“We was playin’ charades,” another guest clarified, as if that explained the lapse in attention. “You know how that gets.”
“Uh-huh. Is, er, Mr. Brodersen still here?”
“Oh, no, he’n the sheriff left right quick after y’all did.”
“We thought they was gonna go to it in the driveway. My, but they got it bad for you, Mrs. Hardesty,” the tall brunette said with unmistakable admiration.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s the case,” Stella demurred, secretly pleased. “Has anyone seen my daughter?”
Looks were exchanged, and the gal holding the dice dropped one on the floor. “Um. She left.”
“With Joy?”
“Oh, no, ma’am. Joy’s right over there,” she said, pointing to the living room, where—sure enough—Joy had kicked off her sneakers and curled up under an afghan and gone to sleep. She wasn’t the only one; one of the young men had conked out in a chair, head slung back, mouth slack. It reminded Stella of Noelle’s high school days, when she would have her friends over and they’d stay up late watching TV and Stella would fix them popcorn and Rice Krispies Treats, and they’d all end up sleeping on the living room floor, Stella fluffing blankets over them when she got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.
“Well, where did she go?”
More looks were exchanged. Finally the brunette sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “She left with Cinnamon Ferlinghetti.”
Stella glanced from one to another of the guests and demanded, “Is that a bad thing? Had they been drinking?”
“Oh no, ma’am, Cinnamon don’t drink. She’s a teetotaler, is what she is.”
“Well, then—”
“Tell her,” a little freckled gal suggested in the delicate, exaggerated fashion of someone who was one Jell-O shooter away from sleeping on the bathroom floor. “She deserves to know.”
“Just, Cinnamon’s kinda a heartbreaker, a little bit.”
“The catch-and-release queen,” the freckly gal sighed, and there was general nodding and concurring. “Cinnamon can’t much resist startin’ up things, ’specially with someone smokin’ hot like Noelle, but they never do seem to stick.”
“Oh,” Stella said, pinching the bridge of her nose up high in the place where headaches occasionally seemed to cluster. “I see.”
There followed the sort of embarrassed silence that only drunk people are capable of, but by the time Stella decided she had done the best she could, and sent up a quick prayer asking the Big Guy to sort everything out as He saw fit, the festive Monopoly game was gathering momentum again.
* * *
In the morning, there were a few more revelers crashed in the living room. Since Hardesty Sewing Machine Repair & Sales was closed on Tuesdays, Stella didn’t bother rushing as she got all the blankets and afghans she could find and covered them all up, and set a pot of coffee on.
For herself, she stopped at the Doughnette Diner and got herself a large Irish crème–flavored coffee and a couple of glazed chocolate cake doughnuts. That was the problem with having a doughnut—for days after, you couldn’t stop thinking how darn good they sounded every morning. It was like getting a Journey song stuck in your head, a problem only the passing of time could heal.
She called Chrissy from the parking lot and apologized for talking with her mouth full as she related the events of the night before.
“Gee, Stella, way to go, dragging a young’un into your life of crime.”
Stella bristled at the suggestion. “There wasn’t any actual shootin’ or anything—”
“Oh, well, that’s all right, then.”
“Well, what would you of done?” Stella sighed. “You know, Chrissy, I’m gonna be glad when all your mom’s company’s gone so she can watch Tucker again and you can come on these errands with me.”
“Aw, that’s sweet—you miss me!”
“Maybe a little. I guess you’re too busy to come check out this Addney Walsingham guy with me.”
“Oh, I promised Carmela we could do a craft project, since the shop’s closed today.”
Carmela was Chrissy’s oldest niece. She stuck out like a sore thumb in the Lardner clan. Quiet, serious, and bookish, nine-year-old Carmela adored her aunt Chrissy. And since her own mom’s interest in her had waned since she went to live with a guy she met at a revival the summer before, Chrissy had been trying to fill in some of the gaps.
“What are you doing, making pot holders?”
“No, it’s the coolest thing—found it on the Internet. Did you know you can make a holster out of an old milk jug?”
