A Bad Day for Pretty

by Sophie Littlefield

  “Guess she can hold her liquor,” Stella observed. There were regular thumps on the door of the guest room, accompanied by occasional bursts of singing alternating with muffled hollering.

  “She always could put it away, but I wouldn’t say she holds it all that well.” Goat gingerly touched his head and scowled. “She gets a little excitable. It was one of the things that got between us—me having to talk her down all the time, well, that got plenty old.”

  Stella couldn’t help it—her ears pricked up at Goat’s criticism of his ex. That was an avenue she would have liked to explore further—she could probably listen to Goat trash the woman for hours without getting bored—but Tucker was getting terribly heavy.

  “Is there somewhere I could—?”

  “Oh, sure,” Goat said, and grabbed Tucker from Stella before she could protest. To her surprise, though, he did it like a champ, smoothly easing the little boy into his own arms, settling him high on his shoulder so that Tucker’s cheek tucked perfectly into the hollow of Goat’s neck, and balancing him there like a sack of chicken feed. “I’ll set him down on my bed here in a second. Just let me get you something. Uh, I’d offer you a beer, but I’m fresh out. I think I got a bottle of pinot noir in there somewhere—”

  “Water,” Stella said, “and I guess you best brew up some coffee if this is going to take any kind of a while. Though it does look like you got things under control here, so maybe I can just turn around and head home.”

  As if on cue, Brandy sent up a high-pitched wail. “I got to peeeeee,” she cried, and Goat gave Stella a deer-in-headlights look.

  “You take care of her,” he begged, “and I’ll make you a damn good cup of coffee.”

  Stella rolled her eyes. Not much of a trade.

  “The door’s not really locked,” Goat added, “it just gets stuck to where it’s hard to open from inside. Put a little shoulder in it—that’ll do the trick.”

  Stella did as he suggested, wondering at her own sanity the whole time. Helping Brandy was like encouraging a relentless suitor: it just guaranteed she’d keep coming back.

  When she shoved, the door burst open, knocking Brandy over. She landed hard on her butt, hiccupped, looked up at Stella in surprise, and laughed.

  “You did come!” she said. “I knew you would. I ain’t scared no more, but Goat’s being no fun. Maybe we can pop us some corn.”

  Stella put out a hand to help her up, noticing that Brandy had changed into a snug terry knit jog suit at some point in the evening, a little yellow set with athletic striping down the side. It was hard to imagine the sport it might have been designed for, seeing how it scooped astonishingly low over Brandy’s energetically uplifted breasts, and the pants didn’t cover even her hip bones, leaving a wide swath of midriff bare to the world. Stella spotted a fussy little gold-and-bead ring poked through Brandy’s navel, and felt a twinge of envy; childbirth and a close personal relationship with the Frito-Lay product line had pretty much ensured her own navel would stay adornment-free and out of sight.

  “Oooh—my—I’m just a little light-headed,” Brandy observed as Stella tugged her upright.

  Suddenly there was a huge flash, a thunderous crashing sound, and the room tilted sideways as Brandy came hurtling toward Stella, knocking them both out the door and into the hallway, where they fell in a heap.

  An explosion of some sort. Stella, heart pounding, hastened to untangle Brandy’s floppy arms and legs from hers. Out the window she could see an orange fireball shoot flames toward the sky.

  Goat rounded the corner at a gallop, Tucker wide-eyed in his arms. “Are you—? Is she—? Stella —”

  He grabbed her in a not-unpleasant fierce embrace and then released her, eyes roving up and down her body, before he handed her Tucker and bent down to check out Brandy.

  “I think I peed myself,” Brandy said, and yawned.

  Goat scowled and let her slump against the wall. He grabbed Stella’s hand and pulled her with him at a jog, through the house to the front door, but as he reached for the knob, he hesitated. “You stay inside,” he ordered.

  Stella got Tucker hitched up a little more comfortably in her arms. He pointed a chubby finger outside and said, his voice full of awe, “Hot.”

