But Goat refused to take the bait. “Good idea. Best put them jeans in a bag just in case I need ’em,” he said. “Leave it on the porch, if you can’t abide the smell.”
Now he was just being testy. Well, maybe she deserved it: She’d lied to him, and they both knew it. But that didn’t mean she was going to back down.
“Bet there’s lots of scarves like that. And I hear Priss is back in town. It’s probably hers. What does it matter, anyway?” she asked in a conciliatory tone. “Something gone wrong over there?”
“Like I’d tell
you
anything. Stella Hardesty, I trust you about as far as I can throw you, and that ain’t any kind of far distance.”
As Stella lowered her cell phone back onto the bedside table, she tried to convince herself that she hadn’t just been hung up on, that Goat had just rung off in a hurry.
But as she tried to get back to sleep, she couldn’t decide if she was more upset about getting involved in some new and unknown criminal dealings or about the complete absence of warmth in the sheriff’s voice.
Chapter Seven
“I’m out on work release,” Chrissy announced, holding up a paper bag as she let herself into Stella’s kitchen a few hours later. Stella had managed to fall back into a troubled sleep before getting up with the dawn. “Mom says she’ll watch Tucker for me today if I’ll help her later.”
“What-all does she need you for?”
“I need to help her clean up the rec room. Everybody got to dancing, and a couple of the ceiling tiles got knocked out, plus there’s guacamole in the carpet. Least, I think that’s what it is. And Mom wants to put up her crosses before everyone leaves.”
“Wow. You’re going to be busy.” Chrissy had described her mother’s habit of observing the Lenten season by decorating each of the house’s street-facing windows with a four-foot cross made from scrap lumber rigged with bathroom lightbulbs; at night, the effect would be not unlike a high-wattage Mount Calvary.
Chrissy sighed. “I don’t mind, only I can’t help but feel like it’s just a little bit tacky. But the little kids like it, so what can you do? Only Stella, promise me you’ll do up your yard like you used to. I can’t wait for Tucker to see it.”
“Well … maybe.”
When Noelle was little, Stella had decorated the front yard for Easter. It had begun with a few plastic eggs hung from the sugar maple, which had been a lot smaller in those days. Every year, she added something new: a family of ducks cut from plywood, painted and mounted on stakes; big plastic pots shaped like baskets, planted every fall with tulip bulbs; strings of pink and lavender lights strung along the eaves.
Easter had been her mother’s favorite holiday. Pat Collier had loved everything about Easter, from sewing fancy dresses for herself and little Stella, to the corsage her husband always bought for her to wear to church, to hiding dozens of eggs around the yard, to baking a cake shaped like a lamb and frosted with fluffy coconut icing. Pat had been gone for six years, and even after Stella quit observing the holiday with more than a ham sandwich, it always brought back memories of happy times in the warm, safe bosom of her parents’ home.
The boxes of decorations hadn’t come down from the attic since Noelle had grown up and moved away, but folks in Prosper still talked about the Hardesty Easter display. Maybe it was time to stage a return. Stella hid a smile. She was liking the sounds of the upcoming holiday more and more. Waking up with a little one in the house again, experiencing the magic through his eyes—it had been a long time since Easter morning had been anything special. The last few years had been just plain lonely. “Now can I have my doughnut?”
“Yes’m, I got you them ones with the crunchy shit on top like you like. Only hurry up, ’cause Irene says the sheriff told her he’ll be in by ten. I got her a couple a jelly and a couple a crème-filled ’cause I didn’t know what she liked.”
On the way to the sheriff’s office, Stella got Chrissy caught up on the latest developments, including the reaction she got when she called Goat. When they pulled into the parking lot of the old Hardee’s restaurant that had been converted into the Prosper Municipal Annex, Stella was relieved to see no sign of Goat’s cruiser. Only Irene’s old boat of a Chevy Caprice station wagon was parked in what used to be the drive-through lane. Much of the parking lot had been given over to a prefab equipment shed, so staff and visitor parking was somewhat limited.
Behind the glass double doors, Irene was squinting into a purse mirror and plucking her eyebrows. “Oh, goody,” she said when Stella and Chrissy came in. “Chrissy, darlin’, come on over here a sec. I know I got one a them strays down here somewhere, but I cain’t see it with my old eyes.”
