A Bad Day for Romance (9 page)

“Like you ain’t heard,” Foster said, with a little less scorn. He swallowed hard, closing his fist on Stella’s change, which he appeared to have forgotten as he gazed down at Chrissy, who was practically in Stella’s lap. “And, no, I wasn’t here, so you can’t, uh, get any details out of me. We ain’t talkin’, anyway. Sheriff’s got it all locked down, you can’t even go up in there.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want to do
that
,” Stella exclaimed. “It sounds positively dangerous. Why don’t you tell me where the murder happened exactly so we can avoid it. Wouldn’t want to stumble on any killers.”

“Ha,” Foster said. He handed over Stella’s crumpled bills with an air of disgust. “Nice try. It’s only because y’all don’t look like reporters I’m even letting you in at all.”

Stella put the Jeep in gear and started easing down the road, as Chrissy called out the window, “What do you mean we don’t look like reporters?”

“What did he mean?” she repeated, starting on the other half of her sandwich. “I could totally be a reporter.”

“Jeep’s running nice,” Stella said. She’d learned the hard way never to enter into a conversation where Chrissy’s skills and talents were under question. The girl had been raised by parents who doted on and adored her, but believed she would never amount to much more than some man’s pretty little wife, and that was precisely what she’d been until that man hit her hard enough to shake loose a helping of grit and intelligence that surprised everyone, most of all her. But to say she was sensitive to perceived slights was like saying that you could find a whiskery catfish or two in the depths of the Ozarks. “Potter sure did a nice job on the timing belts, wouldn’t you say?”

While Chrissy fumed, Stella followed the signs to the trailhead and parked next to a shiny red SUV. They got out of the Jeep and found themselves in the company of a trio of forty-something ladies at the back of the SUV. They were decked out in expensive-looking running tights and shiny jackets, with heart-rate monitors strapped to their wrists and little caps corralling their hair into tidy ponytails. They were taking off their muddy trail shoes, changing into sneakers neatly arranged on an old towel spread out in the back of the SUV. Pasted to the bumper was a sticker that read “Real Environmentalists Don’t Eat Meat” and another that sported what looked like a leafier-than-usual marijuana frond and the word “Kaleologist.”

“Y’all have a nice hike?” Stella asked pleasantly, lifting the hatch on the Jeep.

“I suppose,” a lean redhead said, looking at Stella’s outfit with what appeared to be barely concealed distaste. Not having anticipated a walk in the woods when she set out today, Stella was wearing jeans embellished with little embroidered martinis on the butt pockets, and a lime green sweater with a soft band of matching faux-fur trim on the hood. “Though we were trail running, not hiking.”

“Are you girls training for the Quail Valley Turkey Trot?” Stella herself had completed a half marathon over the summer, and had big plans for the Trot, where she would be competing in the over-fifty class, a distinction about which she had mixed feelings. On the one hand, she often wondered what the hell had happened to the intervening decades since she left her teens behind her; on the other, she intended to totally wipe the floor with the competition, few of whom had the advantage Stella enjoyed of starting a second career at the age of forty-seven that required working out with the sort of fervor usually reserved for Marine enlistees. After a disappointing finish in a recent half marathon, which wasn’t entirely unexpected since her regimen had been interrupted by a trip up to Wisconsin to clear her nephew’s good name after he accidentally got involved in gambling and dismembering and illegal doctoring, Stella had intensified her workouts and upped the mileage on her training runs.

“Why, yes, we are,” the redhead said, perking up and giving her another once-over, evidently pleased to discover a fellow runner in her midst. “I see you’ve got the Saucony Hurricane. How do you find the support?”

Stella pointed the toe of one of her pink-and-silver running shoes at the rutted road, turning it at an angle which best showcased her legs. “I just
love
it. I’m an overpronator, though, so I need the extra stability.”

The three ladies turned as one and regarded Chrissy’s footwear, a pair of high-heeled faux-suede booties with three-inch silver tassels dangling from the zippers. Chrissy put her hands on her hips and returned their gazes unblinkingly.

“And do you run also?” the skinniest of the ladies inquired, a bit smugly.

“Only if someone’s chasing me,” Chrissy said blandly, “which I must admit does tend to happen fairly often. Of course, sometimes I have to slow down to give the gentlemen a chance.”

