by Molly Harper
“She was so wound up when she told me, I thought she’d freaked out and taken a job in Alaska or something. A baby was much better news,” he said, grinning to beat the band. “But I did give you the heads-up on your favorite teen vandal, so I think we’re even.”
“Could you ask Margot to call me? I have some stuff I really need her help with,” Frankie said.
“Family stuff?”
“No, just . . . stuff.”
“That’s . . . cryptic.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Frankie told him.
SO ON ELECTION night, Frankie found herself crouched in the back of the hearse. It was parked across the lot, in a shaded area by the dock. The funeral home windows were dark, as was the marina. Even the neon Snack Shack sign had been extinguished for the night. The only light spilling across the gravel of the parking lot was the streetlight over the Dumpsters. It cast a sickly greenish-yellow glow over the back bay doors.
Frankie watched from the hearse’s hatchback as a black SUV with one headlight rolled into the parking lot. The driver’s-side door opened and a dark figure snuck quietly across the lot, a black bag slung over his shoulder. Frankie’s teeth clenched at the sight of him, wishing that Kyle had been wrong about Jared’s plans. Why couldn’t this kid be palling around with the other boys at the courthouse lawn, enjoying a burger from the diner, instead of committing several crimes at once? While wearing a cliché head-to-toe-black ensemble and greasepaint on his face? The little jerk was using his phone as a flashlight, for cripes’ sake.
Sighing, she held up the night-vision game camera Duffy had provided and recorded Jared using a tire iron to bash off the door handle. He paused, as if waiting for an alarm to sound, and relaxed when nothing but autumn wind echoed across the lake. Because Frankie had turned off the alarm system for the night. And just in case Jared’s parents tried to argue that her video could show any teenage boy breaking into McCready’s, she zoomed the lens across the parking lot and took several seconds’ worth of focused footage showing his car and license plate number.
When Jared entered the mortuary, Frankie slipped out of the hearse and walked quickly across the lot on feet she’d wrapped in burlap to muffle her steps. Within seconds, she heard Jared screaming his head off. She grinned, and continued to record from the shadows as he ran out of the mortuary, toward his SUV.
ACCORDING TO SEVERAL sources, Eric was sitting at the courthouse lawn with the rest of the locals, watching the marshals scribble election results on a whiteboard. He was winning in the polls, by a lot, while Landry’s mama comforted him in the corner. As a write-in candidate, Landry scored twenty-three votes, most likely from people related to him.
As part of what Ike considered his patriotic duty, he served burgers and coffee from the Rise and Shine from a booth on the lawn. It was a pretty civilized way to handle politics, generally speaking.
Just as Eric was declared the unofficial winner of the election, Jared Lewis’s SUV rolled up on the courthouse lawn, horn blaring. Jared Lewis hopped out, his face gray and sweaty, screaming for his father.
“Dad, Dad, we’ve got to get out of here. They’re coming! The zombies are coming!”
Vern Lewis’s eyes darted around, grimacing at the crowd that was gathering around them. He clutched his son by the arms. “Now, Jared, calm down, son, and just tell me what happened.”
“ZOMBIES!” Jared shrieked. Several of the older parents rolled their eyes and redirected their children to their ice cream. “At the McCready place, that crazy bitch Frankie has been making zombies down in that basement of hers! I saw it. There was all this special equipment and this glowing green chemical stuff in beakers all over the counters. And there was a body on the slab and all of a sudden it started twitching and it sat up! It tried to grab me! And then the morgue drawers started opening and zombies started climbing out and they were moaning and growling and sniffing. Like they could smell me and they wanted to eat me!”
“Shhh,” Vern Lewis hissed, looking around the crowd gathered in the lot. “Keep quiet, boy!”
“You’ve got to get me somewhere safe, Dad. The courthouse has a bomb shelter in the basement for the community leaders or something, right? Like a bunker? We need to hide out there until the army comes to save us.”
