She’d been all those things and more, Stella guessed, if only she’d been brave enough to let them out of the box. Maybe the younger gals got it right. Chrissy never seemed to waste time worrying what the rest of the world thought of her choices, of her looks, of her desires and ambitions. And Noelle—well, she’d found the fortitude to pursue at least one dream, and she had a great job to prove it. And now she had the courage to pursue another. However this whole new romance of hers worked out, Stella had to admire her for that.
“Hey, anyone home?” Chrissy prompted, waving a french fry in front of Stella. “You were saying, how we got one dead man hooker?”
“And a missing madam—”
“Maybe it ain’t called a madam, with men,” Chrissy pointed out. “Come to think of it, maybe she’d be the pimp, d’you think? A woman pimp? Kind of an equal rights thing.”
“Okay, we got a missing pimp and her missing brother. Unfortunately, we now know Priss likes taking picture evidence of her employees and their clients so she can blackmail them.”
“We ought to go see that Turk,” Chrissy said.
“You mean to find out who else they were blackmailing?”
“Yeah, sure, that and … well.”
“Well, what?”
“Well—just—what do you think it was that he could do, in the lovin’ department, that was so special? I mean you got to figure if he was the only one out of all them guys who could do it—”
“Chrissy, we are
not
spending company time figuring out how to do some dirty porno act!”
Chrissy pouted. “You don’t need to get all ugly about it. How’s it dirty, if two folks are having a nice time? Or even if one person’s having a nice time and the other person don’t much mind, especially if they’re getting paid decent?”
“It’s—what it is—you can’t—” Stella left off sputtering, and then realized she didn’t have a leg to stand on. Chrissy was parroting her own philosophy, more or less.
In fact, Stella realized, the philosophy she’d actually evolved without giving it a whole lot of thought was that things she liked to do or hoped to do or was even a little curious about were, by definition, healthy and natural and normal. By comparison, if she were truly honest with herself, the things other people did, that didn’t light a fire for her, that she
didn’t
hope to do—those things she considered just plain
wrong.
But that didn’t seem terribly fair.
And then there was the complicated situation with Noelle. Plenty of folks in Prosper still felt that men getting it on with men, or women with women, was a sin on a par with all the deadly ones, that you had to turn in your Christian card and hang your head in shame and maybe rot in jail if you happened to want to spend your zestful lovin’ hours with someone whose chromosomes lined up more or less with your own.
And that did not strike Stella as one bit right.
“I’m sorry,” she said, chastened. “I don’t mean to judge what folks are getting up to. Only if I do find the judge’s tapes, I’m holding on to them.”
“’Cause they’re
useful,
” Chrissy clarified. “Not because they’re dirty.”
“Yes. Okay. Agreed. Now can we get back to the crime solving?”
“Be my guest. I ain’t stoppin’ you.”
A squawking issued from her purse, and Stella quickly wiped her fingers on a wad of paper towels and squinted at the display.
“Aw, shit. It’s Goat.”
“Well, answer it!”
“I can’t. He told me to stay in town.”
“So, he doesn’t need to know where we are.”
“But what if he, you know, wants me to come over right away or something—”
“Then you tell him you’re giving your legs a hurry-up shave and you’ll be there quick as you can. Damn it, Stella, if you don’t answer that thing, I will!”
Before Stella could decide, Chrissy snatched the phone away from her and flipped it open.
“Stella Hardesty’s phone,” she chirped. “Chrissy speaking. May I help you?”
Stella could hear Goat’s voice from three feet away, and he didn’t sound happy. She strained to make out what he was saying, but Chrissy leaned away from her and batted at her with her free hand. “Mmmm,” she said. “I see … uh-huh … oh my goodness, I’d surely love to, but the gal wouldn’t let her take the phone in the fitting room.… Oh, down here at, uh, Sears, actually. We’re over at the Casey one. And it’s like a new security thing?… Yeah, cell phones and, um, cameras.”
Stella rolled her eyes furiously and grabbed at the phone, but Chrissy fended her off. “I surely will, Sheriff. It’ll probably only be forty-five minutes or so—”
Goat’s voice rose in tone and Chrissy held the phone away from her ear, sighing. “Well, sure, but you shoulda seen the stack of garters and thongs and shit she took in there. It’s gonna be a while, I’m telling you. Uh-huh. Uh-huh … sure.”
