A Bad Day for Romance (6 page)

“I hate that song,” Chrissy exclaimed. “You get that stuck in your head and, man, there ain’t any getting it out again.”

“Exactly!” Divinity snapped her fingers. “He went from unknown to the top ten in the space of a few months. That’s the power of what Leif can do for somebody. And he’s going to hear me sing on Saturday even if they have to carry me up onto the altar in a wheelchair.”

“Don’t you have to take care of the arrangements?” Chrissy asked. “You know, for your ex-fiancé? Who’s, like, lying on a
slab
and all now?”

Divinity regarded her blandly. “I hate to speak ill of the dead, but since you’re concerned about Bryant, you might be interested to know that he started seeing Lexie about thirty seconds after we split up. That’s the official version, anyway—the truth is there was some overlap.”

Stella and Chrissy exchanged a glance. “And yet you were not only still speaking to him, but sharing a
tent
with him?” Stella asked. “Wow, the spirit of forgiveness sure did visit
you
.”

“We’re professionals,” Divinity said icily. “Bryant and I had already put a lot of work into getting ready for these auditions. He’s very—was very—invested in my success, and neither one of us was going to quit over him getting involved with some two-bit plus-size tramp from Forever 21.”

“Wow,” Chrissy said. “You talk about all your friends that way?”

“I didn’t say she was my friend. We roomed together for a while, that’s all. She answered an ad when my old roommate moved out. I was the one who introduced her to Bryant—she wouldn’t have ever got an audition without him. She hasn’t got any range at all.” Divinity frowned as though the mere thought of Lexie’s voice pained her.

“If she’s such a bad singer, why’d you ask her to do the duet with you on Saturday?” Chrissy asked.

Divinity favored Chrissy with a chilly gaze, which Chrissy returned full bore. “Any singer in Branson worth her salt ain’t gonna have a Saturday night to give up,” she said. “Lexie wasn’t my first choice, believe me, but everyone else was booked.”

“Well, listen,” Stella said, seizing on the opening, despite the fact that Divinity’s story didn’t ring anywhere close to true. “We need to make sure you get there, then. I thought maybe Chrissy and I could help. You know, sort things out, help the cops figure out what happened to Bryant so they’ll let you leave town.”

Divinity blinked, looking bored. “You guys? What can
you
do?”

So, word of her exploits hadn’t reached Divinity. That was good, though it meant Stella had to tread carefully. “Well, now, I’m sort of a special deputy to our sheriff in Prosper,” she began, crossing her fingers behind her back, an impulse that sprung from the sheer magnitude of the lie. “Chrissy and me have taken all kinds of training. We, uh, volunteer a lot.”

“Whatever,” Divinity said dubiously, clearly unimpressed. “I think I just have to go in and look at photos or something, over at the police station.”

Before Stella could do any more fabricating, the door to the room opened and two uniformed officers came in, accompanied by a harried-looking doctor with a clipboard in her hands.

“Divinity Flycock,” the taller of the two cops said, pushing right past Stella and Chrissy as though they weren’t even in the room, “you are under arrest for the murder of Bryant Molder.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“BETTER LET ME DRIVE,” STELLA SAID
as they hightailed it back to the car. Chrissy tossed her the keys, and Stella noticed that her partner’s face had taken on the deep pink shade that signaled embarrassment, an emotion she didn’t often associate with Chrissy. “Hey, you okay?”

“It’s, ah, just that I sort of know Lloyd.”

“Lloyd who?”

“Lloyd the deputy who just arrested Divinity. Lloyd Hubbard, he went through the academy with Ian.”

“Oh, dear,” Stella said. She got in the driver’s seat and buckled in before placing a consoling hand on Chrissy’s shoulder. “And you slept with him, and now you’re wondering how to spin that with Ian. Well, honey, like you’re always telling me, best way to come to the truth is head-on.”

“Stella!” Chrissy said, looking genuinely shocked. “I certainly did
not
sleep with Lloyd!”

