You sure you got all that?” Stella asked, watching Chrissy’s stubby fingers, with their sparkly lavender nails, move over the keys of the old cash register. It was nearly nine o’clock, Hardesty Sewing Machine Sales & Repair’s official opening hour, though the street outside wasn’t exactly overrun with eager customers.
“Um-hum. Unit price, then that dept shift key. Then dept number and, um, PLU…” She tapped the keys slowly and deliberately until the drawer popped open. “And personal checks okay if I know the person.”
“Not if you know the person, Chrissy, if you trust the person. There’s a difference, remember?”
Chrissy knit her eyebrows together. “I still don’t get how I’m supposed to know if somebody’s going to try and write a bad check. I mean, there’s been times I’ve wrote one and never even knew it, ’cause I just didn’t tote up how bad off we were in the account.”
“Well, think, sugar. Like, you wouldn’t take a check from Crandall Jakes, now would you?”
Chrissy’s eyes widened. “Oh no I wouldn’t. That man lets his dogs get knocked up and then drowns the puppies, I know it for fact. Don’t even try to find ’em homes.”
“Well, yeah, but…” Stella considered trying to explain that it was Crandall’s two stints at County for tax evasion and social security fraud that were more to the point.
“What do you suppose he’d want to buy here, anyway?” Chrissy continued, looking around the shop at the walls hung with racks of sewing notions, the quilting and embroidery machines set up with sample scraps of fabric under the presser feet, the racks of books and patterns.
“Forget him, he was a bad example. Oh, Chrissy, just use your judgment. I won’t be gone all that long anyway.”
“Okay.” Chrissy hitched her feet up on the rungs of the stool and patted the stack of magazines Stella bought her at the 7-Eleven. “I’ll just read and maybe dust a little and be fine here.”
“I know you will, darlin’.”
“Wouldn’t it be just great if they got Tucker up in the trailer out there?” Chrissy asked with a little smile. “Like if maybe Roy Dean asked ’em to babysit while he did some errands for Mr. Benning and them all? Heck, you know how men are, they’re prob’ly feedin’ him those little powder sugar doughnuts and lettin’ him watch pro wrestling.”
“Uh… yeah, that would be nice,” Stella said, slinging her big old brown leather purse over her shoulder. It was a little heavier than usual today since she’d taken the precaution of adding the Ruger. She’d picked it more for luck than anything—it reminded her of her dad, though she’d never seen him fire it. She’d cleaned and oiled it when she got home from dropping Arthur Junior off, listening to the radio and thinking. “But don’t go getting your hopes up, hear? We got to be ready for the possibility we’re in for a bit of a haul here, remember, like we talked about?”
Chrissy nodded but refused to look at Stella. She used a long lavender nail to scratch at the sales tax chart taped to the counter and pursed her sticky pink-glossed lips. “I know, I just said it would be nice. You know.”
On the drive to Benning’s Stella wondered if she’d done the right thing, soft-pedaling the information she’d wrung out of Arthur Junior last night. She’d told Chrissy that she’d run into someone at the divorce party who told her Roy Dean was just helping out some friends of Mr. Benning with some business that might include trips up to the city, which could explain why he was away. Stella allowed as to how Benning’s business might not be on the proper side of legal, but that didn’t faze Chrissy in the least, seeing as how her brothers and cousins and uncles had already done a fair job of setting her expectations for the conducting of business firmly in gray territory.
Stella hadn’t mentioned Arthur Junior’s fears that Roy Dean might already be dead. Chrissy, convinced as she was that Roy Dean had her son, would no doubt make the intuitive leap straight to real, frightening danger for Tucker. And Stella needed the girl to stay calm, if only so she didn’t have to stay home and babysit her.
She also didn’t tell Chrissy about the visit to Pitt Akers’s apartment. Stella was more than a little concerned about the empty rooms, the cat food stockpiled with what looked like several weeks’ supply. She’d snuck a look at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children web site while Chrissy was busying herself at the cash register, and she didn’t like what she saw, not one bit. All those sweet faces—all those big trusting eyes—and the terrible facts: “Last seen with her mother’s live-in boyfriend…” “Last seen with his non-custodial mother…” If Pitt truly believed the boy was his, who could say what lengths he might go to?
It was better not to give Chrissy any more to worry about than necessary. By leaving the girl at the shop, Stella hoped Chrissy would pour all her attention into selling a few packages of elastic or fetching fixed-up machines for the ladies who came to collect them. And if she messed up the day’s receipts or rang up a package of straw needles as a box of silk pins, well, that was just part of the cost of doing business when you were breaking in new staff.
That particular thought was still on Stella’s mind as she pulled into Benning’s. No guard today; the big metal gates had been folded back, leaving the dirt entrance clear, and a couple more cars were pulled in the area between Benning’s trailer and the start of the rows of ruined and wrecked cars and parts.
She eased Chrissy’s ’96 Celica into a space between a dusty late-model pickup and a fenced-off dog run. Chrissy’s car, with its rust-spotted panels and rear bumper attached with a length of steel cable, was Stella’s ostensible reason for the visit, though Stella didn’t intend to need one. She meant to see if she could just deal straight with Benning, especially since it wasn’t too likely that his friends from up north would be hanging around the yard on a Wednesday morning when very little was stirring, including the drooping black walnut trees lining the fenced edge of the property, their branches looking like they were ready to give up from the heat.
As she turned off the ignition, the radio guy announced it would get up to a hundred again.
Stella wasn’t too excited about that, but as she walked around the front of the car, the fevered braying that went up in the pen next to her indicated that the dogs, at least, didn’t intend to let a little heat and humidity keep them from their duties.
Stella considered herself a dog person. Years ago she’d brought home a stray, a little dog that was at least part beagle, with some mystery elements mixed in. She’d named the dog Buttons for the spots that ran along her soft belly, but when Ollie took to kicking Buttons for no reason at all, Stella gave the dog to a family on the other end of town, crying all the way home, and swore she’d never put a pet in harm’s way again. Besides, there was Noelle to think about; even if Ollie never hit the child and mostly ignored her, it wasn’t good for a child to see acts of violence carried out right in front of her. While Ollie did most of his wife-beating when Noelle was asleep or out of the house, he kicked Buttons any old time he felt like it, no matter who saw him.
