“Well, sure, Stella. Bring it on.”
“See… Goat and me, well, we keep working ourselves up to starting something. And it feels like, maybe, it might be…” Stella, who’d married at the tender age of twenty-one and spent nearly three decades mostly trying to stay out of her husband’s way, didn’t have much of a vocabulary to describe the feelings she’d only begun feeling in middle age, and only for one man, ever. “Real,” she concluded in a near whisper. “Except every time, it’s like we both get scared and back off. Goat comes up with all these excuses, which I mean they might be true, since somebody’s got to keep the law and order going in town, except if he really wanted me, why isn’t he showing up on my front porch every chance he gets? Because, since it’s just me and you talking here, Tilly, that’s what I’d do.”
She swallowed hard at the magnitude of the confession.
“Then why aren’t you? Why aren’t you over there on his porch the minute he gets off work, with a nice casserole and a bottle of wine?”
“Because!” Stella exclaimed. “I can’t. I mean, what if I looked like I was trying too hard? If I showed him exactly how I feel, it could…”
“Did it ever occur to you, Stella Hardesty—and by the way I always thought you were supposed to be smart—that maybe Goat might be feeling the same thing? Men are more delicate than women. They’re afraid of rejection and their feelings are about as tender as November lettuce.”
“They teach you that in preacher school?”
“No, but I’ll tell you what I did learn there, sister, which is that you only go through life once, and while the Lord is going to be glad to see you when you get up there no matter what, he’ll be extra pleased if you squeeze every ounce of joy out of the time you got here.”
Stella thought about that for a while. The roadside scenery rushed by at an alarming clip, and Stella realized she’d been lead-footing since they started discussing Goat. “That don’t sound like any Sunday School I ever attended,” she finally said, easing her foot back off the gas. “But I’ll think about it.”
“Well, I’m coming down the minute we get Divinity out on Monday—and I’ve got half a mind to come even if we can’t. I’m not going to let Dotty down twice, even if it means that girl has to cool her heels in the lockup without the three of us driving each other crazy in the waiting room.”
“How are y’all holding up?” Stella inquired.
“If I hadn’t taken sacred vows, I might just strangle Divinity myself. She’s acting like she’s Lindsay Lohan, ordering everyone around and complaining about the way they’re treating her. But Taffy’s no better—she’s been trying to get the lieutenant governor on the phone all morning. And Marty keeps going outside to smoke and make calls—I guess the real estate market waits for no man.”
“I don’t envy you,” Stella said sincerely. “If you don’t mind me asking—did it ever occur to you to just let them sort out their own troubles? When you got all these folks down here that actually like having you around?”
“Every waking minute, especially since the three of us are sharing one room at the Hampton Inn and Marty snores and the pullout’s about as comfy as sleeping on a hay bale. Only, Taffy’s my sister. My twin, and that’s a special kind of connection. She’d do the same for me, and—” Tilly paused. “Well, okay, she wouldn’t, but there’s some times you just got to suck it up for the people you love. Or the people you got to tolerate, anyway.”
Stella, who knew about that sort of obligation just about as well as anyone else, wished Tilly well and said her good-byes. She drove for a while, listening to Lucinda Williams singing “Righteously,” turning over Tilly’s words in her mind. After all, Tilly now had a direct line up to the Big Guy, and if Tilly said she should go for it… but what about BJ? Wouldn’t it be poor etiquette to throw herself hell-for-leather at one man before breaking up all the way, or even a little bit, with another?
Chapter Thirteen
Branson loomed before her in all its spangled glory, the sun glinting off the tower up on Inspiration Point. Stella had last visited Branson about four years ago, when she and Ollie had come on a church trip to see the Branson Area Festival of Lights. Ollie, who had had a few too many beers prior to strolling, knocked over a lighted camel and got himself thrown out of the nativity; but he’d waited until they got home to take out his embarrassment on Stella. She’d spent the rest of that holiday season covering up a black eye with concealer.
