by Molly Harper
Frankie approved, heartily.
“Oh, not at all! I mean, I know you’re probably not familiar with this because you’ve never actually worked for anything before, but there are little, tiny, insignificant complications involved with any business. And when those minor, petty, barely noticeable problems come up, you just fix them, forget about them, and move on.”
While placing the finished piece of toast on a plate, Peggy spotted Frankie watching her and froze like a deer caught in headlights. Frankie grinned at her, and Peggy relaxed ever so slightly. Smiling, she picked up the second piece of toast and gave it the same treatment as the first.
“I don’t have to work,” Jared retorted.
“Congratulations . . .” Frankie said, ending the word on a dubious, scornful note.
“You think you’re such a big deal, with your stupid hair and your weird clothes. Everybody feels so sorry for poor little Frankie who almost died. Boo-hoo. Well, I know what you really are. You’re a freak.” Jared leaned and loomed over her . . . because she was seated and that was the only way he could loom over anyone. “And one of these days your mouth is gonna get you in trouble.”
Frankie couldn’t lie. His words stung. Not about her being a freak, of course. She dressed the way she did because it was fun and it set tight-asses like Marnette Lewis on scandalized pearl-clutching rants. But the suggestion that people in Lake Sackett pitied her set her teeth on edge. It was one thing for her to play her parents, but Frankie had never flaunted her illness around town for sympathy.
Then again, the suggestion came from a half-grown jackass, so she was going to give it all the consideration it was due, which wasn’t much.
“Next time you make a vague threat like that, you should really twist a pretend mustache at the corner of your mouth to drive home how super-duper evil you are,” she scoffed. As Jared’s face flushed an unpleasant shade of puce, she nodded to Peggy, who was walking back to his boothful of toadies. “Now, I think that sweet girl serving your food has finished your toast. Why don’t you go sit down and eat your breakfast?”
Jared’s lip curled, but he turned and started to swagger away.
“And Jared?”
He stopped, and she added, “Do be sure and tell your mama I said hello.”
He bared his braces at her, and she made an exaggerated show of shivering in her booth. He snarled and stomped back to his table, snapping at Peggy to get the hell out of his way.
Satisfied, Frankie stood and slid the cost of her breakfast, plus a generous tip for Ike and an extra twenty, across the counter. “Make sure Peggy gets this as a tip. She’s worth every penny.”
Ike wiped his hands on his apron and accepted the bills with a frown. “But Peggy didn’t serve you.”
Frankie grinned at him. “Sure she did.”
6
LEN HUFFMAN’S CONDITION was almost a textbook description of accidental drowning. Lake water in the lungs, complete with the appropriate levels of local diatoms, no alcohol in his system, no suspicious bruising or wounds, no defensive marks on the hands, no contusions on the head, no foreign matter besides dirt under the fingernails. His heart was as clogged as you would expect for any husky man in his fifties, but not diseased. She was still waiting for the drug test results from the state police, but Frankie was willing to sign all papers necessary for Melody Huffman to become a very comfortable widow.
And yet . . .
Eric Linden wouldn’t release the body to the family, claiming an incomplete investigation. Melody was becoming frantic, unable to get the body home for a funeral. The only good news was that her stepsons were equally irritated by Eric’s reluctance and threatening to come down to Georgia if the body wasn’t released in the next three days.
And so Frankie sat in the Sackett County Sheriff’s Department lobby, which was really just two uncomfortable plastic chairs situated in front of the clerk’s desk, contemplating what exactly she would be charged with if she threatened to smack a law enforcement official with one of her drainage pans.
Probably a lot.
Besides the gloomy wear and tear of a county building during a budget shortage, the sheriff’s office was also showing some of the chaotic disorganization left over from the previous administration. Poor Janey Jesper’s desk was overflowing with stacks of files and Post-it notes scrawled with phone numbers and report references. The floor was crowded with filing boxes marked with descriptions like Reports, 1963–1974, Water Damaged. A crumpled truck bumper, labeled with an evidence tag, leaned against the far wall.
