A Bad Day for Romance (10 page)

There was a respectful silence while her two assistants focused on not pointing out how unlikely her theory was.

“What about the hunter?” Harvey finally asked.

“Seriously?” Daphne took one last extra-long drag on her cigarette and tossed it to the ground, where it immediately ignited a cluster of dead leaves. Daphne stomped at the flame with her boots. “I’ll bet my bottom dollar she’s lying. Hunting’s not allowed in national forest—nobody comes in here to hunt.”

Chrissy snorted—she and her family had gotten through a few barren stretches, when her father had been underemployed, by poaching off government land—and Daphne looked up sharply.

“Shit,” Chrissy whispered.

“Hold up,” Daphne said. “You hear that?”

“Hear what? I didn’t hear nothing,” Charlie said.

“Me neither,” Harvey nodded in agreement. “Probably it was just a turkey.”

“Or a possum.”

“Possum’s nocturnal,” Daphne said. She started striding toward the rock face, drawing her service piece. “That there was a human, I’ll bet you anything.”

“Go!” Stella blurted, but Chrissy was already sprinting down the hill.

Stella could hear the shouts of Daphne and her men as they scrambled up the hill on the other side. She didn’t turn around, focusing on putting as much distance as she could between her and her pursuers before they reached the top. Chrissy had a considerable head start, but thanks to the Chinese martial arts instruction she received from her mentor, Mr. Hou, Stella was able to make herself an arc of silver lightning, or at least a very fucking fast, slightly overweight middle-aged lady, and when they passed through the campground she and Chrissy were neck and neck. Chrissy swerved to grab her shoes off the picnic table, but they made it to the Jeep only moments later, and were roaring down the road soon after that.

“Aw, hell,” Chrissy said.

“What? Can you see them behind us?” Stella’s heart pounded ferociously, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the road as the speedometer eased past eighty. “Shit—are they catching up with us?”

“Naw, calm down, Stella, nothing like that—I just chipped my toenail polish.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT DIDN’T TAKE THEM LONG TO
sift through their newfound insight.

“So Divinity had a bow, but it wasn’t the one that was used to kill Bryant.”

Chrissy snorted. She’d crawled over the seat to take a look at the thing through the plastic. “If you even want to call that a bow. I mean, Stella, you might could shoot a boot with it if someone set it out twenty feet in front of you. I’m sure Divinity just picked it to match her audition outfit.”

“What I got to ask is why she was up in a
tree
.”

More sounds of disgust from Chrissy. “That’s the way it was in that stupid movie, they had this girl
sleeping
in a tree. Makes you wonder if them Hollywood folks have ever even walked ten feet from their front doors to check out how shit actually works. They should have put
me
in the movie—”

“Yeah, if they’d a wanted to film a massacre. Not sure that would have gone over all that well with the ratings folks.”

“Now a carbon broadhead bolt—
that’s
got some serious penetration,” Chrissy went on, ignoring her. “ ’Specially if you got a good crank cocker.”

“What is that, anyhow?”

“Crossbow,” Chrissy said admiringly. “Bolt that killed Bryant? You got any aim, you could take down a moose with it. But the draw on it takes strength. Crank cocker’s this thing that looks like fishing reel with a high gear ratio.”

“Uh, that ain’t exactly giving me much of a visual.”

Chrissy sighed. “Okay, how can I put this so you’ll understand? It’s a thing about six inches square that you got to carry extra if you don’t have the power to draw, which Divinity definitely don’t, and if you can remember how to use it in the heat of the moment, which, come on, she’s just got a big bubble where her brain ought to be.”

“I know you don’t like her, Chrissy, but—”

“Don’t matter if I like her or not. But there’s no way she killed Bryant, that’s all I’m saying, unless she had a
lot
of help.”

With that established, Stella called Dotty and found the bride to be in an agitated state, even though she took the call in the spa, where she was getting a hot-stone massage.

“Mrs. Rangarajan was just about fit to be tied when she heard Divinity went to jail,” Dotty said. “I can’t figure out how she heard.”

“You know how news flies around here,” Stella reminded her. “There wasn’t any way you were going to keep her from finding out.”

