A Bad Day for Pretty (15 page)

“Todd!” Stella said, horrified. “
Smoking?
That’s the nastiest—”

“Calm down, Stella. There ain’t any tobacco in them. They’re like all natural and—”

—and Chanelle was the hottest girl in eighth grade, Stella thought darkly. “Todd,” she interrupted him sternly, “we’ll talk about your slow and painful lung cancer death later, but for now, just tell me this guy didn’t see you.”

“Okay. He didn’t see me.”

“Well, did he?” The notion of a Peeping Tom at her window had taken a turn for the more sinister since the car bombing a couple of minutes earlier. Some unusually violent force was at work in Prosper, and the thought of Todd wandering, innocent and unsuspecting, into its midst was terrifying. “Or didn’t he?”

“Uh, well, I don’t think so. When I snuck over to get the Knowleses’ hose, I—”

“When you did
what
?”

“Stella,” Todd said patiently, “you gonna let me tell you or you gonna keep interrupting me?”

“Continue,” Stella said through gritted teeth. “Please.”

“I went down three houses before I crossed over to your side of the street, then I came back the other way in the backyards, and when I got to the Knowleses’ I came around the side real slow, and the hose was all coiled up on that hook thing Mr. Knowles got on the wall there and I got it unwound enough without making any noise. Then the faucet handle creaked just a little—”

“What the hell were you doing with the hose?” Stella could feel her heart pounding in her throat. The Knowleses lived next door to Stella to the right; Todd would have been a mere fifteen feet from the intruder in the bushes—an intruder who could have been armed or even wielding bombs or grenades or something. “And what kind of fool idea—”

“I was
saving
your ass,” Todd said, raising his voice to a powerful whisper-bellow. “I didn’t have a phone with me and what was I supposed to do, let him murder you when you got home?”

“What makes you think he was going to
murder
me?” Stella demanded. “He could of, I don’t know, wanted to borrow something or—”

“Stella,” Todd said in a withering tone, “men don’t come around your place askin’ to borrow shit. They come around fixin’ to maim you and kill you.”

Naturally, the boy knew all about her recent brush with death—he’d visited half a dozen times in the hospital and asked a hundred questions. Stella had tried to soft-pedal her answers, but she figured the boy was entitled to a good helping of truth, seeing as smart kids generally know a lie when they hear one. So he was well aware of the nearly half dozen assorted crooks and ne’er-do-wells who’d attempted to kill her.

“Okay,” she sighed. “The hose?”

“It had one a them attachments on it? You know, with all the settings? Well, good thing it was set to jet, ’cause I just pointed it at the guy and blasted the shit out of him. Man, you shoulda seen him come flyin’ outta that bush! Soaked him good ’fore he took off running, too!”

Todd chortled at the memory as Stella’s pulse skyrocketed. If the man had come
at
Todd, rather than fleeing … if he’d turned and looked and noticed that his attacker wielded only a garden hose … if he’d decided to come back and finish the job—

“Please tell me you didn’t stick around to watch,” she said.

“Naw, I went home the back way, he wouldn’t a known how to find me. Turned the water off, too,” he added. “I guess you’re gonna say to go wind that hose back up, huh?”

“I’m—I’ll—” Words eluded Stella as she tried and failed to come up with a way to convey to her teenage bodyguard the recklessness of his actions. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Now get your ass in bed. Lock all your doors first—then straight to bed.”

“Don’t you mean,
Thank you, Todd
? For getting rid of your armed and dangerous killer?”

“Thank you, Todd,” Stella repeated, trying to keep the agitation out of her voice. “Gotta go. Get your butt in
bed
.”

She hung up and slipped the phone back in her pocket, and covered Tucker with an afghan that was folded over the couch, touching his cheek to make sure he was sleeping soundly. Then she returned to the porch, where she watched Goat jabbing at a smoking pile of rubble with a garden rake. A sound behind her in the hall caught her attention, and she turned to see Brandy, vertical at last, leaning against a wall with a tumbler in her hand.

