by Gen Griffin
GIVE ME
SOME SUGAR
A POSSUM CREEK NOVEL
GEN GRIFFIN
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this stripped book.
GIVE ME SOME SUGAR
POSSUM CREEK BOOK FIVE
Copyright © 2015 by Gen Griffin
All rights reserved.
ASIN: B01AYMHNBW
ISBN-13: 978-1523653027
ISBN-10: 1523653027
The uploading, scanning, and distribution of this book in any form or by any means — including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal and punishable by law. Permission is granted to copy or reprint portions for any noncommercial use except they may not be posted online without permission. Please purchase only authorized editions of this work, and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Also By Gen Griffin
The Possum Creek Series
Hot Southern Mess
Hissy Fit
Hot Southern Nights
Pretty Is As Pretty Does
Give Me Some Sugar
If Pigs Could Fly (Coming Summer 2016)
Lord Have Mercy (Prequel Novella)
Sweatin' Like A Sinner In Church (Possum Creek Spin-off)
After The Apocalypse
The Scavengers
Church of Chaos
False Idols
DEDICATION
To Karen.
Without you, I'm not sure I would have believed any of this would be possible.
I miss you. Enjoy your wings.
SUPPORT METATASTIC BREAST CANCER
AWARENESS AND RESEARCH!
STAGE 4 LIVES MATTER.
Chapter 1
Kerry Longwood had just made it past the welcome to Possum Creek sign on the outskirts of town when the sheriff's department cruiser pulled out behind him with sirens blaring.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Kerry grumbled. He hit the brakes and eased his baby blue Audi convertible onto the shoulder of the road. He watched with annoyance as the cruiser pulled in behind him and Sullivan Briggs got out of the driver's seat. Sully was filling in as a temporary deputy until the state police commission finished investigating Ian and the Sheriff figured out whether Ian was going to get to continue serving in the line of duty or if he would forever be mowing the overgrown lawns of Possum Creek.
“It's me,” Kerry called out his open window as Sully walked up to the car carrying his clipboard. Sully wasn't an improvement over Ian. Sure, he had been a detective in whatever city he'd lived in before he'd moved back to Possum Creek to help Tate run the fire department, but the last thing Possum Creek needed was a burned out former college football player with too much time to work-out and the same lousy sense of humor as Addison Malone.
“You were speeding.” The buttons on Sully's uniform shirt were struggling to stay closed across his thickly muscled chest as he leaned down and peered into Kerry's car. “I'm going to need your license and registration.”
“Screw off,” Kerry said. “You know I'm legal.”
“License and registration.” Sully held out his hand. “Either give them to me or I'm going to have to fine you.”
“Go to hell.” Kerry reached over to the passenger's side of the car and pulled open the glove box. He tugged out the manila envelope that contained all of his legal paperwork. He passed it out the window to Sully. “There. Are you happy now?”
Sully pulled the paperwork out of the envelope and made like he was really checking the details. Kerry sat up as tall as he could in his seat and glared at Sully. “I wasn't speeding.”
“You were going 47 in a 45 mph zone.” Sully tucked Kerry's paperwork into the clipboard he was holding.
“You're not going to write me a ticket for going 2 miles an hour over the speed limit. I'm a cop.” Kerry was getting increasingly annoyed by the minute.
“I've never heard of any law that prevents officers from getting tickets,” Sully replied with a shrug. “The whole thing where cops don't ticket cops is more of a, well, I believe the words I'm looking for are professional courtesy.” Sully grinned unkindly down at Kerry. “Its kind of a you scratch my back and I scratch yours situation.”
“Whatever favor you're trying to get me to do for you, the answer is no.” Kerry crossed his arms over his own lumpy and decidedly not impressive chest.
Sully laughed. “I'm not asking you to do me a favor, Kerry. I'm returning the favor you did for me a few months back. Remember when you wrote me $875 worth of seat-belt violations in less than two months because you were concerned for my safety?”
Kerry groaned. “Those were valid tickets.”
“So is the one I'm about to issue you for speeding,” Sully replied with a smirk. “Also sir, I'm going to have to ask you to get out of your car.”
“Excuse me?” Kerry had no intention of playing along with Sully's little farce any longer.
“Get out of the car.”
“You're not searching my vehicle.”
“Actually, I am.” Sully still had a smile on his face. “We had a tip called in through dispatch that someone was running a load of illegal prescription drugs through town in a bright blue Audi convertible. I've been waiting for a car matching the description the caller gave us to come through here.” He tapped the Audi on the door. “Hop out, Kerry.”
“Addison probably called that tip in and you know it.”
“The caller was anonymous.” Sully jerked his thumb towards the side of the road. “Don't make me pull you out of the car.”
“If you don't think I'm going to file an official complaint against you for this, you are sadly mistaken.” Kerry grudgingly opened his door and got out of the car. The pavement was so scorchingly hot that he could feel it through the thin soles of his flip flops.
