His voice had risen in frustration with each syllable, and Stella was suddenly aware of people at a few nearby tables looking over with interest.
“Hush now,” she said, “let’s not have the whole world in on your secrets, okay?”
Todd flushed even further and nodded.
Stella’s phone, which she’d left faceup on the table so she’d be sure to hear it over the restaurant’s din, started ringing. Todd reached for it, but Stella slapped his hand away and put it to her ear, jamming a finger in her other ear to try to drown out the noise.
“Hello?”
“Stella, this is Adriana Wolfort.”
“Adriana!” Stella was genuinely pleased to hear the old lady’s voice, though it seemed odd she’d be calling at this hour on a Monday night. A couple of years back, she’d met with the rich old lady to discuss measures to deal with her husband. It wasn’t the usual case; her husband Milton’s irascibility was a result of a stroke that had fried some key filter on his brain, so that he mostly sat on the couch and hollered strings of obscenities at nobody in particular all day long. Adriana, who’d never been all that fond of her husband and was very frank about having married him for his money five decades earlier, had suggested Stella could come up with some relatively painless but voice box–obliterating injury to keep the man quiet to give her a moment’s peace, and Stella had been trying to get her to consider off-site care instead when Milt had obliged them both by having a second, massive stroke and pitching forward onto the carpet, dead before he hit the floor.
Adriana had wanted to pay Stella what she called a “consulting fee,” but Stella had demurred. Now, given the state of her bank account, she wondered if she ought to have taken the old gal up on her offer.
“I’m desperately sorry to bother you,” Adriana said breathily. She was a great fan of old movies and had adopted an oddly formal and dramatic way of speaking. “But there’s a little matter here that needs your attention.”
“What sort of little matter?”
“Oh, I don’t want to say on the phone. Why don’t you just buzz on over.”
“I’m out to dinner,” Stella said. “Can it wait an hour or so?”
“Oh, I certainly think not.”
Stella raised her eyebrows. What kind of trouble could the widow have possibly gotten into? She had a gal that came around to help several days a week now, and her activities were generally limited to visiting with the very few spinsters in town she considered her social equals. Stella had often thought the old widow ought to join up with the Green Hat Ladies, but that would be a crossing of the social strata that, she was sure, would horrify the old biddy.
“Well, is it something, um … dire? Should you be calling 911?”
“No need for that,” Adriana said crisply. “I’ll put the coffee on.”
Then she hung up.
“You done eatin’?” Stella asked, resigning herself to another fool’s errand. Odds were that the old lady was just feeling lonely. “Call your mom and tell her you’ll be a little while longer. You can come with me and do your civic duty.”
Chapter Twenty-four
The once-proud iron gates at the Wolfort estate were propped permanently open, years of rust and corrosion having popped a hinge or two out of place. The road was not plowed, but lights burned from inside the big house. Stella pulled up the circular drive and gestured at Todd’s feet. “Guess you wish you would have worn boots now,” she said.
Todd jumped out of the Jeep and stomped around in a little circle, kicking up snow. Anything to prove an adult wrong. “I’m fine,” he said through chattering teeth.
“Mind your manners,” she cautioned as she rang the bell. “Mrs. Wolfort’s old school. She won’t put up with no sassin’.”
Adriana opened the door with a grand, sweeping gesture. She was dressed in her country gentlewoman finest, a look she’d adopted years ago that was lost on most of the locals. Her Wellington boots were topped by a tweedy skirt and a sweater set that looked like it might have been picked out by the queen mother herself.
“Hello, young man,” she said, holding out a gnarled, beringed hand.
Todd, to his credit, shook it with no hesitation and set to rubbing his shoes vigorously on the entry rug. “I’m Todd.”
“Well, now,” Adriana said briskly, leading them through the musty, once-grand foyer across threadbare carpets laid out all over the marble floor. Stella spotted cobwebs in the corners and a thick layer of dust on the furniture. She knew Adriana made a habit of firing housekeepers and had burned through every available cleaner in town.