Stella had been meaning to get a dog ever since Ollie died, but she’d been waiting for things to calm down a bit so she’d have time to raise a pup up right. Unfortunately, her side business had remained strong, with a new client showing up every time she thought she’d finally hit a dry spell, and it was beginning to look as if Stella would just have to bite the bullet and get herself a broke-in dog. Not the worst thing in the world, of course; Stella had a fair amount of hard miles on herself, and she wouldn’t hold that against any potential canine pet.
But the huge, angry beasts throwing themselves against the fencing just inches from her hip were another story. With the boxy snouts and barrel chests that indicated pit bull blood, they had their dog-lips bared and their snapping teeth exposed, and the ruckus they were sending up had an edge of crazed fury to it that Stella knew only too well came from a particular dog-raising philosophy.
It took mean to breed mean. Always had, when it came to dogs. Unlike men, who’d produce a bad apple now and then even in the best environment—like Roy Dean, for instance—it was near impossible to raise up a mean dog if you just gave the thing a little attention and didn’t take to abusing it.
The pair in the cage, though, with their quivering, muscled bodies and drooling vicious grins, appeared to have developed appetites that were downright terrifying. Stella could imagine the huge jaws clamping down on unprotected flesh, the forearms scrabbling for purchase as they went in for the kill, and she backed away from the fencing.
“Aw, now, they wouldn’t hurt nothin’,” an amused voice said behind her.
Stella turned and found herself face-to-face with Earl Benning.
“What can I do for you today, young lady?” he continued, and then a curious thing happened: his eyes, which had been all squinty in the bright sun, opened a little wider, and the smarmy grin snapped off his face as though someone had knocked it down with a plank. “You’re Stella Hardesty, ain’t you.”
So much for the whole “just looking” ruse. Oh, well, Stella wasn’t one for subterfuge. Down and direct, that did the trick more often than not.
“I am. And you’re Earl Benning, am I right?” She jutted a hand out, but after Earl just kept staring at her face, making no move to shake, she finally withdrew it.
“You used to be a brunette, I think I remember,” he said. “Had a tight little figure, too.”
Stella hadn’t been planning on a tea party, but Earl’s manners were a little much even for the circumstances. “I’m still a brunette,” she said, touching a hank of her hair. “I paid good money for this. And as for my figure, I seem to remember there was a little less of you a decade back, too.”
“Nah, I’m talkin’ about back when you first married Ollie. Course, I was still a kid then, but—mmm, man, you sure used to fill out your blouse.”
Stella, who was almost never at a loss for words, gulped air. What the hell? If it was just a matter of filling out her shirt, well, she could probably manage two for the price of one these days. She’d been a 34C when she walked down the aisle. Now she was a 40DD. But she doubted that was exactly what Earl Benning had on his mind.
“Thanks, I guess,” Stella said. “Course, I don’t recall ever checking out your package, so even if I wanted to now, which I don’t, I wouldn’t be able to do any comparin’. Look, this is real fun and all, but if you’re fixin’ to ask me out I’m not interested, and besides I got some other stuff to talk over with you.”
The expression on Benning’s face darkened from amusement to something a sight more cruel. “Ain’t it just my bad luck,” he said. “Here I was wondering if you were free for the prom. All right, what is it that I can do for you today, Stella Har-des-ty?”
The way he enunciated each syllable of her last name gave Stella a chill that started around the bottom of her spine and snaked its way up her back, shivering along her nerve endings. She was glad to have extra insurance in her big purse.
“How about if we take a little walk?” she asked. “That okay?”
“I suppose that’d be all right,” Benning said. “Gimme just a sec here.”
He pulled a walkie-talkie-type device off the worn belt that hung low beneath his drooping gut and muttered into it for a minute.
“Why don’t we take this way?” he suggested, replacing the walkie-talkie and giving his pants an upward tug.
Stella followed without a word. They walked down a gravel lane through rows of automotive refuse that were arranged in rough rectangles. Most of the cars either had the front or back end caved in, or had taken a T-bone to the side. Some had apparently died of a series of unfortunate encounters, damage extending all the way around. A few looked as if they’d succumbed to old age. In the distance, a yellow front loader was moving scrap toward a towering pile of crushed cars.
“Let me get right to it,” Stella said. “I’m looking for Tucker Lardner. Little boy, eighteen months old, just a baby, really.”
Benning glanced quickly at Stella, his eyes narrowed; something flickered within their flinty depths. “No babies around here,” he said quickly.
“Just hold on,” Stella said, watching him carefully. “I ain’t saying there was. What I know is, Tucker disappeared last Saturday with Roy Dean Shaw. Now, I don’t have any business with Roy Dean. Don’t even care where he ended up, though I wouldn’t mind knowing just so’s I could, you know, cross all the t’s and dot the i’s on this.”
“Cross the t’s, huh,” Benning echoed, muscling his expression back into indifference. “I ain’t seen Roy Dean since, since ages, and I definitely ain’t seen no kid.”
“Well, okay, like I say, I’m really just looking to find the boy. Now, there’s some talk that Roy Dean was doing a little work for you and some of your, ah, business associates. That’s none of my concern, either. Hell, looks like a nice place you got here, all this… stock, and whatnot.”
“You like my place, do you?” Benning laughed, a short, percussive sound that was almost a bark. “Well, now, that’s a nice compliment, coming from a businesswoman such as yourself.”
