Page 208 of Secrets Along the Shore

Inside, Sheriff McNealy was mid-argument with his receptionist. He didn’t notice me, but I had a front row to read his lips shouting at the woman. The receptionist, with her silver hair pulled tight in a bun, stood behind her desk, eyes red, trying to hold her composure as he towered over her.

“Don’t ever speak of a case, closed or otherwise! Do you understand me?”

As the woman nodded, her lower lip quivering, I pushed through the door, and he froze. The energy in the room shifted like someone had yanked the cord on a ceiling fan. Both of them looked at me. The receptionist quickly turned her face away, wiping beneath her glasses.McNealy’s face was red and puffy, and he straightened like a man caught doing something he shouldn’t.

“Miss McBride,” he said, trying to regain authority, but his voice cracked slightly. “Didn’t expect you back so soon.”

“Clearly,” I said.

He let out a breath, his jaw tightening. “Give us a moment, Peggy.”

The receptionist nodded stiffly and disappeared through a side door. McNealy turned to me, rubbing a hand down his face like he was trying to scrub away the last five minutes.

“You always yell at your staff like that?” I asked.

He flinched but said nothing.

“You don’t look like the man I remember,” I continued. “You used to be kind. Soft-spoken.”

“I still am,” he said, settling behind the counter, looking remorseful.

“Then what was that?”

“That…thatwas a moment of…frustration. All because of that case.”

“Livvie’s case?”

He met my eyes but said nothing.

“I’d like you to reopen it.”

His mouth dropped open. “With what evidence?”

“A hunch. What if it wasn’t a drowning? What if it was murder? Would that change anything for you?”

His eyes narrowed. He stepped up to a filing cabinet and unlocked it, reaching inside a drawer to pull out a manila folder, flipping through it slowly as if buying himself time.

“You think I haven’t asked myself those questions every day for fifteen years?” he said. The folder trembled slightly in his hands. He placed it flat on the counter but didn’t open it. Didn’t offer it to me. “But a hunch isn’t evidence.”

“Then why the anger?” I asked. “Why yell at your receptionist for giving me basic information on a closed case?”

“Because that case ruined careers, Miss McBride. My boss quit right after it. I became sheriff by default. Not because I earned it.”

“How convenient,” I muttered.

His head snapped up, eyes flashing. “You think I wanted that? Youthink any of us did? The investigation was a mess from the start. We had a half-dozen locals pulling her out of the lake before we even got a perimeter set up. Someone moved her body. Another covered her with a blanket. You know what that does to a scene?”

“Contaminates it,” I whispered.

“Destroys it,” he corrected.

“Who was there? Who touched the body?”

He snorted bitterly. “It was the Fourth of July, McBride. Whowasn’tthere? The entire town showed up to watch the fireworks across the lake. Someone saw a body floating, and the place turned into a circus.”

“But someone had to get there first,” I pressed. “Someone found her. Who?”

He rubbed his temples. “Her father. Paul Bishop. He was the first one to spot her. Swam out himself. Brought her in. Then the paramedics arrived. Then the sheriff. Then half the town.”