“If he’d actually made it into the building and she pulled him out, would you have charged her with assault, too?” Marianne demanded crisply.
“Marianne, I appreciate the loyalty, but let’s just go.”
Eric nodded toward her feet. “Frankie, you’re barefoot.”
“I left your boots in the cell.”
“What happened to your shoes?” Duffy asked, glancing between Frankie and Eric, a suspicious expression taking shape on his face. “Why were you wearin’ his boots? What’s goin’ on?”
“You can’t walk around barefoot,” Eric told her. “Just take the boots.”
“I’m good. You keep them,” she told him. “That way we don’t have to meet up to exchange them or anything. Let’s just agree not to talk for a few days.”
“There’s a lot of gravel between here and your cousins’ car,” Eric noted.
Frankie lifted her brows and climbed onto the counter. “Duffy?”
Duffy angled his body so Frankie could wrap her arms around his neck. He pulled her up into a piggyback position, settling her relatively slight weight against his back. Frankie nodded to Eric, as if this were a totally normal way for one to leave the jail. “Sheriff.”
“So what happened to your shoes?” Duffy asked.
“Just keep walkin’,” Frankie told him.
FRANKIE LIFTED HER head from her pillow and found Deputy Landry Mitchell over her, smiling.
“What in the living fuck!” she shouted, thinking she was somehow back in the jail cell. She scrambled back across her twin mattress and fell into the crack between her bed and the wall. “Ow.”
“Jar!” Tootie crowed, moving the poster she was holding over Frankie’s bed. It seemed to be an election poster that showed Landry smirking with a waving American flag and a bald eagle posed in flight behind him. Frankie groaned and dropped her head against her mattress. It was way too early and Frankie had gotten way too little sleep to deal with Tootie’s special brand of morning humor. Or her dog pack, which was currently milling around Frankie’s childhood bedroom, sniffing at her old stuffed animals.
“What is that?” Frankie yelled. “Also, why are you standing over me? Also, can I take away your key to the front door? When will my voice return to its normal volume?”
“Don’t be silly.” Tootie sniffed. “Your parents don’t ever lock the door.”
“What is that?” Frankie hissed. She pushed herself up using the cheerfully painted yellow wall until she was standing and snatched the poster from Tootie.
“Landry Mitchell is running for sheriff,” Tootie said. “As a write-in candidate.”
“How?” Frankie marveled, staring at Landry’s aggressively patriotic pose. “He is an irony-free zone.”
A new addition to the pack, a young lab mix named Rocky, was chewing on her Captain America–themed platform heels.
“Out, dogs!” Frankie yelled. “Go downstairs.”
Lulu the pit bull sniffed indignantly and led the charge into the hallway.
“These posters sprang up in every business window in town this mornin’,” Tootie said. “He’s got a billboard near the Dirty Deer. And Ed Hotchkiss said they’re puttin’ in one of those bench ads on Main Street tomorrow.”
Frankie climbed back over her bed. “Wait, Landry’s mama balances his checkbook for him because he still owes money to the Columbia Record Club. How did he pay for billboards and posters? And a bench?”
Tootie shrugged, sitting down on the bed. “I suspect he is not bankrollin’ his own campaign. And I doubt it was his idea to run in the first place. I’m sure he thought about it once or twice, but someone probably had to fill out the paperwork for him at the courthouse. Who in town has that sort of money and an ax to grind against anyone who shows you loyalty?”
Frankie yawned. “The Lewises?”
“You’ll notice that Vern Lewis used the same eagle in the background of his campaign posters last time he ran.” Tootie tapped the clip art in question with her finger.
“But Eric only arrested Jared last night,” Frankie said.
“Yes, and trust me, that tidbit has made the rounds, which Marnette is plenty upset about. But honey, your sheriff questioned Jared a few days ago, and that gave Marnette all the time she needed to have these tasteful posters rush-ordered at her cousin’s print shop in Athens.”