Stella kept walking, keeping her eyes on the gravel and clumps of weeds on the ground in front of her, but her heart did a little speed-up. “You mean my shop,” she said. “The sewing machine shop. I did some nice business last year, but—”
“That ain’t what I mean, Stella Har-des-ty,” Benning said, his voice going low. He leaned closer, conspiratorially, so that their shoulders brushed as they ambled along, and Stella had the weird thought that they must look like lovers strolling together. “I mean your other business. Course, I don’t know what sort of numbers you got on that. You know, expense ratios and receivables and all that. Yeah, surprising, right,” he added, giving her a little poke in the ribs. “My daddy didn’t raise no dummy. Didn’t get to be the biggest salvage outfit around by letting it run itself.”
“Clearly, you’re no dummy,” Stella agreed. “Though I’m not sure what you’re talking about with—”
“Can it, Stella. Let’s just get this said. I know what-all you do, and if I wanted, I could get a lot more information pretty quick. You know, in the form that might be useful for law types. See where I’m going? I run a nice, tight shop here, but I don’t like the idea of anyone coming around snooping into my business, any more’n you probably like someone coming around doing it to you. So here’s what I propose. I don’t have any idea where Roy Dean is. Yeah, he’s brought a few cars around, and we buy now and then, but I run a clean shop and if he can’t provide title, I take a pass. So I haven’t seen him in what, two, three weeks. I can check the books if you want to know what we last bought off him, though seems like it was an Odyssey, front-end collision, if I’m not mistaken. As far as that boy, I didn’t even know Roy Dean had a kid. It never came up.”
“He doesn’t. Tucker’s his wife’s. Chrissy’s.”
Benning shrugged and nodded. “Well, there you go. No reason for him to be hauling the kid around anyway, then. Wish I could help you, but looks like we’re just a dead end for you.”
Benning took a left and led her down a rough section of road that veered back toward the main lot. Stella glanced behind her shoulder and could just make out the edges of a shed big enough to fit Arthur Junior’s description past the fields of cars and several structures holding various parts suspended from metal gridwork. Reluctantly, she followed Benning.
“You say ‘we,’ ” Stella said. “Who all you got working here, anyways?”
Benning shrugged impatiently. “I got a part-timer most days. Chuck Keltner, you probably know his mom, and a guy moved up here from Morrisville. Not full-time, you know, no benefits or nothing. Mostly it’s me for the big stuff.”
“Yeah, see, way I hear it, you got some out-of-town interest, too.”
Benning said nothing, but Stella could sense him tense up next to her.
“Some friends of yours maybe bringing you in on some other avenues,” Stella continued. “Look, like I said, it’s no concern to me. You want to grow a little pot patch on your back forty, whatever. Just trying to keep this a two-way flow of information, hear what I’m saying?”
“If I knew anything, I’d tell you,” Benning said, his voice soft. “But you’re way off the mark with that last comment. Yeah, I got some friends come down from the city from time to time. We go out on the lake, fish a little. Play cards. Hunt or whatever. I don’t know who’s been giving you your information, but let me tell you, the biggest thing around here is maybe a little weekend party from time to time, and if someone stuck their nosy face in and saw something that wasn’t there, well, that would be their problem, see where I’m going?”
“I think I see,” Stella said, keeping her own voice low. “Anytime you had a bunch of visitors after hours, maybe taking the party over to some of your other facilities on the site, why, you’re just eating pretzels and playing Crazy Eights. That about the size of it?”
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Benning said, nodding. “Now you’re getting it. Roy Dean’s not exactly on my A-list, and we sure don’t have no little kids around when we party, so I guess that’s about all I can do for you today. Unless you want to see if we can find something to fix up that rust bucket.”
They had arrived back at Chrissy’s car. The sun had climbed higher in the sky, and the heat shimmered inches above the opaque, faded paint on the car’s roof and hood.
“I appreciate the offer,” Stella said as the dogs hurtled across their pen, braying and crashing into the fence, “but I think I’ve changed my mind about it since talking to you.”
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“Well, this little ride don’t look like much on the outside,” Stella said. “Lots of miles, just like I got. But under the hood? That’s a scrappy little engine. Gave me plenty more get-up-and-go than I was expecting.”
“That so.”
“Yeah.” Stella got in the car and rolled down the window. She gave Benning her sweetest smile as she stuck the key in the ignition and fired up the little Celica. “Sometimes you just can’t tell from looking how much trouble your ride’s going to give you.”
Hardesty Sewing Machine Sales & Repair shared a parking lot with China Paradise, a generally decent restaurant run by the eternally grumpy Roseann Lu. When Stella pulled into the lot at eleven thirty, she figured the three cars already parked there were Roseann’s customers, getting an early start on the lunch special.
In her shop, though, she was surprised to find Chrissy with not one but two customers, Lila Snopes and a second woman in her sixties, both of them talking at once. Chrissy’s wide, pale blue eyes darted from one to the other, and when she saw Stella she blurted, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back! We got us a situation here!”
Lila turned away from the counter and, at the sight of Stella, pursed her features into a frown that caused the many wrinkles around her smoker’s mouth to focus in like arrows. “Not a situation, just a case of the customer is always right,” she said primly.
“Hello, Lila,” Stella said. She noted a heavy resemblance in the woman’s companion: same steely, severe bob haircut, same pronounced chin and flaccid cheeks. “And this must be your sister.”
“I’m Delores,” the woman said, nodding.
“I called Delores to tell her you were running the binding two-for-one,” Lila said. “I love the wide stuff for quilts. I’m stocking up.”
She pointed to the counter, where packages of binding were piled up high. Her sister had her own pile. There were probably thirty packages between the two of them.
Stella took a deep breath and said, “Sorry, ladies, but I’m not running any specials. I think there’s been some misunderstanding.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell them,” Chrissy stage-whispered in a singsongy voice.
“No misunderstanding I can figure,” Lila said. “I was in here at ten and I bought two packs of the inch and a half. Kelly green. And your girl here charged me for one. So I says, you charged me for one, deary, and she says no, that’s no mistake, that’s what you told her to do.”
“I said no such thing!” Chrissy said. “I said I was just doing what Miz Hardesty told me, and it wasn’t my fault the cash register wasn’t ringing up the numbers right.”
