Frankie noted that Eric turned faintly green at the mention of her work. She sighed. Well, he wouldn’t be the first man who couldn’t stomach her job. This was just the cherry on the sundae of his lack of personality.
“Good night, Sheriff. Good luck to us both.”