“You’re teaching Carmela to make a holster? What’s next, you two gonna make a pistol out of office supplies?”
“Stella,” Chrissy chided. “It’s a present. For her dad. Pete’s got a little .38, fits okay in the pocket of a pair of Dockers or what have you, but on the weekends he wants something he can tote if he’s wearin’ jeans.”
Stella thought about that for a minute. “Okay. I’ll bite. How do you make it?”
“Oh, this is so cool. You heat the milk jug with a hair dryer, see, it softens it right up. Then you staple all around the gun to get the shape right, cut it out, and wrap up the whole thing with duct tape—it’s perfect, and you wouldn’t believe how slick you can draw against that plastic.”
“Huh. That’s damn ingenious, I got to say.”
“Hey, Stella, how’s a gun better than a man?”
Stella smiled. She could think of a few ways—depending on the man. And the gun. “How?”
“If you admire a friend’s gun, and tell her so, she’ll probably let you try it out a few times.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Addney Walsingham lived in a part of Kansas City that could only be described as past its prime, in a beat-down apartment building that shared a parking lot with a liquor store and an Everything for a Buck. Everything seemed to be broken—the asphalt parking lot was cracked and busted up; a rusting car sat on four flat tires in one of the garage stalls; the mailboxes lurched on a bent pole where some careless driver had taken a swipe at it. Even the numeral 6 on Walsingham’s door had lost a nail and spun upside down, making it look like a 9.
Stella peered at the door, considering her options. She’d circled the lot slowly, determining that the apartments had no back exits, just smallish windows on what was probably the bedrooms. The only signs of activity were a gnarled old gentleman hosing off the sidewalk in front of the Triple-X Video store across the street, and a lady with a twin stroller full of bags of groceries but no twins, not even a single baby, who was rolling slowly and serenely down the street.
Stella unlocked the steel box bolted to the floor of the Jeep where she stashed her guns when they weren’t in use, and considered her options. The Bersa was more suited to threatening amateurs, especially smallish ones, as it didn’t have a whole lot of firepower. Not knowing what to expect from Walsingham, she chose the 9 mm Mak PA that she’d picked up used from a guy who was trading up. The thing had a sort of old-fashioned look to it, and it was a pain to find the surplus ammo, but it fit nicely in the hand and got the job done.
She folded a lacy crocheted sweater over her gun hand and headed for the door, swinging the Tupperware full of lock tools in the other. The sweater was strictly for show—Stella figured the day she started sporting pastel twin sets was the day they might as well put her out to pasture—but it was an amazingly effective bit of camouflage. Folks saw the sweater and just couldn’t help their brains from forming a picture of a nice granny. Hell, outfit the Special Forces from the Tog Shop catalog, and you could probably send them right into the most dangerous hot spots on the planet without drawing any attention.
She knocked softly. No point interrupting Walsingham’s neighbors’ morning business, if any of them were home.
“What,” a pleasant-enough male voice said after a few seconds. “Who’s that, then?”
“Census Bureau,” Stella said. It was an old standby, not terribly
creative, but she hadn’t been expecting to find anyone home.
After a longish pause and a curious scuffling sound, the voice spoke again, closer to the front door. “Cen-what?”
“I’m with the Census,” Stella repeated. “Just need to ask you a few questions about the household. Won’t take but a minute.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not interested.”
“Oh, it’s mandatory,” Stella said, slipping a little extra sugar into her voice. “You mostly just have to sign it.”
“Just leave it out there. I’m, um, I’m in my bathrobe.”
“Oh, dear, I wish I could, but see, this is, like, federal property?” Stella improvised. She’d tried the ruse out a couple of times before when rousting was necessary, and as a rule she liked to use it only on her stupider victims; she doubted whether Walsingham would go for it. Damn—she’d have to find somewhere to hunker down until he came out and she could break in. “Leaving it unattended is a crime. I could lose my job. I could be prosecuted.”
