The store itself was a labyrinth of narrow aisles crowded with merchandise organized according to some system that probably made perfect sense to the owner but looked like controlled chaos to everyone else. Screws in tiny drawers labeled with perfect handwriting, electrical supplies hanging from ceiling hooks like mechanical stalactites, plumbing fixtures arranged by size and function on pegboard walls. Everything had its place, and that place had been carefully considered and maintained with the dedication of someone who genuinely cared about helping people find exactly what they needed.
Behind the counter stood a man who looked like he’d walked out of Mayberry and decided the 1960s suited him just fine. He was slight—maybe five foot eight and a hundred and fifty pounds after a big meal—with sandy hair going gray at the temples and a face so earnest it made you want to confess your sins just so he could forgive them. He wore wire-rimmed glasses that kept sliding down his nose, a flannel shirt despite the late spring heat, and jeans that had been washed so many times they’d faded to the color of forget.
When he smiled at us, his whole face transformed into something boyish and open, the kind of smile that made you trust him with your grandmother’s antique lamp or your deepest secrets.
“Afternoon, ladies,” he said, his voice carrying a soft low-country drawl that wrapped around the words like honey. “Can I help you find something? We’ve got a special on deck stain this week if you’re looking, and the window screens just came in—had to order them special from a supplier in Columbia, but they’re good quality. Last you ten years if you treat them right.”
“Frank Holloway?” I asked, approaching the counter with the careful steps of someone approaching a skittish animal.
“That’s me.” His smile faltered slightly, becoming cautious in the way people got when strangers knew their names. “Do I know you folks?”
“No, but we know someone who spoke very highly of you. Thomas Wheeler’s brother, Marcus.” I offered my hand across the counter. “I’m Mabel McCoy, and this is Dr. Dottie Simmons. We were hoping you might have a few minutes to talk about your time as a deputy on Grimm Island.”
The transformation was immediate and complete. Frank’s open expression shuttered like someone had thrown a switch, his body going rigid as a corpse on an autopsy table. He took a step back from the counter, his hand moving instinctively toward something beneath it—probably a phone, possibly something more dangerous. His face had gone pale, and behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes held something that looked like fear seasoned with resignation.
“I don’t talk about that,” he said flatly, his voice stripped of all its honey warmth. “Not to anyone. Not ever. And anyone who knew Tommy Wheeler should know why.”
“We’re investigating the Pickering–Bailey murders,” Dottie said gently, her medical examiner voice coming out—calm, professional, impossible to ignore. “Reopening the case officially. We believe Sheriff Milton buried evidence, and we’re trying to find out what really happened that night in September 1985.”
“Milton’s in prison,” Frank said, and there was satisfaction in his voice, dark and bitter as burnt coffee. “Federal prison, where he belongs. But that doesn’t change what he did, what he covered up. Some things stay buried even after the person who buried them gets locked away.”
“But Ruby Bailey and George Pickering deserve justice,” I said, pulling out the folder we’d brought. “And Thomas Wheeler died thinking he’d failed them. Marcus said Tommy never got over that case, that it haunted him until the day his heart gave out. He was fifty-two years old, Frank. That’s too young to die from carrying guilt that wasn’t even his to carry.”
Something flickered across Frank’s face at Thomas’s name—grief, guilt, anger, a complicated tangle of emotions that suggested Marcus had been right about his brother’s obsession with the unsolved murders. His hand trembled slightly as he removed his glasses, cleaning them on his flannel shirt with slow, deliberate movements that looked like a delaying tactic while he decided what to say.
“Tommy was a good man,” Frank said finally, his voice rough as sandpaper on raw wood. “The best partner I ever had in my three years on the force. We were young together, both of us thinking we’d make a difference, believing that doing things right actually mattered. Tommy never lost that belief, even when Milton tried to beat it out of him. Even when it became clear that honesty was a liability on Grimm Island, not an asset.”
He replaced his glasses, and his eyes behind them held decades of resentment compressed into something hard and sharp. “But Grimm Island didn’t want honest cops back then. It wanted cops who understood how things worked, who knew which families were untouchable and which crimes weren’t worth solving. Who knew when to look the other way and keep their mouths shut about what they’d seen.”
“Is that why you left?” Dottie asked.
“I left because I couldn’t do it anymore.” Frank’s voice had gone quiet, almost apologetic, as if he were confessing a failure rather than standing up for what was right. “Milton kept asking me to do things—lose paperwork, forget what I’d seen, tell witnesses their statements weren’t needed. Small things at first, then bigger ones. And I kept telling myself it was just how things worked, that I was too new to understand. But I understood.”
He looked down at his hands, as if surprised to find them gripping the counter so tightly. He relaxed his fingers, stepped back.
“Tell us about the Pickering–Bailey case,” I said quietly. “What did you and Tommy find that Milton didn’t want found?”
Frank looked at us for a long moment, his earnest face struggling with something—fear, maybe, or the weight of secrets kept too long. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes held the kind of wariness that came from experience rather than nature, as if life had taught him that some conversations were dangerous even decades after the fact.
The bell above the door chimed. I thought it would be Hank, but a customer entered—a woman with a canvas shopping bag, heading toward the paint section with the purposeful stride of someone who knew exactly what she needed.
“Jimmy,” Frank called out, his voice carrying through the store with practiced ease, “Can you handle the front for a bit? I need to take care of something in the office.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Holloway,” came a young man’s voice from somewhere among the aisles.
Frank gestured toward the back of the store with a slight inclination of his head, the movement almost furtive. “Come on. We can talk privately back here.”
The office was small but meticulously organized in the way that suggested a man who’d learned to control what he could when so much had been beyond his control. A desk covered in receipts and invoices arranged in neat stacks, each pile squared at the corners with mathematical precision. A filing cabinet with drawers labeled by year and category in that same careful handwriting we’d seen on the screw bins out front. An old coffee maker that looked like it had survived several decades and countless pots, its carafe stained dark as river water.
Frank pulled out two folding chairs for us—the metal kind that had probably been purchased during some long-ago church surplus sale—and settled himself behind his desk with movements that were careful, measured, as if his body hurt in ways he’d learned to accommodate.
He was quiet for a moment, his hands resting on the worn wood of the desk, and I could see him gathering himself, preparing to revisit something he’d spent decades trying to forget.
“Tommy made me promise,” he said finally, his voice soft. “Before I quit, he made me promise that if anything happened to him, I’d make sure someone eventually knew the truth. Someone who’d actually do something with it instead of letting it get buried again.”
He took a breath, and when he spoke again, his voice had changed—gone flat and careful, the tone of someone reciting a report they’d memorized so thoroughly it had become part of their DNA.
“The call came in around 6:30 Monday morning,” he began. “September 16, 1985. Samuel Morrison out jogging at Turtle Point at an hour when decent people were still in bed. Found two bodies near the tree line, called it in from the pay phone at the marina. Tommy and I were on duty that morning—we’d pulled the overnight shift and were about ready to clock out when the call came through. We got there maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes later.”
