Hissy Fit (Possum Creek #2)

by Gen Griffin

  “You could have given me a heads up.”

  “I did give you a heads up. You got to come in to the station on your own terms. You got your lawyer, and you got to leave without ever having charges pressed.”

  “I shouldn't have had to go down there in the first place. Everyone knows I didn't kill that guy.”

  “It’s Kerry. I told you Kerry was going to be trouble. He's got it out for you.”

  “Because of Casey Black?” David heard the hesitation in his own voice when he said the dead girl's name.

  “Right.”

  “That's bullshit.” David tossed the wrench down and leaned against the hood of the little car. “You know, I kind of thought we'd reached the point where everyone had forgotten about Casey. It’s been eight years.”

  “Me too,” Addison sighed and slumped down on the concrete floor, his back to the car. He tapped a cigarette out of the pack from his pocket. “We need to get rid of Kerry.”

  “Getting rid of Kerry isn't going to make everyone in Possum Creek forget about Casey.”

  “It would help,” Addison said. “Kerry is going to accuse you of every murder in Callahan County from now on. You realize that, right?”

  “I'm glad we have a low crime rate,” David grumbled. “I didn't kill anyone.”

  “I know,” Addison shrugged his shoulders and played with the edge of a brake line. “Why wouldn't you let Gracie provide an alibi for the time of the murder?”

  “She doesn't need to be drug into this kind of mess,” David replied. “She has enough to worry about back at college without adding my lousy reputation into the mix.”

  “Speaking of Gracie's college,” Addison narrowed his eyes at David as he lit a cigarette. “That was a hell of a stunt y'all pulled this weekend.”

  “Don't smoke in my shop.” David made a shoo-ing gesture. “Too much flammable shit in here.”

  “Quit trying to change the topic.” Addison narrowed his eyes at David. “You don't want to have this conversation outside, do you?”

  “No,” David glared at Addison. “I don't want to have this conversation at all.”

  “You're not really screwing my kid sister.” It was statement, not a question.

  “You have no idea what your sister and I are doing,” David said after a moment's hesitation.

  “Want to tell me why she needs an alibi for her whereabouts this weekend?” Addison asked, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Alibi?” David nearly choked on the Coke he'd just taken a swallowed.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don't know what you’re talking about,” David said.

  “Liar.” Addison took a long drag off of his cigarette. “The State University police called me yesterday. They wanted to confirm Gracie was with you this weekend.”

  David froze with one hand halfway into the engine. He put the wrench he was holding on the side of the engine block. “You tell them she was?”

  “Why does my kid sister need an alibi?”

  “Don't worry about it, Addy. Just tell them she was with me. Don't mention the part where Kerry thinks I kill people as a hobby.”

  “I have to worry about it. She's my sister.”

  “I took care of it, okay?”

  “Jesus Christ, you really did kill that guy, didn't you?” Addison stared at him in horror. “Kerry was right.”

  “No. I didn't. Kerry is an idiot.” David hated lying to Addison but he had no choice. “I definitely did not kill that guy.”

  “Then why did Gracie need an alibi?”

  “As far as I know, she didn't.” David lied again. “Maybe someone is stealing things out of the dorm or something. State University doesn't have real cops, you know. They're rent-a-cops. Maybe they just needed to make sure Gracie wasn't in the dorm this weekend.”

  “You could be right.” Addison didn't look convinced.

  “Look, remember when you accused me of setting up a plan to get Gracie and Cal back together?” David decided to distract Addison.

  “Yeah.” Addison nodded.

  “You were right. I was hoping he’d snap out of it and drop Jo Beth if he thought he was really losing Gracie or good.”

  “Oh.” Addison blinked in surprise and then nodded. “It worked then.”

  “Did it?” It was David's turn to look surprised. “Cal still isn't speaking to me.”

  “He's trading in that ring for a new set of mud tires,” Addison smirked. “He and Jo Beth are history.”

  “Nice.” David meant it.

