Page 13 of Overkill

“You seem protective of the good sheriff.” I noted, returning to the last woman we were talking about.

“I’m protective of good people.” He waved me off. “Go do good things and come back when you have something that can unravel this whole…mystery. Should I like what I see, and you can prove yourself as competent as your friend, Trinity Guerro, then I’ll provide you with more than a steady stream of work.”

I nodded. I was sure I could get something.

“Oh, and discretion is paramount. The Grays don’t want word of this going around. Scandal, and all that. I’m sure you understand.”

Chapter 4

The Attorney

Melody

“This is all your fault.” I stared at Luke’s photograph on the mantle. The one of him holding a medium-sized fish by his side with a broad smile and his red “Spiro Grant for President” hat tilted back on his head, crystal-blue eyes as shiny as the wet scales on his latest kill.

I stood, walking across the creaky floorboards where the floor had started sinking from too much foot traffic, and laid my hand on the white mantle.

“I’m glad I murdered you.”

He couldn’t hear me. He was dead. And I was glad.

“You can’t hurt me anymore. And you’ll never hurt Miriam.”

He’d dangled it in front of me like a baited hook. He’d said if I were gone, he’d need someone. Someone like her. Her, who looked like me. And I looked like my mother. The woman he’d loved.

“How can you claim to love someone, then hurt her children?”

I pulled my hands away, looking down at the dust on my fingertips. I hadn’t cleaned this in a while. I hadn’t dared look at the mantle too closely, in case I fell apart staring into the eyes of a mother who’d have been so hurt and disappointed at how her family broke under that man’s care. How she had loved him. How he had loved her.

How he’d turned that love to her child.

I tilted that photo down. But not the one he shared with me and Mom on their wedding day. Or the one of him holding Marcus during our first holiday. Not the one with toddler Marcus on his lap and baby Miriam in Mom’s arms. Not the family photos that came after, with our smiling faces on vacations, when things hadn’t been fucked up.

“I wish I could have stabbed you in the guts, stripped you naked, and left you hanging by your balls in the middle of the woods, howling at the moon like a lunatic, you sick fuck.”

I almost giggled at the image of his pain.

“You got off too easy.” Drunk on his favorite whiskey and relaxed on too much Flexeril. My send-off was designed to look like an accident. He deserved so much worse. “But life’s not fair, is it?”

As if on cue, my phone rang. It vibrated and danced across the table. Local number. No caller ID. But still familiar…because this was not the first parent I’d lost.

“Hello?” I said as I brought it to my ear.

“Miss Melody Gray. You might remember me, ma’am, I’m Rhodes LeRoy. Your family’s attorney.” His voice was smooth, slow, and almost lazy. Not what I expected from a lawyer.

“I thought our attorney was Regis LeRoy.”

“Ah yes, my father. I’ve taken over the family business since his untimely passing.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” He let out an awkward laugh. He sounded young. Certainly not a man in his fifties like Regis had been. “A lot of that going around, eh?”

I froze, realizing Luke’s body being found was, indeed, the only reason he would call. Regis was an estate attorney, not a prosecutor. I didn’t need to lawyer up quite yet.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Funnier in my head than it was out loud.”

I’ll say…