Sophie Littlefield - Bad Day 05 - A Bad Day for Romance

by Sophie Littlefield

  “I knew that,” the boy mumbled. “I was just getting it set right.”

  “Course the biggest injury is when folks leave the rope cocker around their neck,” Wayne continued as if the boy hadn’t spoken. “Saw a guy take his own head off.”

  The young man set the crossbow down on the counter with a clunk. “You’re shitting me.”

  “No, I’m afraid I’m not. Folks loop it around their neck after they cock the bow and forget about it, which is fine, unless they accidently catch it in the draw. And then…” He made a slashing motion across his throat—and a very convincing wet gagging sound. “Leaves a hell of a mess.”

  “Uh, okay, thanks,” the boy said, backing away from the counter. “I’m just going to think about it for now.”

  “You do that,” Wayne said gravely. “Thanks for coming in. Say hi to your dad.”

  He waited until the door shut behind the young man before chuckling.

  “Am I mistaken, or did you just sabotage your own sale?” Stella asked.

  “Aw, he’s a nice kid, he just ain’t ready for this piece yet,” Wayne said, setting the bow carefully back on the display rack. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  Stella launched into her cover. “I’d like to buy a gift for my boyfriend,” she said. Rule number one of extorting information from folks was to keep their suspicions unraised as long as possible, which meant making yourself unremarkable. So, for this outing, Stella intended to play the part of the nice middle-aged lady she appeared to be on the outside. “For our anniversary. He’s been wanting some new arrows. He’s got a…” She dug around in her purse and pulled out a crumpled receipt from Wendy’s and pretended to examine it. “Diamond Core compound bow? Does that make sense? I wrote it down. Anyway I guess his old arrows are just worn to nothing and he wants these new ones.” She peered at the paper again, batting her eyelashes, and exhausted the last of her bow hunting knowledge. “Carbon Express?”

  Wayne Donald Griffin chuckled good-naturedly. “I think I know just what your boyfriend needs,” he said, going down the glass display case to the end that held an impressive variety of arrows and bolts. He dug his keys out of his pocket and bent down to open the locker—and Stella launched herself around the counter with the speed she’d practiced on a thousand sprints around the track at Prosper High on weekends. She’d already grabbed the grip of the Ruger when she pretended to put her shopping list away, and now she had it poked into the sweet spot in the hollow under Wayne’s ear, and was crouched down with him, out of sight of any potential customers, before he’d got the key fitted to the lock.

  “Not one sound,” Stella said quickly, giving the gun a little jog for emphasis. Wayne immediately dropped the keys and put his hands up against the glass where she could see them. To his credit, his moves were smooth and calm.

  Stella was pleased to be dealing with a fellow professional. Amateurs were messy; men who understood the potential for damage a gun could do were far more likely to treat them with respect. The odds of Wayne doing something stupid like trying to disarm her were very low, particularly because Stella had him in a position where such an attempt could only end in his brains decorating the floor and case and cash register.

  That is, if she was willing to shoot him, which of course she wasn’t, but she was counting on Wayne to give her the benefit of the doubt. Just to add a little credibility, she fast-talked him through the scenario she thought he was most likely to buy into.

  “You and I are headed into the back room, where we’ll make you comfortable. You’re going to give me your keys. We’ll turn the Closed sign around and get you settled, and then I’ll let my partner in. You’re taking a long lunch today, my friend.”

  “I ain’t got but a few hundred in the register,” Wayne sighed.

  “It’s not your cash we’re after, as you know very well,” Stella said. “You got a mighty nice inventory here, and my friends over in St. Louis are going to be pleased to give us top dollar for it once we get those pesky serial numbers filed off.”

