“I had to change. I wasn’t about to come out here in my
nice
clothes.”
Priss gave Stella’s outfit a flick of examination and lifted her nose in the air—a nose that, Stella noticed in the dim light cast by a buggy porch lamp, had had the bump carved out of it. Porters all had ungainly noses; Priss was the first one who could afford to do anything about it, as far as Stella knew. She climbed the porch steps and took a better look, but in the poor light, she couldn’t make out the rest of Priss’s features to see if she’d bought herself any other alterations and enhancements.
“Is that your, ah,
professional
attire?”
Stella looked down at the hot pink fleece jacket she’d layered over a T-Bones sweatshirt and a pair of flannel-lined jeans and her fake-fur-topped snow boots. The jacket was sprinkled here and there with little sparkly crystals and featured a rhinestone-studded zipper. It had been a birthday gift from her friend Dotty Edwards, who had purchased it from QVC and owned one herself, in lime green. Dotty bought everything from drain uncloggers to fine faux jewelry to handcrafted teddy bears with little knitted sweaters from QVC, and she often got so swept up in the online-shopping rush that she couldn’t stop herself from buying twos and threes of things—Stella was frequently the lucky recipient of the excess.
“This’ll do, I guess,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Priss’s own cold-weather gear, which included a pair of shiny black boots with high pointy heels, and a shimmery black cape sort of affair that swung around dramatically but left long swatches of Priss’s forearms exposed. “Depending on what you want to hire me for. Speaking of which, if you have in mind to get right down to business, which I guess you must, seein’ as you’ve been waiting for me out in weather like this, how about if you show me a little good faith cash.”
Up-front payment was something Stella rarely insisted on. In fact, finances were generally among the last things she and a client talked about, well after the litany of misdeeds and mishandling and mistreatment that brought them to Stella in the first place, and generally after a soothing cup of hot chocolate or a resolve-firming jolt of Johnnie Walker Black or a steadying can of ice-cold Fresca, whatever the client seemed to require. Sometimes it was several meetings before payment came up at all.
But Priss was pissing Stella off. Part of the reason was obvious—the woman had left town at the age when most other local gals were trying to decide whether to pop out their first baby before or after racking up a Prosper High School diploma. She’d headed for the city, where rumor was she’d earned not just an undergraduate degree but also a business school diploma, which showed the kind of gumption Stella could respect—but then she somehow landed a job that rained money down on her but didn’t leave her time to come back and visit any of the local folks, even the few who’d managed to tolerate her when she still lived in Prosper. And that kind of thing—turning your back on the ones who brought you up—Stella didn’t cotton to that one bit.
Still, an unpleasant thought lurked around the edges of Stella’s mind, and she sighed and dragged it into focus: Priss’s life path—all but the frosty, ungrateful bitch part—was uncomfortably close to the dream Stella had carried around for Noelle for many years until she finally got it through her head that her daughter had her own ideas about her future. Specifically, Noelle did not wish to be a doctor or a teacher or a scientist—she dreamed, since the age of five, about becoming a beautician, and now that she had become a darn good one, the girl had the sort of career satisfaction that Stella guessed everyone was entitled to.
Maybe, she admitted to herself, she ought not judge Priss quite so quickly for her own ambitions and decisions.
“Well, I guess you can describe the job first,” she said, softening.
“I’ll do better than that—I’ll show you,” Priss said, going down the steps in her high heels with surprising agility, leaving neat little footprints in the dusting of snow that had accumulated on the ground. She practically sprinted across the drive, the loose gravel not even slowing her down, and aimed a key ring at her car. It beeped and the trunk popped and Stella caught up just in time for the expensive German-engineered mechanism to glide soundlessly open, the tasteful interior lighting revealing one sorry-looking dead man who, judging by his color, had been departed from the living long enough to get used to the idea.
Chapter Four
“There you have it,” Priss said, hand on a hip in the manner of a game show hostess, gesturing at the unfortunate fellow with a flourish. “I think it’s time we expedite his disposal, don’t you agree?”
“Holy fuck,” Stella breathed. “He’s
dead.