In the sitting room, a tray was laid out with coffee cups and a china pot and a plate of what looked like stale Nilla Wafers. “Young man,” Adriana said imperiously, “why don’t you make yourself at home here for a few minutes while I confer with Mrs. Hardesty. Do help yourself to refreshments.”
Todd looked around the room, which was stuffed with upholstered furniture and lined with breakfronts and cabinets and bookshelves, every surface piled with fussy knickknacks.
“Uh…,” he said, and Stella knew he was trying to figure out something to keep himself occupied.
“Oh, looky here,” Stella said, seizing on a pile of magazines stashed on a bamboo tray. “Saint Louis Town and Country. Enrich yourself.”
She thrust the magazines at Todd, and he sat down on a tufted settee and glared at her.
“This won’t take long,” Adriana promised, striding with surprising speed for an old gal toward the back of the house. She picked up a pair of flashlights on a table by the back door and handed one to Stella, and they went out onto a stone terrace. Stella offered a hand to Adriana to help her down the steps, which were dusted with fresh snow over evidence of recent foot traffic.
“I’m fine,” Adriana snipped as a trio of sleek black Labradors came hurtling around the corner. They were handsome dogs, and well trained enough that they sniffed at her politely but didn’t jump. “It’s these three that alerted me to the problem. About an hour ago, they took to baying like the hounds of hell, and I came down here to take a look.”
Stella followed the old lady along an overgrown path. The garden had once been a showplace, an English-style affair featuring benches and footbridges along the curved paths. At the bottom of the gentle incline, a few dozen yards from the house, was Milton’s pride and joy, a large pond that he had once kept stocked with trout. Beyond it, a road led from the pond to what used to be the rest of the Wolfort estate, but had been sold off and planted with soybeans. Stella remembered that in her childhood there had been old-fashioned grass tennis courts and stables and an archery course.
The dogs grew increasingly agitated as they drew up to the edge of the pond, and one tried an experimental bark, but when Adriana scolded him, he immediately quieted down and skulked along at her heels.
“Well, there they are, then,” Adriana said. “I know I said you could use the pond any time, but I think you need to work on your technique some. I’m quite certain you didn’t expect them to come floating up to the surface so fast.”
Stella flashed her own light on a trio of lumps that lay at the edge of the pond, their sodden shapes hard to make out but distinct enough that she knew without a doubt they were bodies.
“Liman and Priss,” she guessed, a sinking feeling in her gut. “And the fella from the trunk.”
“Well, now, it might be better if you didn’t tell me the particulars,” Adriana said. “In case the police decide to interrogate me vigorously. If I don’t know any details, they won’t be able to drag them out of me, even if they resort to that waterboarding like the last administration was so fond of.”
Stella bent to the closest body, which was facedown with its limbs out at odd angles. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it, and looked around for a stick. It took some doing to get the thing rolled over, and even then its features were waterlogged and swollen, and only when she recognized the second corpse’s black cape did she feel confident she was looki
ng at the drowned remains of Priss and her brother.
“How the heck did this happen?” she said, her gut twisting from both the ramifications to her personal situation as well as a general queasy feeling about the distasteful effects of their deaths.
“Well, now, my guess is that they were of insufficient weight or density to stay down. But then, I’m hardly qualified to put forth an opinion,” Adriana said. “I’m no forensic scientist.”
“You think I killed them?”
“Now, Stella, you don’t need to be coy with me. When I offered you the use of the pond, I understood it entailed a certain measure of discretion, and I would never dream of breaching that.”
Offered the use of the pond … Stella racked her brain and dredged up a conversation she’d once had with the old lady the summer that Milton had his strokes. They’d gone for a stroll to get away from the old gent’s off-color screaming. By then he’d been at it so long that his voice had been permanently reduced to a scratchy, hoarse grating that still somehow managed to reach every corner of the house.