“Well, you took my money, didn’t you?” Lila said, the jut of her chin taking on an even more stubborn set. “Way I see it, that means you agreed on the two-for-one.”
Lila’s sister nodded along to everything her sister said, and Chrissy’s face was getting blotchy and red. “Now let’s just slow down a minute, ladies,” Stella said. “This is Chrissy’s first day on the job, and she’s still getting used to our… system. I don’t think—”
“I did drive up from Quail Valley,” Delores said primly. “Seein’ as you had the special.”
Stella tapped her foot on the floor. Did the math in her head. “Okay,” she said after a minute. “How’s this. Twenty-five percent off. That’s the best I can do.”
“Well… how about you throw in one of those serger books I know you ain’t sold in two years,” Lila sniffed. “And maybe you ought to consider getting some more qualified help.”
Chrissy went very still for a moment, and Stella was trying to figure out how to diffuse the old bitch’s comments, when she noticed something interesting.
A deep purple flush was creeping upward from Chrissy’s collarbones, and her eyes had narrowed to slits. She slowly drew herself up to her full height and drew in a breath, and then she made her hands into tight fists before extending her fingers out like a boxer getting taped for a fight.
“Excuse me, lady, what did you just say?” she demanded, her voice very soft.
Lila put her hands on her hips and glared back. “Just that seein’ as you’re not even able to run a simple cash register or add up a purchase, maybe Stella here ought to—”
Chrissy’s hand shot out so fast that Stella jumped. Chrissy made a crisscross motion in front of Lila’s face, snapping her fingers twice.
“Lookie here,” she said, voice full of menace. “I have had a very bad couple of days. I have sat back and took what assholes like you have been dishing out for way too long, and I’m about sick of it. I am not dumb. I am not helpless. And I’m not taking any more shit. I’m done, and I’m about to get very, very pissed off and I’m tellin’ you now I don’t think you want to be around when that happens, hear?”
Lila’s eyes went wide, and she gripped the handle of her handbag hard. Her sister shifted slightly so she was standing behind Lila.
“Um, now…,” Stella began, but realized she didn’t really feel like scolding Chrissy. This anger of hers might not be such a bad thing. In fact, it just might be something they could use.
She grabbed the book Lila wanted from the rack and slipped it into a plastic merchandise bag along with the binding tape. “You got a deal,” she said, and gently pushing Chrissy out of the way, rang up the sale and quickly counted out the ladies’ change.
Lila Snopes took the bag and the change without comment. She shoved the money in her purse, and the two old ladies scuttled out of the store without a backward glance.
When they were gone, there was a long silence. Chrissy stared at the shop door and took a few deep breaths. After a few moments she turned to Stella with a nearly placid expression and handed her a Post-it note.
“I took a message for you,” she said.
Stella squinted at the note. In curvy lettering was written: “Call me on my cell.”
“That’s great,” she said. “Thanks. Call who?”
Chrissy looked at her in surprise. “Well, the sheriff, of course.”
Stella’s heart did a little rollover, but she kept her expression neutral. “Oh. ’Cause see on the note, it just says…” She pointed to the Post-it. “Never mind. When did he call?”
“He didn’t call, he stopped by. After that lady was here the first time. Maybe an hour ago?”
“What did he say? I mean, besides to call.”
“Well, mostly he told me not to worry. But you know what, Stella? I’ve been thinking. I think y’all ought to stop trying to make me feel better. I mean, I’m Tucker’s mama. I need to know what all’s going on, so I can help find him.”
Stella hesitated. She admired the girl’s guts and was relieved to see Chrissy provoked out of her listless funk. But her instinct was to tell Chrissy to stay out of it. It wasn’t just that she’d always worked alone—there was also the promise she had made to herself after Lorelle Cavenaugh died: that she would never do anything to endanger a client again.
Chrissy was still a client.
Letting Chrissy anywhere near Benning and the rest of them—or letting her tag along on the hunt for Pitt Akers—was insanity.
“Anything else?” she asked carefully.
“Sheriff Jones asked where you were. Oh, you know, I guess I could have given him your cell phone number. I didn’t even think of that.”
“That’s okay. He’s got it,” Stella said. “Did you tell him?”
“Tell him what?”
“Where I was. You know, out at Benning’s.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t. ’Cause you remember, you said—”
“I remember. But when it’s the sheriff who’s asking—no, scratch that.” She had been about to tell Chrissy that, despite her earlier warning to keep Stella’s errand a secret, the sheriff was an exception. But that wasn’t really true. As much as Stella was sort of wishing she’d been back in time for his visit, she wasn’t ready yet to fill him in on her search.
She needed to find out a little more about Benning’s side dealings. After her visit, she was more inclined to worry about that angle: there was something about the way Arthur Junior had reacted when she mentioned Tucker. Earl Benning was shiftier and meaner-looking than she remembered, that was true; and yet when he kept insisting he didn’t know anything about Tucker, there was an element of something resembling fear in his eyes, a nervous quality to his voice.
Enough to make Stella think twice. Just because she couldn’t figure out why Roy Dean might have taken Tucker to the salvage yard didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Some men, she had learned, didn’t always need good reasons to do bad things.
Earlier, as she left Benning’s, Stella had taken a good look at his house. A recent-model silver Camaro was parked in front of a glossy black Ford F-450, and around the side a pair of Sea-Doos were loaded on a trailer. On the other side of the house, on a larger trailer, a sweet blue and white closed-hull Ski Nautique was pulled up under a carport. On the porch, a long-legged bleached-blond gal in a bikini top and a pair of cutoffs lounged in a deck chair.
Cars, boats, toys, and women… none of those came for free, at least not for a man like Benning.
Stella needed to find out where the money was coming from. That would lead her to the business Earl and his friends were conducting. And that information, with any luck, would lead her to Roy Dean.
And from there, just maybe, to Tucker.