“Jared, Jared, baby, what happened?” Marnette cried, pressing his head against her chest. “Shush, shush, now, don’t get overexcited.”
“Oh, hush, woman, stop coddling him. Can’t you see he’s high or drunk or something? He thinks zombies are walking around!” Vern yelled.
“They were!” Jared cried. “Go back to McCready’s and you’ll see them! Sheriff Linden! You need to take as many guys with guns as you can over to McCready’s and start double-tapping those assholes.”
“Jared, language!” Marnette whispered.
“Why don’t any of you believe me?” Jared demanded. “I’m telling you, I know what I saw. Frankie probably wanted me to stay away from the basement because she didn’t want me to find out that she was doing her sicko experiments on the bodies!”
It was at this point that Frankie strolled onto the courthouse lawn, cool as a cucumber. She smiled at the Lewises before giving a side hug to E.J.J., who was watching the scene with some confusion.
“Actually, I wanted you to stay out of the basement because it’s private property and you don’t have permission to be there. As a matter of fact, my family, the owners of said property, have asked you multiple times to stay away from that property,” Frankie said.
“Tell them!” Jared shrieked. “Tell them that you made zombies, you crazy bitch.”
“Oh, Jared. Poor, misguided, badly parented Jared,” Frankie said, shaking her head as she opened up a video file on her tablet. “I didn’t make anything, except for this videotape that shows you using a tire iron to break into the funeral home and then running out screaming a few minutes later.
“Sheriff, this should be all the evidence you need to press even more charges, which my family fully intends to file,” she said as the action played out on the screen. “I have e-mailed a copy of the file to your work address. Also, this is an official application for a ‘no trespass’ order that would bar Jared from our property for the foreseeable future.”
Eric cleared his throat. “Thank you, Ms. McCready.”
“Now, wait, we don’t have to bring criminal charges into this,” Vern protested.
“Don’t we?” Frankie demanded. “We asked you several times to keep your son from breaking into our place of business and committing vandalism. You said it couldn’t possibly be him and refused to do anything, so now we have proof that he did it and there will be consequences for him.”
Jared slumped against his mother. “So there were no zombies?”
“No, Jared, there were no zombies. I set that whole thing up with makeup and special effects and volunteers. Because I’m smarter than you. Deal with it and grow up.”
He looked like he was on the verge of tears or throwing up, or both. “All right. All right. I did it,” he said, looking at his mother, who was trying to hold her hand over his mouth. “No, I did it, Mom. She’s right. I’ve been breaking into the funeral home for weeks, playing pranks and messing with her because I don’t like her.”
“Feelin’s mutual,” Frankie muttered.
“But I’m just glad there are no zombies,” he said. “I’ll take community service or probation or whatever. As long as there are no zombies.”
“Mr. McCready, would you be willing to talk to the county attorney and agree to that sort of thing?” Eric asked.
“If he’s willing to plead guilty to the charges, we’re willing to cooperate with community service sentencing,” E.J.J. said.
“Now, hold on,” Marnette said, glancing around. “You don’t have to sign anything. They can’t prove—”
“Shut up, Marnette!” Vern thundered. “For once, let the boy take responsibility for what he’s done! I should have done something years ago, should have tol
d you no, but I just didn’t want to hear you talk anymore. And now look at him, scared of zombies and losin’ his mind in front of the whole town.”
Marnette gasped and shot Vern a filthy look but didn’t say anything else.
Eric sighed. “For right now, Jared, I’m releasing you on your parents’ recognizance. Go home and don’t be a little jerk for the rest of the week. You can come by and sign the paperwork tomorrow.”
“Don’t talk to my son that way!” Marnette screeched.
“Don’t tempt me to file more charges,” Eric told her. “Against you, for disturbing the peace.”
Marnette swung her bag over her shoulder so hard it whacked Vern in the face. Vern and Marnette hustled Jared toward his SUV and drove home.
By the time they drove off, Eric turned to find that Frankie was gone.
