A Bad Day for Pretty (11 page)

Stella could feel Irene’s curious gaze on her as she waited impatiently for Goat to give up the ruse. Irene was a holdover from Sheriff Burt Knoll’s administration, but she’d made the transition to the new sheriff with ease. It wasn’t hard to do—her working style of listening attentively and then doing things exactly as she damn well pleased went equally unchallenged by both administrations.

Goat was no dummy. Sheriff Knoll hadn’t been either. Both knew better than to go trying to fix something that wasn’t broke, and Irene—with her sharp memory undiminished by age, her unyielding loyalty to the long arm of the law, and her matronly scent of rose water and Jean Naté dusting powder—worked plenty well just the way she was.

“He’s been hiding since that crew took the body and hightailed it back up to Fayette yesterday,” Irene clarified in a slightly louder whisper. “That Detective Simmons says she’s coming on back in her own car this afternoon, and Goat don’t want nothing to do with her.”

Stella turned away from the sheriff’s door and considered Irene thoughtfully. Seventy if she was a day, Irene seemed to think she had the entire town fooled about her age due to her zealous if not entirely professional home hair coloring. Her thin strands were dyed a relentless black, and not only did she keep up with the roots, but she often ended up dyeing the skin that encroached on her hairline, too, giving her a special-effects horror movie effect—as though she was wearing a gray latex skullcap with a wig attached.

Irene was holding a copy of
In Touch
out as far as her arms extended in front of her, peering over the tops of a pair of coral pink–framed reading glasses. She licked her thumb, then her forefinger, before turning a page.

“So … what do you think of those folks from up in Fayette, anyway?” Stella asked Irene.

“Well, now, they been here before. Once in 2000, once a few years before that.” If Irene had an opinion on the subject, it wasn’t forthcoming.

“Murders?” Stella asked. While her own interest in deadly crime hadn’t really gotten jump-started that far back, she thought she’d remember the violent spilling of blood of one of her fellow citizens.

“Hmm, not so much,” Irene said. “In 2000, remember that coot fell off his dingy and drowned in the strip pits, and then the next week them kids were ditching for senior week and one a them got fished out—”

“Tragic,” Stella murmured, because she did remember that one, a skinny kid who’d been something of a local sensation on the track team.

“Yes, but remember Sheriff Knoll got it in his head it was a serial killer at work. Drowndin folks.” She shook her head incredulously. “I coulda told Burt it wasn’t nothin’ of the sort, but you remember how he got. Them crazy theories of his. Anyway, they sent that bunch down from Fayette back then and they poked around a little and come up with the bodies’ blood alcohol levels and whatnot and finally everyone was satisfied it wasn’t nothing but stupid at work.”

“Well, what about the other time? Before that one?”

“You remember that whole Trusty Carmichael thing.…”

“Oh, that.” Trusty Carmichael went a little nuts one summer after his wife of thirty years left him to go up to Saint Louis and enter a convent. He grew convinced that God was performing blood sacrifices on the picnic table in his backyard, but it turned out that the blood came from his own chickens, which he killed off over the course of a few weeks, chopping one up every time he got too despondent over Mrs. Carmichael’s defection to the holy side. “Least that probably didn’t take them a whole long time to figure out.”

“Not with the feathers and all, no.”

“Guess we just don’t have a whole lot of mayhem around here,” Stella mused, reflecting on the locations where she’d done some of her messier work. Generally it took just a bucket of rags and some Windex or Soft Scrub to clean up after even the most spirited discussion with one of her parolees, as she wasn’t spilling murderous amounts of blood—just enough to do the trick, that was the rule.

Not for the first time, she flashed a quick prayerful thank-you up to the Big Guy for helping keep hid what she’d hid in the first place—the not-so-accidental nature of the string of accidents that had befallen the worst offenders of devil-baiting hatefulness against their women.

“No, ma’am,” Irene said serenely. “And that’s how we like it.”

“So what’s Goat got against Simmons?”

