A Bad Day for Pretty

by Sophie Littlefield

  “Anything else you dug up on her? Like something that would explain why a person would want to incinerate her, for instance?”

  “Nah … she’s been working at a place called Dinette Superstore, but she musta got laid off a couple months back ’cause she’s been drawing unemployment.”

  “No kidding. Usually it’s laid-off folks that do the workplace violence to their old bosses and such, not the other way around.”

  “What, you think it was someone she worked for that blew up her car?”

  Stella pondered that. “She is awfully annoying, but that seems kind of extreme. I guess maybe I’ll check out that fella she was shacking up with. Like you said, he was acquitted, he probably isn’t such a bad guy. Maybe I can get him to come and get her and take her back to Versailles.”

  “Now, Stella, are you trying to help this gal, or are you just trying to get rid a her?” Chrissy demanded. “I mean, you’re always flappin’ your jaw about helpin’ out women don’t got anywhere else to turn, blah blah blah, and seems to me this Brandy don’t really have nowhere else to go if she had to come bunk with her ex. Plus she’s got someone trying to kill her.”

  “What’s your point?” Stella demanded.

  “Only if—well, if you want me to work for you, we got to have this one thing clear: I ain’t doin’ your dirty work just so you can clear out the competition for a man. That ain’t what these skills is for.” She held out her hands in front of her and made a typing gesture with her fingers.

  “Point taken,” Stella said dryly. “Whyn’t you type us up a corporate ethics policy while you’re at it.”

  “Maybe you oughtta git that smart mouth a yours out of bed,” Chrissy retorted. “Come on, you two lazybones, have a doughnut.”

  Stella complied, setting Tucker down on the floor; he hit the ground running in his rumble-seat jammies, barreling straight for the white paper sack on the kitchen table.

  “I found out some other stuff,” Chrissy said after she’d made them coffee and polished off a sprinkle doughnut plus the abandoned crumbs of Tucker’s. “I looked up all the missing girls from when Neb and them were building that snack shack, in all seven counties around Sawyer. There’s only a couple cases that ain’t got solved yet. I printed out the details for you.”

  “Wow—that’s great,” Stella said. “Looks like you might have to keep makin’ that Larry happy—I mean, until he’s taught you all his tricks and you can do everything yourself,” she added hastily as Chrissy opened her mouth to protest.

  “Shouldn’t take long. I figure I already know about a million times more about computers and shit than you do.”

  “Okay, okay, you can be like the tech support department. Or CIO. Chief Information Officer. Would you like that?”

  “I don’t know. Is that a high-paying job?”

  “Sure thing. Second highest in the company, in fact.”

  “Oh, great,” Chrissy said sarcastically. “All that means is I’m one step away from the poorhouse. Maybe I’ll stick to selling elastic and whatnot.”

  “Suit yourself,” Stella said, shrugging indifferently; it wasn’t lost on her that Chrissy had been more excited about the online sleuthing than most of the tasks she’d undertaken since starting to work for Stella. It seemed clear that she had a gift. “But don’t you figure you ought to jump in the shower, girl, and wash off all that sinnin’ before you go open up the shop?”

  Chrissy gave her a dazzling smile, the fetching little gap between her front teeth making her look as innocent as a baby lamb. “Considering all the places Larry used a bar of soap on me in the Jacuzzi this morning, I believe I’m clean enough I won’t need to shower for a month.”

  Stella’s Own shower, while a solo effort, was just what the doctor ordered. She turned the heat up high and stood under the stinging spray with her face upturned for as long as she could stand it. The night, with all its interruptions and surprises, hadn’t been the most restful she’d ever passed.

  Toweled, moisturized, deodorized, glossed, shadowed, and blown dry—feeling like an entirely new and spiffier woman—Stella added a spritz of White Diamonds and had a brainstorm.

  She went to the laundry room, stepping over Roxy, who after a brisk walk and a generous bowl of kibble was snoozing on her new bed. Stella fetched the soap flakes and the liquid laundry starch and mixed up a gruely paste in a mixing bowl.

