A Bad Day for Pretty

by Sophie Littlefield

  “Not all of them,” Gracie Lewis chided.

  “All the missing ones, anyway,” Shirlette said defensively.

  “Then there’s June Dunovich,” Stella said. “She was local. Well, over in Fairfax, anyway.”

  “Well, sure, I remember that,” Lola said. She leaned forward conspiratorially. “I’d bet you a hunnert bucks she ain’t missing, though. She had those gambling problems—”

  “Riverboats,” Linda confirmed, bobbing her head. “It was up in the thousands. She tried to clear out her and Rex’s accounts, he only found out when the bank called him.”

  “Suze Orman says you should have all the accounts in your own name. Not your husband’s,” Novella said.

  “Oh, she says no such thing,” Gracie said. “What she said was—”

  Stella interrupted to read the final name, but there was general head-shaking and mystification all around.

  “Wait,” Gracie said. “That last one—Laura Cassel? That rings some kind of bell.”

  “She was thirty-five, says here. Lived alone, up in Picot, worked for a company called Glecko-Goldin.”

  “Drug company!” Shirlette exclaimed. “They make my blood pressure medicine. Greedy bastards.”

  Drugs. The connection loomed obvious and unwelcome in Stella’s mind—what with OxyContin being prescription, was it possible that Laura Cassel could have been some sort of supplier for Neb? It seemed like drug companies would have all kinds of procedures in place to make sure their products didn’t wander off the premises on the persons of their employees, to make their way through shady channels and end up in the hands of addicts, but it wasn’t the sort of news that had Stella feeling extra-optimistic.

  “Says she didn’t show up for work, her boss got worried, had them check out her town house. Didn’t ever find anything out of place or anything.”

  “I think it was on the news,” Gracie said. “Good-lookin’ gal, kind of that pinup girl look. With the bosoms and the rouge. And blond hair cut in a pageboy.”

  “A bob, ” Gracie said, touching her own steel-gray hair, which was cut in an unflattering line that bisected her jaw. “That’s called a bob now.”

  Stella remembered the pale hair around the freakishly shrunken face of the mummy. “White blond?” she asked. “Platinum?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Gracie said. “They interviewed all these gals in the singles club up there. I guess that woman ran around some with them. If it’s the same one I’m thinking of.”

  “Was there an ex-husband, do you remember?” Stella asked.

  “Well, if there was one, I don’t recall him coming on TV or anything. You know like they do sometimes—all crying and saying all we want is our loved one back? I never believe that, anyway—it was me, I’d want my loved one and to gut the kidnapper like a fish.”

  “It’s never just a kidnapping,” Lola said ominously. “There’s generally crimes of a sick and twisted nature gets done on these gals ’fore they get dismembered and all.”

  Stella started to correct her, to point out that the mystery mummy was, as far as she could tell, not dismembered a bit—but then remembered that she was here to gather information, not feed it into the grapevine. The Green Hat Ladies needed more grist for their gossip mill like their blood pressure needed a heaping serving of sodium.

  She thanked them, finished up her spicy chicken deluxe sandwich, and refilled her Diet Coke for the road. It was starting to look like an extra-caffeine kind of day.

  TWELVE

  On the forty-minute drive to Versailles, Stella rolled the windows down and enjoyed the Indian summer warmth of the breeze that blew through the car. She came to a flashing red at an intersection and waited her turn behind a little parade of traffic. No one seemed to be in a hurry today.

  Off past the fields beside the road, she saw an old barn that had been flattened in the storm, silver-gray boards scattered like pick-up sticks. An old man in a straw hat moved among the debris with slow, deliberate movements like he had arthritis in his joints. Two young men helped, lifting and hauling shattered wood as though their burden were weightless. One had stripped off his shirt in the autumn sunshine, and Stella could see he was a young man, barely out of his teens, his muscles defined against his pale skin and hairless chest. He called something out and the others stopped their work to laugh, the old man wiping at his eyes with his sleeve, the other—his brother?—tossing a clump of earth that hit the boy squarely on the shoulder.

  The cars in front took their turns through the intersection, and Stella put her foot on the gas and cruised forward. A strange sadness hit her in the gut, a memory of what her father had said that day as he and Horace left to help the folks caught in the storm. Why do you have to go, Daddy? she’d asked, and she’d never forget the gentle smile on his face when he answered: ’Cause helpin’ folks is what men do when they grow up.

  Someone had taught those two boys right. They were out helping their neighbor or uncle or whoever it was, it didn’t matter, he was someone who needed help and they did it without a second thought. If Stella’d had sons, they would have missed out on that lesson. Her father died from a heart attack right after Stella got married.

  How was it that she’d forgotten that simple message when she went out to pick a man to settle down with? Ollie hadn’t just been a cruel and worthless husband; he hadn’t been much of a friend or neighbor either. Ollie looked at his fellow man and wondered what they could do for him. He found humor in other folks’ misfortune and had a keen eye out for the extra share, to which he helped himself without qualms.

