A Bad Day for Pretty (14 page)

“Awww… the
shop
? You all aren’t gonna do it on the counter, now, are you?” Stella had a sudden vision of the pair of them toppling the cash register on the floor in the heat of the moment.

Chrissy giggled. “I ain’t promising anything like that, but we’ll be sanitary. I’ll put down some fusible web or something first.”

“Ah—why’d you have to—that’s just disgusting,” Stella said.

“I was just messin’ with you, we’ll probably go back to his place. Besides, it ain’t disgusting. It’s just natural, and you’re just jealous. Now git on over here ’fore Larry goes and fries all his circuits, waitin’ on me.”

Chrissy hung up in a fit of more giggling.

Geek humor, Stella thought darkly as she rounded up her purse and keys. An hour later, she was rinsing out a very messy bib in the little sink in Chrissy’s microscopic kitchen, trying not to think about what was going on in the darkened shop across the parking lot. Tucker was fast asleep, curled up sweetly with his bottom in the air in the crib that shared the bedroom with Chrissy’s twin bed and an old dresser.

Larry had been everything Chrissy promised and then some; it was hard to see a whole lot of computer geek left in the hard-muscled, tanned, compact young man who was somehow managing to type and mouse while staring at Chrissy’s ample, softly rounded behind with his lips parted in anticipation while she got Tucker’s diaper bag and toys ready for Stella.

Stella had been curious to see what the amorous pair had discovered in all their online sleuthing, but between her fatigue and Tucker’s hungry whining, she figured she might as well leave them to their varied pursuits. She’d crash in Chrissy’s bed, and the gal could explain it all in the morning.

She got the latest J. D. Robb paperback out of her purse—she couldn’t wait to see what that badass lieutenant Eve Dallas was up to now—and poured a tumbler of purple grape juice, ready to settle in for a few minutes of reading before she nodded off, when her phone rang.

“Damn you!” she exclaimed, pulling the thing out of her purse. She hadn’t gotten this many calls on a single day in ages.

Goat’s number showed on the caller ID.

“Brandy—”

“It’ ain’t her, it’s me,” a deep and desperate-sounding male voice cut in. “Get over here, Stella. It’s an emergency.”

Unbelievable. By the end of the night, everyone Stella knew was going to have called with some made-up emergency that demanded her immediate attention. “Is it her imaginary burglar?” she demanded. “’Cause I’m not going anywh—”

“I’m telling you, Dusty, for the love of everything you hold dear, if you don’t get here now, I’m liable to kill this woman with my bare hands.”

“What’s she done now?” Stella couldn’t quite keep a smug note out of her voice. It should have been obvious that Brandy was going to prove her own undoing, with her fragile little poor-me helpless act.

“Oh, not much,” Goat grumbled, “unless you count hitting me on the head, knocking me out, and stealing my pants.”

NINE

I didn’t say I was knocked out for very
long
, ” Goat protested when Stella arrived half an hour later with Tucker in tow.

“Yeah? Well, what about your pants?” Stella nodded at the faded old cargo pants that were slung nicely around Goat’s athletic hips, held up by a burnished brown belt with a silver buckle. Nothing, that she could tell, was amiss
there
.

“She didn’t get them
all
the way off, but she would have, if she hadn’t been too drunk to deal with the buckle. You don’t know how she gets when she’s drinking.”

Stella was not happy. She’d gotten Tucker out of the crib, bundled him into the car seat, listened to him wail all the way over to Goat’s, only to fall asleep just as she arrived, and now he was twenty-eight pounds of back-breaking weight slumped against her chest.

Not to mention the fact that she’d flossed and brushed and swigged a bolt of Scope and redone her eye makeup. None of that was Goat’s fault, of course, but it still made her irate that she’d gone to the trouble, only to arrive and find out that Goat was suffering only a knot on the side of his bald head, and he’d locked Brandy in the guest room.

“I thought for sure she’d pass out by now,” he added conversationally. “She drank every one of my beers and made a dent in some schnapps that probably goes back a decade.”