  “Coming, mutt?” she asked, and Roxy bounded to her feet and skittered across the kitchen floor to where her leash was hanging on a hook. In the yard Stella let Roxy wander free while she took care of her little task, a variation on a Girl Scout project she had done years ago with Noelle’s troop, helping the girls make casts of fossil imprints out by the quarry.

  She carefully poured the gucky stuff into the footprint her peeper had left the day before. She had to use her fingers to smooth out the top. It felt unpleasantly slimy, but Stella pushed the mixture into all the nooks and crannies.

  She straightened and called Roxy, who’d made it as far as the neighbors and was peeing on a patch of tuberous begonias. Roxy finished and pawed daintily at the tender flowers before loping back, ears flopping.

  “Now, you stay out of that, hear?” Stella said, pointing at her makeshift cast.

  She picked up the leash, and the two of them strolled around the house and down the street to the Groffes’ house. Seeing as it was Saturday, Sherilee would undoubtedly be home, trying to cram a week’s worth of housecleaning and bill paying and laundry into one day. Saturday nights she got a sitter for her twin daughters, who were nearly seven, and took Todd out for a little quality time—a slice of pizza or a movie.

  Tomorrow was Sunday, which meant Todd would come to Stella’s house while Sherilee took the twins out for their weekly girls’ night—a trip to Chuck E. Cheese or a spin around the mall. It was a sacred and unshakable commitment, and Stella mentally readjusted her schedule so she’d be ready in time for Todd tomorrow—any crime-solving that remained unfinished at that point would just have to wait.

  Stella knocked on the Groffes’ door, straightening a faded wreath of plastic leaves and silk flowers. She heard the girls scrambling for the door, giggling and shouting, and then it opened, and one of the girls fell backwards with a thud while the other one grinned up at Stella with a couple fewer teeth than the last time she saw her.

  “Nice look, Glory,” Stella said, taking a chance and tapping her own teeth.

  “I’m Melly,” the girl replied with a dramatic sigh, “but it’s okay, I forgive you.”

  Glory picked herself up off the floor and poked her sister in the side. “I’m the one with the extra freckles, ” she said with exaggerated patience. In truth, Stella didn’t think there was a single difference between the girls. Even their mother got them confused. Sherilee rounded the corner holding half a plate and trailing Todd, who was scowling at the ground.

  “All’s I said was, if Melly hadn’t left it there, it wouldn’t have got broke,” he muttered.

  “And if you hadn’t been skateboarding inside the house, you never would of broke it,” Sherilee shot back. “Hi, Stella. You come to take this boy a day early? ’Cause you can sure enough have him.”

  “I’ll pass,” Stella said. “I got to rest up before he comes over. I just really wanted to tell you that I got a new dog.”

  Sherilee fanned herself with the broken plate and gave Todd a shove back toward the kitchen; the girls followed him, tripping over each other’s words. “A dog. Huh. Wouldn’t be a black-and-white one, about yea high?”

  “Hmm,” Stella said. “Sounds about right.”

  “Oh … that boy of mine, I’m gonna have to tan his hide.”

  “I just thought I ought to ask if you knew where it came from.”

  Sherilee rolled her eyes to the heavens and shrugged. “Come in with the storm, is what Todd told me. Found ’im in the culvert, half drowned, and cleaned him off with my guest towels. The nice ones, with the lace.”

  “Bet that fried your
bacon. Well … I guess I’ll keep her, anyway.”

  “It’s a girl dog?”

  “Yes. Name of Roxy.”

  “Roxy? Did Todd give her that name? ’Cause this girl from school left her backpack over here the other day. Said ‘Roxy’ on it ’bout fifty times, and then she’s got it wrote on her T-shirt and on the butt of her shorts.” Sherilee sighed. “My girls don’t wear words on their butts.”

  Stella clucked sympathetically. “The other thing …,” she said, not sure quite where to start. “Well, I guess there’s been a peeper in the neighborhood. Looking … into windows and whatnot. Just thought I should tell you, maybe you could convince Todd not to go out after dark, least till we get this cleared up.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t. I don’t let him.”

  “Oh.” Stella considered enlightening Sherilee on her son’s peripatetic evening ways, but a scream from the kitchen distracted her.