Eric had inherited a mess. She felt just the tiniest bit sorry for him, but then she remembered poor Melody’s face when she’d arrived that morning expecting to take Len home, only to be told that Eric hadn’t signed the necessary releases.
Yep, back to the drainage-pan plan.
“He’ll be right with you,” Janey promised, chewing on the Breakfast Stick that Leslie had sent with Frankie. Breakfast Sticks were her mama’s original breakfast creation, comprising bacon wrapped around a sausage, stuffed with cheese, dipped in egg batter, and deep-fried. “He’s been on the phone all morning, tryin’ to get a cleanin’ service that will work for the budget he’s got. I tried to tell him to just ask the local church ladies to pitch in and help him get organized. You know Sara Lee would be chompin’ at the bit to get her hands on this place. But he said there are regulations against that sort of thing.”
“Eh, he’s probably right on that one. He’s got enough chain-of-evidence issues around here without worryin’ about Sara Lee gettin’ her grubby paws on his files.”
Landry Mitchell, thin with ash-blond hair and perpetually pale skin, ambled into the office with a confidence you wouldn’t expect in a man who left his police radio in the break room fridge at least once a week.
“Hey, Frankie,” he said, peering into the white paper bag in her lap. “You got one of those Breakfast Sticks for me?”
“Sure thing, Landry,” she said, offering the bag. “How’s your mama?”
“Ah, she’s fine, thanks for askin’,” he said, grinning around a mouthful of breading and bacon. “No idea how she just fell off the porch swing into those rosebushes, but her leg’s almost a hundred percent. She said she’s got to get better soon so I don’t have to keep cookin’ for her.”
Frankie resisted the urge to grimace. Most everybody in town—except Landry—knew the reason Vonnie Mitchell “fell off” her porch swing was that Landry had installed the swing incorrectly and bolted it to a weak joist on the porch. The joist collapsed under Vonnie’s weight, sending her flying through an equally weak railing—also repaired by Landry—and into her prize roses. But Vonnie never wanted Landry to feel bad about his shortcomings, so she blamed her own clumsiness. She probably wanted to recover before Landry could set her kitchen on fire.
Landry was a sweet guy, but there was a reason he failed to see how underqualified he was for his job. And that reason was spelled V-O-N-N-I-E.
“So how’s the new sheriff settlin’ in?” Frankie asked Landry in a conspiratorial tone.
“He’s a good guy,” Landry said with a shrug. “Knows his stuff when it comes to laws and such. Kind of a stick-in-the-mud, but what are you gonna do?”
“Don’t you think it’s gonna hurt him that he doesn’t know anything about Lake Sackett?” Frankie asked.
“I think it might help him,” Landry said, wiping his mouth with his uniform tie. “It’s always kind of awkward for me, arrestin’ somebody I’ve known since high school or who knows my family. They cuss at me at the scene for not just lettin’ them off with a warnin’. And then my mama wakes me up from a dead sleep to fuss at me for arrestin’ one of her friends’ sons. And then I get nasty looks at the Food Carnival, and I never know whether it’s safe to drink at the Dirty Deer because someone coulda spit in my beer. I figure it’s gonna be easier on him because he doesn’t know anybody. He doesn’t owe anybody any loyalty. His mama’s not gonna wake him up out of a dead sleep to fuss at him b
ecause I hear she lives in Florida. Maybe that’s why he moved here, ’cause he doesn’t know anybody.”
Frankie tilted her head and stared at Landry for a moment, as if she’d just watched a turtle play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on a harmonica. “Occasionally you are full of surprises, Landry.”
“Bound to happen sometime.” Landry shrugged and shoved the rest of the Breakfast Stick in his mouth.
Janey snickered, but as soon as Eric came walking out of his office, she straightened in her chair.
“Janey, is there any more coffee?”
“Miss Frankie McCready here to see you, sir,” she said in a very formal tone.
Eric’s generous mouth turned downward, but Frankie wasn’t sure if it was because of her presence or the fact that his deputy had gone full chipmunk cheeks on fried breakfast meat. That was a lovely way to start an appointment. “Ms. McCready, please come back to my office.”
