A Bad Day for Scandal (28 page)

“Oh … you do?” Stella looked at it doubtfully. In addition to the damaged roof, there were quite a few other aspects of the house that needed attention. Several of the shutters had come loose during a series of tornadoes earlier in the fall, and hung askew. Paint was beginning to flake near the bottom of the paneling, and the windows could do with a good wash.

But as she tried to see the place through fresh eyes, she had to admit that the place had a certain cozy charm. It wasn’t a Park Avenue showplace, but it was home.

She squeezed her eyes shut and remembered the first Easter she spent in this house. She and Ollie had been married long enough for her to know that she hadn’t bought her way into any kind of bed of roses, but not long enough for her to realize how terrible things could get. She had been pregnant with Noelle, and as she decorated the house with the pots of hyacinth and narcissus bulbs she forced in February and hung an old straw hat with a checkered bow on the front door, her heart had swelled with anticipation and joy.

“It’s just so
cute.
I grew up in this big old modern thing my stepdad built. It just had no charm at all,” Cinnamon said wistfully. “Noelle’s so lucky.”

Noelle gave Stella an impulsive little hug. “Once we get the lights up, I was thinking we could get the rest of the decorations down and maybe we can boil up some eggs, Mama. Only, neither me or Cinnamon was tall enough to get them boxes out from on top of the shelves and we couldn’t get the ladder up there.”

Long before Stella and Ollie had ever bought the house, someone had nailed up two-by-twelves to create makeshift shelves, and it had always been Ollie’s job to put the decorations away, since Stella couldn’t reach. “Oh, honey, maybe we can get Todd to come over and help.”

“Todd ain’t hardly any taller than us,” Noelle said. Then she smiled conspiratorially. “Besides, I had a better idea—the sheriff’s coming over, Mama!”

Stella’s heart did a little slip-slide. She sincerely doubted Goat would be arriving any time soon, unless he was digging in his belt for his handcuffs to haul her off. “Uh, did you actually
talk
to him?”

“Well, sure, only he just had a minute or two on account of some trouble they’ve got. Dotty called about an hour ago, she saw that crime scene van heading through town. Mama, you don’t know what’s going on, do you?”

Noelle’s lovely green eyes were wide and unsuspecting, and Stella realized that the near impossible had happened—the sheriff’s department had managed to keep a lid at least partway on its business for something like twelve hours. Now that the Fayette crew had been called in, though, that wouldn’t last. Folks would be following the county vehicles like a row of ducklings after their mama, and short of Mike and Ian taking potshots at the townsfolk, there was bound to be a whole gaggle of bystanders out at Adriana’s pond in no time.

It was a wonder, really, that they’d managed to get the bodies out the night before without attracting more attention. They must have locked Adriana up in her butler’s pantry to keep her from calling around town—and Goat and his deputies must have had a heck of a night as well, babysitting the soggy corpses until they could get backup.

She took a deep breath. “Why, no,” she said as innocently as she could. She didn’t like to lie to Noelle, as a rule, but this concerned Goat, a subject she didn’t really care to discuss with anyone at all … and besides, they had company. “Noelle, sugar, what-all did the sheriff say? Did he sound especially, you know,
exhausted
or anything?”

Noelle shrugged, stooping to gather an armload of lights. “Not really. He was nice, like usual. He said he’d try to get free later today, but it might be tomorrow. I explained how I’m taking a little time off and told him any time was fine with me.”

“So he specifically said he would, uh, come to
our
attic, here at the house? Did you tell him where I was?”

“Mama, I didn’t
know
where you were. Remember? You didn’t exactly leave me a note.” Noelle didn’t look impatient; she gave her mother a tolerant, affectionate little smile, her smooth skin rosy and pink in the winter chill. More evidence of young love, Stella thought wistfully—there was nothing for the complexion like the thrill ride of infatuation. “Where were you, anyway—care to share?”

Stella raised her eyebrows. “Maybe later, honey. Boring work stuff.”

“Well, if you’re done for the day, why don’t you help us? Cinnamon’s staying for dinner. When we get done, we can maybe fix brownies and watch a movie.”

“Oh,” said Stella, and she could feel the color creeping into her face. “That sounds real cozy and all, but I. There’s. Um.”

