“Oh, lord. That’s Jimmy Burnes and Abe Rubelle. They live next door to each other and I swear they’ve regressed back to childhood.” Mabel shook her head as the party of injured elderly made their way across the floor. “Tell me they weren’t playing chicken with the riding lawn mowers again.”

The youngest of the men groaned. “I wish I could. My daddy has lost his mind.”

The gentleman he was holding up managed to raise a fist. “I’m living, son. Living. And I won.”

“Did not,” the other man said. “I was getting back on my mower when you decided to have a heart attack. Game ain’t over ’til one of us gives in. Where’s Doc?”

Lila sighed and sprang into action. It looked like her day wasn’t over yet.

•   •   •

Armie stared across his desk at Gene Boudreaux. Gene owned the local grocery store/tourist information station. He also listened to far too many conspiracy theory podcasts. It hadn’t been all that bad when he’d only had network television to draw from. Ah, the good old days. Back then Gene would only come in to talk about potential government takeovers. Armie could usually point out that unless the government wanted shrimp or to take a tour of the bayou, there really wasn’t much for them to take over.

But then last Christmas Gene’s grandson just had to introduce the man to the wonderful world of podcasts. Now Gene constantly listened to non-experts talk about crimes, and now he saw them going on everywhere. And he constantly proved that he didn’t understand what the young people meant by being “woke.” It was definitely not being woke to think that every single stranger a person met was likely trying to murder him.

“Do we really know what happened, Sheriff?” Gene looked around like he needed to make sure no one was listening. “It seems odd that Doc would walk away like that.”

“He’s been talking about retiring for the last twenty years,” Armie replied.

Gene’s index finger came up like Armie had made his point. “Yes, and he never did it. All these years and he never once retired. Suddenly this woman shows up in town and he’s gone?”

“I don’t think he’s dead. I’m pretty sure he’s fishing. Remy said he took the boat out early this morning.” Remy Guidry ran Guidry’s Bar and Grill and the marina that it was attached to. Many a boat was safely nestled there. Remy hadn’t been worried about the doc. The doc went fishing all the time. He’d been a little upset that Doc had left his sister-in-law alone on her first day at the clinic.

The whole Guidry family was worried about how Lila Daley was going to fit in, and from what he’d seen, they were right to be.