A Bad Day for Romance (16 page)

Stella crumpled up her napkin and threw it at Chrissy. “There weren’t any rooms, Goat just crashed in Leif’s extra bed. But I think those two are playing golf this afternoon.”

“Well, here’s what we’ll do,” Chrissy said, gathering up her purse. “Ian’s going to be here any minute, and by the time you get back we might of got through our hellos, if you see what I’m saying, and we’ll meet you for a little afternoon snack in the clubhouse. Wear something cute, and when Goat comes in off the links, all sweaty and looking for something cool and refreshing, why, there you’ll be.”

Stella was about to protest, but Chrissy was already out the door. Besides, as plans went, it was no worse than most.

After a quick shower, Stella went out to the parking lot and spent a good half hour making sure no further automotive tampering had taken place in the wee hours before jumping in the Jeep and heading south. She popped in her Bluetooth, turned down the music, and made a few calls. First she made plans with Noelle to meet for hair and makeup before the party, even though Stella no longer had a call for maid-of-honor glamour. “You still might as well look nice,” Noelle said slyly, “seeing as the sheriff’s going to be there.”

The next call was to Tilly, who confessed she’d told Noelle about Goat’s unexpected arrival when Noelle called to see how she and Divinity and the rest of the Flycocks were holding up.

“But how did
you
find out?” Stella said, only a little mortified that even Tilly, who’d spent much of the last year cramming for her pastor exams, knew about her and Goat’s relationship or whatever it was that they kept not having.

“Well, do you know someone named Daphne Simmons? Some sort of detective around here?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“When I was over at the municipal building with Taffy and Marty, waiting to visit Divinity, she was gossiping with the receptionist by the front desk, and she wouldn’t stop talking about him. How when she gets promoted again she’s going to transfer him up to Fayette to take her old job. What’s that all about?”

Stella sighed. “Daphne used to be just a regular deputy but somehow she got herself promoted to head of the crime-scene unit a while back, which is a real mystery because she ain’t smart enough to sleuth out the coupons in the Sunday paper, and she thinks she’s going to take on Sheriff Stanislas’s job when he retires. And, she has a, a, um… she thinks she has a special relationship with Goat. Only, it only goes the one way, see?”

“She’s got her eye on him while all the time he’s only looking at you—like that?”

“Tilly!” Stella exclaimed, abashed. Then she reconsidered. “Hey, now you’ve been ordained you’ve got that client confidentiality, right? I mean, whatever we talk about, it’s just between me and you and the Big Guy?”

“They don’t lay it out quite that way in the sacred vows, but, yes, I think I see where you’re going. Is there something you want to get off your chest?”

“No, it’s more of a—like, I was thinking I could just talk something through with you, since everyone around here couldn’t keep their mouths from running if their lives depended on it.” Chrissy, Noelle, Dotty, even Stella’s friend Jelloman—who looked like a stoned longshoreman but gossiped like a teenage girl—all of them were great for pouring out her heart to, as long as Stella didn’t care who else knew about it.

“Well, sure, Stella. Bring it on.”

“See… Goat and me, well, we keep working ourselves up to starting something. And it feels like, maybe, it might be…” Stella, who’d married at the tender age of twenty-one and spent nearly three decades mostly trying to stay out of her husband’s way, didn’t have much of a vocabulary to describe the feelings she’d only begun feeling in middle age, and only for one man, ever. “
Real
,” she concluded in a near whisper. “Except every time, it’s like we both get scared and back off. Goat comes up with all these excuses, which I mean they might be true, since
somebody’s
got to keep the law and order going in town, except if he really wanted me, why isn’t he showing up on my front porch every chance he gets? Because, since it’s just me and you talking here, Tilly, that’s what
I’d
do.”

She swallowed hard at the magnitude of the confession.

“Then why aren’t you? Why aren’t you over there on his porch the minute he gets off work, with a nice casserole and a bottle of wine?”

“Because!” Stella exclaimed. “I
can’t
. I mean, what if I looked like I was trying too hard? If I showed him exactly how I feel, it could…”

“Did it ever occur to you, Stella Hardesty—and by the way I always thought you were supposed to be smart—that maybe Goat might be feeling the same thing? Men are more delicate than women. They’re afraid of rejection and their feelings are about as tender as November lettuce.”

