All that was missing from that picture, Stella thought, was this rugged yet sensitive man’s woman, dressed in a slimming pair of hiking trousers and a nice fitted parka that showed off her curves, maybe in a lovely shade of violet. They’d hike through the morning and have a romantic lunch of elk or something at a rustic lodge before climbing into a log bed to make crazy love all afternoon long under a puffy down comforter, until night fell and they watched the northern lights sparkle up the sky as snow fell around them, naked under a bearskin blanket, arms around each other.
Reverently, Stella placed the book in her cart. Not for Goat, of course. Not after that little display in his office. Unless maybe he came to his senses and … but no, Stella Hardesty did not wait around letting men walk all over her. The man on the book, why, he could be anyone. He could be the man around the next corner, someone she’d never even met yet, who would turn out to be rugged and hot and clever and funny and just a little devilish.
Just like Goat, the little voice in her mind whispered.
Not, she thought fiercely as she gazed down at Mr. Yukon—who was assuredly not Goat—and imagined how bear fur might feel on her behind as he rolled her on her back in order to take her to delicious new sensual heights.
And plowed her cart into a display stand of Windex Crystal Rain.
“Stella Hardesty, is that you?” a deep voice bellowed from down the aisle as the plastic bottles tipped and wobbled on their cardboard shelves. Stella looked up to see Big Johnson Brodersen rushing toward her just as the first bottle crashed to the ground.
Then things went a little slow-mo as BJ and Stella both attempted to forestall a Windex disaster and ended up crashing into each other and sending the display toppling over, Stella tripping on one of the bottles and causing it to burst and puddle on the floor. She scrambled to stay on her feet, but in the end there was nothing to do but clutch a handful of BJ’s faded denim shirt and hold on for dear life as she fell.
BJ’s generous frame softened the impact, and she found herself sprawled on his burly and surprisingly comfortable chest before they managed to disentangle themselves from each other and the litter of bottles and shelves.
“Sorry I wasn’t quick enough,” BJ said, getting to his feet and offering a hand. “I saw you wasn’t lookin’ where you was going—got your mind on something?”
Stella put her hand in BJ’s and allowed herself to be helped up. “Nothing important.” She gave him a big smile as she straightened her top and dusted herself off. “What are you shopping for?”
“Pickin’ up a curtain rod. Doing a little fixin’ up at the bar. Fact, you were on my list of people to call. You think you could find me someone might want to sew up some curtains? Nothin’ fancy, I just got so sick of lookin’ at them plaid things, I think they been there since they built the place.”
Stella didn’t doubt that was true. BJ’s Bar was a homely place, a tavern favored by folks who liked to do their drinkin’ and carryin’ on in an austere environment, without any frippery or frills. You could get Bud or Miller or Michelob on tap, your basic well drinks—if someone ordered a Tequila Sunset or a White Russian, a riot would probably break out.
Stella found herself at BJ’s on business from time to time, hunting down some ne’er-do-well or other who’d been abusing his relationship with a loved one. Over time, she’d become friendly with BJ himself. He was a good-sized, powerful man with scarred-up knuckles and a brush cut flecked with silver. He’d flirted with her a time or two, and while Stella had never followed that trail to see where it led, she snuck a glance at the man on the cover of the Yukon book and thought that he did, in fact, resemble BJ a little, if BJ were a bit more rugged and narrower and illuminated by the magical glow of a northern sun.
BJ had taken hold of her shopping cart and looked ready to steer it wherever he was told. Unlike that stubborn Goat, who did not strike Stella as the sort of man you could drag around on a shopping trip. Not to mention the fact that she couldn’t exactly see Goat leaping to her aid when she was about to collide with cleaning products—he was more likely to stand back and laugh his ass off.
Suddenly an old-fashioned kind of gentleman didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.
“I might could find you someone,” Stella said. “Chrissy’s probably looking to make a little extra cash. Here, let me help you with your rod.”
