A Bad Day for Pretty (17 page)

She pulled the piece of paper from her purse and unfolded it, slipped on her reading glasses, and read out loud.

“Okay … so this first one’s Ashley de Boer, twenty-two when she went missing, student at Southern Missouri State … she came home to her folks’ house up in Independence in August three years back, just for the weekend. She was working at the university library for the summer and hadn’t seen her folks for a while. Saturday night about nine she went out to meet a friend for a drink and never showed up.”

“Ashley, huh,” Lola Brennan said. “I don’t recall any Ashley.”

“I remember that one from the paper,” Shirlette said, clucking sorrowfully. “Pretty girl. I bet she’s in a ditch somewhere picked clean over by the buzzards. That’s how those college girls generally end up.”

“Not all of them,” Gracie Lewis chided.

“All the missing ones, anyway,” Shirlette said defensively.

“Then there’s June Dunovich,” Stella said. “She was local. Well, over in Fairfax, anyway.”

“Well, sure, I remember that,” Lola said. She leaned forward conspiratorially. “I’d bet you a hunnert bucks she ain’t missing, though. She had those gambling problems—”

“Riverboats,” Linda confirmed, bobbing her head. “It was up in the thousands. She tried to clear out her and Rex’s accounts, he only found out when the bank called him.”

“Suze Orman says you should have all the accounts in your own name. Not your husband’s,” Novella said.

“Oh, she says no such thing,” Gracie said. “What she said was—”

Stella interrupted to read the final name, but there was general head-shaking and mystification all around.

“Wait,” Gracie said. “That last one—Laura Cassel? That rings some kind of bell.”

“She was thirty-five, says here. Lived alone, up in Picot, worked for a company called Glecko-Goldin.”

“Drug company!” Shirlette exclaimed. “They make my blood pressure medicine. Greedy bastards.”

Drugs
. The connection loomed obvious and unwelcome in Stella’s mind—what with OxyContin being prescription, was it possible that Laura Cassel could have been some sort of supplier for Neb? It seemed like drug companies would have all kinds of procedures in place to make sure their products didn’t wander off the premises on the persons of their employees, to make their way through shady channels and end up in the hands of addicts, but it wasn’t the sort of news that had Stella feeling extra-optimistic.

“Says she didn’t show up for work, her boss got worried, had them check out her town house. Didn’t ever find anything out of place or anything.”

“I think it was on the news,” Gracie said. “Good-lookin’ gal, kind of that pinup girl look. With the bosoms and the rouge. And blond hair cut in a pageboy.”

“A
bob
, ” Gracie said, touching her own steel-gray hair, which was cut in an unflattering line that bisected her jaw. “That’s called a bob now.”

Stella remembered the pale hair around the freakishly shrunken face of the mummy. “White blond?” she asked. “Platinum?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Gracie said. “They interviewed all these gals in the singles club up there. I guess that woman ran around some with them. If it’s the same one I’m thinking of.”

“Was there an ex-husband, do you remember?” Stella asked.

“Well, if there was one, I don’t recall him coming on TV or anything. You know like they do sometimes—all crying and saying all we want is our loved one back? I never believe that, anyway—it was me, I’d want my loved one
and
to gut the kidnapper like a fish.”

“It’s never just a kidnapping,” Lola said ominously. “There’s generally crimes of a sick and twisted nature gets done on these gals ’fore they get dismembered and all.”

Stella started to correct her, to point out that the mystery mummy was, as far as she could tell, not dismembered a bit—but then remembered that she was here to
gather
information, not feed it into the grapevine. The Green Hat Ladies needed more grist for their gossip mill like their blood pressure needed a heaping serving of sodium.

She thanked them, finished up her spicy chicken deluxe sandwich, and refilled her Diet Coke for the road. It was starting to look like an extra-caffeine kind of day.