Frankie gave a little salute, winking at Janey as she passed. Janey stifled a grin.
“Landry.”
“Thans for beckfast, Fankie!” Landry called around the food in his mouth. Eric cringed visibly.
Frankie followed Eric into his cramped, windowless office. His desk was a still spot of calm amid stacks of mildewed boxes and files.
She dropped her grease-spotted white paper bag on the desk. “These are Breakfast Sticks from my mama. She hears you haven’t made an appearance at the Rise and Shine yet, and she’s worried you haven’t been eatin’ breakfast. She has this whole rhymin’ thing about breakfast being the most important meal of the day, but I’ll spare ya.”
“People have noticed I haven’t eaten breakfast at the diner yet?”
She shrugged. “Small town.”
Eric eyed the bag dubiously and put it on the corner of the desk, far from his blotter. “Tell your mama I said thank you. Now, how can I help you this mornin’?”
“Well, you can release Len Huffman’s body to his wife, so she can take him home and bury him.”
He sighed, flopping back in his chair. “This again?”
“Yes, this again. Why are you treating that poor woman this way?”
“Because that’s my job! I just got hired. How’s it gonna look if I just rubber-stamp the first complicated situation that comes up? Plus, I just don’t think Melody Huffman’s story adds up. And she stands to gain quite a bit by his death.”
Frankie threw her hands up. “Because he loved his wife and wanted to make sure she was comfortable if something happened to him! Are you really trying to make this into a murder? Because it took her too long to get to a phone after she was thrown in the water? I told you, there is nothing about Len Huffman’s condition that suggests anything but accidental drowning.”
“Look, you can prove that he drowned, but you can’t prove that she didn’t do something to help him along. At least not until the toxicology results come back.”
“You are not the sheriff in Jaws! This was a boating accident!” she cried. “Just let me release the body to Melody so she can take him home and we can all move on with our lives!”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you saying this because you don’t want to wreck the rest of the tourist season?”
Her mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Everybody here talks about how vital the season is to the town’s economy. You’re the one who just mentioned Jaws. A civil servant eager to whitewash a tragedy so the town can ‘move on with their lives’ and bring the tourists in, sound familiar?”
“You know, if you could ever get both the brain cells in your head to agree, you’d be downright dangerous.” She stood with all the righteous fury someone could muster when they were wearing a T-shirt featuring a cartoon cat chasing Pop-Tarts. “First of all, screw you. Second, if anything, a nice juicy spousal murder would probably bring more tourists into town, sad to say. But that doesn’t matter because I don’t let things like that affect the decisions I make.”
She jerked his office door open. “You want results? I will show you results.”
She stomped out of his office, only to stomp right back and grab the bag of Breakfast Sticks. “You don’t deserve these.”
And then she walked out, with his breakfast in her hand.
ONCE FRANKIE WORKED UP A head of steam, it was pretty hard to stop her. And she knew the anger was genuine when she was still pissed off after driving to McCready’s from town. Usually, blasting Panic! at the Disco in the funeral home van cheered her out of lesser moods. She stomped down the hall toward the funeral home office, past the paint-by-number Jesuses the family felt too guilty to throw out. With Eric’s bag of Breakfast Sticks still clutched in her fingers, she threw open her daddy’s office door and flung herself into the chair in front of his desk.
“Please, come in,” he said, shaking his head at her.
Knowing this was as close as Bob would come to chastising her, Frankie hung her head. “Sorry, Daddy.”
“What if I’d been with a customer?”
“You’re right, that was rude,” she conceded. “Just remind me again how often the state regulators check our logs for crematory use and how difficult it is to fudge those records.”
“You can’t fire up the crematory to solve personal problems, sweetheart,” Bob said, his lips twitching. “We’ve talked about this, about twice a year, since you were in high school.”
Frankie growled. “Fine, another respectable felony thwarted by good sense and bureaucracy.”
“What’s buggin’ my doodle bug?” he asked, smiling fondly, like her fury was the most adorable thing in the world.