Then there was a long and horrifying moment when Stella realized what she had said. She could feel her face turning all kinds of pink as BJ suddenly got something stuck in his throat that seemed to require a fair amount of coughing to settle down. Stella grabbed the front of the cart and dragged it—and BJ, who was hanging on to the handle—to Home Fashions. By the time she grabbed the first rod she saw and thrust it into the cart, BJ had mostly recovered.
“Do you need anything else?” Stella asked with as much dignity as she could muster.
“Nope, that’s it for today. I’m a man of simple needs,” BJ said, wheeling the cart gallantly out of her way so Stella could precede him down the aisle. As she headed for the front of the store, Stella dug in her purse for a mint and popped it in her mouth and just generally appreciated BJ’s nice manners.
“Ooh, you fixin’ that chili cream cheese dip?” the checker asked, running her groceries over the scanner. “Havin’ a party, are you?”
“I guess I am, even though I was the last to know,” Stella said. “My daughter’s done invited half the town already. Um, BJ, I’d sure be pleased if you could stop by.”
“I’d like that,” BJ said, helping pile her purchases on the checkout conveyor. An appealing flush stole over his cheeks. “What can I bring?”
“Not a thing. Once I get going, I’m usually good for quite a spread.”
By the time Stella realized what she’d said, BJ was well on his way to another coughing fit.
Chapter Twenty-one
The house smelled strongly of chemicals mixed with something fruity, and the kitchen sink was tinged a faint green, but any other evidence of Noelle’s beauty projects had been cleaned up and the girls were gone. Stella put the groceries away and put the frozen chili in a pot on the stove to start thawing, and then she spotted a note on the table.
Gone shopping for the party, it read in Noelle’s loopy scrawl. Will get beverages etc. Be home soon to help with dinner. Love you!
It looked like the girl had done a little party prep on her own. The house was picked up and dusted and vacuumed, and the dining room chairs had been dragged into the living room for extra seating. Plates were stacked on the kitchen table, buffet style, and Noelle had wrapped silverware up festively in paper napkins and tied them with snips of silver ribbon and stacked them in a basket. Plastic cups were arranged in neat rows.
Things appeared to be under control. Stella glanced at the kitchen clock—barely two.
Plenty of time for one more errand.
She made a quick call to Chrissy and asked her to look something up for her. By the time she put the groceries away, the girl called back.
“That was no kind of challenge,” she said, sounding miffed.
“Well, I pay you the same either way,” Stella said. “Might as well enjoy your leisure.”
Chrissy snorted. “Leisure? Tater and Evvie got into Mom’s closet and unwrapped the boxes she was fixin’ to send to the boys overseas with her church group. She got a hell of a deal on these NFL belt buckles on Overstock with the Rams logo—I tried to tell her, ain’t nobody backin’ the Rams these days, but they were dirt cheap so she bought ’em out. She and Aunt Busty boxed ’em all up the other night while they was drinkin’ that nasty port someone brought, and it didn’t look like much, I got to say—only now it’s a hell of a mess and we got to get them all wrapped back up. Dad said just ship ’em out like that, and Mom pretty much told him he could go drag his communist ass out on the driveway and sleep there if he didn’t want to get into the patriotic spirit and support the armed services. And now they’re all bickering, and guess who�
��s in charge?”
“You,” Stella guessed.
“Yeah, as if I don’t have enough to do with these lamb costumes for the twins for the Easter play. Do you have any idea how hard it is to sew on that fake fur? I probably won’t even get to go over to the U-Pub tonight. Why, it’s been weeks since I had any of that kind a fun.” She sighed audibly over the phone. “Hippity Hop, my ass.”
“All righty, then,” Stella said, and hung up hastily. Maybe it was better to do the afternoon’s outing solo, she thought as she headed back across town.
As she rounded the corner onto Salty Mingus’s street, he came barreling toward her in his truck. He didn’t notice her, since he was busy checking out his hair in the rearview mirror. He was going at a good clip, but Stella managed a neat little U-turn and followed half a block behind.