But if she went to Goat now, with nothing but a hunch, he was bound to go in and ask a bunch of questions and give Earl plenty of time to cover his tracks. While Goat was going through channels, talking to judges, getting search warrants, their chances of getting Tucker back would be slipping away. It was times like these that reminded Stella how convenient it was to be on the more casual side of law enforcing. Luckily, she had a few contacts who would help her get the information she needed without having to involve Goat.
On the other hand, if Pitt Akers had Tucker, waiting was exactly the wrong thing to do. In the case of family abductions—not that Pitt was family, but the man evidently imagined himself to be—early days were critical, and they needed to get on his trail before he had a chance to take the boy so far away that no one could find him.
Stella felt her veins go icy at the thought, and the images of lost children from the Internet flashed through her mind. She’d never forgive herself if she waited too long, if Pitt was even now driving out west to California or down to Mexico or up to Canada, Tucker sitting in a wet diaper and wailing for his mother.
“Stella, you okay?” Chrissy asked, peering at her carefully. “You look like you’re about to faint there.”
Stella forced a smile. She crumpled up the Post-it note and made a rim shot on the wastebasket across the room. Tomorrow—if she was no closer to finding Tucker by tomorrow, she’d tell Goat everything. “I’m good. Come on, Princess. Let’s eat.”
After a no-worse-than-usual lunch of lemon chicken and greasy chow mein served with a bare minimum of chat by Roseann Lu, which Chrissy consumed with gusto befitting a far tastier meal, they returned to the shop and Chrissy set to pacing back and forth. Stella had an inspiration.
From the back room, where she kept spare inventory and cleaning supplies and Costco-sized containers of pretzels and beef jerky, she brought out a large cardboard box. “Fran Colvin started this back when we had that teacher in here doing the quilts,” she said. “Poor Fran, she died before she could finish it.”
“Got that chicken bone in her throat, didn’t she,” Chrissy said, coming to take a look.
“Yup. Anyway, how about I teach you how to do this?”
Chrissy hesitated. “Ain’t there something I can do that’s, you know, for Tucker?”
“But that’s just it,” Stella said. “We’ll make him a quilt. And when he gets home, you’ll be able to tuck him in under it.”
“Oh,” Chrissy said. For a long moment, Stella wasn’t sure she was going to go for it. The girl had a far-off look to her, part longing and part grief and a fast-growing part nail-spitting fury.
The thunderclouds building in Chrissy’s pale eyes worried Stella. The last thing she needed at this point was a loose cannon.
“All right,” Chrissy finally agreed. “Let’s do it.”
Stella explained the basics, then started working the phone, dialing trusted friends—many of them former clients—all over the county, and out to the far edges of the state, to let them know about the missing little towheaded boy last seen wearing denim overalls with a baseball embroidered on the bib. If Pitt—or Roy Dean, for that matter—stopped for a burger or a bathroom break or to pick up a pack of diapers, there would be a lot of women on the lookout, women whose lives had taught them to be observant and resourceful. It wasn’t an AMBER Alert, but it was a start.
She also called a few people who had access to official-type information, the type of information that wasn’t generally available to the average citizen.
Between calls, Stella showed Chrissy how to cut the fabric using a ruler and rotary cutter. The rotary cutter looked like a pink-handled pizza wheel, but its blade was razor sharp and easily sliced through several layers of fabric at a time. When the patches were cut, Stella taught Chrissy to join them into blocks, lining up seams and trimming the thread tails, then pressing the finished blocks at the ironing board. When Chrissy held up her first nine-patch, a homely, uneven affair of blue and brown fabric, she smiled faintly.
“I made that,” she said. “Damn!”
Stella rested a hand on Chrissy’s shoulder. “Tell you what,” she said. “Sewing’s good therapy. There were plenty of times when I didn’t feel much like dealing with my life. You know? And I’d sit there at my machine—probably sewed a million miles in seams, just thinking about things.”
Chrissy looked doubtful. “This is okay and all, but I’d still rather be doing something,” she said. “Not just sittin’.”
Stella thought how Chrissy had looked just yesterday, puddled in the chair in her living room, eating her way through her worries. She was amazed at the girl’s transformation. She’d got some fight back in her. Telling off the dreadful sisters seemed to be just what she needed.
Chrissy reminded Stella of herself, in a way, on the day when she’d finally had enough of Ollie’s abuse and made the transformation from passive victim to hell-for-leather avenger.
Nobody had told her, that day, to sit down and relax. Nobody had offered to help her set things right, either. Maybe it was a mistake to try to settle Chrissy down, to keep a lid on her newfound anger… but at the same time, Stella couldn’t figure out any way to include her without putting her into danger. And that was something she simply wasn’t willing to do.
She wasn’t going to let another woman get hurt—or killed—on her watch. She had to do the job alone.
“I hear you,” she said, not meeting Chrissy’s gaze. “But really, there’s not a lot we can do today. Until we start hearing back from these folks, we just got to be patient.”
“Who all’d you call, anyway?”
“Oh… just friends, here and there.”
“Stella.” There was reproof in Chrissy’s voice. “I know you think I couldn’t hear you fishin’ around for stuff you ain’t supposed to know, but I am sittin right here not ten feet from you. And I got young hearing. Now, who was it?”
“Well… the DMV, for one,” Stella said, giving in. She supposed there was no harm in letting Chrissy in on some of her strategy. “I wrote down some plate numbers out at Benning’s. I want to see if they’re all registered to him direct.”
“They just gonna tell you that?” Chrissy asked.
“Well, not exactly. But I got a friend…”
“Uh-huh.” From her expression, Stella could tell she’d made the leap.
“Friends that owe me favors, actually.”
“That’s good with me,” Chrissy said. “Who else?”
“Well, I got some law enforcement… contacts, I guess you’d call ’em, up in Kansas City. Thought I’d see if they have any ideas about what kind of… side business Benning and his friends might be running down here.”
She didn’t like the way Chrissy’s eyes narrowed; the girl’s wheels were spinning. Stella didn’t want to mention the mob or organized crime. She saw no point in scaring her.
Chrissy lowered her pinned patches of fabric to the table. “And what kind of business are they running, Stella?”