What there was, was a real chance that she’d come face-to-face with her baby girl snuggling on the couch with, well, another girl. Which Stella had absolutely no problem with, in theory. But in application … well, she might just need a little more time to get used to it.

As soon as the thought popped into her head, Stella felt ashamed of herself. For one thing, Noelle wasn’t really a little girl anymore—she was a grown woman of nearly thirty, old enough to make all her own decisions and hang out with whomever she wanted to.

Noelle was looking at her anxiously, a few stray twigs stuck in her magenta hair, which was back in its usual spiky style today.

“I’d love to,” Stella amended as heartily as she could, just as her phone started ringing. “Excuse me, will you?”

She squinted at the phone and went to the front porch to take the call. Chrissy. She hit the answer button and eased down on the top step as Roxy bounded over and leaned into her knee, demanding attention.

“Hi, Chrissy.”

“Hi, Stella, figure out who done it yet?”

“No, but I found you a few new boyfriends.” She described the outing up to Walsingham’s.

“Dang, you keep having all kinds of fun without me. Well, we got rid of most everyone around here, they’ve all gone home so everything ought to be back to normal tomorrow and I’ll be back at the shop. Can you live without me until then?”

“I’ll do my best.” Stella grinned. “Find out anything new for me?”

“Just a little more on Priss’s car. Nothing they won’t already have up in Fayette, but I figured you’d want to know. You hear anything from Goat?”

“Naw … no news is probably good news from him right now.” She told Chrissy about the crime scene van. “I guess with them all being back down here, they’ve probably left Priss and Liman and Keller on ice up there. The car’s probably fallen pretty far down their priorities.”

“Ewww, Stella, that’s nasty,” Chrissy objected. “You really think they got ’em in a freezer?”

“No, I think it’s more like a fridge. I don’t know, probably they keep it right above freezing or something.”

“Anyway, that car of hers? She’s only had it a month. Paid full sticker, too—the guy at the dealership said he told her she could take a silver one off the lot with all these dealer incentives and what not, and she told him she only drives black cars. It was kind of funny, he said she made it sound like anything else was the height of bad taste, you know?”

Stella grimaced. “I can just imagine. Why, she’s probably got opinions on every last little thing—what toothpaste is worthy of her teeth, what brand of toilet cleaner is good enough for her toilets.”

Was,
she corrected herself silently.
Had.
Past tense.

“Yeah, well, this guy didn’t seem to mind too much. Said she buys a new car from him every two years on the dot, but this was her first Mercedes, and I don’t guess he’s sold a whole shitload of those while the economy’s been on vacation.”

“Yeah.” Something stirred in Stella’s memory, something that didn’t fit quite right. “When did you say she bought the car?”

“Let’s see … she picked it up on February eighteenth.”

“And when did Salty say he last talked to her?”

“Salty? What does that have to do with anything?”

“It was New Year’s, didn’t he say? He hasn’t talked to her since January, so how do you figure he knew she was driving a Mercedes?”

There was silence on the line, and Stella could imagine Chrissy pinching her bottom lip, the way she always did when she was thinking.

“Huh. I guess he wouldn’t.”

“But there he was, sure as shoot, talking about how she had her uptown life now, with her Mercedes and her country club and everything, remember? Which makes me think he was lying to us.”

“Yeah…”

“And why does a guy lie about a woman?”

“Why, Stella, that’s your department, ain’t it? I imagine there’s as many reasons as there are men out there stretching the truth to suit them, which is practically all of them.”

“I’m thinking I might ought to go see Salty again.” Stella could feel the excitement building in her veins. She’d been lied to … and in her business that nearly always meant she was digging in the right direction.

“That’s getting to be a regular thing,” Chrissy exclaimed. “You been to his house, you waylaid him on his way to the gym—why, if that wife of his gets wind of you stalking him, she’s liable to get jealous.”

Stella hung up and managed to get to her feet without her knees making more than a token complaint, just as the girls were packing the leftover lights into the boxes.

“We’re going to take a break, Mama,” Noelle said as they came up the walk, Roxy bounding at their heels. “Could you make us some popcorn?”

“Why, sure, honey. Only then I’m going to have to run out on an errand after all.” She had a thought. “I’ll, um … call, when I’m close to home. So you know when to
expect me.
” She was tempted to add a wink, just to make sure she got her point all the way across.

Inside, Cinnamon went to wash up in the powder room, and Noelle followed Stella into the kitchen.