  After Stella put out a hand to test the air, she followed Goat onto the porch. Out in the gravel drive, the slightly tarnished red Camaro in which Brandy had delivered herself to Goat’s house just two nights earlier had been reduced to a burning pile of rubble. Smoke poured from the chassis, and flames licked out from the rear of the frame. Bits of glass winked on the ground, and pieces of metal thrown by the blast lay smoldering on the drive.

  “Holy cow,” Stella breathed. “I don’t believe she’ll be driving that thing anywhere any time soon.”

  “What—? How—?” Goat sputtered and stepped in front of her, throwing a forearm out protectively. “Stay right here, Dusty,” he finally said.

  Stella was torn between the urge to push him aside and the lovely sensation of that hard-muscled arm brushing against her clavicles … that, and a taste for personal safety. Heading into all that molten metal and leaking fuel and fiery devastation just didn’t strike her as all that smart.

  Her pocket gave a little start and began to shriek, and Stella fished out her phone and answered it, coughing from the smoke fumes. “Hello…”

  “Stella? It’s me,” a voice said in a scratchy whisper.

  Stella jammed the phone harder against her ear and stepped back into the house in an effort to hear better. She kept an eye on Goat, who stepped off the porch toward the blaze. Damn fool man, more guts than smarts. Though there was something kind of appealing about his broad-shouldered frame silhouetted against the flames.

  “Me who?”

  “Todd!” the voice barked indignantly.

  Stella checked her watch. “It’s almost ten,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed or something by now? Besides, I’m involved in a—a little drama unfolding here.”

  “No, it’s Friday. I can stay up as late as I want. Besides, Stella, reason I’m calling—you got an intruder. I got rid a him for you.”

  “I got a what?”

  “An intruder. I put the hose on him and he ran away.”

  Stella took a last look at Goat, who was edging into the yard toward the wrecked metal, despite the fact that flames licked around the ruined carcass of the car. She retreated farther into the house where the reception was better, and settled down on a couch with Tucker, who yawned and snuggled down into the cushions. “At my house? You saw someone at my house?”

  “Well yeah, where’d you think? I saw him come sneakin’ down the street acting like he was just out walkin’ or whatever, and when he got to your place he looked all around and then kind of ducked down and ran over to your front porch. He knocked a bunch of times and then he put his head right on the door, trying to hear were you inside, I figure, and I guess he decided you weren’t and that he was going to wait for you to get back, ’cause he went back of that big old bush you got next to your porch, kind of wiggled in behind it, and then he just stood there hiding.”

  “What? When was this?” Stella thought of the broken glass at the back of the house, the gouged sill, the footprint in the soft earth. Looked like her peeper had come back.

  “Like around … I don’t know, half an hour ago.”

  “What were you doing, that you saw him?” Stella demanded.

  “I was … uh … playing Pokémon on my PSP?”

  “Wrong,” Stella said automatically. There was only one good reason for Todd to be outside alone after dark, and that was to come visit her. If this intruder had spotted him coming down the street …

  “This is important,” Stella added. “Code of Silence rules apply.”

  She could hear Todd breathing in the phone and knew he was thinking that over. Code of Silence was their agreement, made at Stella’s suggestion, that in some instances she would hear Todd out with the understanding that Sherilee
would not be notified as long as Stella was satisfied that the boy had told the entire truth and, if it concerned something ill advised or even stupid, he would not repeat the infraction. So far, it had been invoked only once, when Todd had left a Tupperware full of live bait on the front seat of the brand-new Lincoln belonging to mean retired neighbor Rolf Bayer on a sweltering morning last May, and had second thoughts and called Stella from his first class at school.

  Stella had removed the bait before it could disintegrate in the heat and add a permanent olfactory taint to the car, and it was not spoken of again. She figured Todd’s belated guilty conscience made up for the stray mischief. Besides, Bayer truly was an asshole.

  “Okay,” he said. “Chanelle Tanaka gave me some clove cigarettes. I was, uh, smoking them on Mrs. Granick’s porch—she’s in Florida.”