“Guess she can hold her liquor,” Stella observed. There were regular thumps on the door of the guest room, accompanied by occasional bursts of singing alternating with muffled hollering.

“She always could put it away, but I wouldn’t say she
holds
it all that well.” Goat gingerly touched his head and scowled. “She gets a little excitable. It was one of the things that got between us—me having to talk her down all the time, well,
that
got plenty old.”

Stella couldn’t help it—her ears pricked up at Goat’s criticism of his ex. That was an avenue she would have liked to explore further—she could probably listen to Goat trash the woman for hours without getting bored—but Tucker was getting terribly heavy.

“Is there somewhere I could—?”

“Oh, sure,” Goat said, and grabbed Tucker from Stella before she could protest. To her surprise, though, he did it like a champ, smoothly easing the little boy into his own arms, settling him high on his shoulder so that Tucker’s cheek tucked perfectly into the hollow of Goat’s neck, and balancing him there like a sack of chicken feed. “I’ll set him down on my bed here in a second. Just let me get you something. Uh, I’d offer you a beer, but I’m fresh out. I think I got a bottle of pinot noir in there somewhere—”

“Water,” Stella said, “and I guess you best brew up some coffee if this is going to take any kind of a while. Though it does look like you got things under control here, so maybe I can just turn around and head home.”

As if on cue, Brandy sent up a high-pitched wail. “I got to peeeeee,” she cried, and Goat gave Stella a deer-in-headlights look.

“You take care of her,” he begged, “and I’ll make you a damn good cup of coffee.”

Stella rolled her eyes. Not much of a trade.

“The door’s not really locked,” Goat added, “it just gets stuck to where it’s hard to open from inside. Put a little shoulder in it—that’ll do the trick.”

Stella did as he suggested, wondering at her own sanity the whole time. Helping Brandy was like encouraging a relentless suitor: it just guaranteed she’d keep coming back.

When she shoved, the door burst open, knocking Brandy over. She landed hard on her butt, hiccupped, looked up at Stella in surprise, and laughed.

“You
did
come!” she said. “I knew you would. I ain’t scared no more, but Goat’s being no fun. Maybe we can pop us some corn.”

Stella put out a hand to help her up, noticing that Brandy had changed into a snug terry knit jog suit at some point in the evening, a little yellow set with athletic striping down the side. It was hard to imagine the sport it might have been designed for, seeing how it scooped astonishingly low over Brandy’s energetically uplifted breasts, and the pants didn’t cover even her hip bones, leaving a wide swath of midriff bare to the world. Stella spotted a fussy little gold-and-bead ring poked through Brandy’s navel, and felt a twinge of envy; childbirth and a close personal relationship with the Frito-Lay product line had pretty much ensured her own navel would stay adornment-free and out of sight.

“Oooh—my—I’m just a little light-headed,” Brandy observed as Stella tugged her upright.

Suddenly there was a huge flash, a thunderous crashing sound, and the room tilted sideways as Brandy came hurtling toward Stella, knocking them both out the door and into the hallway, where they fell in a heap.

An explosion of some sort. Stella, heart pounding, hastened to untangle Brandy’s floppy arms and legs from hers. Out the window she could see an orange fireball shoot flames toward the sky.

Goat rounded the corner at a gallop, Tucker wide-eyed in his arms. “Are you—? Is she—?
Stella
—”

He grabbed her in a not-unpleasant fierce embrace and then released her, eyes roving up and down her body, before he handed her Tucker and bent down to check out Brandy.

“I think I peed myself,” Brandy said, and yawned.

Goat scowled and let her slump against the wall. He grabbed Stella’s hand and pulled her with him at a jog, through the house to the front door, but as he reached for the knob, he hesitated. “You stay inside,” he ordered.

Stella got Tucker hitched up a little more comfortably in her arms. He pointed a chubby finger outside and said, his voice full of awe, “Hot.”