“How many cousins does Marnette have?” Frankie groaned. Suddenly Vern Lewis’s comment about Eric being sheriff “temporarily” made a lot more sense. “So, they’re gettin’ revenge on Eric for darin’ to question Jared, by tryin’ to put an idiot in office?” She stumbled around the foot of her bed, tripping over a pair of mermaid-print leggings. “That’s just wrong.”
“Welcome to small-town politics. And regular-size-town politics.”
Frankie threw her closet door open and pulled out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt with the “Can’t Hear You” door knocker from Labyrinth on it. Tootie had the grace to look the other way while Frankie struggled into her clothes.
“I’m going to go talk to my dad,” Frankie said. “Maybe he can talk some sense into Vern Lewis.”
“When has that ever worked?” Tootie called after her.
“It’s worth a shot!”
Frankie ran outside to find that while her dad’s truck was gone, Margot was climbing into the funeral home’s van. “Hey, pukey, can I ride in to work with you?”
“If I say no, are you going to smash my headlights?” Margot shot back.
Frankie nodded. “Well played.”
Margot was getting pretty good at driving the large van over the county’s bumpy roads. Frankie settled into the passenger seat and pondered how smart it was to have run out of her house without her cell phone. Margot was still looking a bit peaky, but she was wearing office clothes that matched and full makeup, which was a step up from vomity Margot.
“So how are you feelin’?” Frankie asked carefully.
“Fine,” Margot said. “A little less pukey, but still super tired and I have to pee every five seconds. Aunt Donna actually brought me a bottle of cranberry juice, which means she could actually be worried about me. Or that she is annoyed by me.”
“It could be either one,” Frankie admitted. “Have you talked to Kyle yet?”
Margot’s mouth pulled back at the corners. “No.”
“Margot!”
“I have an appointment at an OB’s office in Atlanta the day after tomorrow. I don’t want to talk to him until I have all the information.”
“You don’t think Kyle would like to go to the appointment?”
“I’m not going to take shit from someone who spent last night in jail for vandalizing a teenager’s bro-mobile. You’re not exactly cornering the market on emotional maturity.”
“Point taken.”
“The Trunk-R-Treat is tomorrow. I just have to white-knuckle my way through that, and stay as far away from the chili as I possibly can, because all tomato-based products make me throw up now. Go to the appointment, eat my weight in cheesecake, as there seems to be a Cheesecake Factory down the street from my doctor’s office, and then figure out how I’m going to tell Kyle that when I say ‘I’m covered,’ what it actually means is ‘I’m the point-zero-zero-zero-one percent of the population that ruins the birth control curve for everybody.’ ”
“I don’t know if I would open with that,” Frankie said. “According to the Internet, all the cool girls are presenting their partners with pee-soaked positive pregnancy tests.”
“Hard pass.”
“Also, I’m assuming it was a positive test. You never said.”
Margot shook her head. “Yeah, I haven’t really wanted to tell anybody until I talked to Kyle. It feels like a weird betrayal to discuss it with other people, and yet I don’t have the balls to talk to him about it. I am a conundrum of dysfunctional personality traits.”
“Please, don’t say you don’t have the balls. Let’s respect your apparently fruitful lady bits. You don’t have the
ovaries.”
“Rude,” Margot muttered. “So, change of subject, how much trouble are you in?”
“I don’t know. It sounds like my trouble is negotiable, but Eric’s is just getting started.”
Margot winced. “The election posters?”
“How late did I sleep? How does everybody know about that already?”
Margot shrugged. “Small town.”
FRANKIE FOLLOWED MARGOT right into her father’s office. Bob was sitting at his desk with his tie thrown over his shoulder, eating a vanilla latte Pop-Tart and dunking it into his coffee.
Frankie gasped. “Daddy, are those my Pop-Tarts?”
Bob dropped the purloined pastry into the wastebasket. “No.”
“Did you dig my Pop-Tarts out of the trash?”
“I’m out,” Margot said, raising her hands and marching back out to the hallway. “I’m going to go have Breakfast Sticks with my dad!”