“You didn’t? I mean…” Stella shifted into backpedaling mode, which was difficult because she was genuinely surprised. Chrissy had a freewheeling approach to matters of the heart; she firmly believed in getting to
know
a man, so to speak, as a prelude to getting to know him, rather than the more usual other way around. Before becoming involved with Ian, Chrissy had sampled widely and enthusiastically, and saw nothing wrong with trailing an ardent and often heartbroken herd of lovers along in her wake. In the year and a half since she separated from her abusive husband, an event that coincided both with her introduction to Stella and Roy Dean’s subsequent violent end at the hands of even lower low-life scum, Stella had learned to take Chrissy’s frenetic love life in stride, and made a policy of assuming Chrissy was involved with whatever earnest suitors were afoot until proven otherwise.

But in the four months that she’d been seeing Ian Sloat, Chrissy had become a different woman: frequently distracted, a touch moody, and—most surprising to Stella—occasionally evasive. Stella would have worried if she weren’t possessed of nearly foolproof man-judging skills. Her radar showed nothing wrong with Ian except, perhaps, an unnatural fondness for the Cincinnati Bengals, but then again he did hail from Ohio, so Stella gave him a pass on that one.

“No, I did not. Stella, as I have told you on more than one occasion, me and Ian, it’s… well, it’s complicated.”

“Yes, exactly. You keep telling me it’s complicated,” Stella said, as her assistant’s complexion went from pink to a truly alarming shade of red and she twisted her hands in her lap. Stella reluctantly focused on the road, since she aimed to keep as close as possible to the cruiser bearing not just Lloyd and his partner but Divinity, who was unfortunately now the number-one suspect in Bryant’s murder, which was going to be a heck of an impediment in getting her to the wedding tomorrow. “And we’ll get back to that in a second. But for now, how is it that you know Lloyd, if not, uh, romantically?”

“Well, him and Ian went to the academy together and they all meet up with some of the other fellas from their class from time to time, and Ian took me to a fish fry last month that got a little out of hand.”

“Out of hand… how? Too much breading? Ran outta trout? Or was it more the liquid kind of trouble?”

“Yeah, that. Gina Chimes, she’s a deputy up in Sumpter County now, she had the party out on her folks’ land, they did a bunch of whitefish in one of them big oil fryers and built a bonfire after dinner and had a couple kegs in the back of a truck, and she said everyone could just stay over in the barn if they were drinking, so wasn’t anyone being all that cautious. So it got a little, you know. And Lloyd, well… you know. I mean, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t remember, and I sure didn’t stand for it going any further than… uh.”

“Okay, honey, I followed about the first half of that.” Before she got uncharacteristically vague, Stella didn’t add. Something was very off. “What exactly does Lloyd not remember doing? Pretend I’m slow and lay it out for me with all the extra details.”

“Oh, Stella. It was… well, Ian was busy helping cook and whatnot, and Gina’s dad was selling a litter of bluetick pups and you know the twins’ birthday is coming up and so I went down to the pen with Lloyd to see Mr. Chimes run those pups with the roll cage.”

“Wait a minute,” Stella said, sidetracked into incredulity. “You’re fixing to give your niece and nephew a
hunting
dog?”

“Stella, they’re almost seven. Why, when Danyelle turned seven Mac let her use his rifle and she shot a crow out of the tree that was picking at mama’s kitchen garden.”

Stella sighed. Though she herself kept a tidy and ever-changing arsenal of firearms for use in her side work, it was nothing compared to the wealth of armaments belonging to Chrissy and her four siblings and extended family, who had been hunting their land, as well as anyone else’s where they figured they could get away with it, ever since her kin had settled in central Missouri. The Lardners were long on marksmanship skills but generally short on observing details like licenses and season permits and registrations. Luckily, Chrissy herself was the prudent sort and had yet to put so much as a water pistol in the hands of her four-year-old son, Tucker.

“Okay, so you were looking at the dogs.”

“Well, I was fixing to anyway, but the minute we got down to the cage Lloyd sets to telling me that he beat Ian on every test in the academy, how he scored four percent higher on the qualifying exam, he ran the obstacle course faster, and did better in the drills and it went on and on, and wouldn’t I like to take a chance on a better man? And, the whole time he’s backing me up in the pen, all them little pups nipping at our feet and rolling all over each other, and I keep saying I’m not interested and shouldn’t we head back, but there wasn’t even barely room to turn around in that pen. Finally he put his hand on my ass and, well, I got so worked up I hauled off and slapped him.”

“Sounds like he had it coming.”

“Right? But he just told me he likes a gal with spirit and to give him a call when I got tired of second best. So, whatever you think you’re going to get out of him, you’re gonna have to do by yourself, because I won’t have one thing to do with him.”