She snapped the phone shut, shaking her head slowly.
“That was the stupidest lie I ever heard you tell,” Stella said. “No
phones
in the
dressing room
? Couldn’t you have said I was, I don’t know, getting a massage or something?”
Chrissy jumped up impatiently. “Come on, you can yell at me on the way home. We need to haul ass if you’re going to pull this off. Is it like a crime or something to leave town when you’re a suspect?”
“Why, what did he say?”
“Only that you better be in his office in half an hour. Want me to drive?”
The phone rang again and Stella put it to her ear with an exaggerated sigh while she hustled out of the restaurant, practically jogging to keep up with Chrissy.
“Mama, you don’t care if I have a dinner party here tonight, do you?” Noelle’s breathless voice was full of excitement.
“You want to do
what
?”
“Because Joy turned out so cute, just wait until you see, Mama. She’s like, maybe, Natalie Portman if she was blond. We’re going to invite some of the girls from Sidewinders. And you can come, too. And you can bring the sheriff if you want to.”
“Sugar, you know you can’t cook!”
Noelle had actually been kicked out of home ec for setting fire to the test kitchen years earlier when she was trying to take a shortcut on a frittata. Stella didn’t bother adding that the sheriff wasn’t likely to feel festive after the day he’d had.
“I can make cookies,” Noelle said defensively.
“That ain’t makin’ cookies, when you pry off a lump of that shrink-wrap dough and cook it,” Stella said. “That’s just fakin’.”
“Well, I saw you got some frozen chili in the freezer. How about I thaw that out and maybe you can fix some corn bread?”
“You want me to—Noelle, honey, I am on my way to see the
sheriff,
who is likely to put my ass in a
jail
cell for leaving town when he’s got all manner of unsolved criminal
behavior
on his hands.”
“You’ll sort that out. He’s into you, Mama. Just flash him your tits or something. Oh, and can you do that thing with the cream cheese and the chili sauce, you know that you serve with the Ritz crackers? That would be great. Gotta go—we’re doing green tea facials and I’m dripping all over the counter.”
Stella slipped the phone in the pocket of her new silver jacket as they approached the car. The restaurant parking lot glinted with snow crystals in a sliver of afternoon sun.
“What’d you just agree to do?” Chrissy asked as Stella slammed her door a little harder than necessary.
“Looks like I’m fixing dinner for a bunch of Noelle’s new friends. Want to come?”
“I’d love to, ’cept if I don’t get home, Mama’s likely to let Tucker go sledding with the bigger boys and that’s no kind of good idea. Did it occur to you to just tell her no?”
“It occurred to me,” Stella said darkly, “but heaven forbid I should get in the way of true love.”
Chapter Twenty
Goat slammed something down on the desk in front of Stella, making her jump. She was sitting in the uncomfortable molded plastic chair Goat had dragged in from what used to be the dining area of the Hardee’s that now housed the Prosper sheriff’s offices. The old dining room had been carpeted, the booths replaced with a reception desk that backed up to where the order counter used to be, and a few vinyl-upholstered chairs were arranged in a sort of waiting area. A handful of offices and a cramped conference room had been carved out of the remainder of the old restaurant. The deep fryers and refrigerators and the rest of the equipment had been sold off, the proceeds funding a new photocopier and phone system.
Goat kept his broad hand flat on whatever he’d thunked down, leaning across the desk and glowering. He covered the distance between them with no effort at all, his long arms stretching his polyester shirt tight against his broad shoulders.
“You left town,” he growled, “after I ordered you not to.”
Stella couldn’t help a shivery zip skipping up her skin even as she bristled at his words. She didn’t much figure any man had the right to order her to do anything—she’d had several lifetimes’ worth of that nonsense during her marriage—but when Goat said things like that, they somehow took on a deliciously perverse challenge. Stella kept her chin up and stared Goat right in his baby blue eyes until he finally leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on the desk. She glanced down: in front of her was a lavender ceramic dish shaped like half an egg, and it was full of jelly beans.
“Oh, is this that tropical mix?” she said, stirring it with a finger, looking for the pineapple ones.