After Stella put out a hand to test the air, she followed Goat onto the porch. Out in the gravel drive, the slightly tarnished red Camaro in which Brandy had delivered herself to Goat’s house just two nights earlier had been reduced to a burning pile of rubble. Smoke poured from the chassis, and flames licked out from the rear of the frame. Bits of glass winked on the ground, and pieces of metal thrown by the blast lay smoldering on the drive.

“Holy cow,” Stella breathed. “I don’t believe she’ll be driving that thing anywhere any time soon.”

“What—? How—?” Goat sputtered and stepped in front of her, throwing a forearm out protectively. “Stay right here, Dusty,” he finally said.

Stella was torn between the urge to push him aside and the lovely sensation of that hard-muscled arm brushing against her clavicles … that, and a taste for personal safety. Heading into all that molten metal and leaking fuel and fiery devastation just didn’t strike her as all that smart.

Her pocket gave a little start and began to shriek, and Stella fished out her phone and answered it, coughing from the smoke fumes. “Hello…”

“Stella? It’s me,” a voice said in a scratchy whisper.

Stella jammed the phone harder against her ear and stepped back into the house in an effort to hear better. She kept an eye on Goat, who stepped off the porch toward the blaze. Damn fool man, more guts than smarts. Though there was something kind of appealing about his broad-shouldered frame silhouetted against the flames.

“Me who?”

“Todd!” the voice barked indignantly.

Stella checked her watch. “It’s almost ten,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed or something by now? Besides, I’m involved in a—a little drama unfolding here.”

“No, it’s Friday. I can stay up as late as I want. Besides, Stella, reason I’m calling—you got an
intruder
. I got rid a him for you.”

“I got a what?”

“An intruder. I put the hose on him and he ran away.”

Stella took a last look at Goat, who was edging into the yard toward the wrecked metal, despite the fact that flames licked around the ruined carcass of the car. She retreated farther into the house where the reception was better, and settled down on a couch with Tucker, who yawned and snuggled down into the cushions. “At my house? You saw someone at my house?”

“Well yeah, where’d you think? I saw him come sneakin’ down the street acting like he was just out walkin’ or whatever, and when he got to your place he looked all around and then kind of ducked down and ran over to your front porch. He knocked a bunch of times and then he put his head right on the door, trying to hear were you inside, I figure, and I guess he decided you weren’t and that he was going to wait for you to get back, ’cause he went back of that big old bush you got next to your porch, kind of wiggled in behind it, and then he just stood there hiding.”

“What? When was this?” Stella thought of the broken glass at the back of the house, the gouged sill, the footprint in the soft earth. Looked like her peeper had come back.

“Like around … I don’t know, half an hour ago.”

“What were you doing, that you saw him?” Stella demanded.

“I was … uh … playing Pokémon on my PSP?”

“Wrong,” Stella said automatically. There was only one good reason for Todd to be outside alone after dark, and that was to come visit her. If this intruder had spotted him coming down the street …

“This is important,” Stella added. “Code of Silence rules apply.”

She could hear Todd breathing in the phone and knew he was thinking that over. Code of Silence was their agreement, made at Stella’s suggestion, that in some instances she would hear Todd out with the understanding that Sherilee would not be notified as long as Stella was satisfied that the boy had told the entire truth and, if it concerned something ill advised or even stupid, he would not repeat the infraction. So far, it had been invoked only once, when Todd had left a Tupperware full of live bait on the front seat of the brand-new Lincoln belonging to mean retired neighbor Rolf Bayer on a sweltering morning last May, and had second thoughts and called Stella from his first class at school.

Stella had removed the bait before it could disintegrate in the heat and add a permanent olfactory taint to the car, and it was not spoken of again. She figured Todd’s belated guilty conscience made up for the stray mischief. Besides, Bayer truly was an asshole.

“Okay,” he said. “Chanelle Tanaka gave me some clove cigarettes. I was, uh, smoking them on Mrs. Granick’s porch—she’s in Florida.”