“Heavens,” Stella marveled. “Time was, you’d see that as the sort of comparison shopping it was practically your duty to take on.”

“Maybe I don’t care for men who are that full of themselves.”

“And maybe you do. Least, you always have in the past.” When Chrissy remained tight-lipped, Stella figured she’d come at it from another angle. “Don’t worry about Lloyd, we’ll figure out how to deal with him when we get to the station. Meantime, tell me a bit more about what’s so complicated about you and Ian. Most gals, if they’re enjoying whoever they’re spending their free evenings with, say things like it’s ‘serious’ or ‘heating up’ or ‘giving my lady parts a workout’ or some—”

“Stella! I wish you wouldn’t talk that way about him.”

“What way? I didn’t even say anything.” A thought occurred to her. “Oh, wait. Oh, no. I’m sorry, I’ve been… has he got, you know, issues?
Bedroom
issues?”

“He certainly does not!” Chrissy managed to sound even more outraged. “He’s just—he doesn’t—we have a fine time in, um, private. A perfectly…”

Suddenly she burst into tears. Up ahead, the Quail Valley sheriff’s cruiser pulled onto the highway at a vigorous clip and Stella had to pull a swift evasive move around a poultry truck to keep up. As soon as she whipped around traffic in the passing lane, she risked taking one hand off the wheel to give Chrissy a comforting pat. “Whatever has gotten into you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Honey, if he’s got, um, technical issues, why, there’s all kinds of things they can do these days. Why, you just call up the urologist and—”

“Everything works just the way God intended it, thank you, Stella.”

“All right, now, if he’s got some unusual proclivities that don’t match all the way up with what you’re wanting to do, they’ve got people to talk to about that, too,” Stella said gently.

Not long ago she’d added a certified sex therapist over in St. Louis to her list of professional contacts after the woman proved a valuable resource in helping Stella navigate the turbulent waters of one of her clients who needed help taming a beau who enjoyed a surprising scenario involving a rabbit pelt and a variety of ladies’ underpinnings and a few other items which Stella would just as soon forget.

“He ain’t like that, either! Now, Stella, I am begging you to please just stop asking me questions or I’m liable to open this door and jump out into traffic.”

Stella pressed her lips together and drove for several miles and worried about Chrissy in silence, an exercise that she’d practiced during the difficult two years she’d been estranged from Noelle before they worked everything out after Stella was nearly killed in a shootout. Keeping one’s mouth shut, for a mother, had to be on par with doing a dozen chin-ups with weights strapped to your ankles, or filing back taxes—nearly impossible, and increasingly painful the longer it went on.

Up ahead, she could make out Divinity’s silhouette in the back of the car, behind the safety screen; she had a bad case of bedhead in the back from being laid up in the hospital. Stella tried to distract herself by focusing on how she was going to explain this new turn of events to Dotty.

“I’m sorry,” Chrissy piped up softly when they took the exit for Quail Valley. “I didn’t mean to take my mess out on you.”

“I’m the one who ought to say I’m sorry for prying, honey, but I just hate to see you so miserable.”

“But that’s the problem!” Chrissy bubbled up tears again. “I’m not the least bit miserable at all!”

Stella figured that pointing out that she wasn’t making any sense wouldn’t help Chrissy, and besides, they were almost to the sheriff’s department, so she settled for some more soothing murmuring and clucking, another skill that belonged in every mother’s toolbox.

As they parked on the street a block from the department, taking advantage of a shady elm to keep Stella’s Jeep out of sight, Chrissy blew her nose and touched up her makeup in the visor mirror and generally got her emotions corralled. “So what’s the plan here?” she asked, all business.

“Well, to be honest, I was going to go in and talk to Taffy and Marty. I thought I’d give them Pearline Moss’s number.” Pearline was a Princeton-educated attorney from Independence, who’d managed to fall for a man who bilked her out of most of her investments before she noticed, which proved to Stella that there was smart and then there was
smart
, but Pearline owed her big-time since Stella had hunted down not just her savings but an apology delivered by her bruised and much-chastened ex-beau on his way to jail. “Pearline’ll be glad to take on Divinity’s case. But meanwhile, I thought I’d see if I could convince Marty to handle things here so Taffy and Tilly can come down and Dotty can have her wedding on schedule, now that Divinity’s out of the hospital.”