“I may have dug your Pop-Tarts out of the trash,” Bob said.
“Oh, Daddy, no.”
“They were wrapped,” he told her, sliding a package her way. “And you made such a big deal out of your mama throwing them away, I thought I should get them back for you.”
A cold flash of guilt swept through her middle. “Thank you. So I’m guessin’ that you heard about my trouble last night.”
“Did you really break the boy’s headlight?”
“Not intentionally.”
“That only counts in horseshoes.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s the expression.”
“I’ll talk to his daddy, see if we can get somethin’ worked out, pay to have the headlight fixed.”
“Actually, no, Marianne’s handlin’ the legal stuff. And I’d rather go through the right channels, that way Eric doesn’t suffer for it later.”
Her dad smirked. “Eric, huh?”
“Not even remotely the right time to tease about the sheriff,” she said. “But that is what I came to talk to you about.”
“You didn’t just come by to talk to your father because you love him?”
“The same father who just stole my Pop-Tarts?”
“Reclaimed!” Bob protested.
“I need you to talk to Vern Lewis about Eric. He’s putting up Landry Mitchell as some sort of straw man candidate to get Eric voted out.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because Eric dared to question Jared a few days ago and Marnette is freaking out. Of course, she’s freaking out worse now that Eric took Jared into custody last night.”
Bob grinned. “So he really took Jared into custody? Good for him.”
“Yeah, except for the part about Vern trying to get Eric fired now. Or unelected. I’m not really sure what the word would be. Do you think you can talk to him, local politician to local politician? Make him see how insane it is to try to replace an effective sheriff who keeps us safe with Landry? I mean, of all people, Landry.”
“Well, honey, I don’t know if I’ll be able to talk any sense into Vern. You know it’s not really him that’s the problem, it’s Marnette pullin’ the strings. And she’s not going to take well to the embarrassment of her son bein’ arrested.”
“Nope.”
“Because this is a very small town and it’s only been about seven hours and everybody knows.”
“I’m aware.”
Bob sat back in his chair, sipping his coffee. “So when you were in jail—for real this time—you didn’t call your mama and me? You called your cousins instead?”
Frankie pinched her lips together. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Honey, of course a man is going to worry when his daughter goes missin’ in the middle of the night. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you turned off the ‘find my friends’ thing, because I did. You said we could trust you. How can I trust you if you do things like that without talking to us? You can’t lie to us and tell us you’re okay when you’re not. And you can’t lie to us and tell us that you’re at work when you’re in jail.”
“Actually, I was with a friend at the time I sent that text. The jail thing happened later.”
“Which friend?” Bob asked.
“Not important.”
“Which friend?” he asked again.
Frankie’s cheeks flushed.
“Was it—you were with the sheriff when you texted?” he asked, his eyes wide. “But that was after midnight.”
“Yes, it was,” Frankie said, not quite able to look her father in the eye.
“Wait, and then he arrested you?”
“Actually, he arrested me before I texted you.”
“Well, that’s not right. I mean, I know times have changed, but surely the right thing to do at the end of the night is to drive your date home, not lock her up.”
“Technically, he was trying to drive me home when we stopped at the funeral home to check on everything,” she said. “Also, technically, he didn’t lock the cell door.”
“What a gentleman,” Bob drawled.
Frankie sighed. She appreciated her father’s tendency to be indignant on her behalf, but she was really trying to be emotionally mature and pragmatic about this whole arrest thing. She needed a little less indignant support.
“Don’t go gettin’ mad at Eric. I broke the headlight and I had to answer for it.”
“Still seems wrong to me.”
“Well, you’re an old-fashioned guy.”
FRANKIE WASN’T SURE how she felt about returning to the sheriff’s office. Good things did not happen for her when she walked through that door.
Janey was sitting at her desk and made grabby hands when she saw that Frankie was carrying a bag from the Snack Shack. Frankie had expected some admonishment from her mama about her arrest or at least the fact that she’d been so rude as to damage Jared’s car. But Mama just kissed her on the cheek, told her to make sure she didn’t work too hard after her ordeal, and gave Frankie her breakfast order.