“I don’t know what the hell it is. It’s Irene’s.”
“Bet she don’t know you’re in here threatening me with it.”
“I
confiscated
it because she was giving
candy
to the
Girl Scouts,
what come around selling cookies,” Goat growled. “That just encourages them to come back.”
“Wow, good thing you nipped
that
in the bud,” Stella said. “I mean, coming around here in their little knee socks and sashes? The nerve!”
Goat’s face, which even in the middle of one of the coldest Marches on record retained the ghost of a tan from his frequent trips to the lake, where he paddled around in his kayak or his canoe, depending on his mood, darkened a shade. “Let me tell you about my morning, Stella.”
“Why don’t you. Seein’ as you interrupted my shopping and all.”
“Oh, like I believed that whole yarn of Chrissy’s. That gal of yours can’t lie for shit.”
“How was your morning, Sheriff?” Stella asked as sweetly as she could manage.
“Well, let’s see. When I got here at seven, I had an e-mail from the crime scene folks up in Fayette. One of those fellas stayed up way past his bedtime last night working on Priss Porter’s car. Care to guess what-all they found?”
“Open containers of beer? Stolen street signs?”
“
Blood,
Stella. I don’t know why this is all so damn funny to you. There was a significant amount of blood trace all over the trunk. They’re sending it off for DNA now.”
“Isn’t that, like, confidential information?” Stella said. “I’m pretty sure the handbook says you’re not supposed to share that kind of stuff with regular citizens like me.”
“Damn it, Stella!” Goat smacked his hand down on the edge of his desk, causing the ceramic dish to skitter close to the edge. Stella hastily pushed it back before it could tip to the floor. “Why do you think I have you in here? Don’t you think I might be cutting a corner or two that I don’t have any business cutting? You’re here so you can tell me exactly what the fuck you were doing there the other night.”
“I didn’t—”
“There’s enough blood in there that it’s a distinct possibility whoever it belongs to’s dead, especially as live folks don’t generally make a habit of lying down in automobile trunks without puttin’ up a fuss. I want you to tell me everything you know about Priss Porter and Liman Porter and whoever they stashed in that trunk, because I’ll tell you right now that if I don’t come up with something quick, Detective Simmons and her merry fucking band of chore boys are going to be camping out in my office while I fetch her coffee, and that is something I
know
neither one of us wants.”
He was right about that, at least. One of the problems with being the smallest outpost of the county seat was that Goat was at the mercy of Sheriff Dimmit Stanislas and his staff. Stella was willing to bet that Detective Simmons had put a lot of effort into helping Sheriff Stanislas forget all about her recent blazing show of incompetence and that she’d relish an opportunity to come down and show off, even if she hadn’t been sweet on Goat. All in all, Stella would be pleased as punch for her to stay up in her end of the county and leave Prosper alone.
“Do you want to come to dinner tonight?” she blurted. “It’s, ah … a party. I guess. Kind of.”
Goat stared. He looked like he was trying out half a dozen different responses before he sighed and shook his head slowly. “You are about half a fly dick away from me throwing you in the dumpster until you decide to play by the same rules as everyone else, Stella Hardesty.”
The “dumpster” was Prosper’s single holding cell, for anyone unfortunate enough to need to be locked up for any matter of time before being hauled up to Fayette to be processed at the county jail. It wasn’t really a dumpster, but it was built on the site of the walled enclosure that held the trash containers during the Hardee’s days. It had been finished off with a concrete floor and a fourth wall and a roof with a skylight, but the baseboard heaters didn’t work very well, and it still smelled faintly of rotting garbage.
“You wouldn’t,” Stella guessed, crossing her fingers under the overhanging edge of the desk.
“Oh, I would. You might think, just because you’ve got me worked up a time or two, that you have some sort of special privileges around here. But you’d be wrong, Stella Hardesty. The law comes first. A crime’s a crime, no matter how pretty a package you tie it up in, and way I see it, you refusing to cooperate on this thing is capital-
O
obstruction, and that puts you on the other side from me, any way you slice it.”
Stella kept her features carefully fixed in a neutral expression even while, on the insides, her heart felt like it was melting into a runny mess.