It wasn’t exactly a good memory, but as Stella cruised slowly down Main Street, passing clumps of tourists out enjoying the pleasant weather in the historic downtown, she took the opportunity to consider how much her life had changed since then. For the last few days she’d been practically cowering in terror at the thought of telling a sane, rational man how she felt about him. How had she allowed fear to rule her this way? She’d done things most women only dream of—started a business, traded her extra flesh for sleek and lissome muscles, and killed her husband. Well, maybe most women didn’t dream about that last one, but the ones who did now had someone to turn to, all thanks to Stella.
By the time she pulled up in front of Lexie’s apartment building, using the address Chrissy had texted her, she was simmering with determination.
The apartment complex was on the unfashionable end of the town, a cluster of seedy seventies buildings with concrete-and-iron staircases slapped on the front that made the complex look like a Berlin parking garage. It was the kind of place that people moved out of just as soon as they could afford better—or got evicted.
Lexie’s apartment was on the ground floor, but it was in the middle of a row facing the parking lot, which made any sort of stealthy approach impossible. In general, Stella liked to keep her interactions as private as possible; the more folks who knew what you were doing, the harder it was to control the flow of information—like, for instance, who was in the area when some gutless wife-beater met with misfortune. So she counted off doors and walked around to the back of the building, as though she were heading out on a vigorous power walk on the dirt path that wound along the creek, but when she got to Lexie’s patio she ducked behind a cobwebby barbecue grill and a dead hanging plant. It wasn’t much in the way of camouflage, but Stella didn’t plan to need it long, especially since the sliding door was open a crack and the smell of burnt toast wafted out on the breeze.
Inside, someone was singing, if you could call it that. Short bursts of vowel-heavy nonsense words made their way up a scale. Stella could admire the intonation, which seemed pretty near pitch-perfect to her untrained ears, but the repetition of “eeeeh” and “aaaaahm,” would surely grate on her nerves if she spent much time in the neighboring apartment, separated only by thin wallboard.
Stella eased open the sliding door, peering into a cramped living room that opened into an even smaller kitchenette. One wall was entirely lined with shelves bearing trophies, but otherwise the furnishings consisted of a rolling rack from which dozens of sparkly gowns hung, and a sofa and chair that were piled with magazines and folded laundry. The coffee table held plates and cups, some of them bearing bits of past meals, as well as a huge open tackle box, from which spilled barrettes and hairbands and such. Underneath the toast odor was a complex bouquet, with notes of hairspray and stale beer and perfume and something faintly rotten.
The person belonging to the singing voice walked into the room, squinting into a mirror while she made her way up and down the scales. In her hand was a pair of tweezers, and while Stella watched, she took a flyer at one of her eyebrows, plucking out a hair as she hit the top of the scale.
Then the girl noticed Stella, and the clear, dulcet “aaaaahm” turned into a sort of a squawk and she dropped her tweezers on the floor.
“Who are you?” she inquired, when she recovered both the tweezers and her composure.
“Oh, sorry, I’ve been knocking and knocking at the front door. I don’t guess you
heard me, so I thought I’d just check around back since I could hear you singing. My, what a nice voice you have, too, Miss Albertson.”
“Halburtson,” Lexie corrected her, looking a little irritated now that she’d recovered her wits. She put her hands on her hips but made no move to flee or grab a knife; Stella’s greatest asset in such situations was that she looked far less threatening, in her velour jacket and cute sneakers, than she actually was. “Who did you say you were with?”
Stella smacked her hand against her forehead. “Oh, now, that explains it,” she said, taking Chrissy’s tablet out of her purse and tapping the blank screen a few times for effect. “We’ve been having a problem where the system keeps lopping off the first letter in folks’ names, causes all kinds of problems with the billing. Why, I just came from a fella named Roger Bass, and the system had us sending bills to Mr. Ass. Well, you can imagine he wasn’t very happy about that!” Stella giggled, all the while gauging Lexie’s reaction.