Stella bit her lip. “Well, I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t be trying to find out, now would I?”
After a few more seconds of frank and suspicious gazing, Chrissy picked up the quilt block again and went back to work.
“But you’re going to tell me soon’s you learn something, right?” she said.
“Mmm-hmm,” Stella said, feeling worse than she usually did about lying.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of success with the rest of her calls. Between the customers who straggled in, helping Chrissy with the sewing, and not finding people at their desks or answering their cell phones, Stella hadn’t made much progress at all when closing time rolled around.
She and Chrissy stopped by the FreshWay to pick up dinner fixings. When they got home, Todd was doing skateboard tricks across the street in old Rolf Bayer’s driveway. Stella was surprised, since Bayer had always been hostile to everyone in the neighborhood, and seemed to reserve a special hatred for kids. He’d yelled at Noelle years ago for making chalk drawings on the sidewalk in front of his house.
“Hey,” she called, walking into the street as Chrissy took the groceries into the house. “You tryin’ to get Bayer to call the cops on you?”
Todd shot out into the street, leaping over the curb and landing hard, then skidded to a stop next to her. As usual, he hadn’t bothered to tie his shoes; it was a wonder that the puffy, enormous things stayed on his feet.
“He told my mom he was going to sic the city on us!” he said in a tone of outrage. “Called us trash. So I told him I was gonna skate on his driveway until I broke something and then we’d sue his ass to hell.”
Stella figured she knew what had Bayer’s dander up—the Groffes’ lawn had been neither watered nor cut in a long time, and the girls usually left their Big Wheels and Cozy Coupes in the front yard.
“Well, lemme ask you something,” she said. “You ever thought about cutting that grass of yours?”
“Mower’s busted,” Todd muttered, toeing the ground.
“Ah,” Stella said. Poor Sherilee. In her line of business, Stella occasionally forgot that getting rid of a bad man was only the first step to getting one’s life back. And with Sherilee’s schedule, she could see how lawn care might have fallen down on the priority list. “Well, look here, mine’s working fine. You go and get it out of the garage. It’s got gas in it. Put the clippings in the garden bin, okay? I don’t want to see them left out on the lawn.”
“Aw, Stella—”
“Shut up, punk, and listen. When you’re done with that, come on back here and I’ll loan you some sprinklers. Hoses if you need ’em, too. That lawn is officially your job, now, hear?”
Todd crossed his arms and glowered at her. “Why the fuck would I want to do any of that?”
It had been a long day, and Stella’s patience was stretched thin. Without thinking she reached out for the collar of Todd’s grimy T-shirt and twisted until she was practically choking him.
“Look here,” she said. “You want to grow up like the dirtbag who walked out on your mom, or you want to maybe be someone she can be halfway proud of? Huh?”
It wasn’t until Todd made a strained gasping sound that Stella realized she might be squeezing a little too hard, and relaxed her grip. Todd rubbed at his throat and glared at her.
“Besides,” she said, softening, “there’s twenty bucks in it for you.”
“Mom won’t let me take no money,” Todd muttered.
“Well, that’s right. She shouldn’t. But I’m going to give it to you anyway. That can be our secret.”
Todd stared at her a moment longer. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll do it for ten,” he said, and as he trudged into her garage to get the mower, skateboard tucked under his arm, Stella felt an odd little tug at her heart.
Maybe there was a chance for the kid.
Inside, she put a pot of Rice-A-Roni on and tossed some pork chops with bread crumbs and Lipton French onion soup mix, drizzled them with butter, and stuck them in the oven. Chrissy was slicing veggies for a salad and setting the table, so Stella took her cell phone out to the screen porch at the back of the house and dialed Noelle’s number.
“Hi. You’ve reached Noelle! Gerald and I aren’t here right now…”
Stella’s throat tightened at the sound of her daughter’s voice. She called a few times a week, always when she knew Noelle would be at work, which wasn’t hard to do, because Noelle worked long hours at the beauty shop.
This Gerald thing on the machine was new. But it wasn’t a surprise.
Stella knew a fair amount about Gerald already. An old client who lived in Coffey e-mailed Stella to let her know when Gerald and Noelle started keeping company. Within two weeks of their first date, Stella had his priors memorized. Could draw his family chart from memory, the whole unremarkable clan over in Arkansas. Knew the details of the warrant he was avoiding across the state line, for putting his old fiancée in the hospital.
Stella still didn’t understand what it was that made a girl who grew up in a house filled with anger and violence seek out the same. Even if Ollie never smacked Noelle, she was barely six the first time she saw him punch her mother—and Ollie doled out a steady stream of verbal abuse to both of them. Why hadn’t Noelle arrived at adulthood, looked around, and said to herself, “Oh goody, look at all these perfectly nice, ordinary men—they’re not one bit like Dad”?
But Gerald wasn’t the first man her daughter had dated who treated her badly.
He was the second.
Unfortunately, Stella had dealt with the first one so decisively that he lived in Alaska now, not daring to show his face in the continental U.S. Stella didn’t regret it—not even when Noelle called her up sobbing and cursing and promising never to speak to her again for the rest of her life.
No, she only began to regret it when Noelle went out and found herself someone worse.
Stella dialed her daughter’s number again and listened to Noelle’s voice, that sweet voice that had called her “mama,” had shrieked with laughter during tickle fights, had sung in every concert the Prosper High School chorus put on.
“Oh, sugar, why do you want to do this to yourself?” Stella whispered, then hung up when the phone beeped.
She slipped the phone back into her pocket and rocked back and forth on the glider. She was keeping a close watch. If things got to where she needed to intercede with Gerald, she would. But she’d learned a lesson, and the fact that it broke her heart didn’t make it any less important that she stay a little further out of her daughter’s life than she wanted.
Next time, there was nothing to stop Noelle from moving even further away. And though Stella doubted there was anyone better at finding people who wanted not to be found, she was terrified of pushing Noelle further out of her life than she already was.
