by Tegan Maher
Table of Contents
© 2018 Tegan Maher
Author’s Note
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Thank You!
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© 2018 Tegan Maher
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Author’s Note
Before you start reading, I thought maybe a little clarification might be in order because I’ve gotten a few emails wondering about the linguistics and grammar.
First, thank you for giving me your time!
I use local dialect both in dialogue and in narrative. Noelle, Rae, Hunter, and crew are smart and educated, but still drop back to default dialect sometimes, as do most of us when we’re in casual situations.
Grammatical errors and use of slang are likely intentional (me and you vs. you and I; we was going vs. we were going; etc.) You’ll even find some words that look flat-out made up, unless, of course, you’re from the South. ☺
That being said, typos are never intentional and if I’ve missed any, I apologize!
So please, I ask for a little latitude for the good folks of Keyhole Lake, especially Skeeter, Earl, and Bobbie Sue. I hope you enjoy the book—I’d love to hear what you think!
-Tegan
CHAPTER ONE
"I HOPE YOU'RE READY to get out-fished by a girl," I told Hunter as I used the oar to push our johnboat away from shore. The sun was just slipping over the mountains, and it was still daylight enough that I could see the outlines of a couple other boats farther offshore.
"Yeah, okay," he said as he dropped the trolling motor into the water. "Care to put your money where your mouth is?"
I took a seat on the bench and lifted a shoulder, grinning. "If you have some extra cash you're ready to lose, then sure. Twenty?"
He arched a brow at me. "Twenty it is. Are we betting on who catches the most or who catches the biggest?"
"Hmm," I said, considering. "Quantity or quality? Let's go with quality. Whoever catches the biggest wins."
He dipped his head in agreement. "You're on, Ms. Flynn. Not that it matters, really. I'm gonna catch the most and the biggest." He narrowed his eyes at me. "And no hocus pocus."
I put my hand to my heart. "It wounds me that you think I'd cheat." I tied on a new hook then clipped a weight to my line while he navigated to one of our secret honey holes. "Besides, I don't need magic. I've been fishin' this lake my whole life. If you remember, I'm the one who told you about all the good spots."
"You may just be surprised. Earl and I have been checking out some new spots. The storms we had last summer washed the bank away in a few places, and they're turning out to be pretty sweet."
I finished rigging up my pole and reached for his so we'd be ready to cast as soon as we dropped anchor. "That's a good thing. I hope y'all have kept quiet about 'em so maybe we have a head start in the tournament."
There were only a couple days left until Keyhole Lake's annual fishing tournament kicked off, so we were out doing a little strategic planning while squeezing in some quality time. We'd both been so busy over the last few weeks that we hadn't had much time to do anything fun. Hunter was in the middle of remodeling his house, and I'd been working my tail off to keep up with the demands of my upcycling business, Reimagined.
When he'd suggested some night fishing, I'd jumped all over it. My Uncle Calvin used to take me when I was a kid, and those were some of my best childhood memories. There's just something about being out on the water at night that's both soothing and exciting at the same time. Add in a handsome man and a picnic basket full of junk food, and that was about as close to a perfect evening as you could get as far as I was concerned.
Keyhole Lake was about seven miles across at its widest point, so there were plenty of places to go, but we only traveled for ten minutes or so before he pulled into a little cove I'd never noticed before. He killed the motor while I dragged the anchor out of the bottom of the boat and dropped it overboard.
"Here," I said, handing him his pole. "I rigged it for you, but you gotta put your own bait on."
He took it from me and baited it, then stood to cast. I rocked the boat a little and laughed as he wobbled for a second.
"Watch it, woman, or else I'll use you for bait," he said, mock-scowling at me as he steadied himself.
I crinkled my nose at him, smiling, then stood and cast my own line. We fished in comfortable silence for a while, just enjoying the sounds of fish popping the top of the water as they ate and the noise of the crickets and frogs in the woods behind us.
My line tugged as I was reeling in, and I slowed, waiting for whatever it was to take a good bite. Instead, the line just pulled tighter, and I realized by the steady drag that I'd caught something off the bottom of the lake. I sighed. Just like every other populated lake on the planet, Keyhole Lake was plagued with its share of bottles and other garbage.
It used to be common practice to just dump garbage in the lake, but that had mostly stopped due to hefty fines and dump-shaming. The town environmental committee was making a concentrated effort to clean it up, but decades of garbage still littered the bottom.
I kept reeling slowly, hoping whatever it was didn't cut my line. I managed to get it to the boat and used the net to dip down and pull it out—an old Coke can. Disgusted, I drained the water out of it and tossed it into the boat.
