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was more fun to play with than date. They would have made a cute couple, the burly football player tamed by the blonde bombshell, but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, they settled for good friends.
    “Just tryin’ to raise a few spirits around here,” he glanced over his shoulder at the crowd, “because it shakes people up when they realize that bad things can happen in small towns. Even ones as tiny as Greenville. And Elton.”
    “Johnny seems to be doing fine.” The details he was spewing about what was found at the scene was making her skin crawl.
    “Well, that’s Johnny for you,” Luke said with a shrug. “I guess he’s always had a fascination with the gruesome. When he was a kid, he used to pull the wings off flies and the legs off spiders just to watch them flop around in his hand.”
    “That’s disgusting,” Sydney said as she poured Luke a cup of coffee. “Someone lost their life. He shouldn’t be so excited.”
    “Did you forget he’s the county’s mortician, too?” Luke asked with a laugh. “Death doesn’t bother him like the rest of us. It’s what he does.”
    Overhearing part of their conversation, Pete stuck his head out the window and surveyed the crowd. “Death’s good for business.”
    “That’s horribly morbid,” Sydney said, shocked, but from the look of it, Pete was right. All around her, people were huddled together talking in hushed voices and when they weren’t talking, they were eating. As fast as Pete could cook it, they were shoveling it down.
    “Remember a few years back when the Parkers lost all that cattle? The same thing happened. People filled this place, hypothesizing about the cause,” Luke offered, trying to distract the girls from the heavy topic.
    Pete let out a snort. “As I recall, Johnny insisted it was aliens to anyone who’d listen ‘til Agnes came in here and threatened to shoot him for being stupid.”
    “She did take a shot at him once.” Melissa patted Luke’s hand, smiling. “Remember in high school when she and her husband had that old mare? One night Johnny thought he’d be funny and scare the poor thing because she made the oddest noise when she was upset. So late at night, he snuck out there howling and growling at it like a coyote. Agnes strolled out in her nightdress, looked Johnny in the eye, and shot the hat off his head. Then she closed the door, turned out the lights, and went back to bed.”
    “She didn’t!” Sydney covered her mouth to hide her laughter.
    “Oh, she did,” Luke assured her. “The sheriff showed up at her house with Johnny’s dad. The sheriff asked her if she fired her gun and she said yes, she shot at a deranged coyote that was squawking around her mare. Mr. Rosley got in her face, yelling that it wasn’t an animal, it had been his son. Agnes looked at the sheriff, then Johnny’s dad and said, ‘Well, he does one hell of a coyote impersonation. Keep him off my property,’ and slammed the door in their faces. Her husband, George, never even said a word during the whole altercation.”
    “To this day,” Melissa said, handing Luke a cup of coffee, “if Agnes howls, Johnny hightails it in the opposite direction.”
    They shared a much needed laugh at Johnny’s expense, until Pete motioned toward the door. “Wade looks like hell. Poor guy.”
    “Wade always looks like hell,” Luke mumbled under his breath earning a whack to the head from Melissa. “There he is, moping around for attention.”
    Sydney looked at Luke, unable to fathom where the sudden animosity came from. A second ago he was laughing and now he was a sourpuss. It was obvious Luke didn’t think too highly of Wade, but considering he probably had been dealing with the murder in Greenville all day, a little sympathy was in order.
    The diner erupted with questions as soon as people realized the sheriff had walked in. Wade didn’t even seem to notice the circus going on around him. Instead, his eyes scanned the room until they locked onto