“Isn’t
that
a sight,” she said, sighing happily. “I do love a bonfire. Whyn’t cha fix you a drink and we can go cook us some wieners.”

TEN

Stella was short on misgivings when she left Goat to deal with both Brandy and the firebomb in the front yard. She had Tucker to consider, after all, and she figured he’d seen about enough mayhem for one evening. They were back at Chrissy’s apartment and in bed by eleven, and Stella even resisted the urge to see if the lights were still on over at the shop.

Around seven the next morning, she was lying in a sleep-stupor, Chrissy’s fluffy pink comforter pulled around her like a cotton candy cocoon, enjoying the last of a dream that was slipping away. A few feet from the bed, Tucker was doing his own early-morning ruminating in the crib, humming to himself, making the occasional comment in unintelligible toddler speak, playing with his green fuzzy horse.

Stella was trying to hold on to the image of Goat in those low-slung pants—the very ones Brandy had been trying to take off him—and no shirt, when she heard the key in the door.

“It’s me and I got doughnuts,” Chrissy called. She came clomping into the bedroom in her high-heeled mules and went straight for the crib, scooping Tucker up for a volley of kisses and giggling. Then she lay down next to Stella, the baby between them, the bed pleasantly jammed.

“Well, you don’t look much worse for wear,” Stella said as graciously as she could. “What kind of doughnuts you got?”

“Three cream-filled, three chocolate sprinkles, but you cain’t eat ’em in here.”

Stella rolled her eyes. “Considering what-all you probably been doing for the last dozen hours, I don’t know if I’d be acting all prim and proper over a few crumbs.”

“Oh, envy ain’t pretty on you,” Chrissy said.

She yawned extravagantly and crawled out of bed. Tucker snuggled in closer to Stella, his well-chewed green horse butting her in the chin. “Whore,” he said. No.
Horse
. Had to be horse.

Chrissy opened her tiny closet and started rummaging through hangers.

“Well, while you and your fancy man were making whoopee over in the shop—”

“We went back to his place,” Chrissy interrupted. “He’s got him a nice apartment with a Jacuzzi tub over by the Applebee’s.”

“Well, la-di-da,” Stella said. “I guess it’s nice for some folks to be floating around in bubbles while other folks were being blown up.”

Chrissy turned around, startled. “What have you gone and got yourself into now, Stella?”

Stella laid out the events of the last evening while Chrissy changed into a fresh pair of shorts and a tank top with complicated crisscrossed peekaboo strands of ribbon highlighting her cleavage. There were no obvious hickeys or bite marks or rug burns on her that Stella could make out.

“Hoo-ee,” Chrissy said when Stella finished. “Well, I guess you’re gonna want to know what-all I dug up on that ex-wife of the sheriff for you.”

“You mean Larry looked her up online?”

Chrissy turned around mid-tug on her lacy pink bra. “What do you mean
Larry
—I’m the one tracked her down while he was makin’ us some grilled cheese and tomatoes.”

“Oh—sorry.” Stella held up her hands in apology. It was never a good idea to underestimate Chrissy. She had a chip on her shoulder big enough to flatten a less robust person, left over from several decades of being told she wasn’t smart. “What did you find, then?”

“Well,” Chrissy said smugly, unmistakable pride in her molasses drawl, “Larry showed me how to get past these encryption thingies they got, and then I checked where her mail was going. Turns out she’s been shacking up with this guy name a Wilbur Vines. He owns him a trilevel house and did you know, he bought it in 1992 for sixty-five thousand bucks? Don’t that just beat all?”

“That’s real estate for you, I guess.”

“Yeah, well, anyway he’s got him a couple of arrests on his record. One for burglary and one for fraud, acquitted both times, but you gotta figure he did it or why would they arrest him. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if that Brandy, after being married to Mr. Squeaky Clean for a couple years, went lookin’ for something a little more downtown.”

Stella ignored the amateur psychologizing for the moment. “They were married only a couple of years? Her and Goat?”

