Priss made a funny sound, a sharp sucking-in of breath that Stella supposed meant she was reaching the end of her tight-assed fancy-talking rope. Oh, well. Not her problem.
“These are the only printed copies,” Priss said, tucking the photos back in the envelope. “But if you are considering some sort of retribution, I’ll have you know that there is a digital copy on a flash drive in a secure location which, I assure you, you will not find. If any misfortune befalls me tonight, a series of events will be put into play that you will very much regret. Authorities will be notified. Justice will be served. Perpetrators will be punished.”
“Oh, cut the drama, Priss,” Stella snapped. “You think I’m going to kill you over a few amateur photos? I told you I’m not in the murder business.”
“And I told
you
my name is
Priscilla,
” she retorted, her voice going a little shrill. “Nobody calls me Priss anymore.”
“Now, that’s where you’re wrong,” Stella said, standing and slipping her fuzzy sparkly jacket back on. “Just about everybody still calls you Priss around here. That is, whenever anybody remembers to talk about you at all, which isn’t very often because, to tell you the truth, under all that expensive makeup and clothes and shit, you just really aren’t all that memorable.”
“I can make serious trouble for you,” Priss said, standing up herself and glaring at Stella. With her high-heeled boots on, she was a good three inches taller, and Stella had to tip her head back to return the poisonous gaze, but she took her time zipping up her jacket and slipping on her mittens.
“And I guess
I
could make trouble for
you,
” she said. “Tell you what, though, why don’t we just put this whole evening behind us. You drive on back up to Kansas City and find you some other sucker to clean up after your mess, and we’ll just pretend we’ve been sitting here exchanging casserole recipes.”
“I’m giving you one last chance, Stella Hardesty,” Priss hissed as Stella walked toward the door.
“Give Liman my regards.”
Only when the door slammed behind her did her heart start pounding like it wanted to bust right out of her chest. She sprinted for the Jeep and peeled out, wondering if she’d finally made the mistake that would land her in jail.
Chapter Five
By the time she pulled up Mindy’s sloping drive, Stella’s panic had simmered down to nail-spitting irritation. How the hell had Priss come across those photos? There were a fair number of people who could tick off a list of illegal things that Stella had done, but they were all clients, with ample reason for keeping the information to themselves.
Priss’s threats of exposure hit closer to home than she could possibly know, since the front line in dealing with a situation like the one the photos seemed to reveal would be the sheriff, and he had let her slide several times when suspicions had pointed her way. Goat knew more than Stella wished he did, since he had on more than one occasion stumbled into the aftermath of a case that didn’t wrap itself up neatly, though he had yet to put the pieces together and come up with a picture of Stella that he couldn’t live with. That was a delicate balance right there, Stella knew, and she was well aware that she was playing with fire, and that one unfortunate coincidence or not-easily-dismissed lead too many might push the sheriff too far, and he would have no choice but to end their budding romance and turn her over to the justice machine, presumably to fry.
A smart woman would probably do everything in her power to keep away from the sheriff. She certainly wouldn’t spend her days trying to figure out how to get in his pants. She wouldn’t invite him for dinner or drive past his office on her way home from the sewing shop just for a chance of a glimpse of his fine lanky form striding across the parking lot.
But ever since Stella had got her first gander of Goat’s glinting blue eyes and his smooth bald head and his work-rough hands, she’d been a goner. Reasonable wasn’t a consideration when you had it this bad, and the fire between them didn’t show any signs of settling down. So Stella had to find a way to make sure the sheriff never saw the pictures. Which meant she had to figure out how to get the flash drive from Priss.
Okay. She’d already ruled out option number one, which was to hire on as Priss’s body-disposal service.
Option two: Find something to hold over her. Something threatening enough that Priss would be willing to trade to make it go away.
Well, that body in the trunk might make a fine start. If Stella could connect it definitively with Priss, she’d have the kind of threat that might get things moving in the right direction.
Only, something told her it might not be as simple as it appeared on first blush.
