Free Gone Crazy by Shannon Hill Page B

“You holding up okay?”
    Jack stopped, looking peculiarly lost for a minute. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I am. I do wish I had found a wife and had a family before he passed away. It would have eased his mind.”
    “You’re a guy,” I said with total lack of tact. Aunt Marge would’ve had a fit. “You can wait.”
    “I suppose, but…‌I think my children will spend time here more than we did.” He sighed so deeply that Boris looked at him with his head tipped to one side. “It’s very peaceful.”
    That nearly set me off laughing again. Crazy, peaceful? Only if you weren’t the sheriff.
    ***^***
    A couple of days after the funeral, I was still feeling sore, and I headed to the garden to sulk about being on restricted duty. The flower garden, I mean. Aunt Marge’s vegetable and herb garden is a series of narrow terraces cut into the mountain, and it didn’t encourage lounging. I waved to Roger, who was setting up a system of irrigation pipes to be fed by rainwater gathered in barrels off the roof, and I eased down into the new patio couch. Boris flopped beneath it, glaring at the world. He missed work. So did I.
    I heard the doorbell, but I ignored it. Big mistake. A minute later, I heard feet pattering up the flagstone walk around the side of the house. One thing about mountain living. You get some damn fine cardio just walking around.
    “Lil? Lil, is it true?”
    It was Bobbi, eyes shining, a hand to the stitch in her side. She collapsed onto the chair, panting. “Did he leave you land ?”
    I sighed. I was not going to get any good sulking done. “Enough to be buried in.”
    “Ruth told me it was land,” she insisted, referring to her ex-mother-in-law. “What do you mean?”
    I shifted a cushion. “Burial plot in the family cemetery.”
    Bobbi’s nothing if not partisan. “Why, that old…” She shook her head violently, showing off new coppery highlights. “Well, that’s not all. You haven’t heard about the will reading, then?”
    “Not a word,” I said happily. She didn’t take the hint.
    “Do you know what he left his wife?” she asked, then corrected herself. “Of course you don’t. Oh, Lil, it must’ve been fantastic ! You know Sherrilyn, she works up there.”
    LP Inc. employees, like those who worked at the Eller family estate across the valley, lived on-site and weren’t really considered locals. Sherrilyn, however, had lived in Crazy as a kid, which made her a local no matter how she might feel about it. She was one of the housekeeping staff. It gave her a decent salary, a uniform of blue polo shirt with khaki trousers, and enough in the way of benefits that, unlike most of her family, she didn’t lack for medical or dental.
    “Well, she and the others got mentioned, so they were all there this morning, she came in and told me, she was getting her roots touched up.” It was a secret known only to Sherrilyn, Bobbi and me that Sherrilyn had stopped being naturally blonde sometime in high school. “He left her the same thing he left the housekeepers!”
    I’d cut back to only one pain med at bedtime, so I followed that. “Which was?”
    Bobbi leaned back in feline triumph. If she’d had whiskers, she’d have licked them for satisfaction. “Five thousand dollars. On a gift card. Y’know. Those credit card type ones. Sherrilyn’s going to go to Short Pump and have herself a spree.”
    I was grinning. “Bet Mary Littlepage wasn’t happy.”
    “Oh, she was mad !” chortled Bobbi. “Sherrilyn said she screeched like she’d got stuck, and then she was cussing up and down, the lawyers had to take her outta the room! I guess she’s gonna sue for her widow’s share or something.”
    Mary Palmer Littlepage getting five grand of her hubby’s millions. Oh, that was karma with a vengeance. I must’ve looked like a grinning fool. Bobbi certainly did.
    “Jack’s a practical guy,” I said, “he’ll buy her off with some kind of annuity, I bet. Anything