“Not even, just twenty-two months. Got married at the Morgan County courthouse, almost five years back.”

“Well, then they’ve been split up longer than they were together.”

“Hey, you don’t have to convince me—ain’t no reason you got to stand back from that man on account of any holy union or that shit,” Chrissy said. She had been married twice before; besides her dead ex, she had a first husband who still carried a torch for her, plus a spate of admirers in between, one of whom had fathered Tucker, though Chrissy wasn’t sure which one that was.

“Anything else you dug up on her? Like something that would explain why a person would want to incinerate her, for instance?”

“Nah … she’s been working at a place called Dinette Superstore, but she musta got laid off a couple months back ’cause she’s been drawing unemployment.”

“No kidding. Usually it’s laid-off folks that do the workplace violence to their old bosses and such, not the other way around.”

“What, you think it was someone she worked for that blew up her car?”

Stella pondered that. “She is awfully annoying, but that seems kind of extreme. I guess maybe I’ll check out that fella she was shacking up with. Like you said, he was acquitted, he probably isn’t such a bad guy. Maybe I can get him to come and get her and take her back to Versailles.”

“Now, Stella, are you trying to help this gal, or are you just trying to get rid a her?” Chrissy demanded. “I mean, you’re always flappin’ your jaw about helpin’ out women don’t got anywhere else to turn, blah blah blah, and seems to me this Brandy don’t really have nowhere else to go if she had to come bunk with her ex. Plus she’s got someone trying to kill her.”

“What’s your point?” Stella demanded.

“Only if—well, if you want me to work for you, we got to have this one thing clear: I ain’t doin’ your dirty work just so you can clear out the competition for a man. That ain’t what these skills is for.” She held out her hands in front of her and made a typing gesture with her fingers.

“Point taken,” Stella said dryly. “Whyn’t you type us up a corporate ethics policy while you’re at it.”

“Maybe you oughtta git that smart mouth a yours out of bed,” Chrissy retorted. “Come on, you two lazybones, have a doughnut.”

Stella complied, setting Tucker down on the floor; he hit the ground running in his rumble-seat jammies, barreling straight for the white paper sack on the kitchen table.

“I found out some other stuff,” Chrissy said after she’d made them coffee and polished off a sprinkle doughnut plus the abandoned crumbs of Tucker’s. “I looked up all the missing girls from when Neb and them were building that snack shack, in all seven counties around Sawyer. There’s only a couple cases that ain’t got solved yet. I printed out the details for you.”

“Wow—that’s great,” Stella said. “Looks like you might have to keep makin’ that Larry happy—I mean, until he’s taught you all his tricks and you can do everything yourself,” she added hastily as Chrissy opened her mouth to protest.

“Shouldn’t take long. I figure I already know about a million times more about computers and shit than
you
do.”

“Okay, okay, you can be like the tech support department. Or CIO. Chief Information Officer. Would you like that?”

“I don’t know. Is that a high-paying job?”

“Sure thing. Second highest in the company, in fact.”

“Oh, great,” Chrissy said sarcastically. “All that means is I’m one step away from the poorhouse. Maybe I’ll stick to selling elastic and whatnot.”

“Suit yourself,” Stella said, shrugging indifferently; it wasn’t lost on her that Chrissy had been more excited about the online sleuthing than most of the tasks she’d undertaken since starting to work for Stella. It seemed clear that she had a gift. “But don’t you figure you ought to jump in the shower, girl, and wash off all that sinnin’ before you go open up the shop?”

Chrissy gave her a dazzling smile, the fetching little gap between her front teeth making her look as innocent as a baby lamb. “Considering all the places Larry used a bar of soap on me in the Jacuzzi this morning, I believe I’m clean enough I won’t need to shower for a month.”

Stella’s Own
shower, while a solo effort, was just what the doctor ordered. She turned the heat up high and stood under the stinging spray with her face upturned for as long as she could stand it. The night, with all its interruptions and surprises, hadn’t been the most restful she’d ever passed.