“But now she thinks I come from a family full of criminals.” Dotty sighed. “I wish Divinity was still in the hospital. Why, getting herself arrested the day before my wedding is just downright inconsiderate, don’t you think? But nothing that girl does would shock me—I’m surprised she ain’t sassed her way into solitary confinement by now.”

It was the first time Stella had ever detected a crack in Dotty’s unswerving loyalty to her family, and she trod carefully. “So, you’re saying you’ll consider going ahead with the wedding if we can get the rest of them back down here?”

Dotty let loose a long sigh punctuated with an oof, which she explained was the result of an extra-large stone pressing against her rib cage. “Go easy there, girl,” she said. “Not you, Stella. Yes, I suppose I am… oh, I just don’t even know what to think. I had lunch with Kam’s sisters and you know what they were telling me? The day before an Indian wedding, the bride and groom get dressed in old clothes and all the guests rip them off to symbolize the end of their single days. Don’t that sound like fun? And I just wish Tilly was here, and even Taffy, because it reminds me how we used to horse around when we were kids. Kam says he’s happy to do whatever I want to do, but I know he’s worried about his mom, and I just—I just—”

Stella could hear the impending sniffles even over the phone. “Stop right there, sister,” she said hastily. “You start crying now, your eyes are going to be all puffy tonight! Count back from ten and picture Liam Neeson with his shirt off.”

It was a trick Stella had learned long ago, when Ollie had belittled or threatened or otherwise disheartened her in a public place, back when it was a secret that he was beating the shit out of her for nearly all three decades of their marriage. Whenever she didn’t want to cry, she conjured up some far more pleasant image—the Hawaiian Islands she hoped to visit someday, a basket of her mother’s pumpkin muffins—and focused on that instead of the hurt.

In general, Stella was no longer a fan of keeping up appearances, especially when it was for the benefit of someone other than the one whose feelings were being hurt, but exceptions could be made on the eve of the happiest day of her best friend’s life.

Dotty counted backward, and by the time she got to zero, the wobble had left her voice. “Thanks, Stella. You always know the right thing to say.”

“Now just hold tight, and before you know it you’ll be sipping a champagne toast with the handsomest man in Kansas City.”

That earned Stella a giggle. “Aw, Stella, can you believe it? Before you know it, I’m going to be Mrs. Kamran Rangarajan!”

“Atta girl,” Stella said softly before hanging up, because even though her own marriage had ended in a spectacular and bloody fashion, and her own romantic affairs were tangled up like fishing line in the bottom of a wicker creel, she still, deep in her heart of hearts, believed in happy ever after.

When they pulled back into the resort parking lot, Stella’s pulse had stopped racing and her nerves had settled. Chrissy had resolved to ask Noelle to redo her pedicure in the morning, so she, too, was mollified.

“It’s barely five—I think we might have time for a little nip before the rehearsal dinner,” Chrissy said. “I’ll just shower and change and come on down to your suite, okay?”

“Sure, you can help me deal with Dotty.”

Stella had barely slid her key card into the slot and opened the door to her room when a burst of squawking nearly gave her a heart attack.

“It’s about time you got back here!” Novella Glazer said, from her perch at the portable banquet table that was serving as Stella’s makeshift sewing table. Her green cap rested on the end of the table next to what appeared to be the dress Stella had brought for the rehearsal dinner, lying in a mound with pins protruding from the fabric.

“What’s in these, anyway?” Shirlette Castro demanded, holding a coffee cup aloft. It was smeared with the same fuchsia lipstick that was centered more or less on Shirlette’s wrinkled lips.

“It’s nice to see you ladies, too,” Stella said, fanning herself. Lately she’d noticed that a sudden startle could tip her directly into a hot flash, which could be useful when it added to the adrenaline rush in situations that required her to react quickly. But generally that was when she was dealing with fugitive woman-smackers, not octogenarian housewives. “How on earth did y’all get in here, anyway?”

Irene Dorsey came out of the bathroom. “That was me,” she said proudly. “All my years in the sheriff’s department’s taught me how to work the system.”

“What did you do?” Stella asked. As much as she’d looked forward to coming back to a nice, quiet, empty room, and not a trio of what looked to be fairly tipsy old ladies, her professional curiosity was piqued.

Irene chortled. “I just told the fella down there I saw smoke coming out the door. He was so all-fired quick to get in here and look around, he wasn’t keeping an eye on me. And you left your extra key right out on the TV stand, Stella.” She held it up between red-lacquered fingertips.

