The Queen of Sleepy Eye by Patti Hill

Author:Patti Hill
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2008-08-20T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

AFTER DINNER, MOM and Bruce went to the Lost Mine saloon. I tried to read, but the house felt claustrophobic. Each knickknack and paddywack Mom bought for the house added another link to the chain that held me to Cordial. More and more I believed Mom never intended to reach California.

Fine, I’ll go alone.

The phone rang. It was Mrs. Clancy. “Put the coffee pot on. Some crazy Mexican drank himself stupid and got killed walking on the highway. We’re the closest funeral home, so the body is on its way. We have a long night ahead of us. You might as well start a meatloaf too. Mr. Moberly has to put the body back together.”

I wiped my face on the hem of my T-shirt.

“Are you there? Amy? I can’t have you falling to pieces on me. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” The dial tone hummed in my ear.

Lord?

Someone pounded on the kitchen door. “Mrs. Clancy?” a male voice called.

Flipping light switches as I went, I opened the door for a man with a shining star and bold stripes down each leg. He held his cowboy hat with one hand and blotted his nose with a hankie. A rash rimmed his eyes.

“Mrs. Clancy is on the way,” I said.

“Coffee?” he pleaded. “I just came from the … where the Mexican was hit.”

“I was just going to make some.”

The sheriff drank his coffee by the mailbox, waiting for the body and reinforcements to arrive. Mrs. Clancy stopped briefly to talk to him before parking in front of the garage and hefting her weight up the steps to the kitchen.

“Is your mother here?” she asked.

“She’s—”

“It’s just as well. Have you started the meatloaf?”

I motioned to a brick of meat on the counter. “The hamburger’s frozen.”

“Put the meat back in the freezer. We’ll figure something out later.”

A crush of tires on the gravel driveway announced the arrival of the body. Two state patrol officers sat with the sheriff in the living room, drinking coffee and filling out reports. “Ain’t it just like one of those spics to get drunk and wander into traffic?”

Mom’s new daisy clock read 3:00 a.m., long past the Lost Mine’s closing time. I scowled at the clock. What do I care? Mrs. Clancy had woken the grocery store manager to get the meatloaf ingredients delivered, plus sandwich makings and a variety of sweets to set out as a buffet for the officials who came and went. I made twenty pots of coffee that night and refilled the sugar bowl three times.

Every so often one of the officers would open the basement door about an inch and ask Charles if he’d come across any identifying marks on the body. Charles yelled back, “You’ll be the first to know.”

A hand shook me out of sleep. “Amy, there’s no reason for you to be up. Go to bed.”

“I have to make coffee.”

Charles offered a hand to pull me out of the chair. “If they want coffee, they can go down to the Stop-and-Chomp.

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