by Molly Harper
“But I thought the McCreadys were a pretty big deal around here, too,” Margot said.
“We have a different sort of power,” Bob told her. “We have personal power. We have people’s support. We don’t have control over actual government agencies.”
“Can’t you put that sort of power to good use?” Margot asked. “Apply some social pressure?”
“I can go talk to his mama,” Leslie suggested. Most everybody at the table groaned this time. Marnette Lewis was known to lord her “authority” as the wife of the county’s top official over her neighbors. She was not known for her reasonable or logical reactions to criticism of her son.
“Well, figuring that’ll fail, we can put security cameras on the outside of the building, make sure the mortuary bay doors and marina are covered,” E.J.J. said.
“Like I’ve been suggesting?” Frankie said.
“Yep,” E.J.J. responded, his thin lips quirked into a smirk.
“For years now?”
“Don’t push it,” E.J.J. told her.
“I can stay outside a little later at night, spend some evenings on the dock, watching for the little bastard,” Stan said, reaching into his wallet and dropping a dollar into the swear jar.
Tootie noted, “You only cussed once.”
“Well, I’m gonna be gettin’ a lot less sleep over the next few weeks,” Stan retorted. “I’m startin’ a tab.”
4
THE RAIN SWEPT out like a church lady mid-flounce, disappearing over the mountains in full hissy fit.
The skies cleared, leaving behind a landscape that seemed greener and fresher, if a little mildewy. The lake had shot up to “summer pool” levels that would have been normal before the water dump. And the lingering heat shifted to a tolerable fall warmth, though the locals knew that the inevitable boom in the mosquito population was going to make them regret this reprieve later.
Of course, that meant that locals and tourists alike were running crazy all over town like bucks in season, overjoyed to be out of the house for the first time all week and determined to make up for lost time. Fishermen took to the water once more, meaning the Snack Shack and Bait Shop were back in business.
The nonideal road conditions combined with older people clearing away storm debris they had no business trying to lift meant an increase in business at the funeral home, too. Snuggled under a quilt her grandma Sarah had stitched in violet and yellow, Frankie was napping off the effects of prepping five clients in one shift, including two coming in just as she was getting ready to leave for the day. She hadn’t had the heart to leave them unprocessed until the next morning, so she’d worked more than twelve hours, come home, and collapsed into bed without supper.
So even with the cheerful tones of The Big Bang Theory theme song chiming out of her phone, Frankie slapped her hand against the nightstand with a lot of hostility.
“Yello?” she mumbled, pulling the quilt tight against the chill of the full-blast air-conditioning. Her mama always complained she was half polar bear when she slept.
The very official and very unwelcome voice of the duly sworn Sheriff Eric Linden sounded in her ear. “Ms. McCready, I need you to come out to . . . the little jetty at the easternmost point below the dam.”
Smacking her lips against a serious case of dry mouth, Frankie rasped, “Ass Elbow?”
“Please don’t make me call it that.” He sighed on the other end of the line.
Frankie swung her legs over the side of the bed, her bright “Kick This Day Where the Sun Don’t Shine” socks contrasting with the dark floorboards. She frowned at the clock, which showed that it was long after acceptable hours for nonsocial calls from the socially awkward.
“That’s what it’s called, because to get to it, you have to drive to the ass elbow of nowhere. It’s on maps and everything.” Frankie took a long gulp from the water glass she always kept on her nightstand.
“Okay, fine, I need you to come out to Ass Elbow and help me,” he said, grinding out the words Ass Elbow. Frankie held the phone away from her face so he couldn’t hear her snickering. “We’ve got a boater down near the dam. Search and Rescue has been out here for an hour or so, and it’s not looking good. When the body is recovered, I want him processed quickly and moved to your facility as soon as possible.”
“Is it anybody local?” Frankie asked, slipping into a pair of jeans and grabbing the knee-high rubber boots she kept on hand for this sort of backwoods expedition. If she was going to walk around the shoreline near Ass Elbow, she didn’t want to offer up her legs to the local deer ticks as a sacrifice.
