Since I had nothing else to do, I answered him immediately.

VONNIE: With his new grandma.

Silence.

I returned to staring out into the abyss full of woman-eating monsters. I really had to get a hobby. Or that helicopter.

BROADRICK: Who?

It's like the man didn't trust me to keep our child safe.

VONNIE: Barbie. They're watching the afternoon stories together. She has an extensive collection of plants because her husband told her she had a black thumb like two hundred years ago. And I get the impression she's not a fan of golf. He'll be fine. She's feeding him mineral water and probably testing him for allergies.

His response came quickly.

BROADRICK: This isn't helping.

What did he want from me? She'd already passed an entry-level background check.

VONNIE: How do you feel about taking flying lessons?

The boat hit a rough patch of water and droplets flew over the side, hitting me in the face. I slid down on the seat to get into a safe position. I didn't want to lose my phone-or breakfast-over the side of the boat.

BROADRICK: For you? Scary.

I fake laughed, even though he wasn't around to see me.

VONNIE: For you.

The boat slowed as we neared the other dock, and I got ready to leave. I planned to work quickly on this trip. I hoped to catch a cab-quicker than getting my Camero out of parking-make a new contact at the morgue, and return before the boat took off for the island again in an hour.

BROADRICK: I already know how to fly.

Interesting.

I typed out my response as I waited for the boat crew to secure us to the dock and make my speedy escape.

VONNIE: We'll discuss this later.

If Broadrick already had a pilot's license, we were halfway to our solution of using a helicopter to get off the island. Later, I'd have to Google the cost of a nice used helicopter.

I didn't have time to interrogate Broadrick about his flight experience if I wanted to make it back in time to catch the boat. I pulled up the Uber app on my phone while walking off the dock with a quick wave to the workers. It was always a smart idea to stay on their good sides.

Cars filled the temporary parking lot for tourists and workers, causing me to skirt around them as I made my way to the front street and accepted a ride from the app. The county morgue was only a few miles away from the dock, but estimates made it a fifteen-minute drive with traffic. Ugh.

"Thanks," I said to the driver as I darted out of his car toward the sidewalk sixteen minutes after leaving the boat. Time was not on my side. I had to find a willing victim-new friend-quickly if I planned to make it back in time.

The morgue was a standard one-story brick building half a block away from a smaller sized building with a blue hospital sign directing people to a large parking lot. City officials probably built a bigger hospital as the town's population grew but still used this building for other medical needs.

The first row of parking spaces in front of the morgue doors sat empty, and I picked up my pace as I walked toward the two glass entrance doors. A pair of cops in blue uniforms leaned beside a cruiser to the side of the building. I did my best not to make eye contact.

I faltered as I stepped into the building. My lack of a plan hit me full in the face, but how did I plan for a building I'd never visited? This had to count as a recon mission. With my new well-detailed plan of attack, I sucked in a deep breath and faced the room.

The lobby was a large open space with white tile floors and a half wall keeping the regulars away from the bodies and other workings of the morgue. It reminded me of the morgue in Maine, except people cluttered up this building. They were everywhere. Standing in small groups, working at single desks throughout the room as if someone just randomly dropped them in places. Tall and short men in white lab coats clustered together in groups, and police in uniform formed others. The two didn't mingle.

"Can I help you?" a young woman with dark brown hair asked from her position behind the partition. She had an overly stretched smile, so I assumed she was the first front-facing part of the morgue. Places like this needed a friendly person to greet people because everyone behind the line normally had attitudes. Probably from working with all the dead bodies.

"Hi." I stepped up to her area and smiled back but not as large because I didn't want to appear psycho. "I'm here to...."

Shit. I never came up with a good reason to be here after deciding to do recon.

"Pick up effects for a loved one?" the woman supplied.

My eyes widened. "Yes, thank you. I'm just... my brain isn't working after the death. You know?"

She nodded, pieces of her brown hair getting tangled around a thin black choker. "That happens to many people. What is the deceased's name?"

"His name?" My brain fired on way too many cylinders. Just a few days on the island, and I'd lost all my PI skills of deception. I needed a man's name. "Dalton Steamwell."

I sent up a silent prayer that didn't come back to bite me at some point. Naw, how could it? I was fine. Just fine.