Chrissy winked in Stella’s direction. “Gimmee them tweezers and let me have a look,” she said. “You picked the right girl for the job—my mom’s always havin’ me go hunting.”
“Oh sugar, what would us old birds do without you young ones,” Irene sighed contentedly as Chrissy located the offending stray chin hair and gave it a firm yank.
Stella fetched paper plates and napkins from the break room and sliced the doughnuts into quarters and arranged them in an attractive circle on the department’s single chipped serving platter. She poured three cups of lukewarm coffee, and the ladies sat down at the Formica-topped conference table.
“He’s in a foul mood today,” Irene confided. Stella was always a little nervous around Irene, whose loyalty belonged unquestionably to Goat, but Irene had warmed to Stella and in recent weeks had asked for her help with a little situation of her own.
Stella gladly complied. The job involved corralling Irene’s favorite great-nephew, who’d left his freshman year at SMSU to go on an extended bender with a few fraternity brothers. Stella found the little band of good-timers drinking off a long weekend in an Arkansas State cheerleader’s parents’ rec room, and explained the costs and benefits of higher education to the entire group. Each and every one of them was now sending her a weekly update on their grades, and Irene was satisfied that her nephew was no longer failing all his classes.
Now it was time to test the goodwill Stella had built up.
“So, Irene,” she began as casually as she could, once Irene had polished off several doughnut sections and had a fetching little smear of strawberry jam at the corner of her mouth, “what did Goat and them find out at Porters’?”
Irene fixed Stella with a stern gaze and tsked. “Is that why you two are over here bribin’ me with sweets? To git me talkin’?”
“Of course not—it’s just, well, I’m
concerned
about Priss. You know, coming back to town after all these years—why, it’s just terrible that the welcome she’s getting is in the form of a heapin’ pile of trouble.”
“How’d you even know the fellas got called out?” Irene demanded skeptically.
“I was listening to the scanner,” Chrissy said. “I was stayin’ out at my folks’ place over the weekend and I couldn’t sleep.”
“Oh, your dad surely is one for the scanner. We used to have us a time, your dad and me and Sheriff Knoll and those brothers of yours.” Irene’s expression softened. “Your brothers were a hoot, Chrissy girl, even if they were a bunch of untamed hell-raisers. Well, listen, I suppose it won’t hurt to tell you, since it’ll be all over town soon anyway, once folks see Ian and Mike’s car up there. What happened was, Liman called in a intruder.”
“Liman?”
So much for him being asleep, as Priss had suggested.
“Yup, he called Emergency, but he was so drunk, he couldn’t hardly get a word out. He kept sayin’ there was people in the house, and they was comin’ for him. He wouldn’t leave his room. He locked himself in there while he was talkin’ to Darja and told her if we didn’t get somebody out quick, he was gonna jump out the window. And you know maybe that’s what he done, ’cause when Goat got out there, wasn’t a soul on the property.”
“Wait a minute,” Stella said, lowering her uneaten doughnut to the plate. “The house was
empty
when Goat got there?”
“Yes’m. Lights all blazing and Priss’s car right out in front and nobody there, not Priss or Liman either.”
“Then why’d they call out Mike and Ian?” Chrissy asked. “They figure to go lookin’ for ’em in the dark?”
“Yes, they searched all the way back through the acreage and over to Monroe’s land. They’re back on it now it’s daylight, got some a the boys from over to Quail Valley in to help out.”
She gave them a conspiratorial gaze, her drawn-on black eyebrows lifting into impressive arches.
Stella took a deep and steadying breath. She was at a delicate juncture, and she had to proceed with great caution. There were things missing from Irene’s recounting, things that could make the difference between a smattering and a mountain of trouble. Like, for instance, if Priss had disposed of the dead body before disappearing. Or, for that matter, if her little envelope of pictures had turned up in all that searching.
“What-all do you want to know?” Irene demanded, frowning.
“Nothing much,” Stella assured her. “Just … what the sheriff found out there and maybe what else he’s looking for. And, uh, how
hard
they’re looking for whatever they’re looking for.”
Irene sat back and gazed at Stella thoughtfully. “That’s kind of a lot of questions. Okay, but for that, I’m gonna want you to keep on Ricky all through the spring semester.”