“I expect you to respond quickly whether you know this person or not,” he snapped at her.
Frankie held the phone away from her face this time so she could pray for the patience to not hit him with a sock full of nickels the next time she saw him.
“Just get here now,” he said, abruptly hanging up on her.
“Lord, I know I’ve run through a lot of favors with you over the years, miracle-wise . . .” she muttered, glancing up at her ceiling as she shrugged on her orange COUNTY CORONER windbreaker. “No, I will not pray for chiggers to gnaw on a man’s junk until it falls off. That is beneath my dignity as a lady. Also, I’m pretty sure that’s how you end up in the special ‘ironic punishment’ section of hell.”
FRANKIE SAT IN THE FRONT seat of Duffy’s most agile bass boat, the one he only took out for his highest-paying charter clients, as he carefully maneuvered them upriver toward the Sackett Dam in the dark.
Frankie had her full field kit stowed near her feet. She knew this wasn’t going to be a pleasant task. It wasn’t uncommon for boaters to get too close to the dam where the water spilled over and joined the river. Inexperienced people underestimated the drift involved, even when their anchors were in place, and got sucked toward the churning froth. All it took was a few seconds’ carelessness, just a little too much water pressure on the bow, and over the boat went, pushed under by the force of the spillway.
Even though she’d been through this a few times, the debris field from an overturned boat was always staggering. Soda cans, papers, ropes, chunks of foam coolers, every little thing on the boat except what was in the boaters’ pockets, scattered across the water as far as the eye could see. But so far, she couldn’t see anything personal from the boaters, no clothes or anything with a name on it.
“Careful, Duff,” Frankie said quietly as they navigated through the litter. All they needed was one of those ropes caught in their prop and then there would be two capsized boats on the water.
“I’m watching,” Duffy assured her.
She just wished she knew how bad the situation was so she could prepare herself. The sheriff had mentioned one boater missing, but did that mean there was only one fatality? How old was the missing boater? Was he a child? Was Frankie going to be handling the battered remains of someone she knew? She could handle it, but it was always ten times harder than taking care of someone she cared about who’d passed peacefully in their sleep. She assumed it wasn’t a local, considering Sheriff Jackass’s reaction over the phone. She wasn’t exactly a sensitive babe in the woods when it came to this sort of situation, but she would have appreciated a little time to prepare.
She spotted the wreckage of the boat on the darkened shoreline, close to where Eric Linden and a few rescue workers were standing. Backlit by searchlights, the upturned hull was poking out of the water like a broken tooth. Even though it was rare for one of their boats to end up below the dam, a small part of her was relieved it wasn’t one of McCready’s rentals. Duffy always took that hard, when someone was hurt out on the water using their equipment, like he was responsible for not giving them clearer instructions on not doing themselves serious injury.
Frankie spotted rescue workers from the Sackett Preserve National Park Services Office, the closest federal resource with more than one rescue boat, along both shorelines. They were nice guys in general and always willing to earn some overtime doing a littl
e good.
Linden, on the other hand, was about to get a well-deserved attitude adjustment. Bless his heart.
Duffy deftly guided the boat to shore, sliding gently against the mud just as Frankie leaped from the bow and landed on sure feet. Duffy handed her the field kit a few moments later. “You know I hate it when you do that.”
“Which is why I do it,” she retorted.
He smirked. “I’m gonna go look around, join the search grid.”
“I’m sure they’ll appreciate it,” she told him. “If you hear the air horns, come back quick. I’m gonna need your help with transport.”
Duffy nodded sharply. Frankie turned and waved at several familiar faces among the rescue workers. Linden was holding a flashlight over a map, while one of the more senior staff explained the layout of the lower dam. Frankie pulled her windbreaker tight around her middle as she walked closer. She was a professional, dammit. She didn’t care how attractive Eric Linden looked standing there in his green utility pants and emergency vest. He was a prick, prone to prickish things, and she would treat him as such.