  “Mom! Glory’s got her hair stuck in the toaster!”

  As Stella let herself out the front door, she figured she’d just convince Todd herself. Tomorrow, when he was a captive audience.

  ELEVEN

  It wasn’t really a surprise that Jelloman Nunn wasn’t picking up his cell. He routinely slept until noon. Which wasn’t a sign of sloth; most of his business was conducted in the evening, so he was generally awake until the wee hours of the morning.

  Stella pulled into the weedy side yard where Jelloman’s customers parked. His house had been a bungalow of the three-room sort that sprang up a hundred-odd years ago when early Prosper dwellers were still pulling rocks out of the fields, but enterprising homeowners in the intervening years had built additions and nooks and sheds and a sun porch roofed with corrugated plastic and hung with a half dozen Missouri Tiger flags, giving the whole thing a festival air.

  During football season, Jelloman cut back on his motorcycle repair business—though his weed-dealing sideline remained brisk—and on Saturdays, he and his buddies dragged a big-screen television into the shop and set up folding chairs and a couple of kegs. Mizzou was playing Kansas at two o’clock today, so Stella figured she was doing Jelloman a service by pounding on the door and waking him up so he’d have plenty of time to prepare for his guests.

  He came to the door after about five minutes of knocking and hollering, rubbing his eyes and pushing his long gray ponytail out of his face. He wasn’t wearing his black leather vest, but otherwise it looked like he’d slept in his clothes—a Metallica T-shirt from the Summer Sanitarium Tour with a flannel shirt over it, and jeans slung low to give his impressive gut the breathing room it needed.

  Jelloman’s cross expression evaporated the minute he opened the screen door. “Stella! You come to watch the game?”

  Before she could reply, he folded her into a hug, and Stella leaned into it and hugged back, breathing in the not-unpleasant odors of home-rolled cigarettes and Mitchum and sleep. It was good to be hugged. It didn’t happen often enough—though Stella certainly enjoyed the baby-powder drooly embraces of Tucker, not to mention the squeezes from Noelle and Chrissy and ex-clients she bumped into here and there.

  But this was a man-hug. Jelloman didn’t light any fires for Stella, but he had big forearms and his chin landed squarely on top of her head and his sloping gut made just the right angle for leaning in to, and Stella gave in to the whole thing and hung on tight.

  And then it was on into the reception area of the house for Jelloman-style hospitality, which included offers of pot, beer, and finally sun tea, the last of which Stella accepted.

  “Listen, I need a favor,” Stella said once they were settled in a pair of old recliners with a view out the picture window onto a dirt-bike track Jelloman had built for the neighborhood kids.

  “Hell, Stella, anything, you just ask—you know that.”

  A couple years back, Jelloman’s mom—a surprisingly sweet and dainty woman in her early eighties—was wooed and conned by a dapper septuagenarian lothario. He’d nabbed nearly half the old lady’s life savings by the time Jelloman got Stella involved.

  Now the funds were restored and there was one wiser and older old coot who was using a cane that might not otherwise have been strictly necessary.

  Stella had done that one pro bono, and now Jelloman was her go-to guy for all sorts of sticky problems.

  “It’s Todd, that kid who lives down the street from me. I’m worried about him.”

  Jelloman exhaled a thin stream of smoke and set down his spliff. “What’s he gone and got into?” he demanded in atone of outrage. He was old-school when it came to raising kids; he believed in strict rules. His own daughter, a polite, soft-spoken brunette gal, was in the pre-med program at Mizzou.

  “Nothing much, other than the usual teenage buttheadedness. But I think there’s someone hanging around my house. Could be nothing, could be something.”

  “Something having to do with a case a yours.”

  “Yeah, like that. And you know kids—I tell Todd to stay clear of my place for a while, why that’s practically a guarantee he’s going to camp out in the front yard. And I got a few things on my agenda where I can’t be home all day for a while, anyway, so I was wondering if you’d mind coming over and staying for a few days.”

  “After the game, you mean,” Jelloman clarified.

  “Yeah, of course, I don’t expect any problems during the day. But maybe if you could come over, say by dark…?”