Sully began digging through the interior of the Audi. He made a big show of checking through all the consoles and peering under the seats as several cars drove past them. Someone in the back of a red pick up truck yelled out 'serves you right cocksucker' as they blew past.
“You're wasting your time,” Kerry said as Sully popped the trunk.
“Police officers have to be thorough in doing our duty to the public.” Sully looked decidedly pleased with himself as he strutted towards the back of the car and pulled the trunk lid up. He tossed out the bag containing Kerry's spare uniform and the broken DVD player that Kerry had been on his way to return to the store when he'd been pulled over.
“You won't find any drugs in my car. Malone is the one who called in that tip about my car. He knows I have the only blue Audi convertible in town. He probably thinks its funny to waste your time and mine.”
“Addison Malone is the least of your problems.” Sully had lifted the carpeting in the trunk up and was peering into the hole where the spare tire was sitting. Kerry watched as the smart ass smile faded from Sully's face. He leaned down into the depths of the trunk to take a better look at the spare tire.
“I don't have any drugs in my car,” Kerry snapped.
“Drugs?” Sully straightened back up and stared at Kerry with surprising seriousness. “No. I haven't found any drugs.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“Kerry Longwood, you're under arrest.”
“Arrest?” Kerry scowled at Sully. “Sorry, but no. Your little joke has gone far enough. You're not arresting me.”
“Kerry, I'm not playing with you.”
Sully stepped back away from the car and leveled his dark brown eyes at Kerry. “Either you can put your hands on the hood of the car and let me do this the easy way, or I'm going to have to use the taser on you.”
“You're going to taser me?” Kerry took a step back away from Sully.
“You want to explain to me why you have a decapitated human head in the trunk of your car?” Sully asked.
“A what?”
Sully gestured to the trunk of the Audi. “See for yourself.”
“If this is some kind of prank, I'll have your badge.” Kerry walked up to the trunk of his own car. There was no telling what horrible prop Sully had planted in the trunk of his car as the punchline for this joke. He elbowed Sully out of his way and stared down into the back of the car. A human head was laying next to his jumper cables. A clear bullet hole was visible in the middle of the forehead. Its rotted eye sockets were staring straight at Kerry.
Kerry gagged twice and then threw up directly on top of the skull.
Chapter 2
“I get that someone probably thought it would be funny to put fish in the pool, but I'm not laughing.” Katie McIntyre stood at the edge of the Callahan County Country Club's beautifully landscaped Olympic size swimming pool and stared down at the long, thick-bodied olive green fish that were currently prowling from one side of the shallow end to the other.
“What the hell are those things?” Trish leaned over Katie's shoulder and peered down at the water with a look of utter horror on her pretty face. “They're huge and they have teeth.”
“Alligator gar.” Katie began walking around the slender edge that separated the pool from the surrounding deck. She counted the fish she saw on her fingertips. “Nine of them, to be exact.”
“What is an alligator gar?” Trish was so focused on the toothy monstrosities that she looked like she was close to dropping the basket of flirty pink bachelorette party decorations into the water.
“Big ugly carnivorous fish,” Katie spelled out as she finished her lap around the edge of the pool.
“They don't look very friendly.” Trish hadn't taken her eyes off the water. “Can they live in chlorine?”
“Probably not for long, but they seem to be doing an alright job of it at the moment.” Katie shook her head in disgust as she glared at the fish. “We can't have a pool party with these things in the pool. They bite.”
“Oh hell,” Trish muttered. “I was hoping they were just ugly. How do you think they got in the pool?”
“Someone caught them in the river and thought it would be funny to put them in the country club's pool, I guess.”
“That is a truly horrible idea for a prank. It's not funny at all.” Trish narrowed her gray eyes at the gar. “What are we going to do?”
“I don't suppose you have a fishing pole in your truck?”
“I don't think I own a fishing pole,” Trish said distractedly. One of the fish was very aggressively ramming into the glass domed light inside the pool. “Did you call the maintenance man? I mean, this isn't our pool. We just have it booked for the party. Surely they can handle this?”
Katie sighed. “I did call them. The maintenance guy left work at two today because his son fell down the stairs at school and broke his arm. He can't come back in to deal with the gar because he's still at the emergency room.”
“Oh sweet Jesus. I feel horrible for the kid, but what the heck are we going to do about Gracie's bachelorette party?” Trish ran her fingers through her tastefully styled black hair, nearly ruining the elaborate bun she'd put her hair in for the party. “We have two hours until fifteen people show up expecting to spend the night relaxing at a very classy pool party. We should be putting up banners and decorating the tables right now, not trying to figure out how to get fish out of the pool.”
“I'd say we could try to scoop them out with the pool cleaning net, but I think they'll be too heavy. Not to mention that they can probably bite through the netting.” Katie pursed her lips as she surveyed the fish. “The good news is that they're not huge, for gar.”