  “Very,” Addison replied. “He went up to State to get Gracie this morning.”

  “Wait,” David frowned, suddenly confused. “Cal went after Gracie?”

  “Yup.” Addison looked positively proud of himself. “I may have helped that one along just a little bit. Once I realized what you were up to it was pretty easy to prod Cal along in the right direction.”

  “What did you do?” David was almost afraid of what the reply was going to be. Addison may have been at the front of the line when God passed out sex appeal, but he had spent too much time staring at himself in the mirror and had wound up at the end of the line when the brains got distributed.

  “I sent him on a mission,” Addison was grinning now.

  “A mission?” David was dumbfounded.

  “Yeah. I told him to go up to State and get Gracie to tell him what y'all were up to.”

  “And he went?”

  “He never has been able to stay away from her.”

  “Yeah. I know. But he was pissed.”

  “I may have also told him that I thought your relationship with her was total bullshit.”

  “I see.” David did see. Kind of. Maybe. If he were Addison, he was sure it would all have made sense. On the bright side, maybe Addison had gotten something right for once. Maybe Cal and Gracie could sort out their own messy relationship without his help. God knew, David was horrible at guy-girl stuff. That was why he dated his truck. “Good job.”

  Chapter 24

  “Please tell me y'all have clothes on.” David leaned against the frame of the front door and considered whether or not turnabout was fair play when it came to kicking Cal's ass.

  Cal was sitting on the right side of the couch with Gracie's head in his lap. He was stroking her golden blonde hair with one hand and flipping through channels with the remote in his other. A fluffy pink quilt that David recognized from Gracie's dorm room was pulled over them.

  Cal pulled up the corner of the blanket and made a show of peeking underneath before Gracie swatted his hand. He dropped the cover back over her. “For the most part,” Cal smirked at David. “I know how much you enjoy the sight of me in my boxers.”

  “I don't. Not at all. You're fat and hairy.” David was exhausted, but he couldn't stop himself from grinning back at his best friend. He'd been surprised to see Cal's truck parked in the driveway when he'd finally gotten enough done at the shop that he felt he could go home for the night. David hoped Cal's reappearance on his property was a sign that he'd been forgiven. He needed to clear the air between them, and he felt nothing but relief when he saw Gracie curled up against Cal's side. He closed the front door behind him. “I was afraid I was in for a couple more broken bones when I saw your truck parked out front.”

  “Uh, yeah. About that. Sorry.” Cal had the decency to appear genuinely chagrined. “Um, I guess I need to work on my listening skills.”

  “Be awful nice if you would.” David shook his head at the two of them.

  “I told him everything,” Gracie said as she shifted so that she was sitting up, tucked neatly into the crook of Cal's arm. David noted that she kept the blanket pulled damn near to her chin.

  “Thank God. I'm not sure how much longer I was going to be able to keep our little charade up.” David crossed the room and collapsed down into the beat up old recliner that sat off to the side of the couch.

  “If you ask me, the bastard got lucky when he dropped dead. If I had ever found out that someone h
ad tried to rape Gracie-.” Cal had murder in his eyes. Gracie put her hand over his and stroked his fingers. David saw her mouth the words 'it’s okay' to Cal. He shook his head no and took a deep breath as he turned back to David. “She told me she went running for Addison, wound up with you instead. I'm not mad anymore. Not at y'all anyway.”

  “That's a relief.” David eyed the pizza box on his coffee table thoughtfully. The Sheriff had given them money to eat on, but by the time he'd been done at the shop he hadn't even wanted to attempt to go have dinner anywhere. Addison had wanted to bring some girl along with them, and David just hadn't been in the mood to stomach watching Addison play his games. “I'm too damn tired to fight with you right now. Not to mention I told Gracie I'd fix shit with you for her.”

  Cal snorted. “That would have been an interesting conversation.”

  “I was just trying to hide her boyfriend's body, and it seemed like a reasonable alibi.”