The woman clicked keys on her keyboard and narrowed her eyes at the screen. Probably because Dalton hadn't ended up dead in the last hour. "I'm not finding a deceased with that name. Are you sure his body is here? Paramedics may have taken him to the city morgue."

Wow. How many dead people did they have around here? They needed a city and a county morgue?

The odor of burned coffee and spilled sanitizer tickled my nose, and I sniffled, adding to the effect.

"I'm sure they brought Pop-Pop here." I wiped a fake tear from my eye. "Is there any way I can just... have a look around back there?"

The woman pouted. "No."

"No? But Pop-Pop will be so upset to know his stuff is here. He'll think we abandoned him?"

"No." Her eyes narrowed, making her brows too close together, so they resembled a long thin caterpillar. "What kind of person wants to dig through dead people's belongings?"

Well, when she described it that way, it did sound rather disturbing. She glanced behind her and raised her hand like she planned to call one of the numerous police officers. Time to skedaddle.

"Never mind. I'll check the other place," I said and turned around, booking it toward the door. Apparently, Florida kept their dead people under better lock and key than we did in Maine.

I paused as the door closed behind me and waited to make a run for it, but there wasn't a stream of police chasing after me. Thank God. I can't imagine what they'd write in my arrest report. "Wanted to steal from the dead." Broadrick would have a conniption. With Katy states away, he was my only hope for bail money if I needed it.

On the other side of the parking lot, a younger man in a black trench coat sat at the end of a wooden picnic table eating an orange with his phone in his other hand. I smiled. There's my friendly rebel. He had to be an outcast just for wearing black leather in Florida's summer heat.

I checked my watch. My recon of the morgue took ten minutes. If the drive back to the ferry took the same time as getting here, I had just enough time to interrogate my new friend before grabbing an Uber.

"Hey," I said as I slid in on the other side of the table. The August sun beat against the back of my neck, and I repositioned my blonde hair to hide it. Sadly, it didn't lessen the heat. "What's up?"

He lifted his eyes from his phone screen to peek at me. "What?"

Not as friendly as my previous morgue contact, but we had to start somewhere. Since digging through Pop-Pop's stuff hadn't gotten me far on the inside, I chose a different tactic with Mr. Personality.

"I'm looking for a job. Do you know if they're hiring?" I asked with a head jerk toward the morgue's front doors.

He snorted. "Rick doesn't like women."

"What does that mean?"

Mr. Personality dropped his gaze back to his phone. "He doesn't hire women."

"Why the hell not?" Women rocked. We were basically the best at anything we tried. Women would conquer the world one day.

"He's seventy-six years old and believes women are for making babies and getting coffee," he said, not lifting his gaze again.

I smacked my lips. "Sounds charming."

Although, that explained why the place was crawling with men except for the woman at the front desk. She'd been the only women I'd seen in the building during my short stay, and something told me she probably made a lot of coffee.

"I bet you have a good connection in there. A hard worker. Have you heard about the knitting needle woman from the island?"

One of his eyebrows ticked up. He scanned me quickly with his gaze, and then the eyebrow dropped. "Nobody tells me anything because I'm only an intern, and you're not my type."

I officially disliked the entire state of Florida.

"What's your ty-" The ringing of his phone cut off my question.

He answered it, completely ignoring our conversation and upcoming world domination plans. Ugh. Things like this were so much easier in Pelican Bay. People respected me there. Or they feared me. As Frankie would say, it's basically the same thing.

I stood up from the table and gave him a quick jerk of my chin rather than a good-bye. It worked for Broadrick as a means of communication.

"Hey!" he yelled when I was only two steps away.

I turned back. "Yeah?"

"I don't know about your friend, but the cops around here don't like paperwork."

Wasn't that all cops? Anderson spent a significant amount of time complaining about red tape and paperwork. It's one of the top reasons Ridge Jefferson-and I-didn't go into law enforcement. But something about the way he said it rubbed my brain the wrong way.

"Yeah, I've heard that before. Thanks." I turned again, heading back through the parking lot while opening the Uber app on my phone and calling for a ride.

If the cops weren't going to do it, I guess I'd have to solve Melissa's murder on my own.