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Her Father's Killer

by Joseph D'Agnese

About the Author: Joseph D'Agnese is a journalist, author and ghostwriter who has written for both adults and children alike. He has won a Derringer Award for his short mystery fiction, and one of his stories appeared in the Best American Mystery Stories 2015 anthology, guest-edited by author James Patterson. D'Agnese lives with his wife in North Carolina.

Excerpt

Some time after midnight, the blindfolded man started to stir. Cilly roused herself off the boards of the dock and sat up to watch him struggle against the ropes. All around them, the woods were throbbing with life, and the smell coming off the lake was tinged with the stench of summer’s rot.

Cilly flicked on her flashlight. Nothing. She rapped it once against the dock and flicked it again. The putrid yellow beam played across the man’s face and cast a glow on Cilly’s, too. The light revealed a woman in her twenties, dressed in a straw hat and a plain cotton dress. Small purple flowers spattered across white fabric. A clutch and a pair of crumpled gloves at her side. A plain young woman, but not a lean one. A girl with some heft to her, who had plaits of dirty blond hair pinned tight to the back of her head.

“Oh,” the man moaned.

“Mmm-hmm,” Cilly said, slapping the fellow’s cheeks.

The only thing bigger than this man she’d ever seen on this dock was a catfish she plucked out those waters with her daddy, back when she was just a little thing. Daddy had taught her to work a line in these waters. Those critters were not so bad when you peeled the skin off them like a sock, and pan-fried them in butter and cornmeal. Brown butter hid the taste of Clingman Lake.

She missed those days. The lake was loud as life, but Daddy wasn’t.

Cilly slapped the fellow’s cheeks again. “Waylon,” she said. “You hear me? Time you was waking up. Go on—get yourself roused.”

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