“They teach you that in preacher school?”

“No, but I’ll tell you what I
did
learn there, sister, which is that you only go through life once, and while the Lord is going to be glad to see you when you get up there no matter what, he’ll be extra pleased if you squeeze every ounce of joy out of the time you got here.”

Stella thought about that for a while. The roadside scenery rushed by at an alarming clip, and Stella realized she’d been lead-footing since they started discussing Goat. “That don’t sound like any Sunday School I ever attended,” she finally said, easing her foot back off the gas. “But I’ll think about it.”

“Well, I’m coming down the minute we get Divinity out on Monday—and I’ve got half a mind to come even if we can’t. I’m not going to let Dotty down twice, even if it means that girl has to cool her heels in the lockup without the three of us driving each other crazy in the waiting room.”

“How
are
y’all holding up?” Stella inquired.

“If I hadn’t taken sacred vows, I might just strangle Divinity myself. She’s acting like she’s Lindsay Lohan, ordering everyone around and complaining about the way they’re treating her. But Taffy’s no better—she’s been trying to get the lieutenant governor on the phone all morning. And Marty keeps going outside to smoke and make calls—I guess the real estate market waits for no man.”

“I don’t envy you,” Stella said sincerely. “If you don’t mind me asking—did it ever occur to you to just let them sort out their own troubles? When you got all these folks down here that actually
like
having you around?”

“Every waking minute, especially since the three of us are sharing one room at the Hampton Inn and Marty snores and the pullout’s about as comfy as sleeping on a hay bale. Only, Taffy’s my
sister
. My twin, and that’s a special kind of connection. She’d do the same for me, and—” Tilly paused. “Well, okay, she wouldn’t, but there’s some times you just got to suck it up for the people you love. Or the people you got to tolerate, anyway.”

Stella, who knew about that sort of obligation just about as well as anyone else, wished Tilly well and said her good-byes. She drove for a while, listening to Lucinda Williams singing “Righteously,” turning over Tilly’s words in her mind. After all, Tilly now had a direct line up to the Big Guy, and if Tilly said she should go for it… but what about BJ? Wouldn’t it be poor etiquette to throw herself hell-for-leather at one man before breaking up all the way, or even a little bit, with another?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BRANSON LOOMED BEFORE HER IN ALL
its spangled glory, the sun glinting off the tower up on Inspiration Point. Stella had last visited Branson about four years ago, when she and Ollie had come on a church trip to see the Branson Area Festival of Lights. Ollie, who had had a few too many beers prior to strolling, knocked over a lighted camel and got himself thrown out of the nativity; but he’d waited until they got home to take out his embarrassment on Stella. She’d spent the rest of that holiday season covering up a black eye with concealer.

It wasn’t exactly a good memory, but as Stella cruised slowly down Main Street, passing clumps of tourists out enjoying the pleasant weather in the historic downtown, she took the opportunity to consider how much her life had changed since then. For the last few days she’d been practically cowering in terror at the thought of telling a sane, rational man how she felt about him. How had she allowed fear to rule her this way? She’d done things most women only dream of—started a business, traded her extra flesh for sleek and lissome muscles, and killed her husband. Well, maybe most women didn’t dream about that last one, but the ones who did now had someone to turn to, all thanks to Stella.

By the time she pulled up in front of Lexie’s apartment building, using the address Chrissy had texted her, she was simmering with determination.

The apartment complex was on the unfashionable end of the town, a cluster of seedy seventies buildings with concrete-and-iron staircases slapped on the front that made the complex look like a Berlin parking garage. It was the kind of place that people moved out of just as soon as they could afford better—or got evicted.

Lexie’s apartment was on the ground floor, but it was in the middle of a row facing the parking lot, which made any sort of stealthy approach impossible. In general, Stella liked to keep her interactions as private as possible; the more folks who knew what you were doing, the harder it was to control the flow of information—like, for instance, who was in the area when some gutless wife-beater met with misfortune. So she counted off doors and walked around to the back of the building, as though she were heading out on a vigorous power walk on the dirt path that wound along the creek, but when she got to Lexie’s patio she ducked behind a cobwebby barbecue grill and a dead hanging plant. It wasn’t much in the way of camouflage, but Stella didn’t plan to need it long, especially since the sliding door was open a crack and the smell of burnt toast wafted out on the breeze.