Stella thought back to the Porter siblings’ school days and remembered Priss winning every spelling bee, every geography challenge, every speech contest the Prosper school system put on. Her methods had been simple: a ruthless evaluation of the competition followed by its decimation based on whatever weaknesses Priss could discover. Stella had been a young mother at the time, and she read about Priss’s accomplishments in the
Prosper Standard
and heard about them in the grocery line and, at first, felt a sort of regional pride that one of their own had made good, and even hoped that Noelle might someday look at Priss as a sort of role model—until she began to hear the
other
rumors.
When Priss was competing for a space on the Mathletes team, Minnie Seevers mysteriously fell in a ditch the afternoon of tryouts and missed a chance to vie for the spot that went to Priss.
When the master list of final-round words went missing before the school spelling bee, no one believed the innocent expression on Priss’s face. And when the Kiwanis offered a scholarship to the student voted most civic minded, Priss forced her way onto every highway cleanup, nursing home visit, hospital caroling, and food drive until even the Kiwanis ceded defeat and handed over the scholarship check.
So was it really such a surprise that Priss had found a way to set herself up with a backup plan that featured Prosper’s one and only career criminal?
And, Stella had to ask herself as she walked through the light snow that had begun to fall, up the drive to Mindy’s front door, was it really so different from the contingency plans that she herself had set up for circumstances such as these?
Before she had a chance to give herself an answer, Mindy came walking around the side of the house in rubber boots and insulated overalls, a hand raised in greeting. She was a sturdy, no-nonsense woman in her thirties, and she made a nice living for herself raising and selling alpacas to clients all over the Midwest as well as hiring herself out for shearing and grooming. Mindy’s alpacas routinely won all manner of competitions, their bloodline having been proudly overseen by Mindy’s mother and grandmother before their retirement. Alpaca tending, it seemed, ran only in the matriarchal line of the family; Mindy’s younger brothers were pursuing more conventional careers in the construction and hell-raising businesses.
“Howdy, Stella. Your evening go all right?”
Mindy knew better than to pry into the particulars of Stella’s business, but she was a well-raised kind of girl and couldn’t help making a polite inquiry.
“Not sure yet,” Stella said, following Mindy back toward the pens, where the bleating sounds of excited alpacas let her know their unexpected outing had come to an orderly end. “This one might have to simmer for a while. Tell you what, you mind if I get in there with them and work on my alibi?”
“Not a bit,” Mindy said, and then she sat on the fence and chatted with Stella about her worthless brothers and the latest scrapes they’d managed to get into while Stella smeared alpaca shit on her clothes and endured the friendly scrutiny of a dozen gentle, curious creatures, one of which managed to eat a couple of bites of her jacket before Mindy intervened.
* * *
Stella was back in her
driveway twenty minutes later. Her damn garage door was seriously in need of a service call. It wouldn’t go up and down at all. For a few seconds, Stella chided herself for letting Priss’s big payoff slip through her fingers
. It was tainted money,
she tried reminding herself, but she couldn’t avoid the feeling that tainted money would spend just as well as any other sort.
As she got out of the Jeep, however, she noticed something she had missed in the swirling drifts of crystalline snow—the sheriff’s truck was still parked under the sugar maple at the edge of her front yard.
Her heart sped up in her chest as she let herself in the front door. In the kitchen, the dishes were lined up tidily in the drying rack, and dish towels were draped over the oven handles to dry. Sitting at the head of her kitchen table, flipping through an old issue of
Quiltmaker,
was Goat.
“Hey, Dusty, ’bout time you got those alpacas put up. How far did they get this time, anyway?”
Was she imagining things or was there a devilish glint in Goat’s eye?
“Most of ’em just wandered into the back pasture, but a couple got through the fence and ended up over across the road on Monroe’s land,” she said carefully. “We had a heck of a time with those two. Took me and Mindy nearly an hour to wrangle them back in the pen.”
Stella lifted her leg to point out the streaks of mud and alpaca excrement on her jeans. She felt a little silly about planting that particular evidence—it wasn’t exactly mood-setting—but careful planning like this was what separated amateurs from professionals.