Hunter laughed. "Make sure to keep it separate. You're in the running for the biggest soda can of the night."
I glared at him "Laugh now. I'm just getting started."
We fished for another half hour, and our luck got a little better. We each caught a ba
ss. His was bigger than mine, though the only thing brag-worthy about either of them was that they were real fish. Another twenty minutes later, we were about to give up and move to another spot when the sound of voices and a trolling motor carried to us across the water. They stopped a quarter of a mile or so away from us, and after the initial chatter of anchoring and prepping, silence fell again.
After a few more casts, we pulled anchor and reeled in, ready to relocate, when their excited voices carried to us.
"Holy moly, Joe, you got a monster! Don't rush it—easy now!"
"Don't tell me how to fish," the other guy snapped. "It ain't like this is my first rodeo. Gimme some space."
They must have had a biggun on, because the guy wrestled with it for a couple minutes, and we got curious. Hunter changed course and we headed that direction, anxious to see what could possibly be so big that it was taking him that long to get it in. I nudged Hunter and whispered, "I bet it's a tire."
He was pulling then reeling in the slack, over and over, but by that the time we got there, his excitement had faded. We puttered up next to them.
"We heard you from over there and figured you had the catch of the night," Hunter said.
The guy snorted. "Yeah, me too, but I'm thinkin' I've caught a bag of garbage or maybe a tire," he said.
His buddy piped up. "See, I told ya to go with twelve-pound line 'stead of that heavy-duty stuff. Then it woulda broke off already and you wouldn't be wastin' your time catchin' Goodyears while I'm bringin' in the big boys over here."
To his partner's chagrin, he got a bite right then, and from the look of it, it was gonna be a nice one. Finally, whatever the guy had snagged was close enough to the surface to see. It looked like he was right about catching a bag of garbage.
The dark plastic floated around it as he pulled it closer to the boat. His forehead was wrinkled in a combination of concentration and disgust as he hauled it closer. It floated past us as he gave a good tug, and something milky white floated up out of it, and water grass that looked almost like seaweed waved in the water.
"Wait," Hunter barked, putting his hand out in front of me like I was about to fall out of the boat. "Stop reeling!"
The startled man gawked at him but did as he was told.
Hunter took an oar and moved us a little closer to the bag, then poked at it, trying to flip it over. He pulled his flashlight off his belt and clicked it on. When he ran the beam over the surface of the water, I realized then what the white thing was.
"Buddy," I said, gagging, "that ain't no bag of garbage."
The guy craned his neck, and when he saw the same thing I did, he turned and threw up off the other side of the boat. I swallowed, struggling not to do the same, as the white thing rose closer to the surface and morphed into a hand and fingers, attached to a body dressed in dark clothing.
"I reckon it ain't a Goodyear after all," his partner said, plunking to his seat in the boat.
"Not for somebody, anyway," Hunter added, pulling out his cell.
CHAPTER TWO
JIM NICHOLS, OUR SORT-of local forensic tech and coroner, happened to be in town getting his own boat ready for the tournament. He worked in Atlanta but was born and raised in Keyhole. When he wasn't working, he was home. And it was a guarantee that if there was a fishing tournament, he'd be there.
Keyhole County was too rural to merit its own forensic investigator though, so Jim gladly filled in when he was home. Of course, until recently, that hadn't involved much other than closing Great-Uncle Albert's eyes after he'd passed in his sleep, then signing the death certificate.
He'd seen a little more action over the last year than any of us would have preferred. When he showed up, he had boat paint on his hands and looked a little worse for wear.
The body had looked large in the water, but once we got it out, we were surprised to find it was a slender girl, or at least she had been in life. Being in the water hadn't done much for her size or her complexion, but the chain-style belt wrapped around her—which is what Buddy'd hooked—still looked new and shiny against the black clothes she was wearing.
Jim examined her, then said he couldn't give an exact time of death until he got her into the morgue.
"I'm sorry, guys," he said, shaking his head as he zipped up the body bag. "There's just no way for me to tell. It's safe to say she's been in there less than forty-eight hours, but I can't narrow it down much more than that."
Hunter heaved a sigh and held out his hand. "Thanks anyway, Jim."
Rubbing a paint-streaked hand down his pant leg, he stepped forward to shake. "Pardon the paint and work clothes. The Fair Lady was well past due for a haul-out and new paint, so that's what I've been doing all day." His eyes lit with humor. "I didn't take the time to change because I wanted to get here before the rest of the town did."