  “Todd!” Stella said, horrified. “Smoking? That’s the nastiest—”

  “Calm down, Stella. There ain’t any tobacco in them. They’re like all natural and—”

  —and Chanelle was the hottest girl in eighth grade, Stella thought darkly. “Todd,” she interrupted him sternly, “we’ll talk about your slow and painful lung cancer death later, but for now, just tell me this guy didn’t see you.”

  “Okay. He didn’t see me.”

  “Well, did he?” The notion of a Peeping Tom at her window had taken a turn for the more sinister since the car bombing a couple of minutes earlier. Some unusually violent force was at work in Prosper, and the thought of Todd wandering, innocent and unsuspecting, into its midst was terrifying. “Or didn’t he?”

  “Uh, well, I don’t think so. When I snuck over to get the Knowleses’ hose, I—”

  “When you did what?”

  “Stella,” Todd said patiently, “you gonna let me tell you or you gonna keep interrupting me?”

  “Continue,” Stella said through gritted teeth. “Please.”

  “I went down three houses before I crossed over to your side of the street, then I came back the other way in the backyards, and when I got to the Knowleses’ I came around the side real slow, and the hose was all coiled up on that hook thing Mr. Knowles got on the wall there and I got it unwound enough without making any noise. Then the faucet handle creaked just a little—”

  “What the hell were you doing with the hose?” Stella could feel her heart pounding in her throat. The Knowleses lived next door to Stella to the right; Todd would have been a mere fifteen feet from the intruder in the bushes—an intruder who could have been armed or even wielding bombs or grenades or something. “And what kind of fool idea—”

  “I was saving your ass,” Todd said, raising his voice to a powerful whisper-bellow. “I didn’t have a phone with me and what was I supposed to do, let him murder you when you got home?”

  “What makes you think he was going to murder me?” Stella demanded. “He could of, I don’t know, wanted to borrow something or—”

  “Stella,” Todd said in a withering tone, “men don’t come around your place askin’ to borrow shit. They come around fixin’ to maim you and kill you.”

  Naturally, the boy knew all about her recent brush with death—he’d visited half a dozen times in the hospital and asked a hundred questions. Stella had tried to soft-pedal her answers, but she figured the boy was entitled to a good helping of truth, seeing as smart kids generally know a lie when they hear one. So he was well aware of the nearly half dozen assorted crooks and ne’er-do-wells who’d attempted to kill her.

  “Okay,” she sighed. “The hose?”

  “It had one a them attachments on it? You know, with all the settings? Well, good thing it was set to jet, ’cause I just pointed it at the guy and blasted the shit out of him. Man, you shoulda seen him come flyin’ outta that bush! Soaked him good ’fore he took off running, too!”

  Todd chortled at the memory as Stella’s pulse skyrocketed. If the man had come at Todd, rather than fleeing … if he’d turned and looked and noticed that his attacker wielded only a garden hose … if he’d decided to come back and finish the job—

  “Please tell me you didn’t stick around to watch,” she said.

  “Naw, I went home the back way, he wouldn’t a known how to find me. Turned the water off, too,” he added. “I guess you’re gonna say to go wind that hose back up, huh?”

  “I’m—I’ll—” Words eluded Stella as she tried and failed to come up with a way to convey to her teenage bodyguard the recklessness of his actions. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Now get your ass in bed. Lock all your doors first—then straight to bed.”

  “Don’t you mean, Thank you, Todd? For getting rid of your armed and dangerous killer?”

  “Thank you, Todd,” Stella repeated, trying to keep the agitation out of her voice. “Gotta go. Get your butt in bed.”

  She hung up and slipped the phone back in her pocket, and covered Tucker with an afghan that was folded over the couch, touching his cheek to make sure he was sleeping soundly. Then she returned to the porch, where she watched Goat jabbing at a smoking pile of rubble with a garden rake. A sound behind her in the hall caught her attention, and she turned to see Brandy, vertical at last, leaning against a wall with a tumbler in her hand.

  “Isn’t that a sight,” she said, sighing happily. “I do love a bonfire. Whyn’t cha fix you a drink and we can go cook us some wieners.”

  TEN

  Stella was short on misgivings when she left Goat to deal with both Brandy and the firebomb in the front yard. She had Tucker to consider, after all, and she figured he’d seen about enough mayhem for one evening. They were back at Chrissy’s apartment and in bed by eleven, and Stella even resisted the urge to see if the lights were still on over at the shop.