When they passed by the pond, Adriana had made a point of mentioning that it was built on the site of underground caverns and that it was a surprising thirty feet deep in some places. What was it she’d said? Be a fine place to stash a body. Which, at the time, Stella had taken as the eccentric ramblings of a bored old lady, or perhaps wishful thinking about the disposal of her harmless but irritating husband.
“Adriana,” she said carefully, “I didn’t murder these three.”
“Now, now, dear, I really don’t need to know,” Adriana said. “Your business is your business. I just thought you’d want to get them returned to their watery graves as quickly as possible.”
“But I didn’t drown them in the first place. I swear to you, this isn’t my doing.”
Adriana, her features drawn and eerie in the light of the flashlights, pursed her lips. “Well, now, how else would these unfortunate people come to be in my pond? Especially since Priscilla hasn’t been back to Prosper in years, and then one day she shows up unannounced to visit a brother for whom she’s never had a shred of affection? I’m not one to gossip or speculate, but it does seem clear as day that the poor woman must have been having troubles of the sort that require specialized solutions.” She leaned in for emphasis, her hooked nose inches away from Stella’s face, and winked. “The sort of solution that you, if I may be forgiven, are known to provide.”
Stella sputtered in exasperation. “Well, if that was the case, why would I kill her? Or Liman, for that matter?”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” Adriana said. “I’m not the professional here. Perhaps things were not as they seemed … a double cross or a deal gone bad, really it could be anything. But honestly, Stella, I think I had better get inside with the boy while you do whatever it is that you need to do here. You’re welcome to use anything you need from the potting shed.”
“What I need to do,” Stella said with dawning urgency, “is get the heck out of here. Adriana, I can’t be seen anywhere near these bodies. Do you understand? You need to call the sheriff. Give me time to get back into town. You know what, take your car out and drive it around the lane a few times, if you don’t mind, make it look like you were the one driving, cover up my tracks. Can you do that?”
A light glinted in the old lady’s eyes. “Oh my, yes. How exciting.”
This isn’t a game, Stella was about to say, but she bit her tongue. She doubted she would convince the old lady of her innocence. The best she could hope for was cooperation, and if that meant playing to the lonely old gal’s longing for a little adventure, then she’d have to go that route.
“It’s very, very important that you do exactly as I say,” she said carefully. “If, uh, justice is to be served. If the innocent are to be honored. Do you understand?”
As they reached the house, it seemed to Stella that there was a bit more of a spring in the old lady’s step.
“You can count on me,” Adriana said with conviction.
The door burst open and Todd, holding on to an antique-looking black umbrella with a wooden handle, came flying out. “Oh shit, thank God you aren’t killed!”
Adriana looked from the boy to Stella and lifted one aristocratic eyebrow. “Me? Or Mrs. Hardesty?”
“Either one of you. How’m I supposed to know which one they was after?”
“Who?” Stella demanded, taking the umbrella from Todd when she noticed he was shaking slightly, and hurrying him back into the house with a glance around the terrace—there were no signs of anything amiss.
Adriana closed the door behind them and locked it firmly. “Now, young man, what are you talking about?”
“Someone knocked on the door after y’all went out the back, and it was this dude in like a hat pulled over his face with just the eyes cut out? You know, like in the movies when they rob banks and shit?”
“My lands,” Adriana said.
“And I kind of jumped out of the way, because I got to say he freaked me out, I mean the dude was wearing all black like a fuckin’ ninja or something, I mean, sorry, Mrs. Wolfort—”
“Thank you,” she said primly. “You know, coarse language makes the speaker coarse. It will serve you well to remember that. My Milton—”
“What happened then?” Stella demanded.
“Well, he kinda looked at me and looked around and I’m all backing up—”
“Was he armed?” Stella said, heart seizing with cold fear. Facing down attackers was one thing for a hardened criminal like herself, but Todd was a mere boy, a defenseless child. Instinctively, she grabbed his arm and dragged him into a half hug, which he didn’t wriggle out of for at least a few seconds.