He didn’t go far, as it turned out, only to the strip mall by the Home Depot that housed a Baskin-Robbins as well as DumBelle’s gym. Salty fussed with his gel-slicked hair the whole way, trying to get it to camouflage his bald spot was Stella’s guess. She was surprised at his choice: there were two gyms in town, and this one tended to be favored by ladies. It featured pastel walls and carpet and a variety of equipment gathered in a friendly circle with peppy music playing so you could chat or shake your booty in a sassy fashion while you did your squats or lat presses.
Salty stepped out of the car carrying a tidy navy gym bag, but Stella was ready for him, having inserted herself between his car and the gym.
“Well, hey, Salty,” she said. “Imagine meeting you here. Going to take one a them Pilates classes?”
He swallowed. “No, I just, uh. Your assistant ain’t along with you, is she?”
“She was busy today. How’s the project going?”
Salty shifted from one foot to the other, looking like he had to pee bad. “Fine, I guess. I mean I ain’t done a whole lot more since the other day.”
“Oh, you mean when we visited.”
“Uh…”
“Back when you were telling all those tales. About Priss’s landscape business.”
Salty’s eyes widened and he tried to step around her, but Stella nimbly blocked him. “Not so fast. I think we should have us a talk. I was hoping to get some construction tips from you. I hear it can be a bitch to get a permit for one of those sheds like you’re putting in. I’d hate to get halfway in and then … bam, some concerned neighbor calls it in and shuts me down.”
Salty’s ruddy face took on a deeper shade. “That shed’s none of your business, Stella.”
“I’m not saying it is. Come on, take a walk with me, we can change the subject, I promise.”
Salty wavered, looking longingly at the gym, through whose large picture window a variety of ladies in coordinated exercise outfits were lunging and hopping to some unheard beat.
“Ten minutes,” he finally said.
They set out down the street, turning into a neighborhood of neat brick bungalows. “So you weren’t completely honest with me,” Stella scolded. “That wasn’t any kind of landscaping you were doing up in Kansas City with our girl Priss.”
“What’d she tell you?”
Stella noted with interest the sudden change in Salty’s composure. The flush in his skin took on more of a blush-type quality.
“She, ah, has fond memories of your skills,” Stella ad-libbed. “You were one of her favorite, um, gentlemen employees.”
Salty didn’t say anything for a few moments. Stella didn’t push him, but she managed a few covert glances and watched the storm clouds build up in his expression.
“I ought to be her favorite,” Salty fumed. “I was her first. The whole escort service? It was my idea, you know.”
“Really? She didn’t mention that.” Stella didn’t bother pointing out that Priss hadn’t, in fact, confided any details at all about the call boy operation.
“Hell yes. I used to go up there and visit her while she was in business school, did she tell you that part? Guess those MBA-type guys didn’t have what it took in the sack to keep her happy. She always was a, you know, passionate one.”
“So you’d go up there for booty calls? She’d go a few rounds with you and send you home so she could get back to her studies?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Salty protested, but Stella could tell by his dismay that it was, indeed, exactly like that. “I could of gone to school up there myself. We used to talk about what she was studying, her classes, all that shit. I got an entrepreneurial mind, she always said. Only I got, you know, my roots here.”
“Uh-huh. So why’d you move there?”
“We both wanted it,” Salty said a little defensively. “To be together more. I was working construction down here, good money and all, but nothing that I was really, you know, passionate about. And things were getting serious between us.”
Salty didn’t look at her when he said that, and Stella figured there was more than a little wishful thinking going on. She murmured a gentle mm-hmm to keep him going.
“She did one a them things, from Harvard? Them case studies where you look at where some company screwed up and figure out what they should of done instead? And she had one on this escort service, a legit one, and we got to talking about how you could add just a few massage services on the side and there you go, profits through the roof. There’s like hardly any setup costs.”
