“Nothing I know of,” Irene said serenely, reaching into the top drawer of the desk. She took out a little plastic tote containing nail files and polish in several shades of hot pink. “But I’ll keep you posted, hear?”
When Stella and Chrissy took their leave, after rinsing out the mugs and serving dish in the old industrial sink from the building’s fast-food days, Irene was well into giving herself an eye-popping fuchsia manicure. She wiggled her freshly painted nails in a good-bye wave.
Chapter Eight
Their second stop was a visit to the old Prosper library, which had been turned into a shop called the Den of Spirits a few years back. The Den of Spirits sold all manner of New Agey crystals and dream catchers and tarot cards and did, as far as Stella could tell, hardly a lick of business. It was a sturdy building constructed of massive blocks of limestone that had been brought in all the way from Cape Girardeau on the Missouri Pacific railroad a century ago. There was a handsome, broad set of stone steps leading up to the imposing entrance—which was now hung with feathery wind spinners and tinkling chimes—and it was up and down these steps that the Green Hat Ladies currently trudged.
“Well, hi there, Stella! And Chrissy, where’s that little Tucker of yours?” Gracie Lewis practically bounded down the steps at a pace that was impressive for a gal in her late seventies. She was wearing a lime green track suit, and her matching sneakers were topped with hot pink laces. Her three elderly companions followed at a less enthusiastic pace.
“My mama’s taking care of Tucker today, Mrs. Lewis,” Chrissy said politely. “Are you all having a nice weekend?”
Shirlette Castro grimaced and clutched her stomach. “Yes, I suppose so, except we played cards last night, and Novella’s onion dip gave me gas,” she said. “That or them beets she puts in the Jell-O salad.”
Novella Glazer glared at her friend as though she was considering shoving her down the rest of the steps. “I don’t guess anybody
made
you eat two helpings.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t good,” Shirlette said primly. “Only, I don’t suppose you need to be putting beets in everything when ain’t none of us can digest them anymore.”
“Gerald likes the beets,” Novella said. “He’d just be devastated if I left them out. I’ve been making that recipe since 1956.”
The Green Hat Ladies had been meeting for lunch most days for years, over at the Popeyes restaurant. Recently, though, Gracie Lewis’s doctor had warned her that if she didn’t trim down a bit, her chicken-and-biscuit days were over, and she’d convinced the rest of the gals to join her in a pre-lunch walk through town, starting with a few trips up and down the library stairs to get the blood flowing.
“My heavens, Gracie, you’ve taken to this walking program like a duck to water,” Stella said warmly. It never hurt to butter up the ladies when she needed information. “Soon you’ll be running circles around me.”
Stella herself got a great deal of exercise, owing to the demands of her profession. Daily workouts on her basement Bowflex combined with runs through town several days a week had helped her shed a fair amount of weight and given her a firm layer of muscle underneath her curves; after her recent hospitalization, she added some tai chi and yoga moves that the physical therapist had introduced. She’d never felt better, physically speaking, and she was glad to see the old gals taking care of themselves, too. Stella had a sneaking suspicion that if women kept themselves in fighting form, they’d be far less likely to let folks mistreat them.
Gracie beamed. She loved being the center of attention. It was her husband who’d contributed the John Deere caps back when the friends had decided to form their own club, a considerable savings over the purple and red hats they were considering, since the Deere rep gave them away for free when he came to call on Ed Lewis’s feed store.
“I’ve been thinking I ought to call them
Biggest Loser
folks,” Gracie confided. “Give Novella and Linda here a little bit of extra motivation, line ’em up on the scale in nothing but their underthings, on national television. Bet they’d take off all that lard then.”
Novella’s jaw dropped and she raised a finger to point at Gracie. “I don’t know who appointed
you
May Queen,” she sputtered. “I’m large boned, is all. Always have been. Least I’ve still got a
figure.
”
“I know you ladies are anxious to get back to your exercising,” Stella cut in hastily. “Chrissy and I just had a quick question for you.”
“Oooh, a
business
visit,” Shirlette said, clapping her hands to her cheeks. “Why, you should of
said
so, Stella.”