A string of expletives was muttered, but to Stella’s happy surprise, the door jiggled and opened and a suspicious brown eye regarded her through the crack. She tucked the lockbox under her gun arm as a hand slipped out, fingers wiggling.
“Just let me have it, then,” the voice demanded.
Stella seized the door handle with her free hand and yanked as hard as she could, crunching the man’s fingers in the doorjamb. Then she plowed into the opening with her shoulder, ignoring the cursing and sounds of pain, taking advantage of the moment to send him staggering backwards into the apartment. The sweater and toolbox fell to the floor as Stella raised the gun and bumped the door closed with her butt.
“Just lay facedown on the floor with your arms out to the side,” she said calmly, “and we’ll get to collecting data.”
“Now, that’s just plain rude,” a voice said off to the side. Stella’s heart did a little skip as she swiveled her head slightly to see the source—an impossibly good-looking young man had leveled a pistol of his own in her direction.
“Well, shit,” she sighed, and took a closer look at the man she’d shoved out of the way.
If he was Addney Walsingham, he was the most remarkably preserved forty-something gent she’d ever laid eyes on. He looked a lot more like a sleek and polished twenty-five. As she was processing that, a third hot hunk stepped out of the kitchen, drying a glass on a dish towel, and scowled at her.
“What the hell do you want?” the first one asked.
Stella slowly and carefully lowered her gun to the nearest surface, a battered brown sofa table stacked with books and papers. Nearly every surface in the apartment, she now noticed, held piles of paperbacks and dusty hardbacks and papers and notebooks. Dish Towel Boy picked up her gun between a thumb and forefinger with an expression of distaste and carried it into the kitchen.
“So what have I walked into here, anyway—y’all shootin’ some kind of hard-luck beefcake calendar?”
The one with the gun grimaced. “We’re trying to save lives here.”
“Hah. Funny way of doing it, you ask me. What did you do to Walsingham?”
The three exchanged looks. “What do you want him for, anyway? And forget about that census bullshit—I don’t believe a bit of it.”
Stella rolled her eyes. “Darn, I guess my cover’s blown. What was your first clue, anyway?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” the tallest of the three said. His dark good looks were only slightly marred, in Stella’s opinion, by the ridiculous facial hair that he’d carefully sculpted into thin sideburns and a sort of chevron on his chin. “As for Addney, we’ve got him under control—don’t you worry about that.”
“Okay,” Stella said. She could hear muffled thumping and what sounded like moans from the back of the apartment. “Um, this is awkward. Are you sure? Did you tie him up or something?”
“Yeah, we— What do you care?”
Stella cracked her knuckles and rolled her shoulders. The tension of the last few moments had seized up her muscles, and she had learned in physical therapy that she thought best if she took a deep breath or two and relaxed. “Look, boys, I realize this might be hard for you to absorb, but I’m kind of a professional. I got a stake in keeping Walsingham in one piece, and if you ain’t tied him up right, he’s gonna come busting out of there and somebody’ll end up with a hole blown clear through him, and that’s not going to look good for any of us.”
She waited a moment for that to sink in, taking a more careful look at her three new friends while they cast all manner of anxious glances at one another. They truly were a fine-looking bunch, each with his own special look, kind of like the series of plastic suitors Noelle had for her Barbies when she was a little girl. There was the smooth-skinned Latino hottie with the odd and complicated facial hair … the densely built Nordic-looking fellow with the—
“Hey!” Stella exclaimed, realization dawning. “Y’all work for Priss, don’t you?”
More glances and frowning. “How do you know her? Look, I think it’s about time for us to ask questions.”
Stella nodded and took a step toward the boy with the gun. “Yeah, okay, but how about if you hand me that thing so nobody gets hurt. It ain’t any kind of toy.…”
She was counting on Pretty Boy being like so many other young men with their first gun, which was to say, barely aware of which was the business end. Stella herself had been in that position not so long ago, but her first year in the justice business, she had made a serious study of firearms. Not to mention the fact that she had the twin advantages of being a female—unhindered by any machismo action-hero urges—and middle aged, which meant old enough to know better.