  Around seven the next morning, she was lying in a sleep-stupor, Chrissy’s fluffy pink comforter pulled around her like a cotton candy cocoon, enjoying the last of a dream that was slipping away. A few feet from the bed, Tucker was doing his own early-morning ruminating in the crib, humming to himself, making the occasional comment in unintelligible toddler speak, playing with his green fuzzy horse.

  Stella was trying to hold on to the image of Goat in those low-slung pants—the very ones Brandy had been trying to take off him—and no shirt, when she heard the key in the door.

  “It’s me and I got doughnuts,” Chrissy called. She came clomping into the bedroom in her high-heeled mules and went straight for the crib, scooping Tucker up for a volley of kisses and giggling. Then she lay down next to Stella, the baby between them, the bed pleasantly jammed.

  “Well, you don’t look much worse for wear,” Stella said as graciously as she could. “What kind of doughnuts you got?”

  “Three cream-filled, three chocolate sprinkles, but you cain’t eat ’em in here.”

  Stella rolled her eyes. “Considering what-all you probably been doing for the last dozen hours, I don’t know if I’d be acting all prim and proper over a few crumbs.”

  “Oh, envy ain’t pretty on you,” Chrissy said.

  She yawned extravagantly and crawled out of bed. Tucker snuggled in closer to Stella, his well-chewed green horse butting her in the chin. “Whore,” he said. No. Horse. Had to be horse.

  Chrissy opened her tiny closet and started rummaging through hangers.

  “Well, while you and your fancy man were making whoopee over in the shop—”

  “We went back to his place,” Chrissy interrupted. “He’s got him a nice apartment with a Jacuzzi tub over by the Applebee’s.”

  “Well, la-di-da,” Stella said. “I guess it’s nice for some folks to be floating around in bubbles while other folks were being blown up.”

  Chrissy turned around, startled. “What have you gone and got yourself into now, Stella?”

  Stella laid out the events of the last evening while Chrissy changed into a fresh pair of shorts and a tank top with complicated crisscrossed peekaboo strands of ribbon highlighting her cleavage. There were no obvious hickeys or bite marks or rug burns on her that Stella could m
ake out.

  “Hoo-ee,” Chrissy said when Stella finished. “Well, I guess you’re gonna want to know what-all I dug up on that ex-wife of the sheriff for you.”

  “You mean Larry looked her up online?”

  Chrissy turned around mid-tug on her lacy pink bra. “What do you mean Larry—I’m the one tracked her down while he was makin’ us some grilled cheese and tomatoes.”

  “Oh—sorry.” Stella held up her hands in apology. It was never a good idea to underestimate Chrissy. She had a chip on her shoulder big enough to flatten a less robust person, left over from several decades of being told she wasn’t smart. “What did you find, then?”

  “Well,” Chrissy said smugly, unmistakable pride in her molasses drawl, “Larry showed me how to get past these encryption thingies they got, and then I checked where her mail was going. Turns out she’s been shacking up with this guy name a Wilbur Vines. He owns him a trilevel house and did you know, he bought it in 1992 for sixty-five thousand bucks? Don’t that just beat all?”

  “That’s real estate for you, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well, anyway he’s got him a couple of arrests on his record. One for burglary and one for fraud, acquitted both times, but you gotta figure he did it or why would they arrest him. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if that Brandy, after being married to Mr. Squeaky Clean for a couple years, went lookin’ for something a little more downtown.”

  Stella ignored the amateur psychologizing for the moment. “They were married only a couple of years? Her and Goat?”

  “Not even, just twenty-two months. Got married at the Morgan County courthouse, almost five years back.”

  “Well, then they’ve been split up longer than they were together.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to convince me—ain’t no reason you got to stand back from that man on account of any holy union or that shit,” Chrissy said. She had been married twice before; besides her dead ex, she had a first husband who still carried a torch for her, plus a spate of admirers in between, one of whom had fathered Tucker, though Chrissy wasn’t sure which one that was.