Stella thought about it for a moment. Being Ricky’s academic guardian wasn’t really taking up all that much time, especially since the boys had started sending their updates on a Twitter feed, which Chrissy had finally explained to her how to use.
“I suppose I can do that.”
“And anything dips below a C, you go and visit him.”
“But—”
“I will
not
have the first Dorsey to go to college flunk out on his first try!” Irene exclaimed. “You
got
to do this.”
“All right,” Stella sighed. “It’s on my list.”
“Well, all righty, then.” Irene took a sip of nearly cold coffee and swirled it around in her mouth before swallowing. “What the sheriff found was, there was a mess in that house. Above and beyond the normal-type mess Liman’s let build up over there. There was a lamp busted, a chair was turned over—and there was this big china beer mug or something broke on the floor, but it had blood on it and little hairs they think might be Liman’s, seein’ as it was short and brown, so they’re gonna have the folks up in Fayette take a look at it.”
“They think someone used it to hit someone else?”
“Well, you’re the smart one, what do you think?”
“What about the door?” Stella asked, ignoring Irene’s comment. This was a startling development, indeed, if things were being busted on people’s heads—that kind of violence was generally a sign of reckless desperation. “Did someone break into Liman’s room?”
“Sheriff didn’t say nothing about that.”
So the door probably hadn’t been broken down, meaning Liman unlocked it on his own. Or maybe someone—Priss?—had a key. Only doors on the inside of houses rarely had keys anymore, did they?
Stella exchanged a glance with Chrissy, who was polishing off the last of the powdered sugar doughnuts and licking frosting off her fingers. Chrissy gave her a faint shrug.
“Did they search Priss’s car?” Stella asked.
“Not yet, I don’t think. I believe they’re having it towed up to impound in Fayette. They’ll probably take a look at it there.”
There was simply no way to ask if they’d taken a gander in the trunk, not without raising Irene’s suspicions even further.
“Well, I surely do appreciate it,” Stella said, producing a warm smile. She’d have to remember to swing by with a Big Pig sandwich from the Pokey Pot restaurant—Irene’s favorite—in the next few days to ceremonially mark the transfer of favors.
“Whyever are you so curious about this particular case, anyway?” Irene demanded. “Somebody beatin’ on Priss? Wouldn’t surprise me, that gal been stuck up since she got born onto God’s earth. Why, I’d take her down a few notches myself, if I had the chance—though violence ain’t ever the answer to anything.”
Stella noted Irene’s pious tone, and wondered if working in such close proximity to the official nerve center of the law made a person cleave more closely to the party line. “Not that I know of.”
“What about Liman? Is he knocking some gal around? Though I don’t believe that man’s had a date in years,” Irene interrupted herself. “Least not one that don’t take place at the Honey Club.”
“No, Liman hasn’t done anything I know of,” Stella said. She knew the “club” Irene was referring to—it was a flat-roofed cinder block rectangle where a fellow could buy a young lady a drink for eight times what it ought to cost, as an entrée into an evening of delectable pleasures, or at least a quick hand job in a thin-walled cubicle.
Not a very romantic setting, but Stella figured she didn’t have any business judging other folks’ pleasure seeking. As long as no one was hurting anyone else, and everyone was doing what they agreed to do for the price they agreed to do it for, and not being forced to do anything that wasn’t in the plan, she guessed she could respect folks’ rights to party as they saw fit.
“Did they find anything else? Maybe something come through evidence?”
An image of the offending scarf—one that Stella now realized she’d never much liked anyway, since it tended to pill and the little metallic bits scratched against her neck—came into her mind and complicated her efforts to look innocent.
Irene narrowed her eyes and considered Stella craftily. She was no slouch; Goat had inherited her from Sheriff Knoll, who’d hired her as a fresh and dewy fifty-something divorcée a couple of decades back. Now she was plowing through her seventies with all her important faculties intact, and every apparent intention of turning back the hands of time with vigorous attention to her beauty regimen, failing sight be damned. As a result, her makeup often looked slightly askew and her jet-black hair sported a solid anchoring of silvery roots, but she hadn’t lost a bit of her hawkish attention to the details of running the sheriff’s office exactly as she pleased.
Luckily, Goat had enough sense to back off and let the woman mind the shop.