After the dinner was done and the dishes washed, Chrissy settled in to watch Talladega Nights on pay-per-view, and Stella went to check her e-mail. She planned to make an early night of it. Tomorrow, when she had a little more information, she’d put together a plan. Head up to Kansas City, if that’s what it took.
When the phone rang she picked it up right away. No sense taking Chrissy away from her movie. Lots of folks used TV as an electronic babysitter for their kids; Stella was finding it convenient for keeping Chrissy’s mind off trying to get involved in the case.
“Hello?”
“You lookin’ for Roy Dean,” a voice said on the other end. A weird voice, tinny and deep, as if its owner was speaking through layers of Reynolds Wrap.
“Might be,” Stella said slowly, trying to place the voice and having no luck.
“I got some information could help you find him.”
“Is that right? What sort of information?”
There was a pause, and Stella could hear breathing.
“I don’t want to say, over the phone.”
“Whyever the hell not?”
“Line might not be secure.”
Stella sighed heavily. “What, you think the FBI came in while I was at work and bugged my place? Wait—fine, fine, whatever. You want to meet somewhere?”
“Yeah. And I was thinkin’ you could make it worth my trouble. You know.”
Stella was mystified: could it be a friend of Roy Dean’s? Someone he’d blabbed to at a bar? One of Benning’s employees? Benning himself?
“What did you have in mind?” she asked, trying to sound puzzled.
“A hundred ought to do it.”
“A hundred?”
“That’s what I said.”
“That’s—oh, whatever, fine. Where?”
“Bench on the southeast corner of the pond next to the county golf course. Be there in an hour.”
Stella could picture the muddy little pond, a ball-catcher at the bottom of a hill. She didn’t remember a bench, but the county was messing around with the community park and golf course these days, ripping out the landscaping they’d installed in the sixties and seventies and updating it. Bright tubular plastic equipment replaced the swings she’d pushed Noelle in. A mulched plot of azalea bushes grew near the park entrance where there had been an overgrown bank of arborvitae. Worst of all, “exercise stations” had sprouted along the brick walk that used to be a simple muddy track around the pond.
“I’ll find it,” Stella grumbled, hanging up.
She changed into some stretchy black yoga pants and fastened on her holster, a quick-draw abdomen model made of black nylon with Velcro in the back, and tucked the Raven into it. She shrugged on a tank top and slipped a light jacket over it. It was too hot by half to be dressing like that, but Stella didn’t intend to meet up with unknown would-be conspirators without some sort of insurance hidden on her.
As she was corralling her hair into a big plastic barrette, the phone in her bedroom rang. She picked it up, pretending not to notice the gosh-wonder-if-it-could-be-Goat thrill that zipped around her insides.
“Hello?”
There was only the sound of breathing—rather labored breathing—before a young woman’s voice finally said, “Is this Chrissy? Or the other one?”
“Uh, this is Stella Hardesty. Who’s this?” “It don’t matter who I am. Kin I please speak with Chrissy?” Stella considered. It wasn’t likely to be one of the other Lardner girls—presumably they knew their sister’s voice. Ditto any close friends. Which meant that a stranger was calling for her client. A stranger who somehow knew that Chrissy was staying at Stella’s place.
“Chrissy’s occupied at the moment,” Stella said briskly. “May I take a message?”
A bit more silence, then, “How about if I wait? Is she in the bathroom or something?”
“Actually, I’m taking all of Ms. Lardner’s messages at the moment. Can you tell me the nature of your call, please?”
“It’s—I’m—see here, I need to talk to Roy Dean.”
That caught Stella by surprise, but she answered carefully: “Roy Dean isn’t here, I’m afraid.”
“Well, y’all gonna be seein’ him soon?”
“We… may be, yes,” Stella said, thinking fast. Whoever the mystery caller was, she clearly didn’t know Roy Dean had disappeared. It was possible she might unwittingly spill information that would lead to him.
“Well, look. I need him to, to come over and get this, uh, this thing that he left here at my place.”
Stella’s heart sped up. The way the girl said thing… it was as if she had a secret to keep. “What sort of thing are you talking about?” she asked carefully.
Another pause. This gal required a fair amount of thinking time, Stella decided. “Something of his I don’t want around here no more, that’s what kind of thing. Look here, I didn’t know he was married, not when we first hooked up, okay?”
“Um… okay, sure. Can you at least tell me when he dropped the thing off?”
“A few days ago. But look. He said he’d be back for it and he ain’t been. I can’t keep it around here, you know? I don’t want to be responsible.”
Tucker—it had to be Tucker. Roy Dean had dropped the baby off with this girl—his girlfriend, from the sounds of it—maybe even the one he’d been pestering at the speedway. And then, for whatever reasons—reasons having to do with Benning and the Kansas City mafia, maybe, or more likely something a lot more simple, like he got drunk or high or otherwise distracted—he hadn’t been back for the boy.
“Look here,” Stella said in as kind a voice as she could muster. “Is this thing… being well looked after?”
“Huh? Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. Look, tell Roy Dean to come get it tomorrow at noon. I’ll come home on my lunch hour, and he better be there.”
“Sure. Just give me the address.”
“He has the address,” the girl spat, with a full measure of disdain. “He’s been here plenty.”
“Oh. Well, could I at least have a name?”
“He’ll know, okay? He’ll know damn well who it is—just tell him Darla said he better be here.”
Click.
Stella slowly lowered the receiver back to the cradle on her nightstand. She finished with her hair and went out to the living room, hesitating in front of the TV and wondering what to tell Chrissy. On screen, Will Ferrell was saying the Baby Jesus prayer. Somehow it seemed fitting.
“Chrissy… sweet pea… you happen to know a gal named Darla? Might have been keeping company with Roy Dean?”
Chrissy shook her head, glancing away from the television. “No, but I feel sorry for her if she has been.”
“Yeah. It’s just…” Stella considered describing the conversation she’d just had, but without knowing who and where the girl was, there was nothing they could do for now, other than get Chrissy completely riled up—just when Stella had finally gotten her all settled down. “Well, nothing that won’t keep until tomorrow.”