  Wayne just nodded, though he managed to look aggrieved enough that for a moment Stella felt guilty until she remembered she wasn’t actually helping herself to anything she hadn’t paid for. “Upsy-daisy now, nice and slow,” Stella said, in the coaxing voice she reserved for Chrissy’s son, Tucker, who was currently in a stage where his fascination with his mother’s vacuum cleaner often required Stella to lie on the floor with him so she could peer properly into its underside—an exercise that had done its part to strengthen her knees, something she appreciated as she and Wayne slowly stood up together, his hands never leaving the merchandise case. Several years ago, when Stella had been carrying an extra thirty pounds and hadn’t bothered to strengthen any muscles except the worrying and fretting and self-pitying sort, she wouldn’t have been able to pull off such a move without an entire symphony of popping and crackling.

  “The door,” Stella prodded gently. She walked right behind Wayne, gun pressed lightly into the base of his spine, and to his credit Wayne neither sweated nor trembled as he locked the door and turned the sign and put down the blinds.

  “Thisaway,” he said, holding his hands up without being asked as he led her through the open door into his office.

  Stella took a look around. It was as neat and organized as the rest of the shop, a genuinely inviting man cave that made up for its lack of a window with the warm glow of a banker’s lamp. A nice big monitor took pride of place on his desk, and shelves of books and trophies shared wall space with file cabinets and stacked boxes of merchandise.

  “Chair’ll do,” she said, quickly assessing its potential for what she needed. “Get comfy, but keep those hands up a minute more.”

  She dug in her purse for a pair of restraints. As she bound his wrists, she took care not to pinch or abrade his skin, a professional courtesy she did not afford most of her parolees. Binding a fellow, if you did it properly, could deliver all kinds of promises of the pain to come; it was often as effective as the flogging or clamping or singeing that followed in convincing gents that they had gone down a very wrong path the last time they raised a hand to their women. But Wayne had not yet proven himself guilty, so Stella held off on the hurting.

  When she was done, Stella pulled up the spare chair and laid out the rest of her tools in a neat row on the desk. There was a padded steel clamp with adjustable wing nuts, a pair of smaller clamps on a chain, a studded leather paddle, and a rubber filament flogger. She couldn’t help noticing that Wayne wore a very nice cologne; his hair had an enviable gloss and was well cut. Overall, Wayne was a very nicely groomed and put-together man; it wouldn’t do to make such comparisons, but Stella had to guess that he had Bryant beat in just about every department you could judge in a short acquaintance. Wayne’s expression was more incredulous than afraid, which might make the process a little tougher, but Stella had no doubt that once she got rolling he’d soon come around.

  “You know what these are for?” she asked conversationally.

  “Yeah, ’cept I’m having a bit of a disconnect here. Thought you were just going to fill up the truck and go. I’ve cooperated, I’ll give you the code for the safe.” He looked increasingly disappointed in Stella, which made her more uncomfortable than if he’d been furious. She was having a hard time picturing the man in front of her killing anyone, but she had learned that human beings were capable of fooling those around them—sometimes for years—about what they were doing in private, and who they were doing it to. “I’m well insured, ma’am, so this is just going to be a big paperwork headache for me. Don’t know that you need to go compounding that with the, uh…” he gestured at the tools laid out on the desk and swallowed, the only hint that he was nervous about what was to come.

  “Let me catch you up. I ain’t robbing you. I’m here about Bryant Molder. To put it plain, I think you killed him and I’d be obliged if you just go ahead and get it off your ch
est.” Stella pulled the last piece of her equipment out of her purse, a digital recorder about the size of a credit card that she kept in a pink vinyl cigarette case. “You’ll feel better, and we can get you started down the debt-to-society road and Bryant’s family can get the answers they’re sure to be wanting. You must a been keeping a lot of anger stored up inside you since you and Lexie split—you need to start getting that out there so you can heal.”

  “Lexie?” Wayne’s eyebrows shot up. “What the hell—why, I haven’t even talked to her in three, four weeks. I heard about Molder getting shot, but I wasn’t even in town when that happened!”

  Stella rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh. If I had the time, I’d get my assistant in here to take a crack at your phone and your PC there. I bet you anything she’d find you still got Lexie on your speed dial, and you been Facebook stalking her since she told you not to let the door smack your butt on the way out. What happened, did she finally decide to serve papers on you once she started seeing Bryant?”