The one thing about small towns is that news travels. To an outsider, it might have seemed impossible that the majority of Keyhole knew something juicy within an hour of it happening, but it was true. Let one person get caught doing the Saturday-morning walk of shame still wearing the clothes they'd been seen in at Fancy's bar the night before, and it was almost a guarantee the poor schmuck or schmuckette's mama would be waiting for them when they got home.
On the flip side, the town gossip tree served a higher good, too. Cindy Lou Schneider, a ten-year-old girl, had gone riding several weeks before, and her horse came home without her. Within twenty minutes, there were people beating the bushes looking for her, and it wasn't another half hour before a neighbor found her in the woods three miles from home with a broken ankle.
The yin-and-yang takeaway? Count on the fact that your neighbors are gonna know everything about you, and use that knowledge as you see fit.
Hunter shook his head. "I didn't want people crawling all over the place, so I took extra precautions to make sure that didn't happen. I'm holding their cell phones until I'm done questioning them."
He'd no sooner said it than Coralee—the owner of the beauty shop and self-appointed Executive Director of Information Dissemination—pulled in. To put it in simple terms, the Clip N Curl was the hub of the gossip wheel. Nothing went on in Keyhole without Coralee hearing about it, but she had a huge heart and would stop vicious gossip just as quickly as she'd pass on the good stuff. She was also a stickler for sticking to the facts, though speculation about those facts was considered part and parcel.
Jim grinned and looked at Hunter. "You were saying?"
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Hunter threw his hands up. "I give up. I'm just gonna start calling Coralee myself. That's my new protocol—I'll call in the ambulance or whatever emergency personnel I need, then I'll call her."
I lifted a shoulder. "I sorta wish you would. That way, she'd quit cornering me and pumping me for info as soon as I get to work." My shop sat right beside hers, so there was no way to avoid her. Combine that with the fact I was dating the sheriff, and I was a sitting duck.
Glancing at the body bag, I tried to scrub the images of the poor girl zipped inside it from my brain, but that wasn't happening. When we pulled her from the water, she was limp, her long black hair matted and stuck to her face. She was young; I'd be shocked if it turned out she was even legal.
As the EMTs lifted her onto the gurney and pushed her into the back of the ambulance, Coralee waved to us from the other side of the police tape, her giant 80s hair lifting as a single unit when a gust of wind blew through. Behind her, looking every bit as eager, stood Marge and Roberta, her two closest cronies.
Casting a resigned glance at Hunter, I asked the only relevant question: "Now or later?"
CHAPTER THREE
I FIGURED SHELBY, MY kid sister, would be in bed when I got home, but she wasn't. Instead, she was studying for her SATs, sitting at the long farm table in the kitchen Indian-style, books and papers scattered around her. Adelaide, my living-impaired aunt, floated beside her, quizzing her.
Our mama died in a car wreck when Shelby was two and I was
eleven. One day a few months after, our dad dropped us off at Aunt Adelaide and Uncle Calvin's horse farm and never came back.
To their credit, Addy and Cal never missed a beat. When he didn't come to get us, they'd gone to our house, gathered our stuff, and just kept us. He'd left all the necessary paperwork for them to adopt us along with the info to a small college fund, and that was that.
He never said why he left or where he was going, but I imagine taking on a toddler and a young witch just coming into her power was too much for him. He sucked for doing it, but at least we were lucky enough to have family who loved us. I was heartbroken when Uncle Cal passed, but we carried on and got through it together.
When Addy died almost two years ago, I was lost. Shelby was only sixteen, and I was a waitress, working two jobs just to put food on the table for us and our crew of critters. When she showed up in the doorway of a stall I was cleaning during one of my many private ugly-cry sessions, I'd never been so relieved and happy in my life.
Then I found out since she no longer had a corporeal body that allowed her to keep busy, she had plenty of time to boss us around. Still, every ounce of bossiness came with a pound of love—a mantra Shelby and I wore like a cape when we were chewing our tongues bloody when she was pushing the boundaries of our sanity.
Right about then, as Addy floated back and forth around her barking out questions, it was obvious Shelby was losing her tenuous hold.
When the screen door slapped shut behind me, both of them glanced my way wearing expressions from opposite ends of the spectrum. Shelby looked at me like I was the last lifeboat on a sinking ship, while Addy's gaze was stern.
"She's studied this to death. She knows it inside out, but she's still fussin' over it like it's a life-or-death situation."
Shelby scowled at her. "It is life or death. Well, maybe not that, but it's the difference between community college and UGA."
I huffed. "You'll get into UGA with your eyes closed. Honestly, Shel, Addy's right. You're psyching yourself out for nothing. Besides, the test is tomorrow. You're not going to stuff anything more in your head between now and then."