“I don’t know,” Stella said dubiously. “I’m not sure if I’d call a full menu of sensual delights ‘a little on the side,’ Salty.”
“But that wasn’t how it was supposed to be,” he said, getting frustrated. “My thing was, give ’em a little romance. A little kissing, hugging, maybe—maybe—just a friendly grope or two. Make it about the fantasy, you know? That’s what women really want—just the illusion of romance.”
“You really believe that, Salty?” Stella demanded, surprised. It sure as hell wasn’t true for her—a bouquet and a Whitman’s Sampler sure as shit wasn’t about to scratch the itch she got when she thought about Goat.
“Yeah, it’s scientific, women are just wired different, they wouldn’t even have sex if it wasn’t for procreating the species and all. It ain’t their fault.”
“Mmm,” Stella said, aiming to keep her tone neutral. Violent disagreement had no place in a stealth interrogation.
“Anyway, we were building a client base, we got a few leads among the business women community, lonely-hearts gals who wanted to spend time with a good-looking guy who understands them.” He kicked at a flattened can, sending it skittering down along a curb. Overhead, the sky had darkened to a gloomy slate. “If she would a just stuck with my thing, we would of had it made.”
“Let me guess. Business wasn’t picking up at a pace she could live with.”
“Hah. She could be—well, you know. Priss always wanted everything all at once. And then he came along.”
“Who?”
“Walsingham.” Salty practically spat the name out. “Addney fucking Walsingham, this queer-boy fairy she met at school.”
“Another business school student?”
“No, a goddamn hippie ex-instructor or some shit. The only thing he had on me was he was old.”
“I’m lost.”
“Priss and me, we’re young, and believe it or not, that limits the client base. I mean how else do you explain the resistance we were meeting up with? And Addney, he’s like forty, Priss gets it in his head they’ll tell people he’s fifty, you know, go after women in their fifties?”
“Oh, I think I see where you’re going,” Stella said. Not bad, really. Pretty darn brilliant. “You tell folks he’s really well preserved, and the ladies believe they’re with a man their age. Was he good looking?”
“I’m a guy,” Salty said with a wounded tone. “How the hell should I know?”
Right. Excellent looking. “So the long and short is, Addney starts pulling in all kinds of business and suddenly Priss isn’t so hot to have you around. Is that right?”
Salty didn
’t say anything, but his chin sank down and his lower lip jutted as they strolled along. “She asked me to move out,” he finally muttered. “Told me Addney was moving in. Gave me twenty-four hours.”
“Ouch. That’s kind of harsh.”
“She can have him. She can have that old wrinkle-dick poseur professor, for all the good he’ll do her. I’m better off—I’m taking good care of myself these days, you know, valuing myself for who I am. I got a family—what’s she got?”
“She, uh, appears to be living alone these days,” Stella said gently, watching for a reaction. Could Salty be carrying around enough hurt to still have a grudge against his replacement? Could the man who died—Keller—have been the same person as this Walsingham?
But if Salty wanted to kill Keller, why would he wait all this time? “You left Kansas City three years ago. Have you kept in touch with Priss the whole time?”
Salty stared at the ground and didn’t answer.
“Come on—construction permits aside, all I’m trying to do is find her,” Stella prodded. “I’ve got nothing against you unless you get in my way.”
“What do you care, anyway?” Salty said. “I don’t guess this is in your usual area of expertise.”
Like nearly every citizen of Sawyer County who lived in the murky depths below upright citizenship, Salty appeared to know a thing or two about her reputation.
“Favor for a friend. So what gives? You talked to her?”
“We talk. Sometimes.”
“You call her.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You go up for quickies.”
“No!”
Stella tried to gauge whether his adamant denial was genuine or not, and couldn’t decide.
“Okay … she doesn’t call you back.”
“She does. Sometimes. Just to talk. Priss is sensitive—she needs a man who respects her, who’s willing to go slow, listen, like that.”
A Bad Day for Scandal Page 16