“Mr. Redmand,” Frankie said, smiling at the national park’s senior officer. “Thanks for comin’ out.”
“Of course, Frankie. How’s your aunt Tootie doin’?”
“Oh, she’s still a character straight outta science fiction,” she said.
Mr. Redmand, a tall, lanky man with salt-and-pepper hair and a bristly gray mustache, grinned at her. “I always thought of her as more of a Reader’s Digest gal, myself.”
“You be sure to call her a ‘gal’ to her face. It will make her day,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Would you mind if I just borrowed Sheriff Linden right quick? Thank you.”
“Sure thing.”
Mr. Redmand excused himself and all the sticky-sweet charm melted right off her face.
“Do you always talk to the rescue workers that way?” Eric asked.
Her eyes narrowed. She spoke in a low, cold tone that could be mistaken for civil, if someone didn’t know her well. “Yes, I do. Because I’ve known some of them for goin’ on ten years, and around here, you do your colleagues the courtesy of treating them like human beings with lives and personalities of their own, instead of little machines put on this earth to do your biddin’. And by the way, I asked about whether the victim was local earlier because notifying the next of kin might be easier if I could go to them directly as a friend and let them know what was happening as opposed to them hearing the news from someone they barely know and probably won’t like very much.”
Eric’s dark-blond brows knit themselves together. “You’re going to lecture me on how to treat people? The Midnight Uber Escape Artist?”
She rolled her eyes. “I do not discriminate between locals and tourists. They all get top-priority treatment from me. But if you want a shot at a decent second impression with me, remove your head from your hindquarters and try to refrain from doubtin’ my credentials or professionalism for a third time. I have tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, since you’re new to the area and the job, but that benefit has now expired.”
Eric swallowed heavily and nodded. “I will keep that in mind,” he said.
“Now, who are we lookin’ for?” she asked, returning to that sweeter tone she’d used with Mr. Redmand.
Clearing his throat, Eric showed her his clipboard, where he was taking copious notes in a neat block script. He pulled out an iPhone with a heavy-duty waterproof case. He pressed a few keys and a middle-aged man with a shock of white hair and a broad, ruddy face grinned out from the screen. “Len Huffman, age fifty-nine, of Sandusky, Ohio. The boat went down at Ass Elbow around six o’clock. The call for help didn’t come in until a little after seven. We didn’t get boats in the water until almost eight.”
“Have you notified next of kin that he’s missin’?” she asked.
“Yeah, his wife, Melody, is here on the scene. I wanted to get her out of here before the media shows up, but she’s insistin’ on stickin’ around.”
He gestured up the hill to a thin woman with blond hair slicked against her skull, standing at the edge of the water, a green sheriff’s department windbreaker wrapped around her. The resentment in Eric’s voice confused her, like he didn’t understand why a woman would want to be close by as rescue divers searched for her husband. But the guy had issues, and she hadn’t had enough sleep to explore them. She did, however, have just enough mental energy to connect some dots about the wife’s appearance.
“Wait, she was in the boat with him?”
He nodded. “They’d been fishin’ all day, hadn’t caught anything. The wife says she asked her husband to go back to their cabin a few times, but he kept pushin’ for more time. She said he’d heard all these stories about thick schools of fish near the dam, kept getting closer, and over they went. But she didn’t get a call in to 911 until almost an hour later.”
Frankie glanced around. They were in an incredibly remote spot. At that late hour, the Huffmans were likely the only boaters around for miles. The dam didn’t have watchtowers for wayward fishermen, especially at the odd corner end.
“How exactly was she supposed to call?” Frankie asked. “Her cell is probably on the bottom, not to mention what cell reception there is out here sucks. It’s kind of a miracle that she got to the nearest phone that quickly.”