“Imagine that,” Stella said drily. “I suppose I won’t have you arrested, just this once.”

“Well, I wouldn’t think so!” Novella exclaimed. “Not when you had us altering this here gown of yours all afternoon!” She picked up Stella’s dress by the shoulders and held it up proudly for Stella’s review.

Or, rather, she held up what was left of it, leaving a good portion of it behind on the table. When Stella had unpacked her rehearsal dinner dress from her suitcase, it had been a tasteful rayon jersey number with an above-the-knee hemline and a neckline low enough to be attention-getting without dipping into trampy.

Now, the dress had somehow been transformed into what appeared to be a sleeveless minidress with a crossover bodice that might have fit a seventeen-year-old cheerleader on a juice cleanse.

“Aaack!” Stella exclaimed.

“The ladies outdid themselves!” Irene crowed.

“What’s in this?” Shirlette repeated, slurring her words a bit and rattling the ice in her coffee cup.

“I keep telling her it’s what’s left of that punch Chrissy whipped up last night,” Irene said. “I didn’t think she ought to be drinking it, seeing as it’s a day old and who knows what kind of ingredients Chrissy put in there that ought to be kept cold, but you know no one has ever been able to tell Shirlette what to do.”

“Not since we were kids,” Novella agreed.

Shirlette burped.

Stella felt hysteria threaten to rise up inside her. “What. Have. You. Done. To my
dress
!”

Immediately, she regretted shouting. Not only did she try to save her foul tempers for when they might come in handy, say when it was time to deliver a convincing application of whup-ass to one of her parolees—as she liked to think of them—but elderly ladies probably never deserved to be upbraided. Luckily, Novella and Shirlette’s reaction to her show of temper appeared to be more boozy confusion than genuinely hurt feelings.

“Why, only what you told us,” Novella said. “You said it came from Marigene’s with two extra inches in the side seams. You said to take four inches off the hem and spice up the neckline!”

“I certainly did not,” Stella said, awful realization dawning. “I said all of that about my
bridesmaid dress
. Which is hanging
in the closet
. Where I told you to look for it.”

“Oh,” said Shirlette in a small voice after a moment had passed.

“It’s just, this was hanging from the door,” Novella added, looking at the skimpy garment she was holding. “Huh.”

“Yes, I had it hanging there because I planned to put it on tonight. Which I can no longer do since you two have turned a nice size-twelve dress into an outfit a size-six girl in her twenties might wear when she didn’t want to leave anything up to her date’s imagination.”

“Aw, now,” Irene clucked. “Enough of that.” She snatched the dress out of Novella’s hands and held it up to Stella, squinting. “You’re gonna look
hot
in this.”

“I’m not going to wear that!”

“Oh yes you are, young lady,” Irene said, swatting her firmly on the butt. “Now get on into that shower. You’re a mess, which I’m not going to ask you to explain, but I don’t think you’re going to want to come down to dinner with sticks in your hair and dirt under your nails.”

Five minutes before the rehearsal dinner was scheduled to begin, Stella took a final apprehensive look over her shoulder in the floor-to-ceiling mirror of her luxuriously appointed bathroom, where she’d been hiding out as the Green Hat Ladies and Irene fussed over Dotty and reassured her that everything was going to work out just fine before escorting her down to dinner.

“It’s just you out there, isn’t it?” she called.

“Yes, Stella,” Chrissy said. “I sent the rest of ’em on ahead. Now get your ass out here and show me the damage.”

Stella tottered apprehensively out of the room in the towering gold ankle-strap peep-toe pumps that she’d picked up on a lark when she and Dotty had gone shopping for bridal shoes. “These are sooooo comfortable,” the saleswoman had gushed, pointing out the padded platform; on reflection Stella had to admit that she’d been snookered. Back when she’d been expecting tonight to end in romantic fireworks with her boyfriend, the shoes seemed like just the thing. But now she felt a bit like a stork stuffed into a sausage casing.

“I’m going to wear my coat to dinner,” Stella warned, before venturing around the corner.

“It’s balmy out!” Chrissy exclaimed. “And that old raincoat of yours belongs on the scrap heap. It was out of date when I was in kinderg—”