”
Priss shot her a look of surprise. “Well, yes, obviously. That’s why I called you.” She gave the trunk lid a little shove, and it closed as easily as it opened, sealing its ghastly cargo inside. Stella couldn’t say she wasn’t grateful not to have to look at the dead guy—his lips had pulled back from his teeth in a sort of leer that, combined with his glassy open eyes, gave him the effect of an especially bold voyeur.
“Me? What do I want with
your
dead guy?”
Priss turned and started toward the house. “Stella, I realize that you usually like to do the job beginning to finish, but I just got it started for you. Don’t worry, I’ll pay your full rate, but all I really need from you is the, ah … cleanup.”
“Hold on a minute,” Stella said to Priss’s retreating backside. Her heart was going at a solid clip. She’d seen a variety of dead guys, starting with her own husband, four years ago. Ollie hadn’t been very pretty with the side of his skull cracked open with his own wrench, but then again, he hadn’t been a whole lot to look at on a good day, and the expression he gave her before slumping to the floor was one of mildly disappointed surprise, as though Stella had served him tuna mac twice in one week.
Besides Ollie, there had been that crew of Kansas City mobsters down at the lake last summer. They were a lot more pissed-off looking about being killed—and considerably bloodier—than Ollie. And then there were the mummified remains of Brenda Cassell that she’d accidentally gotten wrapped up with—not literally, of course—but Stella had never really got a clear view of that body before getting hired to figure out who did it.
The man in Priss’s trunk was different from the rest of the bodies on Stella’s list in one key way: He was decidedly not fresh. His odor confirmed it, if his unflattering coloring left any doubt. And to Stella’s surprise, that made a considerable difference. She felt her tummy gurgle and surge in horror and realized she was close to losing the pleasantly digesting remains of the corned beef and Irish soda bread.
Priss turned just in time to see Stella lurch across the gravel drive to a row of winter-deadened lilacs that were in need of a good pruning. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Stella, how are you going to dispose of him if you can’t even stand to look at him?”
* * *
Stella’s yakking did have
one happy side effect, which was to get her invited inside the house, out of the cold.
“But you
must
be quiet,” Priss cautioned, holding a manicured finger to her lips as she opened the front door. “Liman is asleep—and he is ignorant of what has transpired.”
Liman’s ignorance was legendary, but Stella didn’t bother to point that out. There was no way she was going to take the job Priss was offering her, but she also was well aware of why the gal had come to her rather than seeking out some other thuggery expert, and the situation called for a little finesse.
Stella didn’t
kill
husbands or boyfriends for her clients. The only deaths she was responsible for were of the self-defense variety—and Stella had no problem including Ollie’s demise in that category, since thirty years of getting smacked around surely justified some defensive maneuvers on her part, and Stella had long ago forgiven herself for unleashing them all in one three-second torrent.
She wasn’t a killer for hire, but—understandably, since rumors of mayhem and mercilessness were part of her stock-in-trade—she didn’t dispel that perception either. There had been half a dozen occasions when her case strategy had included intimidating and threatening a wrong-doing man right out of town—even out of state—with a clear understanding that return visits and, in fact, any sort of contact at all were actively discouraged. These men were missing, though they weren’t missed enough for anyone to go filing reports or hire detectives to find out what parts they’d lit out for, and if folks presumed them dead, why, who was Stella to argue?
But that didn’t mean that Stella had any intention of getting started in the murder business. Not even in the abetting of it, which getting rid of Priss’s dead body would surely be.
“I’ll come in and get warm,” she said, “and then I’m going to turn around and head for home. You can count on me to keep my mouth shut, but that problem you got there, you started it and I’m afraid you’re going to have to be the one to finish it.”
“Oh, why don’t you wait until we’ve had a chance to discuss things further, before you make a final decision on that,” Priss murmured in a low voice. She tiptoed down the hall and peered into a darkened room, listened for a moment, then gently closed the door. When she came back, she pointed to a chair in front of the fireplace, which looked as though it hadn’t been used in a long while, if the
Hustler
and
Off-Road
magazines stacked in sloppy piles on the hearth were any indication. “I’d offer you a drink, but my brother isn’t exactly a connoisseur of spirits. I believe all he has is Budweiser. In
cans
.”