The three ladies exchanged disapproving glances, and the ringleader fished her keys out of a clever little pocket stitched into her shiny leggings. “Well, I guess we’ll leave the trails to you,” she said.

“I was wondering,” Stella said quickly, in as ingratiating a tone as she could dredge up, “if you could point us in the right direction. We heard there was some police investigation here earlier and we certainly wouldn’t want to be accidentally stumbling into that.”

“Oh, as long as you stay clear of the upper-loop trail you’ll be fine,” the redhead said.

“It’s just past the Copper Falls campground,” the skinny one added. “They should mark it better. You come around the outcrop there and bam, all of a sudden there’s tape strung everywhere and the cops or investigators or whatever they are digging around in the dirt. They
yelled
at us, as if we had any idea we were about to step into the scene of the crime. Or accident, whichever. Personally, I think it was a hunting accident. I mean, tragedies like this one are inevitable when you put weapons in the hands of civilians.”

“My
lands
.” Chrissy yawned, fluttering her fingertips over her mouth in such a way that the middle one extended toward the unfortunate speaker. “Imagine, wanting to exercise your constitutional right to defend your own family. It’s just outrageous, ain’t it? Are you one of them vegans?”

The lady blinked rapidly. “I’m a lacto-ovo pescatarian, as a matter of fact. I am deeply concerned with the humane treatment of animals.”

“Mmm-hmm. And yet looky there, I believe that’s cowhide plastered all over those seats you got. But I get you. I saw this thing on TV, when they butcher cows, they use a special kill chute, so they don’t damage the hide. So what they do is they shoot ’em in the skull with a captive bolt pistol.” Chrissy put her fist up to Stella’s forehead. “Bam! Hit ’em with a couple hundred psi, basically turns their brains into cream cheese. Real humane-like.”

The three ladies gawked at her incredulously. “Nice purses y’all got there,” Chrissy added sweetly, nodding at the mound of oversize leather handbags in the trunk. “What do you suppose it takes to make one a those—about three-quarters of a little baby calf?”

“So sorry,” Stella said, beginning to jog in place as she grabbed Chrissy’s upper arm and squeezed, giving a silent thanks for the lever handgrip she’d been using to steel up her hand muscles, until the girl yelped. “We’ve got to be on our way. Have a wonderful afternoon and we’ll see you at the starting line!”

“Hey, hey, slow down,” Chrissy panted, as Stella hauled her up the path, but Stella ignored her until they were safely out of sight, and the sound of a fine German automobile burning rubber reached their ears.

“Do you have to aggravate
everyone
who can help us out on this case?” Stella demanded. Whatever was eating her assistant seemed to be getting worse, spreading from discussions of her love life out to her general comportment.

“Only the ones who make me want to reach down their throats and yank out their smug little Chardonnay-pickled livers.”

They didn’t talk the rest of the way. Chrissy kept up remarkably well, given that she was working with three-and-a-half-inch heels. But when they got to the Copper Falls campground, she left the trail and went to sit on one of the picnic tables, where she proceeded to remove her boots.

“Got a blister?” Stella asked, joining her, easing her ass carefully down to avoid splinters. From the picnic table, she had a fine view of the stony cliff that rose above the next turn in the trail, beyond which they’d been given to understand waited the murder scene.

Chrissy fixed her with a withering glance. “No, I do not. But since we are hoping to make a quiet approach up over that there hill, I’m fixing to be silent as a scout.”

“Barefoot?”

“Stella, when I was growing up, Mac and Pete took their shoes off on the last day of school and didn’t put ’em on again until September, ’cept for church. Mama wouldn’t let us girls do it because she said it wasn’t ladylike so we’d wear our shoes until we got to the end of the block and then we’d stow ’em behind a tree until it was time to come in at night. We always had a contest to see who could build up the biggest calluses. Mac was the judge and he’d poke at the bottom of our heels with his Buck knife until we cried. The minute you made a noise, you were eliminated.”

“You ever win?”

“What do you think? Every year after I turned eight.”

Stella smiled. “Okay, you’re tough. But it’s been a while since you and your brothers and sisters duked it out.” She pointed to Chrissy’s toes, which, far from being toughened and rimed, had benefited from a recent pedicure and an application of baby-blue glitter nail polish.