FRANKIE SPENT THE following weekend moving her stuff from her parents’ house to Margot’s old cabin. She didn’t need a truck, as the few items of furniture she was taking only had to move about thirty yards. But she’d had to ask her parents to go into Atlanta for a moving truck that she hadn’t actually reserved so her unpacking wouldn’t be interrupted by fond reminiscences of how cute she’d been when she’d used every single item in the two boxes of belongings she’d managed to smuggle out of the house.
She heard footsteps on her porch as she was setting out the last of her framed pictures. Without looking back, she said, “Okay, Mom and Dad, I feel really bad sending you on a wild-goose chase for a nonexistent rental truck reservation, but I think we can agree that my version of movin’ involved a lot less cryin’.”
“I like the version of moving that doesn’t involve my pickup truck.”
Frankie turned toward the male voice to find Eric standing at her open front door. Herc was sitting on his haunches.
“Hey, Herc!” she cried. The dog came trotting forward, allowing Frankie to scratch his neck, and then hopped up on her couch to make himself comfortable. Eric started to object, but Frankie waved him off.
“He’s fine,” she said. “Congratulations, Sheriff. I hear your election was a landslide.”
“Yep. I get to keep my job for a few more years, at least. Do you know anything about this?” he asked, holding up a crime report filled with pie charts and numbers.
“Janey helped me crunch numbers from the papers she salvaged from the records room. It’s got the statistics from the weeks you’ve been sheriff—showing everything: traffic accident response times, thefts, assaults, burglaries, vandalism, domestic disputes—and compares them to the same calendar weeks in the previous ten years. It was an absolute bitch to put together on a spreadsheet, but it shows a decline from the previous years, which is impressive considering that you haven’t been in office for very long. If you show this to the county commission the next time you’re up for a raise, it couldn’t hurt.”
“This is amazing, Frankie,” he said. “I’m . . . I’m sorry for what I said. I know better than to call you names, and the things I said . . . It wasn’t right. And for you to turn around and help me anyway shows that you’re a better person than I am.”
“I have my sucky moments, like everybody else. There are real-world consequences for what happens at your job, I recognize that. I do tend to get a little ‘separated’ from the outside world when I’m working, and I forget how sheltered I am. I won’t do that to you again. I won’t put you in the position where you have to choose between protecting me and keeping your job. And I’m so sorry that I did it in the first place.”
“And I’m sorry for taking the whole thing so damn seriously and blaming you when it wasn’t going the way I wanted. That was stupid and selfish. I had no right to talk to you like that. I’m not your daddy—it’s not my job to try to change you. I don’t want to change you. I wouldn’t have fallen in . . . extremely deep like with you if you were anyone else.”
“So we’re both sorry and somewhat selfish.”
Eric smirked. “I’ve been meaning to ask about the zombie thing. It’s probably for the best if I don’t, really, but . . . Your whole family was at the courthouse. Who’d you get to dress up as zombies?”
“Actually, it was your friends from the zombie walk group in Atlanta. Margot’s friend put me in touch with them and they already had all of their makeup and costumes ready from Halloween. They felt really bad about what happened to you and were willing to put their best people to work if it was going to help the ‘Segway guy.’ Also, I think they wanted to prove that zombie scares could be used for good instead of evil. They even cleaned up the fake blood and lab equipment before they left. Very considerate zombies.”
“Why go through the charade of the zombie apocalypse if you were just going to record him breaking in?” he asked.
“Two reasons. One, payback, which is always a noble pursuit. And two, because his parents needed to hear from Jared’s own lips that he’d broken into the funeral home. I had to overcome his self-preservation instincts with fear.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that Vern Lewis has decided to drop the charges against you, in light of you not throwing the book at Jared. Your record is now a clean slate.”
“Aw, that means I have to remove the pins from my voodoo doll.”
“If we’re going to eventually date, you’re going to have to stop saying things like that. I don’t know if you’re kidding.”