She was about to close her hand on the barrel, when the boy tipped it a fraction of an inch to the side and took a shot. Stella whipped around and saw that he’d nailed the wooden base of a lamp across the room dead center.
Huh.
She swallowed hard. “Okay, then. So you can handle a gun. Well, I’m still gonna go check on what you done to Walsingham, so you might as well shoot me if you got any objections.”
She walked slowly down the hall, legs trembling until she arrived at the end of the hall unshot.
“Oh, fine,” Pretty Boy said. He followed her down the hall and pushed the door open ahead of her, keeping his gun trained on her the whole time.
They both gaped: a sweating, balding middle-aged man with a fairly nice physique had got himself into an uncomfortable-looking pretzel, the leg of a desk chair hooked between his bound hands behind his back, his legs kicking furiously, lengths of electrical tape trailing on the ground. What appeared to be a handkerchief was stuffed in his mouth and secured with tape, but it, too, was loose and flapping free.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Stella said. “You call this any kind of restraint? Honestly, ain’t you ever seen MacGyver?”
“Mac-who?”
Stella glanced at him incredulously. Oh, youth today. “Look, just give me the tape and some rope, if you got any.”
She plucked a corner of the tape from Walsingham’s mouth and prepared to rip. “Don’t you get to squawkin’,” she warned him. “I ain’t exactly here to rescue you or anything of that nature, despite any appearances to the contrary.”
Then she pulled.
The exclamation of pain Walsingham blurted out quickly turned to the sort of yelling that was so unhelpful in these circumstances, so Stella gave him a quick and precise jab to the voice box that she had learned watching martial arts videos on YouTube, and the yelling turned to a gargling gasp for breath.
“Now, unless you especially enjoyed that, how about you tell me where you keep the rope,” she suggested.
It took a bit of pantomiming and, once Walsingham got his voice partway back, strained whispering, but Stella found a length of nylon clothesline and a rubber ball of the sort used by weight lifters, as well as a few neckties and a handful of carabiners. Within ten minutes, Stella had Walsingham tied up nice and tig
ht, sitting more or less comfortably on the living room couch. She sat next to him, and the eye candy trio moved enough books and papers off the kitchen chairs that they were able to form a ring around the couch, Pretty Boy in the middle with his gun and an expression that was getting more sour by the moment.
“Okeydoke,” Stella said cheerfully. It was true what they said, a little good hard work could really lift your spirits. “I know you’re kind of the party host here and all, but how about if I take the lead, and you can, you know, wave your little gun around if you don’t like how it’s going.”
That got her nothing but a skeptical snort, but Stella barged ahead. She’d learned that—particularly if you were a middle-aged lady in this country—your best course was often to just keep on going until someone made you stop, rather than waiting around for anyone’s approval.
“So how about if we start with introductions. I’m Stella, I’m pretty sure this here’s Addney Walsingham, and—hey, are any of you by any chance Turk Hardpole?”
That got her a reaction: All three of them exchanged disgusted looks. “Hell no,” the Nordic one said. “I got principles.”
“Oh,” Stella said, a little disappointed. Despite lecturing Chrissy, she was mighty curious about the mystery feat herself.
“I’m Rock,” the boy with the gun said. He stuck a thumb out at the other two. “That’s Maverick, and Jett.”
“I suppose those are all your professional names,” Stella said. Nobody disagreed. “Uh-huh. I don’t guess it matters much to me. Well, tell you what. I don’t suppose any of us is exactly squeaky clean from the law’s point of view, so I guess we can drop any kind of holier-than-thou business. Why don’t you all tell me why you’re bothering this gentleman?”
“Hell no!” Maverick protested. “I don’t see where we ought to tell you anything. What are you, some sort of union buster?”
“Do I look like a fuckin’ union buster?” Stella demanded, incredulous. “And just how dumb do y’all breed around here, anyway? I just had to explain this to your buddy Beau Mandrake—what y’all do is illegal, so you can’t organize.”
A Bad Day for Scandal Page 20