The rest of the ladies crowded closer. Above them, the wind chimes clanked mournfully in the paltry wind. Thick gray clouds obscured the sun, giving the day a downcast, pessimistic feel. On the streets below, few shoppers hurried by. They were all over in Fairfax, Stella would wager, where they’d built a mall a while back. Her own shop was closed on Sundays and Tuesdays. Occasionally Stella considered staying open an extra day, but she doubted it would bring in any more customers. Which was unfortunate, given the state of her finances, and now that Priss’s money didn’t look like it would be coming through, she needed to be on the lookout for some other source of income.
Meanwhile, she had some proactive ass-covering to get to. “I hear there was a little trouble out at the Porters’ place last night.”
“Oh my yes,” Novella said. “Claire Binham saw all them cruisers over there this morning. She thought maybe Liman’d drunk himself into some sort of tragedy, like what Reverend Spokes done.”
All the ladies bowed their heads at the mention of the reverend, letting a respectful moment of reflection pass. The reverend, whose cheerful if largely inebriated presence was a staple at all manner of community events, had been trying to park his enormous church-issued sedan at an unaccustomed angle at the far end of the Bethel Baptist parking lot late one summer evening when the Ladies’ Altar Society had called a meeting and taken up all the parking spaces. He’d run the sedan into the culvert directly behind the church and, tragically reckless about seat belt law, managed to get himself thrown out of the car and crushed beneath all those tons of Detroit steel, where he died a slow but, they all hoped, pleasantly inebriated death before he was discovered the following morning.
“Well, I don’t think Liman got in any wrecks,” Stella allowed. Experience with the Green Hat Ladies had taught her that parceling out a bit of not-commonly-known facts generally stirred up plenty of enthusiasm for helping. Which was often fruitful, given that between them, the Ladies had about three hundred years of residence in Sawyer County, along with it knowledge of the undersides and underbellies of most of the local families.
Stella had often reflected that if the nation’s top law enforcement agencies would each get themselves a flock of old biddies, they’d be able to crack every stubborn gang stronghold and drug epidemic and crime wave in the country. But it had been her experience that the wisdom of mature ladies was often tragically undervalued.
Not by her, though, and she knew how to work them to get the most out of their collective wisdom.
“What do you mean?” Linda wheezed, eyes widening.
“Well … I probably shouldn’t say anything, but when the boys got over there, there wasn’t hide nor hair of Liman
or
Priss on the property,” she confided, making sure to imbue her revelation with as much breathless gravitas as possible.
“No,”
Gracie whispered.
“I’m afraid so.” Stella caught Chrissy’s eye; the girl was standing back a bit from the rest of them. Her assistant always had a hard time hanging on to a straight face whenever they dealt with the Green Hat Ladies. Learning to maintain a sense of calm decorum was part of her ongoing training.
“But how can we help?” Lola asked, rising to her full five feet three inches and putting her fists to her hips.
Stella assumed a serious expression and let a few dramatic seconds tick by. The ladies drew even closer, resembling a scrum of fashion-challenged female senior citizen rugby players.
“It’s like this,” she said conspiratorially, keeping her volume just high enough for their challenged hearing. “I need to know who-all Liman’s been, you know,
consorting
with. Who his known accomplices are, and all.”
There was a collective murmur. The ladies loved jargon, so Stella laid it on thick.
“If he’s been in any illicit relationships … any deals gone bad…”
“Well, now, he is a
homely
one,” Shirlette cut in. “Weren’t any good looks wasted on him.”
“He ain’t getting any action,” Lola said decisively, “’cept the kind that costs twenty dollars over at the Trucker World.”
“Lola!”
Gracie gasped.
“I
think
I would know what I’m
talking
about,” Lola said, folding her arms over her chest and lifting her chin. “Pete can’t hardly help but hear the other fellows talk.”
Lola’s husband, Pete Brennan, had been a long-haul trucker for over four decades. Stella doubted he was much of a familiar of the sorts of commerce that went on in the Trucker World parking lot on the far side of the truck showers. He was a nice old guy.
“What did, ah, Pete say?” she asked gently. “If it doesn’t
pain
you too much to talk about it.”
“Oh, Liman was a regular over there. Pete said he’d sober up once or twice a month, long enough to get his chain yanked.”