  “Yeah. I'm not impressed.” Cal opened a warm bottle of Mountain Dew that he had left on the table after they had eaten dinner earlier. He drank the rest of it in a single swallow, cringing slightly at the flavor. “What I don't understand is why you didn't tell me?”

  “I tried. You refused to hear a word I said.”

  “Gracie and I have discussed the possibility that my listening skills need work.” Cal protectively ran his hand down Gracie's side.

  With one hand David opened the pizza box that was sitting on the coffee table and extracted a slice of not-quite-cold-yet pineapple and ham pizza.

  “That has mushrooms on it,” Gracie warned him.

  “Yelch.” David made a face and bit into the pizza anyway. “I'm so hungry, I don't even care.”

  “I heard your warrant got thrown out,” Cal said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Ian.”

  David nodded. “Y'all aren't going to believe it, but Kerry found-”

  “The wrong body,” Cal cut him off mid-sentence. “Yeah, actually, we did figure that out. Nothing Addison said about the guy who had been murdered matched anything Gracie told me about her date from hell.”

  “Does Addison know what's going on yet?” Gracie asked.

  “No.” David stretched out in the recliner. “He knows a little bit, but I shut him down on the details. He thinks that Gracie and I planned this mess so that you would get jealous enough of our non-relationship to break up with Jo Beth and make up with Gracie.”

  “Nice, but extremely illogical.” Cal frowned. “I can't ever follow Addison's logic.”

  “Me neither. It’s like playing connect the dots without a picture underneath. But he's going to tell you he was right because, well, to some extent it apparently worked.” He gestured at the way Gracie and Cal were cuddled up together.

  “You have a point,” Cal shrugged as Gracie put her head on his shoulder. “Is everything settled down at the Sheriff's Office?”

  “More or less,” David said devouring the slice of pizza so quickly he barely tasted the disgusting mushrooms. He narrowed his eyes at Gracie. “But I do have a question. If y'all knew that, then why are you here and not at college where I left you?”

  “Because I want to be,” she said without apology. “I freaked out when I heard you'd been arrested.”

  “I freaked out when I heard I was being arrested.” David hadn't admitted to himself, or anyone else, how nervous he'd been today when he'd walked into the CCSD building to face off with Kerry. “I thought my ass was toast. Kerry is out to get me, and I was afraid he'd managed to do it.”

  “Me too,” Cal scowled. “We need to do something about Kerry.”

  “Let’s just kill him and hide the body.” David was only half kidding as he closed his eyes and leaned back against the recliner, too tired to move. “We're starting to get good at this shit.”

  “No, we're not. I'm going to have a heart attack before I'm 30 if--” He looked over at Gracie, as if suddenly remembering that there was one last secret between them. David took their distraction as an opportunity to snag Gracie's Cherry Coke away from her and took a long swallow of it.

  She was watching him intently, but she didn't look surprised. “Is this the part where y'all finally tell me what you did to Casey?”

  David choked on the soda.

  Cal raised one eyebrow at David questioningly. David scowled. “You don't need to know what happened to Casey.”

  “But you do know?” Gracie tilted her head at him, shooting him a questioning look. Cal pulled her tighter against his side and ran his fingers through her long hair.

  “We know.”

  “Casey is why Kerry wants me dead,” David explained, a fresh wave of resigned exhaustion washing over him. “I figured that out today while I was loitering around in Frank Chasson's office waiting on my attorney to show up. You can overhear a lot of gossip from that corner of the Sheriff's Department.”

  “Addison said something about Casey the other night when he came and talked to me at the diner,” Cal recalled.

  “Apparently she was Kerry's only friend in Possum Creek.”

  “Casey was a sweet girl,” Gracie interrupted him. “She was shy, but she was nice. It always surprised me that more people didn't miss her when she disappeared.”

  “I keep forgetting the two of you were the same age,” David muttered. “Kerry misses Casey, evidently. He says his life was forever changed when she went missing. Call it my really shitty karma, but Kerry claims the injustice surrounding Casey's disappearance is what spurred him to join the law enforcement community.”