TWELVE

On the forty-minute drive to Versailles, Stella rolled the windows down and enjoyed the Indian summer warmth of the breeze that blew through the car. She came to a flashing red at an intersection and waited her turn behind a little parade of traffic. No one seemed to be in a hurry today.

Off past the fields beside the road, she saw an old barn that had been flattened in the storm, silver-gray boards scattered like pick-up sticks. An old man in a straw hat moved among the debris with slow, deliberate movements like he had arthritis in his joints. Two young men helped, lifting and hauling shattered wood as though their burden were weightless. One had stripped off his shirt in the autumn sunshine, and Stella could see he was a young man, barely out of his teens, his muscles defined against his pale skin and hairless chest. He called something out and the others stopped their work to laugh, the old man wiping at his eyes with his sleeve, the other—his brother?—tossing a clump of earth that hit the boy squarely on the shoulder.

The cars in front took their turns through the intersection, and Stella put her foot on the gas and cruised forward. A strange sadness hit her in the gut, a memory of what her father had said that day as he and Horace left to help the folks caught in the storm.
Why do you have to go, Daddy?
she’d asked, and she’d never forget the gentle smile on his face when he answered:
’Cause helpin’ folks is what men do when they grow up
.

Someone had taught those two boys right. They were out helping their neighbor or uncle or whoever it was, it didn’t matter, he was someone who needed help and they did it without a second thought. If Stella’d had sons, they would have missed out on that lesson. Her father died from a heart attack right after Stella got married.

How was it that she’d forgotten that simple message when she went out to pick a man to settle down with? Ollie hadn’t just been a cruel and worthless husband; he hadn’t been much of a friend or neighbor either. Ollie looked at his fellow man and wondered what they could do for him. He found humor in other folks’ misfortune and had a keen eye out for the extra share, to which he helped himself without qualms.

Well, Stella was making up for all of that. Who said it always had to be the men who went out and set the world straight? Sometimes there were no men around to do the job, and sometimes, it seemed to her, a woman was the better candidate anyway. A woman might not have brute strength, but she had cunning and determination and creative problem-solving skills. Women were used to juggling six things at once and working inside a system that didn’t always cater to their needs.

So Stella’s work didn’t always mean coloring in the lines; so what—she was helping out those who needed help. Doing the right thing had taken the place of just getting by—it was who she
was
now, and Stella realized she had her father to thank for that. Buster Collier never turned away from someone in need because he didn’t feel particularly helpful that day. And Stella had taken that lesson and tucked it away, deep inside, and now that her life had taken all these strange turns and put her on a new path, she brought out her father’s gift and put it to work.

Chrissy had been right—there was no way she could send Brandy packing when by all indications, she was in exactly the kind of straits Stella specialized in.

Stella glanced at the clock and remembered she needed to call Noelle. All this thinking about fathers and sons reminded her how grateful she was to have her daughter back in her life. So she’d never had a son—she figured if her father could see Noelle, he’d be mighty proud anyway. Not long ago, Noelle had got herself hooked up with a bunch of her beauty shop pals who went up to Kansas City a couple times a month and set up a free clinic in a neighborhood where there wasn’t a whole lot of money to go around for milk and medicine, much less extras like manicures and haircuts. Their clinic was proof—there were a million different ways to do the right thing.

Stella called Noelle and left her a message about dinner the next night. Noelle usually came over on Sunday afternoons anyway, to do her wash and catch up on things, and she figured the girl might like a home-cooked meal, even if it was likely to be Jelloman and Sabine doing the cooking.

Stella cruised into town, glanced at her notes, and found Wil Vines’s house with no trouble. It was in a shabby little cul-de-sac of ’70s-era tri-levels. The driveways were cracked, the bushes overgrown, and the garage doors peeling paint. The good times had apparently rolled on past this part of Versailles.