Frankie dropped the Breakfast Stick on Janey’s desk with a flourish. Breakfast Sticks were Leslie’s original breakfast creation involving bacon wrapped around a sausage, stuffed with cheese, dipped in egg batter, and, of course, deep-fried.
“So I had a lot of interestin’ paperwork to process this morning,” Janey said.
“I brought you breakfast, so teasin’ me would be bad manners.”
Janey pouted. “You ruin all of my fun.”
“What if I told you there were hash browns in that bag?”
Janey peeked into the white bag and squealed. “You’re forgiven! The sheriff is in his office. But I’m going to warn ya, he’s in a mood.”
“Not exactly a surprise,” Frankie muttered.
“Good luck,” Janey told her around a mouthful of deep-fried egg and sausage.
Frankie inhaled deeply and knocked on the frame of his office door. “Permission to enter?”
“Come in,” he said with a deep breath. “You know, no matter what your mama tells you, you don’t have to send us a thank-you note after we arrest you.”
“Ha,” she shot back, sliding into the seat across from his desk. She glanced around his office. While his degree from UGA was hanging on the wall, along with a picture of a preteen Eric and a handsome man in a police uniform, she noticed that there were no relics of his own time with the Atlanta Police Department. That made her a bit sad. No matter how it had ended, Eric shouldn’t just pretend that part of his life had never happened.
“So how are you?”
“I’m not going to lie. I’m a damn sight far away from okay.”
Eric nodded. “I can respect the honesty.”
“It’s pretty quiet around here,” she noted.
“Yeah, well, Deputy Mitchell has taken a leave of absence to focus on his campaign,” Eric said, blowing out a breath.
“The election’s only a week away. Does he—or Marnette Lewis, for that matter, because that’s who’s fundin’ his campaign—really expect to launch
a write-in campaign in a week?”
Eric looked oddly affronted. “Marnette Lewis is fundin’ his campaign? Because of last night?”
“No, if I was going to guess, I would say that Marnette Lewis is fundin’ his campaign because you had the nerve to come to her house and question her about the last break-in at McCready’s.”
He rocked back in his chair. “That woman is evil in a twinset.”
“Mean as a snake in an outhouse,” Frankie agreed. “Look, tomorrow night is Halloween. Everybody is going to be distracted by the Trunk-R-Treat and the festivities and such. There’s no way Jared’s going to tolerate being thwarted quite so publicly, letting all his little skeevy high school friends laugh at him for getting busted by the sheriff and the town crazy smashin’ his headlight in. He’s going to go big and he’s going to use Halloween as a cover.”
“Really?” Eric scoffed. “Surely to heaven, he’ll know that we’ll be watchin’ the place. He’s not going to risk getting caught again. His parents aren’t going to let him out of their sight.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but logic and Jared Lewis parted company a while ago,” Frankie retorted. “Just wait a little while, long enough for his parents to fall asleep, and he’ll be there.”
“He just got arrested. He goes to court next week!”
“Clearly you overestimate the amount of self-preservation contained in a juvenile male douche brain.”
“Frankie, I can’t get caught up in your . . . situation again,” he said. “There are other people and businesses in this town that deserve my attention. Not to mention, I’ve got to actually campaign for my job, now that there’s another candidate. I mean, sure, that candidate is an idiot, but he’s got some really nice posters.”
“Look, just come out to the funeral home after dark for a little while, and keep watch. I’ll bring some of my mama’s fried chicken. It will be like a picnic, in a parkin’ lot, in the dark.”
“Well, as romantic as that sounds and as much as I love your mama’s fried chicken, there’s no freakin’ way I’m hangin’ out in a parkin’ lot with you again. Not after what happened last time. You are going to go to that Trunk-R-Treat. You are going to pass out candy and smile at small children and you are going to stay within sight of the Lewises, so they can’t accuse you of doin’ anything stupid and/or terrible.”