Free Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 01 - Hurricane Season by Michaela Thompson

comb through her hair.
    The cobbler had cooled a bit. Lily stuck a piece of adhesive tape, on which she had printed Trulock, to the bottom of the dish, pulled on her white gloves, and, carrying the cobbler and with her white purse under her arm, she started out.
    Once she had the Trulocks’ Nash pointed toward the highway, she resisted the temptation to detour by the store and see how the Eubanks girl, who’d agreed to see to the place for the afternoon, was getting along. There really wasn’t time, and, besides, Sara Eubanks got sulky if she thought you didn’t trust her.
    When Lily pulled up at Snapper’s house, the circular drive in front was already filled with cars. She parked on the shoulder of the road and made her way to the front door, which stood half-open, a babble of voices drifting out. She pressed the bell, and in a moment a tall black woman, hook-nosed and broad-shouldered, appeared. Lily recognized Marinda Washington, daughter of Snapper’s maid, Pearl.
    “Evening, Marinda,” said Lily. “Came to pay respects to Snapper.”
    “Yes’m.” Marinda opened the door wider, and Lily stepped inside.
    The smell of coffee drifted from the dining room on her left, while across the entry hall the living room was full of voices and smoke. “Lot of people here already?”
    “A right smart of ’em,” said Marinda.
    “Peach cobbler,” said Lily, offering Marinda the dish.
    Marinda received it without comment, and Lily thought how much less pleasant she was than her mother. “Where’s Pearl?” she asked.
    “Not here.” Marinda turned and started down the hallway toward the kitchen, tossing “coffee and cake in the dining room” over her shoulder.
    The dining room was set with oval platters holding neatly-arranged slices of pound cake, banana nut bread, and Lane cake. The silver coffee service, presided over by the ladies of the Wesleyan Service Guild, was on the sideboard. An assortment of townsfolk was gathered around the table, talking and chewing, the crumbs trickling down onto Snapper’s floral-patterned carpet.
    Lily got coffee and pound cake and crossed the hall into the living room. Snapper was there, surrounded by six or seven solemn-faced St. Elmo citizens. He wore a black suit, stiff white shirt, and black tie, and was nodding to a group of departing guests.
    “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” he said as Lily walked up. He turned to her, seized her hand, and said, “Miz Trulock.”
    “I’m sorry to hear about Diana,” Lily said, feeling slightly awkward. “I remember when she used to buy candy from me.”
    Snapper’s eyes glistened. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” he said.
    Someone brought her a chair and she joined the group around Snapper. Turning to Brother Chillingworth, whose bald head glistened in the close atmosphere, Snapper said, “Woody wasn’t there when the call came in. Cecil took it and he thought it was a joke.”
    Lily felt uncomfortable at the mention of her son-in-law and his deputy. Woody, as she saw it, was little more than a laughingstock.
    “Cecil was still chuckling over it when Woody got there,” Snapper went on, “and since he didn’t believe it was serious he can’t remember a teetotaling thing the man said. He thinks it was just, ‘There’s a body hanging in a net under the docks on the canal.’ But you know how Cecil is.”
    “Got no business being a deputy,” said a disgruntled listener.
    Snapper made a pacific gesture. “I don’t say that. The law enforcement in this county is the finest of anywhere. I completely trust Woody and Cecil to find out who killed my little girl.”
    How strange it is, thought Lily, that Diana’s death has peeled ten or twelve years from her age. Instead of the twenty-year-old troublemaker she was, who had gone to bed with—Lily glanced around—three or four men in this room, she had become in memory the motherless child whose passing was easier to regret.
    “But who the hell—excuse me”