5 Dead Crazy by Shannon Hill

Author:Shannon Hill [Hill, Shannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shannon Hill
Published: 2014-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

10

I knew Eddie Brady was out of county when I got a call saying, “Someone’s peeing on the flowers.”

“Which flowers?” I sighed. Eddie was notorious for using the world as his bathroom. He had that in common with Boris.

“At the fence.”

By then, there was only one fence in the whole county. The one at Speckled Hen Hill.

I’d expected a fuss from my uncle Robert Eller Senior about that. I’d gotten none. He seemed to have resigned himself to the situation.

That wasn’t very Eller-like. As Aunt Marge just had to remind me. Twice.

There were days I envied Boris that tail. I’d have liked something to lash that got me told how cute I was.

I drove out.

The fence had become a memorial to the unknown dead on the hill. No more green or black armbands anywhere in Crazy. They dangled from the fence, in an odd display of unity, and along the ditch lay bouquets and wreaths and crosses of real and artificial flowers. You could tell which were which at a distance by the activity of insects. They tended to avoid plastic.

Boris meowed happily. He put his nose to the window and looked eagerly at the town as I cruised through it. I knew I had time. Eddie wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. He couldn’t. He’d gone thirty days sober in jail, after all. He’d be on an epic bender.

I didn’t hit the lights till I came in view of the fence. And, yes, Eddie Brady. He was no longer urinating. He was vomiting.

Boris made a cat noise of disgust.

“Too bad a hairball treat couldn’t fix that,” I said, and left the cat in the car. “Hey, Eddie. What did you in this time? Five-buck gin or did you get hold of moonshine?”

Eddie moaned, emptied what might have been his spleen, and hung onto the chain-link fence. “Sheriff! It was one-buck something. I don’t like it.” He pointed at the ditch. “It don’t like me, neither.”

“No, Eddie, it certainly doesn’t.” I handed over a bottle of water. “Sip, please. Slowly.”

He guzzled, spat, and then sipped. Eddie when that miserable was fairly docile.

“Now, do we have to have the discussion about public indecency and littering again?” I asked, arms folded. “Or can we take it as a given that once you sober up you’ll remember to get behind some bushes for this sort of thing?” I hastily tacked on, “Bushes that don’t belong to anyone. Y’know. Away from houses. Never mind. C’mon, let’s get you a shower and a bed.”

He flopped into the cruiser. I had to push his feet in. He was already snoring, head pillowed on the bottles of water.

Boris spat at him. He didn’t like Eddie. Or his smell. I tried to be neutral about Eddie himself, but I agreed on the smell. That man had stink.

Orrin was out scouring the countryside for Gary Tucker again, so I wrangled Eddie through the shower on my own. It was my punishment for past sins, I reckoned. Though I didn’t know what I’d done that was all that bad.

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