Sadie-In-Waiting by Annie Jones Page B

just saying, that for once in my life, the things gone totally wacko around me absolutely cannot be thework of Moonie Shelnutt. He doesn’t do cemeteries, and he doesn’t have any plans to until he’s brought to one feet-first.”
    “Okay, if you’ve ruled out the occult and the obvious, what’s left?”
    “Overactive imagination, according to the chief of police.” She picked up the phone and stared at the black bulky thing.
    “Is that who you’re calling?”
    “No.” Her fingers hovered for a moment over the numbers before she began to slowly punch them in. “I think maybe this time I’ll try Kurt Muldoon.”
    “Breaking and entering on city property? That’s police business, not the sheriff’s.”
    “Yeah, but…” She chewed her lower lip, and aware of the quiet ringing in her ear, met her friend’s gaze and whispered, “I can’t call the police.”
    Mary Tate’s eyes grew wide, her tone went hushed as one suddenly sucked into a potentially sinister mystery. “Why not?”
    “Because…” Sadie straightened up and held the mouthpiece down so when the night dispatcher picked up he wouldn’t hear her. “Because I’ve called them three times in two weeks, and every time they’ve come up with a perfectly logical explanation for whatever I reported. The chief of police has taken great pains to remind me that they do not have a large staff and time spent making like Scooby Doo out at the graveyard means time away from serious police work.”
    “Serious police work? Yes, Wileyville is a regular hotbed of crime. I’d wager that man has had to cut his coffee drinking time at Owt’s down to only two hours a day.”
    The dispatcher in the sheriff’s office answered. Sadie held one finger up to signal to Mary Tate to wait. In as few words as possible she explained who and where she was and why she needed to get in touch with Kurt. When the dispatcher put her on hold to see if the sheriff had left for the day, Sadie picked up the conversation where she and Mary Tate had left it. “It’s his tone, you know, that pat-you-on-the-head, ‘there, there, little lady don’t worry your pretty self’ way of his that made me want to just get right in his smug old face and say…Eeep!”
    Sadie slammed the receiver into its cradle and practically leaped backward.
    “Sadie, honey, what is it?” Mary Tate reached her side in two steps.
    Just that fast the phone began to ring.
    Sadie groaned and dug her fingers into her aching scalp.
    “Are you going to answer that?”
    “No!” She waved her friend away. “When the dispatcher couldn’t find Kurt, he said it didn’t sound like their jurisdiction, so he put me through to the police. That’s got to be them calling me now just to give me grief.”
    “Okay, if you don’t want to answer that , how about going outside, where your other duty calls?”
    Sadie groaned, letting her head fall back. In doing so she caught a glimpse of the clock. “We have a full five more minutes before the meeting officially starts.”
    “But Deborah, not to mention Waynetta…”
    “Circle this day on your calendar, pal. A new day has dawned for the council. As of today, that meeting will begin not when the bossiest woman shows up but when the president, me , calls the assembly to order.”
    “That will be different. And good for you for initiating it.” Mary Tate gave her friend a hug.
    Sadie patted her friend’s hand and wondered how long she could keep up the brave face when what she really wanted to do was go home and hide under the covers. Aside from the odd and the unexplained incidents around her office, these two weeks had certainly taken their toll.
    She was tired. But for once it was a good tired.
    She was stressed. But at least she knew the source of that stress.
    She was resolute. Though she did not have all the answers she needed to carry out her mission, for the first time in a long while, she had a mission to focus her energy on, if only…
    She took a