  Wayne’s face went dark with anger. “Lexie’s one of my best friends,” he said, his irritation finally blossoming into full-scale fury, the sort of mad that made the tendons in his powerful neck stand out and his wrists strain against their restraints. All of which made Stella glad she’d gotten him secured before she started the grilling. “It’s none of your business, but the only reason she and I ain’t divorced is so she can stay on my insurance. I got vet benefits.”

  “You served?” Stella said, her righteous indignation crumbling a little.

  “Yeah. Afghanistan, ’03 to ’04.”

  “Look, that’s all the more reason for us to get this sorted out. You probably got all kinds of combat strain and PTSD. You need help.”

  “What I need, ma’am,” Wayne said grimly, “is for you to give that mouse a nudge.”

  Stella looked warily to where he was casting his gaze. The computer mouse rested on a pad, which, curiously, held an image of George Takei making a live-long-and-prosper sign. “Why?” she demanded, meaning suspicious.

  Wayne gritted his teeth. “Because sometimes a picture is worth a whole lot of us sitting here arguing, is why.”

  Stella gave the mouse a little tap and the screen lit up with an image that took up the entire space—a very nice portrait of Wayne and a smiling red-haired fellow, both wearing tuxedos, standing next to a flower-decked bower while a tropical sunset lit up the sky behind them.

  The gentlemen were kissing.

  “That’s my partner, Lincoln,” Wayne said. “We’ve been together almost two years. That picture was at my sister’s wedding. Lexie was there, too, by the way—she’s stayed close to my family. They all love her. I do, too, actually, but I wouldn’t go killing anyone over it.”

  “Wait,” Stella said. “You’re gay?”

  “Yes, damn it, only I didn’t have that all the way figured out when Lexie and I were together. Obviously.” Wayne let out an aggrieved sigh. “All of which I’m sure she would have told you, if you’d asked her.”

  “I didn’t… it didn’t come up,” Stella said, an awful feeling of remorse turning her skin clammy.

  She’d fucked up, and worse yet, it was a fuckup she could have avoided if she’d paid attention to her instincts and stuck to her SOPs. If she’d proceeded in her usual fashion, doing the background work and easing into using force only after she’d methodically closed all the other doors, like for instance checking his alibi before threatening him with a nipple clamp, this information would have come to light.

  And there was only one reason why she’d rushed in the first place. Just as Stella was winding up to face the truth, which was going to be both embarrassing and uncomfortable, she heard a sound from the shop. Someone was moving around just a few feet away.

  “Who else has the key?” she demanded.

  “Just my night manager, but he don’t come in on weekends,” Wayne said, looking confused.

  “One minute,” Stella said, jumping to her feet. “And, uh, I’m, like, sorry about… well.”

  A more detailed speech would have to wait; as genuinely remorseful as Stella was, she wasn’t keen on issuing her apology from prison up in Fayette, which was where she was sure to end up if someone stumbled on the scene in the back room.

  She’d barely cracked the door to the back room when a big hand shot out and grabbed her wrist and yanked her all the way through the door, unsettling her grip on the Ruger and nearly causing her to shoot a hole in the floor.

  “Damn it!” Goat Jones yanked Stella hard up against him while grabbing for her gun with his injured hand, his fingers scrabbling awkwardly in the splint. Stella probably could have held on, but the sight of her brand-new boyfriend took all the fight out of her, and she let him take the gun from her. “Confound it all to hell, Stella, I let you out of my sight for two fucking hours, after extracting a promise from you that you ain’t going to get up to nothing worse than—than acting like a girl for one miserable afternoon of your life, and the first thing you do is come running over here and threaten a man’s life, which I wouldn’t even know except Ian saw your Jeep heading out Route 9 when he went into town this morning and I knew—I just knew it, Stella. Deep down I guess I knew I couldn’t trust you, not even after what we done and what we shared and what I thought we—oh, fuck it. Fuck it.”