“Mama, you don’t have to do that,” she said.

“Do what?”

“You know—that whole thing with the
I’ll call first
and all. Honestly, you’re embarrassing.”

Stella gave her daughter a tentative smile. “Isn’t that a mother’s job? To embarrass you at every opportunity?”

“There ain’t anything going on with me and Cinnamon, anyway,” Noelle continued calmly. “So you can quit blushing and carrying on.”

“Oh?”

“Nope. I’ve been thinking about what I learned from my relationship with Joy. I think what I didn’t focus enough on was, when you try to make things go faster than they naturally would, why, you can just
ruin
the whole thing.”

“Ah.” Stella nodded and tried very hard to look like that thought had never occurred to her.

“So with Cinnamon, I’m going to take it nice and slow. Friends first, you know? If it turns into something else, fine. If it doesn’t, I guess that’s fine, too.”

“Um … sure. Only … it’s just, last night—when I got home and you weren’t here—and I talked to your friends—well, the ones who were still up, anyway—I mean I just kind of figured you all were, you know, that you and Cinnamon were hitting it off.”

“Mama, I was
drinkin’,
” Noelle said, horrified. “Me and Cinnamon went for a drive, and I’m pretty sure we had a nice time, but she wouldn’t take advantage of a situation where someone was out of their senses. Why, that would be just, just a breach of, of,
manners
and
courtesy
and doing what’s right.”

Stella nodded slowly. She considered warning Noelle that her new friend was rumored to be a heartbreaker, but then she figured maybe it wasn’t really her business.

Cinnamon came out of the bathroom with a big smile on her face. “Oh, Mrs. Hardesty, I just love them little samplers you got in the bathroom. Did you stitch those yourself?”

“Yes, honey,” Stella said, unaccountably pleased, though she’d stopped noticing the cross-stitched samplers years ago. She really ought to take them down; they were part of the old life, the other life, the one from before, when Ollie ruled their home with his temper and his fists.

“‘Every house where love abides’—why, that just made me smile. I love that quote. At my dad’s place, the only thing they got on the wall is that nasty modern shit, big old splashes of paint and what-all that looks like a toddler done it in preschool class.”

“Oh,” Stella said, her misgivings melting away. Impulsively she gathered both girls in for a hug. “Let’s put that corn on the stove and get poppin’.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Stella stuffed a generous serving of buttery popcorn into a jumbo Ziploc bag and had just tossed it on the passenger seat for later, when a familiar cruiser rolled slowly to a stop in front of the house. She briefly considered making a run for it, but she’d recently installed a fence in the backyard for Roxy, cutting off her own best escape route. Instead she took a deep breath and waited for the sheriff.

He unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, a process that involved grabbing the top of the car’s roof with one hand while he swiveled and wrangled his long legs out first. It was a fascinating thing to behold, kind of like seeing someone unfold a pair of nail scissors out of a pocketknife. They just didn’t make a car that could properly contain a fine specimen of man like Goat.

“Heading for the border?” he asked dryly. “Without saying good-bye?”

“This is awkward,” Stella said. A brisk wind gusted along the street, stirring the last of the fallen leaves into the drifts of snow that had refrozen here and there in the gutters. “I know you’re probably figuring on a chat and all, but I’m just ever so late.”

“I could insist,” Goat said. He shut the door of the cruiser with an ominous thud and walked slowly toward her, hitching up his regulation khakis. He wore mirrored sunglasses even under the steely gray skies, and Stella got a crazy funhouse view of herself in their lenses as he came closer.

Damn that Goat Jones. Even as the working part of her brain was cooking up excuses just as fast as she could manage, the swampy feelings part was starting to bubble and burble.

“All’s I’d have to do is mention to Daphne and them all about that one little bit of evidence I ain’t logged yet,” Goat continued. He took one extra step, and Stella found that she was staring squarely at his Adam’s apple, not six inches away. Slowly, exquisite alarm shooting along her nerve endings, she let her gaze travel up, up, up … past his slightly stubbly and hard-edged jaw, over the ridge of his almost-too-generous bottom lip, along the planes of his cheeks, up to the sunglasses. At this distance, she could make out the shadow of his eyes behind the lenses, but then something—the wind maybe, or a bit of dust drifting by—obscured and blurred her vision and she blinked.