Inside, someone was singing, if you could call it that. Short bursts of vowel-heavy nonsense words made their way up a scale. Stella could admire the intonation, which seemed pretty near pitch-perfect to her untrained ears, but the repetition of “eeeeh” and “aaaaahm,” would surely grate on her nerves if she spent much time in the neighboring apartment, separated only by thin wallboard.

Stella eased open the sliding door, peering into a cramped living room that opened into an even smaller kitchenette. One wall was entirely lined with shelves bearing trophies, but otherwise the furnishings consisted of a rolling rack from which dozens of sparkly gowns hung, and a sofa and chair that were piled with magazines and folded laundry. The coffee table held plates and cups, some of them bearing bits of past meals, as well as a huge open tackle box, from which spilled barrettes and hairbands and such. Underneath the toast odor was a complex bouquet, with notes of hairspray and stale beer and perfume and something faintly rotten.

The person belonging to the singing voice walked into the room, squinting into a mirror while she made her way up and down the scales. In her hand was a pair of tweezers, and while Stella watched, she took a flyer at one of her eyebrows, plucking out a hair as she hit the top of the scale.

Then the girl noticed Stella, and the clear, dulcet “aaaaahm” turned into a sort of a squawk and she dropped her tweezers on the floor.

“Who are you?” she inquired, when she recovered both the tweezers and her composure.

“Oh, sorry, I’ve been knocking and knocking at the front door. I don’t guess you heard me, so I thought I’d just check around back since I could hear you singing. My, what a nice voice you have, too, Miss Albertson.”

“Halburtson,” Lexie corrected her, looking a little irritated now that she’d recovered her wits. She put her hands on her hips but made no move to flee or grab a knife; Stella’s greatest asset in such situations was that she looked far less threatening, in her velour jacket and cute sneakers, than she actually was. “Who did you say you were with?”

Stella smacked her hand against her forehead. “Oh, now, that explains it,” she said, taking Chrissy’s tablet out of her purse and tapping the blank screen a few times for effect. “We’ve been having a problem where the system keeps lopping off the first letter in folks’ names, causes all kinds of problems with the billing. Why, I just came from a fella named Roger Bass, and the system had us sending bills to Mr.
Ass
. Well, you can imagine he wasn’t very happy about that!” Stella giggled, all the while gauging Lexie’s reaction.

The girl looked disconcerted, though she managed a polite smile. She was wearing a blue robe that once might have been fluffy but had become matted and threadbare, its design of frolicking kittens blurred and barely recognizable. Her feet were bare except for the cotton stuffed between her toes and a fresh coat of bright pink polish. Her hair was knotted on top of her head in what might have been a bun before most of it sprung free in a sort of waterfall around her head. Most startling of all, however, was the pale green slime that coated her face from chin to hairline.

“Hey, is that the SeaMynt Hydrating Enzyme Masque?” Stella said, before Lexie could get a word in. Building trust sometimes flowed most naturally from wearing a person down with conversation, forging little connections with them to make them feel like you were cut from the same cloth. “Reason I ask is, my daughter’s a cosmetologist, and she got certified in the whole SeaMynt product line. Great stuff, right?”

Lexie touched her cheek and gave a little smile. “Oh, I know. So moisturizing! Just does wonders repairing the skin.”

“A beautiful young girl like you—I can’t believe you’d need anything but soap and water to look your best,” Stella said, and Lexie brightened even more. “Are you a professional singer?”

“Why, yes, I am. You know Miranda Lambert? People always compare me to her, but, like, more crossover? You like live music? Because I’ve played at the Outrigger and the Shamrock Shack…”

While the girl chattered on about her appearances at an extensive list of venues Stella had never heard of, she maneuvered herself between Lexie and her open sliding door, ensuring that the girl wouldn’t make a quick exit after hearing what Stella had to say next.