The girl looked disconcerted, though she managed a polite smile. She was wearing a blue robe that once might have been fluffy but had become matted and threadbare, its design of frolicking kittens blurred and barely recognizable. Her feet were bare except for the cotton stuffed between her toes and a fresh coat of bright pink polish. Her hair was knotted on top of her head in what might have been a bun before most of it sprung free in a sort of waterfall around her head. Most startling of all, however, was the pale green slime that coated her face from chin to hairline.
“Hey, is that the SeaMynt Hydrating Enzyme Masque?” Stella said, before Lexie could get a word in. Building trust sometimes flowed most naturally from wearing a person down with conversation, forging little connections with them to make them feel like you were cut from the same cloth. “Reason I ask is, my daughter’s a cosmetologist, and she got certified in the whole SeaMynt product line. Great stuff, right?”
Lexie touched her cheek and gave a little smile. “Oh, I know. So moisturizing! Just does wonders repairing the skin.”
“A beautiful young girl like you—I can’t believe you’d need anything but soap and water to look your best,” Stella said, and Lexie brightened even more. “Are you a professional singer?”
“Why, yes, I am. You know Miranda Lambert? People always compare me to her, but, like, more crossover? You like live music? Because I’ve played at the Outrigger and the Shamrock Shack…”
While the girl chattered on about her appearances at an extensive list of venues Stella had never heard of, she maneuvered herself between Lexie and her open sliding door, ensuring that the girl wouldn’t make a quick exit after hearing what Stella had to say next.
She fished her wallet out of her purse and flipped it open, bypassing her Freshway card and jcpenney credit card and the card that proclaimed her an ordained minister of the Universal Life Everlasting Church—that one, a gag gift from Jelloman, had come in handy a time or two—and finally found the one she was looking for.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Miss Halburtson,” she said, flashing the card that proclaimed her a code compliance officer of the building department of Licking County, Ohio. She’d bought it from a fellow who made a tidy living modifying legitimate ID cards, but he changed only the photo, because recent advances in printing technology made it nearly impossible to create such pieces from scratch. Ohio, of course, was not ideal; nor was the building department, but Stella couldn’t afford any of the top-of-the-line offerings, like a Kansas City ATF officer ID or a Missouri Narcotics Officers Association membership card. Fortunately, few people asked to examine the card up close. “I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely straight with you. My name is actually Lynn Smith, and I’m helping out in the investigation into Bryant Molder’s death.”
“You’re not here about my car payments?” Lexie said, looking so relieved she might faint. Stella noted with interest that the mention of her purported boyfriend’s name didn’t seem to provoke any sort of painful emotions, either.
“No, miss, and I’m sorry for the subterfuge. But I’m afraid we have reason to believe that your apartment is being watched. You may be in danger.”
Lexie’s eyes widened. If she was responsible for Bryant’s death, which seemed increasingly unlikely the more she chattered, she was covering it well.
“Oh no, I was afraid he wouldn’t stop with just Bryant,” Lexie wailed. “Do you all know where he’s at or is he, like, on the lam right now?”
“Uh…” Stella said, mystified.
“Rex Rendell! That’s who killed Bryant. He just couldn’t stand Bryant stealing his clients. That’s how he saw it, anyway.”
“Right,” Stella said, mystified even further. She was at a tricky juncture now; admitting she had no idea who Lexie was talking about would surely undermine her credibility.
“Here, I’ve saved all his emails. Let me show you.” She grabbed her phone off the kitchen counter and dabbed at it. “I mean, I’ve thought about it before, that he might take it out on me and Divinity and his other clients, only it wasn’t really our fault, you know?”
“Er, what wasn’t your fault?”