“I’m just sayin’ the fact that she took so long to call in makes the timeline real vague.”
Frankie stared at him. “Why would the timeline need to be clear in an accidental drowning?”
“He’s got a lot of expensive equipment,” he said. “Seems to me an experienced fisherman would know better than to fish so late in the day and to get so close to the dam.”
The bewildered irritation was replaced temporarily by the urge to pat his head like a puppy. “Oh, bless your heart, Sheriff. I forgot this is your first tourist season. Just because somebody has a lot of expensive fishin’ equipment doesn’t necessarily mean they have experience or common sense. In fact, you’ll find that the shinier and more glittery the bass boat, the more unreliable the fisherman’s judgment.”
Eric’s brows rose. “What?”
“You ever heard the expression ‘all hat, no cattle’?” she asked. “Same concept applies to boat purchases.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He snorted as the hum of an engine cut across the water. “Who’s that?”
Frankie turned to see Aunt Donna’s boat roaring through the debris field. Frankie should have known that her aunt would want to help the Search and Rescue dive team find some of the harder-to-navigate places where the current could have pushed Mr. Huffman. Frankie’s parents had arrived with her, bringing coffee, cold drinks, and sandwiches for the rescue workers. Slowly but surely, more boats arrived, the better boaters in the community coming out to volunteer.
This was one of the things she loved about her family. Yes, they could be frustrating and drive the pope to cuss, but when you really needed them, they rose to the occasion.
“That’s my aunt and my parents. They’re here to help.”
Eric’s eyebrow arched. “Nobody called for them.”
Frankie grinned at him. “Nobody had to.”
While her mama fed and watered the troops, Frankie hiked up the hill to Mrs. Huffman with coffee and a turkey sandwich in hand. Even from ten feet away, Frankie could see the lady was shivering in her wet clothes and borrowed jacket. Talking to the bereaved was one of the few areas of the job that made her uncomfortable. She rarely had to talk to them at the funeral home. E.J.J. usually arranged the details of the services and passed them along to her. He was so much better at it than Frankie, who was always afraid of saying something that would make the situation worse. Death was a verbal minefield.
Still, better her than Eric, who seemed to have been born without empathy.
“Hi,” Frankie said, handing her the coffee. “My name’s Frankie McCready. You look like you need to warm up.”
She didn’t
introduce herself as the county coroner as Melody sipped her coffee. Frankie found that the word coroner scared surviving kin still on the scene of tragedies. They wanted to hold on to hope, and she didn’t want to be the one to take it from them.
“Hi,” the woman said in a wobbly rasp.
Melody was considerably younger than her husband, and, well, she was at least a nine, with delicate features and almost catlike green eyes, whereas Len was a Lake Sackett four. She was wearing a damp blue camp shirt, khaki shorts, and sensible deck shoes. All caked with mud and dried leaves. Her pupils were huge, and she kept staring off into the distance, as if she could spot her husband waving from the opposite riverbank.
“Do we need to get you any medical attention?” Frankie asked, eyeing nail beds and lips that were turning purple-blue, even in the lingering warmth of early autumn. She took one of the prepackaged mosquito-repellent citronella bands she kept in her pockets and slipped it around Melody’s wrist. The woman was so unfocused that she barely noticed Frankie’s maneuver.
Melody shook her head. “No, I told the sheriff, I’m fine. The boat tipped and I just flopped into the water. I was wearing a life jacket, so I popped right up. Len . . . he doesn’t like them. Says they pull at his neck too much when he’s moving.”
Frankie noted that Melody was still using the present tense to describe her husband, which was pretty common at this stage in the trauma process. She said, “Sometimes, when you’ve got a lot of adrenaline going through your system, you can be injured and not even realize it. Are you sure you didn’t hit any debris or hurt yourself while you were climbing onto the bank? Any problems breathing or moving around?”
Melody bit her lip. “No.”
“Is there anyone you’d like us to call?”