  “I’d be honored,” Jelloman said formally. “Can I bring Sabine?”

  “Absolutely. In fact, tomorrow night’s Todd’s regular visit, why don’t we have us a little party—I’ll ask Noelle to stay, and maybe we can get Chrissy and Tucker over, maybe Chrissy’s new boyfriend.”

  “I’ll get Sabine to fix them wieners she does in the garlic and red wine sauce.”

  Sabine was Jelloman’s French girlfriend. His main girlfriend, anyway. They had a complicated open relationship with rules governing who could step out on whom and when—this must be one of their “on” weekends. Stella figured Sabine for forty or so, but an accumulation of hard miles had rendered her ageless in a wrinkly, nicotine-stained, raspy-voiced way.

  Stella liked her plenty.

  “Well, I gotta go,” she said.

  “You’re doing the Lord’s work,” Jelloman said, standing chivalrously and tracing a quick sign of the cross on himself.

  As Stella made the drive back across town, she queued up Miranda Lambert and did her own quick prayer. She tried to check in with the Big Guy every day, and she always led off with gratitude.

  Back in the days when Ollie was still around to curse every minute of her existence, Stella forgot the gratitude part for a while. She dutifully found her place in the pew every Sunday, but her mind tended to wander or, more often, just shut down, a one-hour respite when even Ollie wouldn’t dare raise a hand or his voice to her.

  Now, she didn’t get over to church much. Mostly, it was a factor of her ever-expanding business, which made her Sundays and Tuesdays—her days off—too busy for much more than chores and delivering brutal justice to woman abusers.

  Ironically, her talks with the Big Guy had become more frequent and far more important to Stella. They left her feeling … calmer. More sure of her priorities. Almost, some days, within spitting distance of some peculiar brand of contentment.

  So as Miranda sang her way through “Mama I’m Alright,” Stella murmured her gratitude, for Chrissy and Tucker and Noelle and friends like Jelloman and clients like the Donovans, and as she pulled into the Popeyes parking lot, she sneaked in one tiny little request, which she didn’t put exactly into words but which had the general outline of a certain law enforcement officer who had been taking up extra room in her dreams for a while now.

  Popeyes, at eleven thirty on a Saturday, was jam-packed, but the Green Hat Ladies had staked out their usual claim and dragged over a spare chair so Stella could join them with her tray of chicken and biscuits.

  “You’re looking well,” Shirlette Castro ob
served.

  Linda Becker pushed her John Deere cap up above her tight-permed curls so she could peer closely at Stella’s face. “Mmm-mmm,” she said, shaking her head. “I swan but them doctors can do wonders nowadays. Git you a little makeup on, Stella, and won’t nobody need to know how bad off you was looking there for a spell.”

  Since no-nonsense directness was one of the things Stella treasured about the elderly ladies, she let the comment pass. The half dozen old gals met nearly every day to trade gossip—which made them valuable allies—and show off their matching ball caps, which made them a startling sight to any out-of-towners who happened to have a hankering for fried chicken. The ladies, however, liked how their caps set them apart from the red-hatted, purple-wearing gals who had formed a rival club over in Quail Valley.

  “You needin’ our help again, Stella?” Novella Glazer asked, picking a bit of corn out of her teeth with a frill-ended toothpick.

  “—Fraid so,” Stella said. The gals loved to help, especially when it meant an entrée into a juicy bit of speculation. “I got this list of women who went missing a few years back, thought I’d see if you all remembered anything.”

  She pulled the piece of paper from her purse and unfolded it, slipped on her reading glasses, and read out loud.

  “Okay … so this first one’s Ashley de Boer, twenty-two when she went missing, student at Southern Missouri State … she came home to her folks’ house up in Independence in August three years back, just for the weekend. She was working at the university library for the summer and hadn’t seen her folks for a while. Saturday night about nine she went out to meet a friend for a drink and never showed up.”

  “Ashley, huh,” Lola Brennan said. “I don’t recall any Ashley.”

  “I remember that one from the paper,” Shirlette said, clucking sorrowfully. “Pretty girl. I bet she’s in a ditch somewhere picked clean over by the buzzards. That’s how those college girls generally end up.”