  “Casey really is dead?” Gracie spoke like she knew the answer.

  Cal stiffened involuntarily then nodded. Gracie wrapped her fingers through his and squeezed reassuringly.

  “She's dead.” David wondered what it would be like to have a relationship where you didn't ever have to hide anything from the person. He figured his laundry list of sins would be enough to send most girls running the other direction.

  “What happened?” Gracie asked, looking directly at David. “I've always heard that you killed her. I heard you were the boyfriend she had been sneaking out to go meet up with when she disappeared.”

  “I wasn't her boyfriend,” David took a deep breath before continuing, “but I'm the reason she's dead.”

  Cal frowned at him. “You can't keep blaming-.”

  “It was my fault,” David cut him off. “I take full responsibility for what happened to Casey.”

  “You and I both knew better,” Cal said. “You have to stop blaming yourself. We're all equally guilty.”

  “You were involved?” Gracie looked up at Cal with obvious surprise.

  “I told you he wasn't a damned saint,” David muttered under his breath.

  “Just as much as David was.” Cal swallowed a visible lump in his throat. “Gracie, I agree with David. You don't need to know what happened to Casey. Not when we've got Kerry crawling around in the bushes behind us, watching every step we take.”

  “Cal, I just want to know the truth.”

  “Gracie, if you don't know the truth then you can't be held responsible for it. Don't take on nightmares you didn't earn. You have enough problems without adding old mistakes to your list of sins.” David dared her to challenge him, knowing she wouldn't.

  Gracie slumped back against Cal and buried her face in his chest. “It was an accident, right?”

  “I promise you, it was an accident.” Cal opened his mouth as if he was going to say more, but David made a slashing gesture in the air and shook his head. Cal stopped talking, choosing instead to stroke Gracie's hair as she snuggled into him.

  “Killing Brett wasn't an accident,” Gracie whispered into Cal's shoulder.

  “I know.” He shifted so that Gracie was between his knees. He crossed his arms around her waist and cast a sideways glance over at David. “We're going straight now. Just so you know. No more bodies. No more chopped up stolen cars. Hell, I think I'm going to start filing your tax returns for
you. From now on, we're good law-abiding citizens. I'm too old and out of shape to be running around trying to hide bodies and cover up murders.”

  David nearly laughed. “Sounds like a plan to me. However, that also means we've got to stop killing people.”

  “I'm not expecting that to be a problem.”

  “And yet, we just disposed of corpse No. 2. Obviously, we've got a problem.”

  “We didn't have much of a choice with Casey,” Cal spoke softly. “At least, I didn't think I had much of a choice at the time.”

  Gracie looked up from his shoulder to meet his eyes. “You regret it?”

  “Casey's death keeps coming back around to bite us in the collective ass,” Cal confessed as he held her close. “Possum Creek is too small of a town for this big of a secret. If there's one thing I've figured out over the last eight years, it’s that I'd rather deal with the consequences when things happen than worry about it for the rest of my life.”

  “Do you think I did the wrong thing when I ran with Brett's body instead of calling the cops?” she asked him, tears filling her eyes.

  “I don't know,” he said. “I've already told you what I would have done.”

  “Everything has its price, Gracie.” David rubbed his eyes. He wasn't in the mood for being philosophical right now. “Someone, somewhere, is going to be devastated when Brett doesn't come home. It may just be his grandma, but she has feelings too. Her feelings just aren't my priority.”

  “Your priority?” she repeated his words questioningly.

  “My priority is protecting my friends. You. Cal. Addison.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I'd rather act first and ask moral questions later than watch you rot in jail while wondering why I left the important decisions to someone else.”

  Gracie cuddled even closer to Cal. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Neither of them spoke.

  David stood up. “I'm fucking exhausted. I'm going to bed. Y'all behave. Or whatever it is y'all do.”

  “What happens next?” Cal asked. “I mean, what do we need to take care of?”