1
This had to be the worst Swamp Cabbage Festival in history.
A deranged stalker had tried to kidnap me, unexpected family members wanted to take my sister Shelley away to Europe, and a herd of feral children had kicked me down the street while I was wearing a moldy old costume shaped like an oversized tree trunk.
Now one ofmyfriends was arresting my Aunt Ruby'sbestfriend—a woman I'd known my entire life. And it was still only Friday, day one of the festival. At this rate, Saturday would include giant ant people or a blizzard.
In Florida.
Never a dull moment in Dead End.
Sheriff Susan Gonzalez stopped in front of Lorraine, who was standing right next to me and Jack in our prime spot to watch the fireworks. The fireworks in the sky, not the kind where one of your friends arrests another.
Or so we'd thought.
Susan took a deep breath. "Lorraine, you're under arrest for the murder of your husband in 1970."
"Earl? But he ran away! He left me!" Lorraine's eyes widened until we could see white all the way around her irises.
Susan sighed. "I'm sorry, but I have a skeleton in my evidence room that says otherwise."
Lorraine, all dressed up for the festival in a bright yellow dress and yellow orthopedic shoes, turned to me and grabbed my hand. "Tess. Find Beau. He'll know what to do."
Then she nodded at Jack and followed Susan down the street toward the sheriff's office.
I whirled on Jack. "Are we just going to let her do this? To Lorraine?"
Jack looked grim, but he shook his head. "Tess, calm down. There's nothing we can do right now. Susan is the sheriff, so I can't interfere. If you were thinking straight, you wouldn't want me to, either."
I felt like my head was going to explode. "Did you really just tell me tocalm down?"
Uncle Mike reached out and took my arm. "Tess. We need to find out what's going on before we go off all half-cocked."
"Ilikehalf-cocked. I live mylifehalf-cocked," I muttered, but my rational side was slowly resurfacing. "Fine. We won't storm the sheriff's office, but we need to find out what the heck is going on."
"We need to get her a lawyer," Aunt Ruby said, stepping out from behind Uncle Mike. She had tears running down her cheeks and a wild look in her blue eyes. "We need to get lawyers forallof us."
"What? What do you mean, all of us?" I studied her face. "Aunt Ruby?"
Uncle Mike pulled her close to him, and she hid against his flannel shirt.
"Not now, Tess," he said. "I'm taking Ruby home. She's overwrought. We can discuss this tomorrow."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "What do you mean we'll discuss this tomorrow? We need to talk about this right now!"
Jack bent down to murmur in my ear. "You realize everybody in town is listening to us, right?"
I hadn't, because I hadn't been paying attention, but it did not surprise me to look around and see a ring of people staring at us. In Dead End gossip is more valuable than gold.
I put my hands on my hips. "Don't you have anything better to do?"
Most of them looked embarrassed and walked away, but a few just shrugged and answered me.
"Not really."
"Nothing good on TV tonight."
"Fireworks are over, so…"