At least, until noon. Somehow, between now and then, Stella had to find Darla. Which shouldn’t be too impossible, in a town the size of Prosper. Though if Roy Dean had taken his lovin’ out of town, she could quickly have a monster search on her hands.
Stella sighed. One damn problem at a time. Right now she had a date with a park bench.
“Hey darlin’, I got to run out for a bit,” she said.
“You meeting up with the sheriff?” Chrissy asked, sitting up straight. She had changed into what Stella figured passed for pajamas: a pink T-shirt with a kitten screen-printed on the front and the words Sweet Pussy.
“Why would you think that?”
“Well, just ’cause of him calling earlier. I figured maybe you called him back and he talked you into a date.”
“Oh…” Stella was about to dismiss Chrissy’s guess, but the truth was she didn’t have any better excuses. “Going out for Pringles” would work, but it might not give her enough time. “Yes, you got me, girl,” she said. “Ought to make you into a detective or something.”
That got her a wide grin. “You think?”
Stella took care to lock the door as she left.
On the way to the golf course, she went back over what her caller had said. The thing about the hundred bucks was a joke. Stella had about fifty-five dollars in her purse, what was left from her once-a-week ATM visit. Taking out another hundred would put her a little too close to overdraft territory for comfort.
Stella had some money put away. Not a whole lot, but enough, if she was careful, to get by on as long as the store continued to bring in its usual unspectacular haul every month.
Because of the circumstances of Ollie’s death, insurance hadn’t paid out a penny. Luckily, when Stella’s mother passed, there had been enough to pay off the mortgage and the car loan and set some aside. After Ollie died, Stella used a chunk to employ herself a fancy financial adviser up in Independence. The man taught her a few things Ollie’d never seen fit to explain, and recommended a few books. Now Stella knew enough to scrape by.
The idea, of course, was to supplement her income with her little side business. And sometimes that actually happened. The bonus the Kansas coff ee importer’s wife had given her, for instance, had paid for the new dishwasher and gas range. But many of her clients had to work out payment plans, and Stella never had the heart to turn anyone away for lack of creative financing.
She had one gal who settled her account by making drapes for every room in Stella’s house. That one was worth it: seeing the ex-girlfriend of the chief of police of a small town near the Iowa border—a woman who’d once believed that no one could help defend her from the most powerful man in town—up on a ladder installing the curtains, whistling and shimmying to an old Pointer Sisters song, was a rare privilege.
She had a couple women who sent her plain envelopes of cash every month. Sometimes it was a few twenties, sometimes more. Occasionally less.
With Chrissy, Stella hadn’t even bothered bringing up the subject of a payment plan beyond the fistful of rolled fives, tens, and twenties the girl handed over at her initial consultation. Chrissy already had too much on her mind. No matter; they’d work it out eventually.
Stella pulled into the access road that ran along the park. Bright streetlights had been installed in the parking lot, an improvement she welcomed. As she parked, she could make out a figure sitting exactly where he’d promised to be, on a bench they’d sunk in concrete across the pond. He was a heavyset man, and sat with his arms stretched out casually along the back of the bench, legs crossed.
Had it not been dark out, he could have been there to feed the ducks.
Stella patted the outline of her gun and slipped her car keys into her pocket. As she made her way around the pond, following the curvy outline of the fancy schmancy brick walk, she was relieved that the man made no move toward his pockets. When she got within twenty feet, she could see his eyes shining in the moonlight.
“Hello,” she called. “Here I am, right on time.”
“I appreciate that. Can’t stand a tardy bitch, myself,” the man said, and chuckled. His voice was slightly high-pitched and had a flat, nasal quality, and he seemed to find himself plenty amusing, which irritated Stella.
“So what is it you have to tell me?” she asked.
She heard the slightest shuffle behind her, coming from the left side of the path, away from the pond—a leaf against a rock, or maybe trash blowing—and turned to look.
At that moment something came at her from the right: a low, broad dark shape moving fast thudded into her hip and knocked her to the ground. Stella reached for the Raven, but before she could get to it her arms were yanked hard from behind. There were two of them—plus the man on the bench, who was getting up slowly, like he had all the time in the world. Fuck me, Stella thought, just like a damn greenhorn, not even checking her periphery first.
“Check this out,” she heard a voice say. She felt hands roving her body as the other guy held her, kicking and struggling, in place. The man searching her wore a stocking cap with eyeholes, pulled low on his face. His hands found her holster; in the next second it was yanked from her waist. For a second she was sure she was about to be shot with her own gun, a feeling that intensified when she felt its barrel pressed against the hollow behind her right ear. She scrunched up her whole face and waited for the shot.
In what she figured was her final half second on earth, Stella marveled at a new revelation: waiting to get shot was different from waiting for a man to punch you on a jaw that was still healing from the last time, or hit you on the temple with a beer bottle, or knee you in the gut.
Or maybe it was Stella herself who was different, who had changed since the last time she’d been victim to the violent reckoning that Ollie routinely dished out. Three years, sixteen days, in fact—that counter had been put in motion when Ollie slumped to the floor and bled out, a counter that would never be turned off again.
Three years, sixteen days of freedom. Of calling her own shots.
And what she felt now wasn’t anything like she used to feel. It wasn’t dull dread, a sense of the inevitable, a wish that he’d just get on with it, even a longing for the relief that would come from being knocked out.
What Stella Hardesty felt, with the barrel of her own gun jabbed a few inches from her brain, was mighty pissed off. To her surprise, it suddenly mattered a great deal to her that she not go down for the last time here, by the little mud pond on the edge of town, at the hands of two men she didn’t even know.
“You cocksuckers!” she screamed and tried to wrench her arms away from the man holding them behind her back. She managed to work one leg free and kicked with everything she had, connecting a solid hit to the balls of the guy in front of her.
She had the satisfaction of seeing him double over and start to vomit before she took a hit to the face that sent her sprawling.
And a second one that sent her out.