Irene laid down her magazine and beckoned Stella conspiratorially. “Now, you didn’t hear this from me,” she said, “but I believe that woman has designs on him. I heard her asking him to have dinner with her today when she was getting ready to leave last night. Seein’ as how she’d be all by her little lonesome out at the Heritage House Motel and didn’t have any idea where to get a decent meal. It was quite a sight to see, Stella, that woman carrying on. She don’t have, you know, the equipment for it.”

To Stella’s startled amusement, Irene slipped her hands under her bosom and gave herself a brief little lift-and-display.

“Irene!” Stella said, blushing. “Not every man’s a tit man, you know.”

“Well, now, honey—it ain’t just that. She’s got that nasty smoker voice and she bites her nails and she don’t have hardly any tush on her at all. And she’s not particularly friendly … to me, anyway. Called me ‘Miz Percy’ twice, even though I corrected her the first time, and it’s spelt out right here,
D-o-r-s-e-y
, plain as day.” Irene tapped her engraved gold nameplate for emphasis.

“Why, that’s terrible,” Stella murmured. She didn’t have any particular ill feelings for Simmons, but it was clear that the woman wasn’t all that smart if she’d missed out on the number one rule of getting on in the workplace: Make friends from the bottom up.

It wasn’t such a difficult lesson as far as Stella could see—why folks ever figured to get anywhere if they couldn’t be bothered to spare a kind word for the people who did all the work. If you woke up with the flu and wanted to be squeezed in with the doctor, why, you’d better darn well be sweet to the scheduler. If your cable TV went on the fritz, hollerin’ at the customer service gal wasn’t going to get you anything but transferred to the wrong department.

And if you wanted to make time with the sheriff, you had darn well better play nice with Irene.

“I just call it like I see it,” Irene said primly, returning to her
In Touch
.

“Well … I do hate to miss him,” Stella sighed, turning as if to go. “Seein’ as I was going to go pick up some Pokey Pot sandwiches and I know how fond of them he is.”

In truth, it was Irene who favored the barbecue joint on the other end of town, a place that simmered its pork shoulder Carolina style until it was reduced to tender, vinegary shreds and tucked it into soft white rolls baked fresh every morning. Irene, who had to man the desk through the lunch hour, usually had to make do with whatever she brought from home.

“Oh, I’d hate for Goat to miss out,” Irene said, snatching up the phone hastily. “Plus I wouldn’t mind one a them myself.”

Stella tried to keep from smirking as Irene stabbed at the button on the intercom. “I know you’re in there, Goat Jones,” she said, “and if you don’t haul your ass out here this instant, I’m gonna shred up your
This Old House
magazine what just come in with the mail.”

She replaced the receiver with a satisfied little smile, adding “He sure does love that magazine,” just as Goat’s door burst open and he stood there, six feet four lanky inches in a tan polyester uniform, glowering at the pair of them.

“Women,” he said with venom. “God’s sent me a plague of women, when all I’m trying to do is mind my own business. And every one of y’all bent on causing me pain.”

“Nothin’ you ain’t got comin, I’m sure,” Irene murmured, focusing on her celebrity gossip while Stella tried to look innocent, a trick she’d been polishing for quite some time.

EIGHT

Stella nibbled at a french fry, watching Goat try to eat his fast-falling-apart sandwich. Between the dripping sauce and the overstuffing that had gone into his Pokey Pot Junior, more of the sandwich was landing on the plate than was making it to his mouth.

Stella, who had a couple decades of Pokey Pot experience, had long ago developed a two-pronged approach to their sandwiches: Eat enough of the middle with a fork to ensure that when you picked up the remainder, the innards would stay put.

The other key was to order the Pokey Pot Baby. It was a rare person who could polish off a Junior at lunch—and Stella knew only a handful of people who’d ever made their way through a Big Pig. Nonetheless, a greasy paper sack holding a Big Pig, its top folded down several times and stapled, sat next to her on the table, a reward for Irene, who had come through for Stella in the clutch.

“I hear you have a date tonight,” Stella couldn’t resist saying.