She parked around the corner and dialed the number Chrissy had turned up in her online trolling. It rang and rang, never going into voice mail or a machine, though Stella tried twice. After thinking a moment, Stella got out of the car and made her way back through the backyards toward Vines’s place. They were sizable yards, and Stella had no trouble skirting the wooded edges, staying out of the sight line of the houses. She cut across the back of Vines’s place and let herself into the screen porch, which smelled of mildew, and knocked on the back door.

She knocked softly at first, then louder, and finally she gave the door a couple of good hard kicks. There was no sound from within the house.

She inspected the door. Luckily, the rock that was holding down a yellowing newspaper on a plastic table worked just fine to break the glass in the door. Stella pulled a couple of quart Ziplocs she’d stuffed in her pockets earlier and slipped them over her hands and managed to let herself into the house without cutting herself on the glass shards.

Inside the dim kitchen, it smelled like stale coffee grounds and moldering rags. All the drapes were pulled shut, giving the place a funereal air. Stella commenced to give herself a thorough tour of the Vines residence.

Make that the Vines-Truax residence. Brandy’s presence was everywhere: she may have split up with Wil months earlier, but there were snapshots of her on the fridge and a framed glamour-shots-style portrait on the side table beside his bed. In the closet, near the back, were a couple of women’s blouses, carefully buttoned to the neck and hung by themselves so they weren’t jammed up against other garments.

The real bounty was in the drawers of the vanity in the bathroom. The top one held a few men’s grooming items, but the other two held a carefully arranged trove of what Stella had to assume was Brandy memorabilia. In one, half a dozen makeup containers were arranged in a neat row, eye shadows and blushes in various stages of use, some nearly empty, some practically new. A fluffy powder brush lay on a nest of tissue, and there were two folded scarves—one hot pink, one gray paisley—rolled and tucked in next to a wadded plastic shower cap. In the other drawer was a hair dryer with the diffuser still attached—not an instrument any man Stella knew would have use for. There was also—in case there was any doubt these were Brandy’s things and not some subsequent girlfriend’s—a fall of platinum-blond teased hair that could be clipped in place to add a little extra vavoom to a fancy hairdo.

So Wil wasn’t entirely over his ex. Could this be some sort of stalker thing, the jilted boyfriend gone nuts, his actions escalating as his girlfriend not only ignored him but also left town to go back to an old lover? One thing was obvious: Brandy was holding out on her. Stella needed to have a heart-to-heart with her, and find out what else the former Mrs. Goat Jones wasn’t telling her.

Stella searched the rest of the rooms and the basement, didn’t find anything else interesting in the house. Wil Vines was a pretty good housekeeper, for a guy, and the carpet was vacuumed and the floors swept. Magazines were stacked in a neat pile on the coffee table. Running a plastic-covered finger along the top of the dining room table produced only a tiny bit of dust.

She went back outside and tried the door of the detached garage. It was open, and Stella slipped inside and turned on the light.

The garage was as neat as the house, with rakes and snowblowers and so forth hanging from pegs on the bare studs. But what caught Stella’s eye immediately was the large panel van taking up half the garage.

Chrissy’s explorations had turned up only one car registered to Wil, a late-model Ford Taurus. Certainly there hadn’t been any record of him owning a windowless white van—or the pile of magnetic signage Stella found piled neatly on a workbench:

MORTIMER & SONS PLUMBING
CENTRAL MISSOURI HEATING AND AIR CONDITIONING
CHEERY MAIDS—LET US CLEAN SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO!
LISA DEE’S FLORIST BALLOONS GIFTS

Stella rifled through the stack, then set it back, neatening up the edges. Well, now this was interesting. She found it hard to believe that Wil ran all these businesses out of his home, and it wasn’t that difficult to imagine that the quick-change nature of the anonymous van and the signs lent itself to the kind of mischief that the law generally frowned on. Like dealing drugs out of the back, for instance. Or snatching college girls from parking lots and dismembering them—Stella remembered Shirlette Castro’s words with a shudder. Or, at the very least, making the kind of house calls that left homeowners scratching their heads and wondering how they could have misplaced the jewelry and silver.