Chapter 2

LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS

Poppy McGee wakes with a towering figure glaring down at her. On the frayed poster in her childhood bedroom, Beyoncé wears a sequined mini, holds her legs in a wide stance, hands on hips, casting a sultry gaze.

Poppy used to have that confidence. But after three years in the Army she fears she’s lost her groove. It doesn’t help that she’s back home, sleeping in bright pink sheets with Queen Bey looking disappointed in her.

She gets up, showers, dresses, and stares at herself in the mirror hanging from the back of her door. Her new uniform is an ugly shade of brown and doesn’t fit well. At five-one, she looks like a kid dressing up as a UPS driver with a sidearm. She tucks a strand of her long red hair back in the bun, straightens the name tag: DEPUTY SHERIFF MCGEE.

She didn’t want the job. Didn’t want to come back to this town. But after her abrupt military discharge, her options were limited. And someone needed to take care of her father after Mom died unexpectedly. Poppy had been on the phone with her, their daily call, when her mom said, I don’t feel so good. And that was that. A stroke. A year before Poppy’s twenty-first birthday; a year after Dad’s cancer diagnosis.

The hits, as they say, keep coming.

She takes a last look in the mirror, straightens her spine, and heads out of her room.

In the kitchen, she’s surprised that her father is up, sitting at the table. He looks tired and weak and ashen. Her older brother, Dash, has stopped by too. There’s a grease-stained McDonald’s bag on the table, and a handwritten sheet of spiral notebook paper that says: Congratulations!

“What’s all this?” she says.

“It’s your first day…” Dash says.

Her dad coughs, and Poppy gives her brother a look. This is why she came back. Dash has no judgment about her father’s health, about anything, really. The first clue is that he’s a grown-ass man and still goes by his high-school basketball nickname.

“Let’s get you back in bed, Dad,” Poppy says.

“To hell with that,” her father says, reaching for the McDonald’s bag, retrieving a breakfast sandwich, and putting it on the plate in her spot at the table.

“Yeah, chill, Serpico,” Dash says.

“Who the hell is Serpico?” She doesn’t wait for him to reply. She sits at the table and unwraps the McMuffin.

As they eat, Dash jabbers on, her father laughing. Whatever his faults, Dash has their father’s heart, he always has.

When they’re finished, Dash piles his plate in the sink. Poppy says, “I hope this celebration includes cleaning up.”

Dash smiles. It’s an endearing smile that has gotten him through life. He is endearing, if she’s honest about it. Unreliable, but endearing, with his kind heart and Shaggy from Scooby-Doo persona, complete with the scruff on his chin. And who’s she to judge? Dash makes good money at the car dealership and isn’t living in his old bedroom.

“I got ya, Sis. Now get on down to the station house. Before we defund you people.”

Her dad laughs too hard, breaking into a coughing jag. The dishes will be there when she returns, she knows, but she decides to let it go.

After getting her father back in bed, moving the chunky cordless landline phone to the nightstand, and telling him to call if he needs anything, she heads out.

The heat hits her like a brick wall. Summer in Kansas would give hell a run for its money. In more ways than one. She drives her father’s Ford Escort down the main street and parks in the garage under the station. It’s a small force, inexperienced, the sheriff said during the Zoom interview. He claimed she’d be a welcome addition, with her military police experience.

The inside of the station house is even more sweltering. The woman working the front desk seems to know Poppy is coming, stands up. Explains that the air conditioner is out and that it isn’t always this awful, sweetie. Margaret is her name. Everyone’s so happy Poppy’s there, she says. Says that Poppy’s sweet big brother—a local celebrity after his single season in the NBA who now uses his charm to sell cars—gave her nephew a great deal on an F-150.

Poppy’s office is decent enough. It has pressed-wood furniture, but it’s clean, has a window overlooking a parking lot. The computer is old, but it’ll do.

She’s brought only a few things in her backpack. A Tupperware container with her lunch, a framed photo for her desk—the family during better days, at her goodbye party before she left for basic training—and a charger for her phone.

She stares at the bare white walls, wonders if she should’ve brought something to make the room less drab, but suspects a Beyoncé poster is out of the question.

Sheriff Walton pops his head in. “Settling in?”

“Yes, sir,” she says.

“Whoa, soldier. No need for ‘sir’ anymore. You can call me Ken.”

“Sorry, old habits…” She smiles, tries not to look defeated with where life has taken her. She’d imagined that after serving her country—which, as it turned out, was checking IDs at the front gate to the base—she’d be a G-woman, taking down mobsters and terrorists and serial killers.

A long quiet follows. Sheriff Walton—Ken, she reminds herself—has a friendly-neighbor air about him. Maybe it’s his last name, but with his full head of gray hair, crinkles around forgiving eyes, he reminds her of the dad from The Waltons reruns Poppy used to watch with her mother.

“How’s your dad?” The sheriff and her father served together in the Gulf. Poppy knows it’s the real reason she has this job.

“His doctor says he’s doing okay, though he’s a bit ornery.”

The sheriff chuckles. “I’d be worried if he wasn’t.”

Poppy has only vague memories of the sheriff from when she was younger. But what kid focuses on their parents’ friends? There’s a photo of a much younger Ken Walton with Dad and another one of their war buddies on the fireplace mantel.

“You started on the right day,” Sheriff Walton says. “We’ve had some excitement around here.”

“Oh yeah?” Poppy says.

The sheriff holds up his smartphone, gestures with his head for her to follow him. “Some YouTube jackasses found a vehicle submerged in Suncatcher Lake.”

Maybe this job won’t be all speeding tickets and DUIs.

“Do they think it’s Laura Palmetto’s car?” The local news has been going on about the missing teen who disappeared two weeks ago from Platte County, only fifteen minutes away.

The sheriff shakes his head. “Car’s been down there a long time. We’re gonna catch hell, because our team searched the lake and found nothing five years ago.”

Poppy immediately understands.

It’s Alison Lane’s car.