Goat swallowed hard and dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin, then took a long drink of sweet tea. “Ain’t a date,” he managed to get out.

Stella shrugged. “Oh … a
professional
thing, then.”

Goat didn’t say anything. He frowned and glowered at the table. Stella couldn’t help noticing that frowning lined up all the hard planes in his face in a breathtaking display of masculinity.

“Uh, probably having to do with that dead gal,” she went on. “You all figure out who she is yet?”

Goat flicked a glance at her, just long enough for Stella to read the blip of intrigue there. “You know I ain’t gonna talk to you ’bout that, Stella.”

“Oh,” Stella said, keeping her expression neutral. “Only reason I ask, is, maybe it would give us something to help convince you Neb didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Goat snorted. “That’s not my concern. Way we see it, Neb’s sitting on a whole lot of trouble right now. Your boy wasn’t exactly an altar boy back in the day. Fact is, he got him a taste for that hillbilly heroin. We know all about it, Stella, and that Oxy’s one expensive damn habit, the kind that might inspire a man to take what ain’t his in order to pay for it. I’ll tell you what, once we confirm who that woman is, it’s only gonna look worse for Neb.”

“Confirm—like you got an idea already?”

“I didn’t say that.” Goat’s glare got stonier, and he gave his plate a desultory shove, sending it to the middle of the table with the four different kinds of hot sauce.

“Well, it’s pretty clear you do. Got something on her to make the ID, did she? One of those clever crime scene types figure it out?” Wallet, keys, medical bracelet—there were a lot of possibilities, Stella reflected, especially since the body had been wearing clothes, which implied pockets, with opportunities for personal belongings you didn’t tend to have on a naked dead person. “How you do the ident on a mummy, anyway? Do the fingerprints even work?”

Goat ignored the question as he got his wallet out and started peeling off money for a tip. Stella watched with secret admiration. Not too many folks put money on the Formica tables at Pokey Pot’s, probably because they had to do all the work themselves, from waiting around for their food to show up in the pass-through to the kitchen, to busing their own tables. It was local courtesy to take an extra Wet-Nap from the basket and give the table a once-over for the benefit of the next diners to happen along, but that was about the extent of the diner’s obligation.

A man who tipped generously was likely to be considerate in other ways as well—that was Stella’s theory. Ollie had been a first-class skinflint; she’d once seen him pocket the tips from the tables they passed on their way out of Denny’s. If Stella was ever to get hold of a new man, picking someone as far opposite of her dead ex as possible seemed like a good start.

“Tell you what,” Stella said, reining in her rogue thoughts and trying a new tactic. “How about I spring for some cobbler, okay? We can split it.”

Without waiting for an answer, she slid off her chair and went back up to the counter, and ordered a big piece with ice cream, two spoons.

Back at the table, Goat looked unaccountably glum.

“So,” Stella said, taking a big bite of the gooey cinnamon-flecked apples, catching a glob of ice cream in her spoon. “You all are thinking this was like a robbery gone bad, then. This mystery gal was loaded, so whoever it was held her up and then, what, shot her? Hit her on the head? Stabbed her?”

“I didn’t say that.” Goat ogled the dessert between them.

“Couldn’t they figure it out with all that fancy equipment they dragged down here? Hell, they looked like a bunch of Amway salesmen, Goat. ’Cept for that Detective Simmons—I notice she lets the other folks do her heavy lifting.”

“Daphne’s good,” Goat said through clenched teeth. “She’s fast-trackin’ it up there. They say she’s got a shot at sheriff when Stanislas steps down.”

The truth was that while everyone called Goat Sheriff, and Burt Knoll before him, they and the chief gunslingers at the other three branch offices, in Fairfax and Harrisonville and Quail Valley, were all
undersheriffs
. They all reported, on paper, up to Dimmit Stanislas, the top Sheriff of Sawyer County, who these days spent most of his time ignoring his doctor’s orders after his second stroke and smoking his way to an involuntary retirement, the kind that requires you to haul around your own oxygen.