Drop Dead Gorgeous(7)

She draws it out, making it clear I’m supposed to fill in the blank by singing her praises. I do my best.

“A marketing genius, an advertising savant.” She waves her hand in a circle expectantly. “The best sister I could ever hope for?”

She points at me, placated for now. “That’s right. And you know that my ideas for your previous commercial increased your business . . . by how much?”

“Sixteen percent in sixty days.” Those facts I know like the back of my hand.

If smug were a Mrs. Potato Head expression, I basically just plugged it into Amy’s face. “So now, you want to reach a new demographic. That needs different strategies. Now, say the lines and smile like the hot chunk of cuteness you know you are, get all the guys wanting to be you and all the women wanting to screw you, and then you can be a good Boy Scout and take their money for life insurance.”

My face contorts in disgust.

She’s not wrong, but she makes what I do and who I am sound so sleazy. The truth is, I really do help people set up their estates, including their life insurance needs, so they can take care of their families after they die. It’s not scammy in the slightest, and I’m proud of what I do, especially since I’m damn good at it.

“Tick-tock,” the cameraman adds quietly.

Amy narrows her eyes, shutting him up. “Quit wasting time.” She makes it sound like I fucked up on purpose, but it was an honest mistake.

I do the lines again, this time smiling at the close like I’m supposed to.

“That’s a wrap,” Amy says. “Guess we’ll see you on Sunday?”

“You know it.”

I’m almost clear, ready to call another Uber when Amy tells me, “Get in the car.” She points at her white sedan.

“No, thanks. I’m good.” I don’t risk explaining that a thirty-minute drive back to town where I’m a captive audience for her interrogation is against the Geneva Convention’s guidelines on cruel and unusual punishment.

“You really okay, Frosted Blakes? From the accident?” Worry mars her forehead, concern filling her eyes.

I nod, smiling easily to reassure her. “Yeah. I’m good. Just gotta deal with the insurance stuff. Those guys are so fucking annoying.”

Luckily, her answering laugh means I’m off the hook and is enough to get me through a ride home and into my soaker tub. I don’t realize how sore I am until the hot water starts to soak into my bones.

But as I relax, there’s one part getting harder as I think of Zoey Walker.





*



“What do you mean, I’ll have to wait for the paperwork to process before I can fix my car? That’s not how this works.”

The lady on the phone sounds bored and couldn’t possibly care less. “Sorry. Paperwork . . . process . . . blah-blah-blah.”

She might be a woman, but she’s trying to mansplain my own industry to me. I’ve been in insurance for over ten years, and though my focus is life insurance, I’m well-versed on auto insurance too. Package deals and all that shit.

“Fine. I’ll make sure you get the paperwork today.”

She laughs, a small little chuckle of ‘sure, you will, good luck with that’, and I press the End button on my phone a little too hard. I miss the days of being able to slam a phone down, that last bastion of ‘fuck you’ to end a wayward call and show the person on the other end of the line exactly what you think of their paperwork nonsense.

Someone should make an app for that.

A few clicks later, I have what I need, the address of the coroner’s office in Williamson County. Zoey Walker, while she might be a good driver—snort!—is shit for filing paperwork in a timely manner, and I’m going to call her on it.

In person.





Chapter 4





Zoey





No effin’ way. You’re not going to do it.

“Uh, yeah, I am. It’s literally my job,” I tell the body on the table. He’s not going to talk back. They never do. Sort of expected that way.

Well, there was that one time I had an old lady wake up on a side table and grumpily ask for a blanket before her ‘tits freeze off . . . again.’ I’d nearly jumped out of my skin and had been so shocked that I hadn’t even asked how her tits had frozen off the first time.

To be clear, I hadn’t been the one to declare her dead and bring her still-alive body to the morgue. But the doctor who did? By the time I got done with him, that nursing home quack was only able to find a job giving flu jabs in the middle of Siberia. Or somewhere where he couldn’t cause any harm.

Oh, sure, ‘she looked pretty passed,’ he’d argued. And yeah, she looked like she was a stiff breeze from coming back to the morgue even as they wheeled her into the nursing home transport van. It was a full-blown Weekend at Bernie’s situation, except she was mumbling about impatient nurses wanting to steal her pussy while staring blankly into space. The nursing home staff had patted her on the arm, reassuring her and explaining to me with a long-suffering sigh that ‘no one wants your porcelain cat figurine, Mrs. Jones.’

Still, Dr. Dumbass had to deal with a very pissed off county coroner. Or I guess I’d had to deal with him.

I shudder, returning my attention to the definitely dead man in front of me. I poke him in the shoulder with my gloved hand. Just to be sure, you know.