Lexie glanced at her, frowning. “That we all dropped him. I mean, now we’re all releasing our work online, we’re, like, out from under the tyranny of the major recording labels. The gatekeepers aren’t relevant anymore, you know? Bryant knows—knew—all these indie producers who can totally help you get your work out there online without having to pay for studio time, and he’s also got the TV leads, so it just seems like a waste of time to focus on traditional vocal training. I mean, maybe five years ago when the industry was totally different—but now it’s like you got to diversify. You got to have your fingers in all these different pies, right? Here.”
She handed Stella the phone, and Stella read the email.
Ask Bryant if he can fix your glottalizing. —Rex
REX RENDELL, voice coach to the stars!
Nominated for the prestigious Silver Songbird Award, 2008!
“Um, I’m afraid I’m not familiar with glot—glot—” Stella said, handing back the phone; squinting at the tiny lettering would give her a headache in no time.
“Glottalizing.” Lexie sighed dramatically. “Okay. So, like, Rex was classically trained, and he thinks that’s the only way to sing. And glottalizing is this thing where you click when you’re voicing. And he was always trying to get me to stop. But the first month I released my new single, I sold almost sixty copies. Right? So maybe it wasn’t this big huge problem Rex always said it was.”
“Uh… let me see if I understand. You used to take voice lessons so you could get picked up by one of the big labels—”
“Who are completely terrified of innovation,” Lexie said, nodding energetically. “They won’t take a chance on anyone who’s even a little bit different, no matter how talented you are.”
“Okay. They got their thumbs up their asses, so you did this online thing with Bryant—”
“A guy Bryant knew,” Lexie said. “Charged me two hundred and fifty bucks, and that included mixing and graphics and prepress, all of it.”
“And now your song is out on the Internet, where people can buy it.”
“Yes!” Lexie said. “For ninety-nine cents, and I keep seventy percent of every sale!”
“So, help me out here… If you sold sixty of them, you made, like…”
“Forty-one dollars and fifty cents. But that’s just the first month, and it’s going to keep growing. There’s this guy I know who made almost four hundred thousand dollars last year on his first album.”
Stella nodded as though the whole thing made sense. “Anyhoo… Rex, your voice coach, was upset because no one wants lessons anymore, and he blames Bryant for hooking you all up with these, uh, producers.”
“And the shows. He was especially mad about the reality shows. He thinks they’re, I don’t know, beneath us or something.” Lexie s
hrugged, adorably. “Um, do you think Rex is going to come try to kill me soon? I mean, should I call my folks and tell them, just in case?”
Her momentary vulnerability tugged at Stella’s heartstrings. So far she seemed both much more naive, and much nicer, than Divinity; it was hard to tell through the green goop, but she seemed lovely, too. “Well, let’s just go over things and then we’ll figure out a next step—that sound okay?”
“Okay. I just feel so bad for Miss Edwards, since I won’t be able to come sing at the wedding. She seems like a nice lady.”
“You and Divinity were close? Is that why she asked you to sing at the wedding with her?”
“Oh hell no, I hate that stuck-up little bitch, she can fry in a pan full of chicken fat for all I care. I just owed her one, was all, and she never was planning to show up for the wedding, she was going to cancel at the last minute and this way there’d still be someone there to sing for her aunt. Of course, that was before she found out about Leif Torgrimson.”
“But doesn’t Leif scout for the big labels?” Stella asked, confused.
“Well, yeah.” Lexie looked a little uncertain. “I mean, I guess if a label asks to sign you, and you can still do your own stuff on the side, it’s not really selling out.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean, if Columbia Records wanted to give me seven figures I guess I’d do it.” Lexie frowned and examined her nails, which were painted the same bright pink as her toenails. “This is a competitive industry, you know? I mean, even with the auditions—Bryant can only ever send one of his clients when he has a connection. He gave Divinity My Side of the Mountain to make up for giving me Bet the House. She was furious, but you know, I earned it.” She shrugged, and Stella had to wonder which of her attributes made her better suited to poke at pie charts or pose in glasses and a business suit.
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