Goat started to get up out of his chair, but then his nose twitched like a rabbit’s and he glanced up and down Stella’s clothes. “That’s not just mud on your duds, is it.”
“’Fraid not. We had to get in the pens with them. You know how it is, get an alpaca riled up, and it takes a while to settle them again.”
“I didn’t realize that. It, uh, does seem kind of funny that Mindy called on you in particular. You know what I mean? She could have called the Monroes—”
“They’re over to Sikeston visiting Cressa’s folks.”
“Or the Spitzers, they’re alpaca people. Seems like they might be a little better at the wranglin’, no offense. I’m just surprised Mindy would ask such a favor, seeing as you had company and all.”
Stella examined Goat carefully for subtext. Was he suspicious? Was he accusing her of making up a bogus outing, perhaps?
“It’s just that … well, I showed alpaca, in Four-H.” Blatant lie. “Got ribbons, did okay in the pee-wee division. I know how they handle, you know? It takes a special touch.”
“Yeah?” Goat advanced slowly, causing a shiver to launch itself right around the base of Stella’s spine and slither and quiver its way upward. “What kind of special touch?”
He came to a halt when he was mere inches away, tilting his head down so he could regard her closely with those inky blue eyes. Stella sighed in anticipation and considered not answering at all, but Goat’s mouth tipped up at the corners and his hands came to rest on the small of her back, drawing her almost imperceptibly closer.
“They, uh, require … reassurance,” she whispered.
“Mmm?”
“They are a little bit insecure.” Stella swallowed hard. “They need a firm hand. Someone to take ch-charge…”
Damn, her teeth were actually chattering in her head. Like she was planted over a hole cut in a frozen pond and ice fishing, instead of standing in her own kitchen, hoping this breathtaking man would kiss her.
You could kiss him first,
an eager little voice suggested from somewhere deep in her mind.
Ain’t any kind of law against that.
But there was something extra-delicious about having the man you’ve dreamed of and lusted after for years hovering centimeters away, so that you could practically count his long fringy eyelashes, could feel the warmth of his skin through the charged air against yours. Something exquisitely delightful about the waiting. Stella wondered if she could be happy if time stopped right now, if she spent all of eternity suspended in the magical span of seconds before Goat’s wide sexy mouth descended on hers and stirred up her insides with one of his soul-searing kisses.
She decided it wasn’t a bad idea.
Except for the alpaca odor.
“If … if you’ll excuse me,” she said breathily, “I think I’ll take a very very fast little shower. I need to, um, freshen up.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Goat rumbled in reply before reluctantly releasing her.
Stella hightailed it to her bathroom and turned the shower on full blast. She dialed it extra hot, then changed her mind when she realized her body was already blazing, having got itself convinced it was headed for eight kinds of paradise. She stripped off her dirty clothes and got in, lowering the temperature to lukewarm and directing the spray carefully away from her hair—no time for a blow-dry now—and lathered up with her favorite Avon Naturals Cucumber Melon shower gel.
When she was finished with her shower, Stella patted herself all over with a clean towel and smoothed on body lotion. She paused, wondering if she should slip into her one slinky nightgown, a gift she bought herself on her birthday this year when she decided to try to get laid before she turned fifty-one. Instead she slipped on a clean pair of pajama pants—pale green, with a coordinated floral-print T-shirt. After a few seconds of deliberation, she skipped the matching slippers.
Going barefoot might send a message.
The sort of message she very much wanted to send.
Stella waited for a moment so her recklessness could sink all the way in, and then she padded out to the kitchen, putting a little shimmy in her step.
The kitchen was empty.
Goat was not in any of the chairs. Goat was not leaning rakishly up against the counter, arms crossed, eyebrow lifted. Goat was not getting a beer from the fridge and giving her a devilish grin over his shoulder.
Goat, Stella discovered after a few moments of searching, was stretched out on the sofa, long legs crossed at the ankles, eyes closed, chest rising and falling gently with the rhythm of deep sleep.