“The new sheriff is impossible,” she hissed. “What in the hell was the county commission thinking, appointing this guy? He’s cold, condescending, constantly questions my authority, wouldn’t know interpersonal skills if they fell onto his face and wiggled, and he uses laws as an excuse to get his own way.”
“So what you’re tellin’ me is that a law enforcement official sticks to professional topics in conversation, doesn’t just accept what he’s told at face value, and follows the letter of the law?” Bob said with a frown. “How dare he? We should fire him immediately before word gets out.”
Frankie pointed to her nose. “See this? Not my amused face.”
“He had a good record and a recommendation from his boss. He had a lot more experience than Landry Mitchell and to our knowledge has never shot himself in the foot while naked.”
Frankie made a harrumphing sound.
“Doodle bug, I know it’s annoyin’ to have your skills questioned, particularly when you take your work so seriously—”
Frankie beamed sweetly and bounced out of her chair. “Yes, thank you for your total agreement. That’s all I needed to hear.”
“BUT,” he added loudly, making Frankie pull a comically unpleasant face as she flopped back down. “Is it possible that you’re having a teensy-tiny overreaction to the fact that Sheriff Linden is not beguiled by your charisma and unique fashion sense?” He rounded his desk and leaned against it so he could smile down at her. “And that hurts your feelin’s just a little bit because you like him?”
Frankie shuddered and edged back away from her father like she was repulsed.
“Okay, we never, ever, talk about me being attracted to anybody, because eww.”
“He’s a nice-lookin’ fella, and you have a weak spot for contrariness. Maybe you can try a little harder to be more understanding.”
“Stop it right now, or I will tell Mama that you’ve been sneakin’ quarters out of the swear jar for the Coke machine!”
Bob’s jaw dropped open. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Keep talkin’ about what I find attractive in a man and see what happens,” she told her father, who scowled while drinking a fresh can of Coke. He preferred the cold cans from the machine in the break room to hiking down to the Snack Shack for a fountain drink.
“Well, could I persuade you to take a slightly gentler approach to your problem with Jare
d Lewis? I honestly think if you just talked calmly to his parents about your concerns, you wouldn’t have to send your uncle Stan on stakeouts of the back parking lot. Just reason with them. You’re a smart young lady. You’re a problem solver. I am sure if you found a way to reach out to them, you could recruit them to your side.”
“Again, no, because you can’t reason with ridiculous people,” she said airily, standing and dropping the cold, greasy bag into his hands. “But thank you, you just reminded me of something.”
“What’s that?” he called after her.
She ducked her head back into his office and smiled so brightly that he winced this time. “I’m really good at my job.”
Frankie practically skipped down the Hall of Jesusi, mentally listing all the reports she would need to collect in the next day or so. The paperwork was going to be a pain, but the look on Eric Linden’s face was going to be glorious. Her gleeful route to the morgue was cut short by the sudden appearance of Mercutio, Aunt Tootie’s pug potpourri mix, rounding the corner on his long, giraffe-like legs.
“Yipe!” Frankie cried, tangling her own feet together to avoid stepping on Mercutio. The dog escaped unscathed, but Frankie wound up face-planting into the carpet. She rolled onto her back, one eye closed. “Ow.”
Mercutio made an apologetic little rowr sound, crawled onto her chest, and licked her face. She sighed. “Thanks, Merc.”
Frankie scratched the dog’s ears, only to be crowded by a half dozen additional wet dog noses also seeking cuddles.
Wait.
Frankie bolted up, dislodging Mercutio. She looked up to find her great-aunt standing over her in a purple shirtdress and lime-green Crocs. “Aunt Tootie, you know you’re not supposed to bring the dogs in here. Uncle E.J.J. is gonna have a fit!”
“Oh, what your uncle doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I only brought the well-behaved puppies in, anyway.”
Frankie scanned the pack for Lulu, the pit mix who saw dry carpet as a personal challenge. Lulu was not present, so that was something, at least. On the other hand, a new addition to the pack, a stoic German shepherd, sat beside Tootie’s feet, warily scanning the hallway. Frankie didn’t know whether he was properly carpet-safe or not.