She leaned close and whispered. “You’ll never know if I’m kidding.”
“True enough,” he agreed.
“Besides, I don’t know that I’ll ever date you,” she said, backing away. “The last time I slept with you, you arrested me.”
“We can leave that part out next time,” he promised. “Please go out on a date with me. We don’t have to confess our undying love for each other or anything. I would just really like a chance to prove I’m not a selfish ass all of the time.”
“What if I date you and it turns out that we still get angry at each other over things not related to Jared Lewis and we should be separated by several counties?”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“What if I date you and you figure out that I just want access to your adorable dog?” she asked.
He grinned and kissed her soundly. “I’m willing to live with that.”
FRANKIE RAN A comb over Ron Turner’s age- and era-inappropriate pompadour, preserving the Elvis lookalikedom he’d maintained in life. Mr. Ron had been a sweet man with a never-ending stream of after-church knock-knock jokes when she was a kid. Frankie was pleased that she’d managed to preserve that little smile on his face. It’s how his family and friends would want to remember him.
“It’s a real shame that you had to leave before the holidays, Mr. Ron,” she told him. “I know your family’s going to miss the way you used to let them win the Thanksgiving wishbone pull every time. And how you used to measure how good a meal was by how far you had to undo your pants.”
She dabbed a bit of Vaseline on Mr. Ron’s lips to give them a more lifelike softness. “I would love to spend more time reminiscing on my favorites in your knock-knock joke repertoire, but I have plans tonight. I’m celebrating with my man-friend. He just got elected as sheriff; officially, not interim, which is a big deal. He’s the first non–Lake Sackett native to win a landslide election for any county office in the county’s history, you know.”
The big celebration she had planned was actually a nice quiet dinner at her cabin, without jail cells or naked swimming or zombies. Or even discussion of zombies. They’d been skating the edges of a relationship for weeks and they hadn’t had a normal, boring date yet. They might even watch Netflix and then actually chill.
For now, they were content with dating. Very cautiously. Frankie was not going to be moving into Eric’s place anytime soon. Her toothbrush was there, and some of her Funko Pop! dolls, but she wasn’t quite ready to make the full transition. She figured she would get there when she was ready. For now, she was content in Margot’s
cabin. She liked knowing that she could stumble about in the mornings without worrying about waking her parents up. She liked being able to walk around in her underwear if she wanted . . . if the curtains were closed, because she did live about ten feet from her cousin. She liked being able to watch the racier episodes of Game of Thrones without her mother walking through the room, covering her eyes, and saying, “Oh my goodness,” over and over.
Frankie’s work environment was also more relaxed, now that she didn’t have to assiduously guard the mortuary. To avoid charges, Jared was going to be spending a lot of weekends picking up trash off the highway and volunteering at a grief counseling hotline for teens to help him appreciate how wrong it is to interrupt the grieving process with jerky shenanigans.
She stood back and smiled as she surveyed the full picture of Mr. Ron in repose. He looked just as he had in life, but quiet, for the first time since she’d known him.
She heard a knock on the door and Eric’s voice calling, “Hey, in there! Everybody decent?”
“Come on in,” she yelled back.
Eric walked into the morgue without hesitation. “Hi. You almost done for the day?”
“Just finishing up,” she said, straightening Mr. Ron’s cuffs.
“Very peaceful and lifelike,” Eric assured her, gazing down at the casket.
“The four words every girl wants to hear,” she said, kissing him lightly before wheeling Mr. Ron over to the elevator. “How was your day?”
“Traffic, tickets, the odd cat in a tree,” he said. “Landry returned from his ‘election bereavement leave’ after I explained that wasn’t a real thing.”
“How’s that goin’?” she asked, pushing the button to send the casket upstairs. “Is it awkward, him comin’ back to work for you after tryin’ to get your job?”
Eric shook his head. “Not really. I think he’s kinda relieved, to be honest with you. I think the only reason he agreed to run is that he thought it would make his mama proud.”