I had been avoiding telling my sisters about the skull because I didn’t want them to panic. Mostly, my sisters had big mouths and I didn’t want them to tell Mom and Auntie and have them panic. And they would. But knowing that my face had been blasted on the local news, it was very possible word would somehow get back to them anyway. Mostly Cora, since she often heard what went on at Lake Echo for her job. Plus, Anna worked in TV news, and while she worked in Georgia, I was pretty sure a dead body in a lake still made for an interesting headline in other states. Especially one that had been a cold case for so long.
Time to rip off the Band-Aid.
Me:
So…I may or may not have accidentally tripped over a skull in Lake Echo, opening up a statewide investigation, which prompted some weirdo to write a letter to our office asking me if I would show him where the skull was located and help re-enact the crime scene. Oh, and steal some of the evidence for his crime podcast. NBD.
Cora:
Iris! What the hell?
Hazel:
When did this happen?
Before I could respond, my phone was vibrating.
“Hello, dear sister. What’s new?” I teased as I answered the phone, even though I knew exactly why Anna was calling me.
“Cut the crap, Sissy. What happened?” Anna barked into the phone, her voice only soft when she used my nickname. “Give me all the details. Don’t leave anything out.”
That was Anna. She had the investigative reporter slash cop brain always working. But I knew she would keep pestering until she had the answers, especially since her husband was a former Las Vegas cop and now private investigator. So rather than fight it, I gave in and told her everything.
Then, I spent the next twenty minutes talking her down from flying outto see me ASAP.
The phone at my desk rang, displaying an internal call from the front desk.
“Hey, Dorothy,” I answered.
“Iris, you’ve got someone here to pick up a letter, he says,” Dorothy explained. “He’s not much of a talker, but he’s very handsome, so even if you don’t know who he is, I’m still inclined to let him stay up here for a little bit so I can just look at him. Oh, and he brought a friend, too!”
I chuckled at Dorothy’s assessment of whichever fellow agents that Agent Andrews had sent. Dorothy was in her sixties and didn’t take crap from anyone. She was also very organized and loved to bake and use us as her guinea pigs, which we loved.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I knew someone was coming. I can come up there to your office.”
“Oh no,” she interrupted quickly. “I’ll bring them back to you. Maybe give them a tour along the way.”
I laughed some more, knowing this would likely be the highlight of her day.
I turned to let everyone else in the room know that some ISB agents would be coming in here anywhere from thirty seconds from now to thirty minutes from now, depending on how long Dorothy took to bring them back. Leah and Calvin chuckled when I explained why.
Dorothy definitely took her time, because it was nearlyten minutes later before I heard her voice coming from down the hallway.
“And this is where our meteorologists work at saving lives,” she said excitedly.
I turned to greet whichever ISB agent had been sent—only to freeze.
“Hector?” My voice squeaked like I’d inhaled helium.
Smooth. Real smooth.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
For reasons unknown to science, this man short-circuited my brain’s ability to behave like a normal functioning adult.
“This is Hector?” Calvin chimed in. “As in, the park ranger from Lake Echo, Hector?”
He said it innocently enough, but I knew that tone. He was fishing, and he smelled blood. This was about to get humiliating.