“They're not huge?” Trish did a double take. “They look huge.”
“I'm putting them in perspective. I think the record for largest gar ever caught around here was like two hundred pounds. These aren't in that league. Probably because whoever caught them and snuck them in here didn't have a cooler large enough to hold the really big ones.”
“Well, let's just thank God for small blessings,” Trish muttered. “In all seriousness, what are we going to do? Should we cancel the bachelorette party?”
“I think its too late to cancel,” Katie said. “I'm going to call Addy and see if he can do anything about the gar. In the meantime, why don't you go talk to the manager and see if he can switch our pool reservation to the party room at the back of the main building?”
“You think they'll be able to do that?”
“I don't think we should give them much of a choice,” Katie said. “The way I see it, we either have to move the party to a different venue, or we run up to the Walmart in Canterville, buy a bunch of fishing poles and have a swimming pool fishing tournament instead of a bachelorette party.”
“Whoever catches the most gar gets the door prizes?” Trish smiled wryly.
“Now you're getting into the spirit,” Katie said. “We'll need to pick up some green cake icing while we're out so that I can add little frosted gar to the cake.”
Trish set the basket of decorations down on one of the pool side tables. “I suppose we can turn this thing into a fish fry. Are they edible?”
“Yes, but they're not particularly tasty.” Katie cast a sideways glance down at the gar. “I think I might have a fishing pole in the trunk of my car. Maybe I can get a head start on removing them.”
“I'll go talk to the manager,” Trish said. “If nothing else, I can guarantee you that we won't be paying to use this facility tonight.”
Katie laughed. “If we have to catch these damned things, then they might as well pay us.”
Trish sighed as she started for the gate that separated the pool from the parking lot and the golf course. “To think, I went all the way to Beauton and bought a new swimsuit for this. What a waste of gas and money.”
Katie glanced down at her own seen-better-days swimsuit and shrugged. “There's always the hot tub.”
Trish blinked at her. “Did you check the hot tub?”
“No.” Katie began reluctantly walking towards the back corner of the pool deck. Peering down into the water, Katie scowled. “Scratch the hot tub off our plans, too.”
“Another gar?”
“Catfish,” Katie said. “The hot tub is full of catfish.”
“Oh hell,” Trish cursed as she headed out to go find the manager.
Chapter 3
“Do you like the gold table linens or the silver?” Gracie held two scraps of linen fabric up in front of Cal and swished them back and forth through the air like shimmery flags of surrender.
His eyes briefly flickered up from the massive binder that he had spread out across the scarred oak desk that took up most of the back office of Walker Hardware. He had a hefty calculator positioned next to his hand and his laptop propped open and precariously balanced on top of the keyboard of the ancient desktop computer that took up most of the left side of the desk. “It looks great. Really sexy.”
Gracie frowned at him as she stopped waving the linen napkins. “Sexy?”
“Everything you wear is sexy.” Cal still wasn't looking up from the store's inventory log. “You'll look fantastic tonight. I don't know why you're even worrying about it.”
Gracie crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her fiance. “They're napkins, Calvin.”
“Uh huh.” He scratched a line through one of the handwritten lines of the hard copy store inventory ledger that his Pappy insisted on keeping due to mistrust of 'over-complicated gadgets', which included cell phones, computers and the internet. Pappy still believed the internet was a tangible item, de
spite Cal's many efforts to explain otherwise.
“If this isn't a good time, I can always make all the decisions for the wedding without consulting you. It's not like this is your wedding too.” Gracie dropped the napkins on top of the ledger.
Cal looked up at her. “Gracie, please. I'm trying to work. I don't have time to worry about whatever you're wearing tonight. Isn't that what Trish and Katie are for?”
Gracie pointed at the napkins. “You think I should wear those?”
“Sure.” Cal started to push the napkins to the side and then stopped, frowning at them. “Well, maybe not. These aren't even clothes, are they?”
“No. They're napkins. I was trying to get your opinion on the color.”
“Oh.” Cal held up one of the napkins and then shrugged. “I don't care.”
“They're supposed to be for our wedding. Pick one.”
“I don't care. I thought y'all already had the tablecloths and things picked out for the wedding.”
“Have you heard anything I've said in the last ten minutes?” Gracie was tempted to shove all his paperwork, laptop included, off the desk and onto the cracked tile floor.
“Gracie, I-.” Cal's eyes were flickering with annoyance.
“We did have the linens picked out,” Gracie cut him off. If they were going to fight, she was going to get her point across to him before he got the chance to add his side to the argument. “I thought we were good to go on the decorations until two hours ago when the company that rents the linens out called me and said that the specialty tablecloths, chair bows and napkins that I ordered never arrived. Apparently, one of their employees accidentally canceled our order.”
“Oh.” Cal was already losing interest in the conversation. “Well, pick something else.”