  He released her so abruptly that Stella stumbled backward. But he wasn’t quite done.

  “I thought we had a chance,” he said, all the anger drained from his voice, replaced by a quiet sadness that was a thousand times worse. “I ought to of known better, but I really thought if we both gave a little—if we tried to see the other person’s point of view—if I remembered we both want the same thing in the end, which is justice—that we could…”

  “I messed up,” Stella said in a very quiet voice. “Wayne didn’t kill Bryant. I got some… ah…” She was about to say she got bad information, but that wasn’t entirely true, and even if her heart was breaking in half, even if she was watching the only man she’d ever love stop loving her back, she wasn’t going to tell anything but the truth. “I didn’t do my research. I usually do, Goat, I swear it to you, I don’t ever go in half-cocked the way I did today but I—I—”

  How could she say it? How could she tell him that she wanted to look nice for him, that when she got ready for dinner, she hoped he’d look at her and find her pretty enough, that she’d shine brightly enough to catch his eye forever? How could she tell him that he’d become so important to her that she’d temporarily lost her sanity?

  “You nearly hurt an innocent man, is what you did,” Goat snapped. “I been standing here for five minutes, hoping I wasn’t hearing what I was hearing.”

  “How did you…”

  “I was on your tail ever since the turnoff,” Goat said. “Can’t believe you didn’t see me in the rearview.”

  Stella couldn’t either—a rookie mistake if there ever was one—except she’d been so busy mooning and singing along to the radio and remembering how Goat’s hands felt on her body that she doubted she’d checked once.

  “And now I got to go back and pretend I ain’t ever heard any of this. It’s just lucky I showed up before you seared off his privates or put a few thousand volts through his chest hairs or something.”

  Stella blushed furiously. She had always suspected that Goat had a vague idea about her contribution to helping abused women find justice, but she had hoped he’d never found out some of the starker details, like the fact that she had a corporate discount at the Fetish Mart or that she knew more about the tender places of a man’s anatomy than thirty years of marriage had ever taught her.

  “I’ll make this right,” she whispered. “Just give me a chance, Goat.”

  “I done gave you one chance too many,” he said, and if his voice was a little choked up as he stomped out of the shop, it was little consolation as Stella went back to clean up the
giant mess she’d made for herself, weighted down with a heavy heart.

  Chapter Twenty

  At least Stella didn’t have to suffer the indignity of watching the tailgate of Goat’s pickup all the way back to town. She got Wayne untied and mollified as best she could, while leaving just enough murkiness around her cover story to suggest that silence about what had transpired might be the man’s best option—a move necessitated by a desire to preserve her reputation that nonetheless left Stella feeling even worse, even after Wayne, who turned out to be an extremely polite gentleman, assured her that “we all make mistakes” and asked her to give Lexie his best the next time Stella saw her. When she finally left Wayne’s World, Goat was long gone, and Stella drove back slowly in the beautiful autumn sunshine, watching the blue sky reach down to fields of pumpkins and turned-under corn.

  On the way, she called Taffy to deliver a status update.

  “What have you found out, Stella?” Taffy demanded. “You figure out who done it yet?”

  “I’m afraid not.” She briefly went over her latest dead ends, skipping the details of her failed interrogation. “At this point I don’t think it was Lexie or her ex. I think we got to start over at square one. I keep thinking there’s something I’ve missed. When Divinity gets out on Monday, I was thinking you guys could bring her down here and Chrissy and I can go over everything from top to bottom again.” She chose her words carefully. “Last time we spoke, I’m afraid the, ah, stress of incarceration might have made it hard to focus.”

  “I guess we could do that,” Taffy said reluctantly. “I suppose they probably aren’t going to let the whole thing drop until they have someone else locked up.”

  “If by ‘the whole thing’ you mean the murder investigation, then, yes, that’s true. Cops are funny that way.”

  “Well, then, I guess you best keep on it.”