Free An Accidental Death by Phyllis Smallman Page A

dangling, and came to a running stop. He stepped delicately onto the listing concrete squares and stood there with his head twitching right, then left, and then back again.
    “What, do you want . . . applause?”
    He cranked his neck around and gave me the evil eye. “I’m no tourist. I knew you could do it.” Elvis tilted his head to the side.
    “Go away you moocher. I’m the only one getting a handout today.”
    He lifted a stick leg and paused before he set it gingerly down and inched closer.
    “There isn’t a scrap in that fridge.”
    He cocked his head, one yellow eye considering me as his fine white feathers quivered in the light breeze.
    “If there was a hotdog in there I’d eat it myself.” Elvis was the only egret in all Florida who preferred hotdogs to fish. He couldn’t abide those disgusting things no matter how hungry he was.
    “Get lost, freak.”
    Elvis decided I was suffering from a serious lack of charity and lifted off with a squawk of protest to fly north across the sand dunes, back towards Jacaranda, looking for someone more generous than me.
    This tiny aqua bungalow, on the beach in Jacaranda, was built closer to the edge of the Gulf of Mexico than the new laws allowed. Sand dunes and beach grasses were the only things I could see from the patio. It didn’t matter, all the other beach houses were empty until the season started. I was alone in paradise, solitary and miserable.
    Even the chartreuse gecko darting in and out of the clay pots full of dead flowers couldn’t lift my mood. My business . . . no, my life, the Sunset Bar and Grill, was running on borrowed money and the fumes of my dying dreams.
    I kept telling myself that everything would go back to normal when the long line of cars with out of state license plates started arriv­ing. The winter before, the tourist trade had been down, leaving me pirouetting on the edge of bankruptcy, and now I’d reached a crisis point. The Sunset needed an infusion of cash or it wouldn’t survive.
    If I could just last until after Thanksgiving, two more months, I stood a chance of keeping the bank from stepping in. But this nasty, nasty little voice in my head kept saying, “And what if the tourists don’t come? What if this is the new normal . . . the new state of things?” God, I hate that little voice. It keeps insisting on pointing out truths I’m quite capable of avoiding.
    I tried to think of someone to tap for money, considered all my options, and discovered there weren’t any. When you grow up in a trailer park on the edge of a swamp, you just don’t make the right social connections to stave off insolvency.
    It was time to make a new plan and decide what I was going to do when it all went down the tubes. I’d read every line in the Help Wanted section of the Herald , but nobody wanted bartenders, my only marketable skill.
    So there I sat identifying the expendable—which server I’d let go and what supplier I could string out a little longer—when I heard a car pull in on the crushed-shell driveway. Glad to be distracted from my wretchedness, I went inside to see who my visitor was.
    A police car was parked outside the kitchen window.

CHAPTER 2
    The back door of the cruiser opened. A swollen ankle in a white sneaker appeared below the door. A few seconds later the second foot followed. It took a little more time for the stout figure to pull herself to her feet.
    I gripped the edge of the sink and stared at her as my world went tilt. Everything outside looked so bright and ordinary, but I knew the truth. Elderly ladies don’t come visiting in police cars.
    Aunt Kay was overweight, maybe even obese. Two black raisin eyes peered out of her rice pudding face while her salt and pepper hair sprang up from her head in an uncontrolled tangle of steel wool. Holding onto the top of the door with both hands, she stepped around it, slamming it behind her without ever taking her eyes off the kitchen window.
    She was dressed in cropped beige