Stella considered telling Priss that she’d downed plenty of Bud in her day and never found it particularly lacking, but then she figured that a bolt of Johnnie Walker Black in her own nice clean kitchen, even if the chances were remote that any of her guests would still be up and ready to party with her, was worth holding out for.
The room, even without a fire, was warm as toast, and Stella figured Priss had dialed up the heat when she arrived at her brother’s place. She peeled off her mittens and the fuzzy pink and silver scarf her sister Gracellen had sent for Christmas and unzipped the sparkly zipper of her jacket with care. She took the seat she was offered, a squishy-cushioned old upholstered job that smelled faintly of mold. Dust puffed out when she sat, making her frown in distaste.
“Really, I’m warmer than I thought I was,” she said. “Why don’t I just give you a couple of pointers for that little cleanup job and I’ll be on my way. Professional courtesy, the least I can do.”
“Oh, Stella,” Priss said, shaking her head in disappointment. “I’m so sorry to have to do this. Really, I hadn’t wanted things to go in this direction. But you don’t leave me any choice.”
She reached for a manila envelope that Stella hadn’t noticed sitting on the dusty coffee table. She reached inside and drew out a thin stack of photographs and considered them briefly, her lips pursed in disapproval, before shaking her head and handing them over.
They were black-and-white photographs, a bit grainy and blurry. Stella stared at the first one for a few moments before she realized that the looming figure in the picture, standing over a kneeling young man cowering on what appeared to be a dirt floor, was none other than herself—and that the object she was brandishing in what could only be called a threatening manner was a twenty-four-inch Stock Shock cattle prod—and that the young man in question was Ferg Rohossen, with his wrists trussed expertly and tied off with a series of neat bowline knots that Stella had perfected during a slow day in the shop last spring, practicing with a package of Wrights Hem Tape and a 1970s-era Boy Scout knot-tying pamphlet she’d bought for a nickel at a garage sale.
She flipped through the stack of photos. There were three pictures in all, taken moments apart, the final one clearly the pièce de résistance, showing a tearful, terrified, pleading Ferg on his knees wearing an expression of powerful entreaty as Stella hefted a sixteen-ounce claw hammer in the air.
Ferg hadn’t been much of a fighter, Stella recalled as the rest of her brain scrambled to figure the angle of the photographer and remembered that, yes, there
was
in fact a dusty little casement window in that canning shed on the old Haversham Ranch. But no one had followed her that day—Stella made sure of it. She
always
made sure. And when she departed the shed, leaving a chastened and tearstained and changed young man behind to reflect on the many promises he’d made, there was no sign that anyone had been peeping.
But she had obviously been wrong.
“Who took these?” she demanded.
“Well, now, in Complex Litigation class at business school, I learned all about a concept called trade secrets,” Priss said acidly. “This would be one of those situations where trade secrets apply.”
Stella nodded slowly, her perception of Priss undergoing a real-time revision. It appeared that Priss had found and hired the kind of manpower whose stalking skills rivaled Stella’s own. Which implied that Priss had contacts in some seriously unlawful circles. Which furthermore suggested that her own dealings skirted the aboveboard variety.
The way Stella understood things from the very cursory attention she paid to the business news, there were ample opportunities for crooks in corporate America—and if Priss had taken her career in that direction, it would certainly explain the Mercedes and the fancy clothes and all that gold on her wrists and the olive-sized diamonds in her ears.
None of this, however, explained what Priss was doing hiring people to build up a collection of incriminating evidence on
her.
And Stella didn’t like to be threatened. While being in the presence of a sharp and calculating criminal mind such as Priss’s might once have shaken her to the very core, now that she herself was a deliberate flouter of the law, Priss Porter didn’t scare her so much as make her very, very irritated.
“Tell me, Priss,” she said calmly, handing the photos back. “Do you think my butt looks big in them pictures?”