“Nah, not that I could see.”
“And then—”
“So he starts running around, I guess looking for you-all or something, and I saw you had that thing full of umbrellas by the front door—”
“It’s hand painted,” Adriana said. “Milton brought it back from India. Quite valuable, really.”
“—so I grabbed the biggest one and ran through that room with all them red curtains and he was coming past the stairs going the other way and I just kinda whaled on him and he fell down and after a minute he got up and went out the front again.”
“You hit the guy with the umbrella,” Stella clarified. “Whereabouts?”
“I guess around here,” Todd said, pointing to his rib cage.
“And he didn’t say anything?”
“Nope, nothing.”
“How big was he, Todd?”
Todd frowned and looked from one of them to the other. “Maybe an inch taller than you, Stella. He weren’t real big or nothing.”
“Well, no matter what size he was, felling him was quite an accomplishment, young man,” Adriana said warmly. “How about a nice cookie?”
“You’re sure?” Stella asked. Salty probably cleared six feet, though not by much. “He couldn’t have been a little taller?”
Todd shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Stella rubbed her temples, which were beginning to throb with the aftereffects of the adrenaline. “Oh, Sherilee’s gonna kill me,” she muttered. “What was I thinking, getting you practically murdered, and on a school night, too.”
“We don’t have to tell her,” Todd said. “I mean, maybe you could, like, buy my silence?”
Chapter Twenty-five
Stella didn’t doubt Adriana’s desire to help, but when the sheriff’s car raced by going the other direction, lights flashing, she realized with a sinking feeling that in the excitement of finding bodies in her pond and nearly being attacked, the old lady hadn’t managed to keep the plan straight.
For instance, the part about waiting half an hour to give Stella a chance to get clear of the scene and deliver Todd home had evidently been forgotten. She had only about five minutes’ lead on Goat, who flashed her an openmouthed look of what might have been horror, or shock, or out-and-out fury through th
e window of his cruiser as he went tearing by.
When her phone rang a moment later, she wasn’t the least bit surprised. She glanced at the caller ID and, seeing that it was Goat, turned up the music to drown him out. Catherine Britt was singing “Swingin’ Door:”
I ain’t your gas-up, rest-stop swingin’ door
Stella and Todd sang along, belting out the high notes, until she got to the Groffes’ driveway, trying hard not to notice the second and third time her phone rang.
“Remember our deal,” she said sternly.
“Twenty bucks now, twenty bucks when they find the guy.”
“No, I meant the part about keeping your mouth shut.”
“Whatever.”
“And being real, real careful to keep the house locked and stay out of trouble for a while.”
Todd shot her a crooked grin and ran up the steps to his front door. Stella waited until Sherilee poked her head out and waved before driving a few doors down to her own house.
She felt a little guilty about not letting Sherilee know what had happened, but she figured she’d feel about ten times more guilty knowing she’d deprived the poor woman of the very little sleep she got before another long day at the office.
Inside, the party was still going, but it was considerably subdued. Four or five of the girls were clustered around the kitchen table playing Monopoly—or rather a variation of the game that apparently involved rolling the dice and drinking without advancing any of the playing pieces. Paper money was strewn all over the table and floor, and at Stella’s arrival, an enthusiastic if slurred cheer went up.
“Hi, Mrs. Hardesty,” one of the gals whose name she hadn’t caught earlier said. “Sorry about the chili ’n all.”
Stella followed her gaze to the corner of the kitchen, where Roxy had her head inside the big stew kettle, licking the last of the chili from the bottom of the pot.
“Oh, my,” Stella said. “Did she eat the entire thing?”
“Oh, no, we ate most of it and then she knocked it off the stove, and we had to let it cool before we could mop it up, you know? Only she beat us to it.”
A Bad Day for Scandal Page 19
