The Saucy Lucy Murders Read Free Page A

dishwasher. OK?”
    “Oops.” Eva winced. “Sorry.”
    “Not a biggie.” Lexie said. “I’m just glad to know the dishwasher only had a bad case of indigestion.”
    “Right,” Eva said. “I’m gonna go hit the shower. Can I help you do anything else?”
    “No,” Lexie responded too quickly, then decided to change the subject so Eva wouldn’t guess she was afraid of her help right now. “Say, how’s your newroommate working out?”
    “She’s cool. College is cool … at least in the three weeks since I started. The cafeteria food sucks, though. Yours is much better.”
    Lexie warmed at the unexpected compliment from her self-absorbed teenager. “I suppose they do their best.”
    “Mom, it’d gag a maggot. And their mystery meat is totally disgusting. Like, it’s not fit for human consumption.” Eva brushed past Lexie and went upstairs.
    “Kids,” Lexie muttered to the sparkling clean kitchen. “Gotta love ’em.”

    Later, trusting Eva could manage to make sandwiches and ladle soup for the lunch crowd, Lexie drove across town to Lucy’s book club picnic at the Moose Creek Junction City Park. Under an arching canopy of ancient elms and cottonwoods sporting the golds, oranges, and reds of autumn, she navigated her truck past treacherous potholes on the narrow streets. She wondered briefly when the annual “Potluck and Pothole Day” was going to be held.
    As a kid, Lexie loved when everyone got together for a community potluck and road repair day. Kids ran around playing and eating while their parents worked with the local asphalt company filling and smoothing out holes in the road. Moose Creek Junction was definitely due for this event. She madea mental note to ask Lucy about it.
    Tucking strands of hair behind her ears, Lexie stared at the parched brown lawns of the neat bungalows lining the sidewalks. It had been dry over the summer. Terribly dry. And now the small town was under strict water rationing because Mayor Golly-horn had determined they could have a potential emergency situation if the winter ahead turned out as warm as the last few years.
Global warming. The end of the world …
Lexie didn’t want to think of that. The end of the world, that is.
    Lucy said that Gus Lincolnway, the reverend at the First Community Church of the Lamb of God was always harping on it, and how the evils of mankind were ruining the environment. Sister Lucy bought all that crap, but Lexie, the sinner, didn’t. She believed the environment had various cycles. The current cycle happened to be dry and hot. It was that simple.
Amen.
    Lexie looked at the children again. Several of them were bouncing back and forth between the homes, chattering and having a bang-up time. She wondered if their mothers realized how lucky they were. That’s what she’d always wanted. Loving husband, little house, white picket fence, two-point-five kids, a dog, a cat, and goldfish, maybe even a gerbil or a parakeet.
    Never mind Women’s Lib. She hadn’t really planned herself a career, despite her parents urging, so when good looking Dan Lightfoot came along,promising her the world, her born-yesterday self had fallen right into his snare. They’d been high school sweethearts, prom king and queen.
    Then she’d gone and gotten herself knocked up. Well, Dan had helped.
    “No problem,” Dan had said when she told him she was in the family way. At the time, his comment made her love him more because her delicate condition hadn’t even ruffled a hair on his fair head. Somehow, with the world against them, they’d graduated high school and took off for California with their tiny baby. Dan managed to make it through funeral home school with student loans and Lexie working evening waitress jobs.
    Unfortunately, any time something went wrong, even if there was real trouble looming on the horizon, Dan’s trademark comment was always, “No problem.” After a while, it became annoying, but Lexie learned to live with it.
    Once Dan