“Lola!”
Gracie repeated, her face turning a florid red that signaled cardiac distress.
“What? I’m just telling Stella what Pete said. It’s
important.
”
Chrissy rushed forward and took Lola’s arm. “Are you all right, Mrs. Brennan?” she murmured. “Can I get you something?”
“No … no, dear. I’m just saying what needs said. I suppose we can’t keep the evil out of the world, now, can we?”
“No, ma’am.” Chrissy flashed Stella a fleeting
you owe me
glance as she worked up a wistful expression. “The devil does come calling every time we turn our backs, don’t he?”
“He surely, surely does,” Lola murmured, taking advantage of Chrissy’s strong grip to do a modified swoon, though Stella noticed she positioned her ample backside against the iron railing for support.
“So Liman … uh, indulged in the comforts over at Trucker World,” Stella summarized. “But no other known vices or regular habits. No gambling, no drugs.”
“None of that,” Linda agreed. “He’s just drunk, and kind of nasty, nothing else. But what about Priss? She always did seem to think she was a cut above other folks.”
There was a round of vigorous nodding and harrumphing around the circle. Stella seized the opportunity; there was rarely a better time to get to the heart of a matter than when the ladies were in high dudgeon. “Can you think of anything, anything at all, that would help me gain a … a better understanding of Priss? And her possible whereabouts?”
There was a moment of silent concentration, and then Shirlette piped up. “Well, you know, she had a reputation for leadin’ the fellas on in high school. Remember that? She could be quite a teasing bit of tail.”
Stella reeled in her own startled expression. “You mean, ah…”
“Well, I’m just repeating what they always said about her,” Shirlette said, coloring. “What, did I say something?”
“Pete said she was coldhearted,” Lola said generously. “I think you’re right.”
Stella fought to control her facial muscles, which were dangerously close to betraying her. “So you are saying that Priss was, um, unfriendly to her suitors.”
“Well, except for Salty,” Linda exclaimed. “Remember?”
Nods all around. Even Stella vaguely remembered: Dalton “Salty” Mingus, captain of the marginal Prosper High golf team back in the early nineties. He had squired Priss around for most of their senior year before she left for greener and more prosperous pastures. He’d moped for quite some time, drifting from one job to another, even—if Stella remembered right—moving up to the city for a while, but nothing seemed to stick until a few years back when he finally got married and went to work in his father-in-law’s restaurant supply business. Since then, he’d done well enough to buy a four-bedroom trilevel and lose any lingering traces of his once-athletic build.
“You don’t think he was still in touch with Priss,” she ventured. Her impression of the grown-up Salty was a wide-bodied guy in an assortment of colorful double-knit golf shirts, his ample gut gamely restrained with pleated shorts for his post-church nine holes, while his wife and couple of young Minguses repaired to the homestead to put on a buttery spread.
Bland. If she had to come up with a word for Salty, it would be
bland.
“Well, love does demand its due,” Shirlette said mysteriously, turning her lined face into the biting November winds that whipped down the street.
“What do you mean, doll?” Stella asked cautiously.
“Only, sometimes them things ain’t over when they’re over,” Shirlette allowed, though she kept her face averted from the group. Stella wondered if she’d experienced her own tragic love and made a mental note to explore the subject at a later date.
She made a few more stabs at stirring up the ladies, but they didn’t have anything more to contribute, and when she and Chrissy left them a little later, they had resumed their brave campaign up and down the steps, Linda checking her watch and demanding they get over to the Popeyes before it filled up with lunchtime customers.
On the ride home, Chrissy chattered about her cousin’s wedding, and Stella tried to keep track of the story’s extensive cast of characters, the members of the vast Lardner extended family, but her thoughts kept going back to Priss. Priss with her ridiculous boots and coat, her fancy car, her condescending airs.
Priss with her—on reflection, desperate—bid for help with the body in the trunk. A body that Stella knew as little about now as she did when she first laid eyes on him. Maybe things were not as they seemed. Maybe Priss was in over her head. Maybe she was being stalked or framed or threatened—all kinds of terrible scenarios flashed through Stella’s mind, and she began to feel a wee bit remorseful.