“Watch me, sister,” Chrissy growled.

And so it was that Stella found herself following behind Chrissy as the girl stalked soundlessly up over the hillock, along the ridge, between trees, and around rocks. Chrissy was swift and sure, snapping not so much as a single twig, while Stella labored to place her feet exactly where Chrissy had and still managed to sound to her own ears like a stampeding rhino. After they’d gone several hundred yards, Chrissy held up a hand and motioned for Stella to come up slow at the edge of the cliff, and they both squatted behind the cover of the feathery lower branches of a jack pine.

They were staring down at a clearing a dozen yards below that was loosely edged with flapping yellow tarp tied to tree branches. In the center knelt three figures in burgundy and silver Windbreakers emblazoned with the letters
FCS
—the Fayette Crime Scene unit’s logo.

“Holy shit,” Stella whispered, “that’s Daphne and her boys.”

“Hush,” Chrissy whispered back. “You can bitch about her later.”

It took a minute for Stella to get over the shock of seeing the woman who had nearly driven Goat to a sexual harassment claim due to her vigorous amorous pursuit of him during an investigation a year ago. Daphne Simmons, once the heir apparent of the current sheriff of Sawyer County, had been censured and disciplined and, Stella had assumed, demoted to a position where she could no longer attempt to rival her for Goat’s affections.

Parked at the edge of the clearing was the unit’s van. Its open sliding door revealed racks of specialized equipment that, in other circumstances, would have piqued in Stella a hearty professional curiosity. Instead, she focused on the three investigators, who appeared to be peering at a square-foot patch of land. While she watched, Daphne held out a thumb and forefinger and delicately picked something off the ground.

“What is that she’s got there?” Stella demanded.

Daphne held up the object with a triumphant “Aha!” and the three stood, dusting off their department-issue navy polyester slacks.

“Thanks,” the man Stella recognized as Harvey Hewson, one of the two technicians, said as he took the object from her and dusted it off on his sleeve.

“His spectacles,” Chrissy said, and indeed, Harvey settled them up on his nose. “Guess he dropped ’em.”

“Ha. Figures. Those three dumbasses couldn’t investigate their way out of a paper bag.” Stella knew this from having crossed paths with them when a personal interest brought her in contact with a case they had come down to Prosper to investigate. The truth was that Harvey and the other technician, Charlie Long, might have been competent if they didn’t take all of their direction from Daphne.

As if to illustrate this point, Daphne shook out a pack of Newports and sparked one up.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Charlie said, holding out his hand for a cigarette.

“This is national forest!” Harvey said in mock horror, as Daphne handed him one, too. “Smokey Bear’s gonna get your ass!”

This brought a round of hearty laughter as they smoked.

“Seriously, we ain’t ever gonna find any more arrows if we put this whole place through a sifter,” Charlie commented after a while. “Guy who favors a carbon broadhead bolt ain’t gonna leave them lying around. They probably run you fifteen bucks each, easy.”

Chrissy gasped.

“That ain’t the only thing we’re looking for,” Daphne snapped. “If that Flycock woman was dumb enough to try to hide her little girly bow under a pile of leaves, there’s no telling what all else she left lying around.”

Harvey chuckled. “I still can’t get over that bow. Got to hand it to those folks at BowTech, coming up with a pink finish! I ought to buy one for my wife!”

“And you’re sure she couldn’t have shot Molder?” Daphne continued.

“With that little recurve peashooter she put her prints all over?” Charlie scoffed. “That thing don’t have enough power to shoot through a well-done steak, much less a big guy like Molder. Why, bow like that ain’t suited for much more’n a Camp Fire girl.”

“Hey!” Chrissy exclaimed. Stella knew well that her assistant had been a Camp Fire girl herself; Chrissy had taught the other girls in her troop to trap and skin a squirrel during one memorable campout when the supervision provided by the dads had been less than scrupulous. The troop had disbanded shortly after, much to Chrissy’s lingering dismay.

“When are they gonna let that Flycock girl go, anyway?” Charlie asked.

“Just because she didn’t kill him with the bow we already found don’t mean she didn’t shoot him with a
different
one,” Daphne said. “If she also brought the crossbow, and left her fingerprints all over it, and she hid it better than the first, well, that would wrap it all up, wouldn’t it?”