Secrets Don't Sink: A Chattertowne Mystery by K. B. Jackson

I am happy to welcome Audrey O’Connell to Escape With Dollycas today!

I’m often asked how I got myself into this mess. You know, how did I find myself knee-deep in a small-town murder investigation fueled by secrets long submerged? I’d say it started with what brought me back to my hometown of Chattertowne, Washington in the first place, but that’s only part of the story. The truth is it goes way further back than that. If I believed in reincarnation, I might think my sister Vivienne is the second-coming of my great, great grandmother Frances, aka Aunt Fanny. Frances passed away when my mother was about ten years old, but her reputation lives on. She’d insisted her grandchildren call her Aunt Fanny—not Grandma, Granny, Nana, or Meemaw—likely a way to offset any hesitancy men might have for dating a grandmother. My Gramma May once said Frances was immature and had an underdeveloped sense of self. She was not a fan of her mother-in-law. My childhood was filled with admonitions about falling into the ensnarement of feckless men like Randolv “Swede” Lundquist and Egbert Doughty, two of Fanny’s four husbands. She’d managed to become both a powerful matriarch and cautionary tale, and at times I’ve wondered if Viv viewed those exhortations to avoid unscrupulous lotharios as a challenge rather than a deterrent. None of these stories about Aunt Fanny came from my mother, of course. Despite her ominous warnings to Viv and me about the innate untrustworthiness of men—my long-suffering father excluded—all the details of our family history were shrouded in mystery and shame. I pieced bits of it together from conversations with Gramma May over the years as she tippled sherry every afternoon, as well as from the newspaper archives at Chattertowne Library. My curiosity of this fabled woman I’d never known but who dwelled in my family tree was intensified by my mother’s unwillingness to share the information. Family secrets are a funny thing. If we know them, we might be able to anticipate what pitfalls lie dormant in our DNA to offset our ancestor’s propensity for making certain choices. Instead they are passed down to us in a combination of genetic lottery and incognizant behavioral patterns. Not to say we’re powerless to the 23 pairs of chromosomes we’ve received, congenitally destined to repeat the mistakes and misfortunes of those who came before us because each of us is the result of a random combination of them and result definitely vary. Take Vivienne and me. I’m a five-foot six-inch hazel-eyed ash blonde with what my easily disappointed mother euphemistically refers to as “large bone structure.” Viv is a petite 5’2 with golden eyes, high cheekbones, and hair the color of champagne satin. Her pixie-like beauty stops men in their tracks. I’m often asked to help my friends move. With few exceptions I tend to be a rigid rule-follower. I’ve always believed rules are there for a reason, while Vivienne hasn’t met a rule she didn’t want to break. We were raised in the same family, under the same roof, with the same two parents. We are not the same. I was slowly working my way through the ranks of The Oregonian and attempting to have a modicum of a social life in Portland when my mother phoned to say Viv had “gone off the rails. Again.” I wanted to hang up and pretend the call had never come through, but I did not. I could not. At 27-years-old Viv should be beyond needing a babysitter but I’ve had an outsized sense of responsibility toward her ever since she nearly drowned as a toddler on my watch. As a result I developed a crippling case of aquaphobia—especially tough when growing up in a riverfront community—while Viv has continued lived her life with abandon, unscathed by the incident. I could’ve said no. Deep down I understand I could’ve said no to coming back home to clean up Viv’s mess. Maybe someday I’ll learn to say it, but that day has yet to come, especially when it comes to my baby sister. And while five additional years of life experience hasn’t yielded enough wisdom to overcome my own proclivity for rejecting nice guys and being drawn to ones who will break my heart or—at the least—make me want to change my phone number, my sister tends to elevate her poor romantic choices to another level entirely. Her most recent incident involved getting caught in flagrante delicto with her (now former) boss in the office stairwell by another employee who decided minor extortion was preferable to reporting the relationship to human resources. The result was termination for all three, a fine and a little jail time for the coworker, and a two-bedroom apartment Viv could no longer afford on the money she makes at her back-up gig singing and waitressing at a nightclub called Nautilus. So, that’s how I ended up back in Chattertowne, living with Viv in her dingy apartment, writing for the not-so-glamorous Coastal Current Newspaper, and dodging messages from my married conspiracy theorist ex-boyfriend. Who could have predicted he’d be found floating dead in the marina, and I’d be the one facing my greatest fears in order to solve his murder and rescue my sister once again? Thank you, Audrey, for visiting today! Keep reading for more info about Secrets Don't Sink starring Audrey O’Connell!