  Well, Stella was making up for all of that. Who said it always had to be the men who went out and set the world straight? Sometimes there were no men around to do the job, and sometimes, it seemed to her, a woman was the better candidate anyway. A woman might not have brute strength, but she had cunning and determination and creative problem-solving skills. Women were used to juggling six things at once and working inside a system that didn’t always cater to their needs.

  So Stella’s work didn’t always mean coloring in the lines; so what—she was helping out those who needed help. Doing the right thing had taken the place of just getting by—it was who she was now, and Stella realized she had her father to thank for that. Buster Collier never turned away from someone in need because he didn’t feel particularly helpful that day. And Stella had taken that lesson and tucked it away, deep inside, and now that her life had taken all these strange turns and put her on a new path, she brought out her father’s gift and put it to work.

  Chrissy had been right—there was no way she could send Brandy packing when by all indications, she was in exactly the kind of straits Stella specialized in.

  Stella glanced at the clock and remembered she needed to call Noelle. All this thinking about fathers and sons reminded her how grateful she was to have her daughter back in her life. So she’d never had a son—she figured if her father could see Noelle, he’d be mighty proud anyway. Not long ago, Noelle had got herself hooked up with a bunch of her beauty shop pals who went up to Kansas City a couple times a month and set up a free clinic in a neighborhood where there wasn’t a whole lot of money to go around for milk and medicine, much less extras like manicures and haircuts. Their clinic was proof—there were a million different ways to do the right thing.

  Stella called Noelle and left her a message about dinner the next night. Noelle usually came over on Sunday afternoons anyway, to do her wash and catch up on things, and she figured the girl might like a home-cooked meal, even if it was likely to be Jelloman and Sabine doing the cooking.

  Stella cruised into town, glanced at her notes, and found Wil Vines’s house with no trouble. It was in a shabby little cul-de-sac of ’70s-era tri-levels. The driveways were cracked, the bushes overgrown, and the garage doors peeling paint. The good times had apparently rolled on past this part of Versailles.

  She parked around the corner and dialed the number Chrissy had turned up in her online trolling. It rang
and rang, never going into voice mail or a machine, though Stella tried twice. After thinking a moment, Stella got out of the car and made her way back through the backyards toward Vines’s place. They were sizable yards, and Stella had no trouble skirting the wooded edges, staying out of the sight line of the houses. She cut across the back of Vines’s place and let herself into the screen porch, which smelled of mildew, and knocked on the back door.

  She knocked softly at first, then louder, and finally she gave the door a couple of good hard kicks. There was no sound from within the house.

  She inspected the door. Luckily, the rock that was holding down a yellowing newspaper on a plastic table worked just fine to break the glass in the door. Stella pulled a couple of quart Ziplocs she’d stuffed in her pockets earlier and slipped them over her hands and managed to let herself into the house without cutting herself on the glass shards.

  Inside the dim kitchen, it smelled like stale coffee grounds and moldering rags. All the drapes were pulled shut, giving the place a funereal air. Stella commenced to give herself a thorough tour of the Vines residence.

  Make that the Vines-Truax residence. Brandy’s presence was everywhere: she may have split up with Wil months earlier, but there were snapshots of her on the fridge and a framed glamour-shots-style portrait on the side table beside his bed. In the closet, near the back, were a couple of women’s blouses, carefully buttoned to the neck and hung by themselves so they weren’t jammed up against other garments.

  The real bounty was in the drawers of the vanity in the bathroom. The top one held a few men’s grooming items, but the other two held a carefully arranged trove of what Stella had to assume was Brandy memorabilia. In one, half a dozen makeup containers were arranged in a neat row, eye shadows and blushes in various stages of use, some nearly empty, some practically new. A fluffy powder brush lay on a nest of tissue, and there were two folded scarves—one hot pink, one gray paisley—rolled and tucked in next to a wadded plastic shower cap. In the other drawer was a hair dryer with the diffuser still attached—not an instrument any man Stella knew would have use for. There was also—in case there was any doubt these were Brandy’s things and not some subsequent girlfriend’s—a fall of platinum-blond teased hair that could be clipped in place to add a little extra vavoom to a fancy hairdo.

  So Wil wasn’t entirely over his ex. Could this be some sort of stalker thing, the jilted boyfriend gone nuts, his actions escalating as his girlfriend not only ignored him but also left town to go back to an old lover? One thing was obvious: Brandy was holding out on her. Stella needed to have a heart-to-heart with her, and find out what else the former Mrs. Goat Jones wasn’t telling her.

  Stella searched the rest of the rooms and the basement, didn’t find anything else interesting in the house. Wil Vines was a pretty good housekeeper, for a guy, and the carpet was vacuumed and the floors swept. Magazines were stacked in a neat pile on the coffee table. Running a plastic-covered finger along the top of the dining room table produced only a tiny bit of dust.

  She went back outside and tried the door of the detached garage. It was open, and Stella slipped inside and turned on the light.

  The garage was as neat as the house, with rakes and snowblowers and so forth hanging from pegs on the bare studs. But what caught Stella’s eye immediately was the large panel van taking up half the garage.

  Chrissy’s explorations had turned up only one car registered to Wil, a late-model Ford Taurus. Certainly there hadn’t been any record of him owning a windowless white van—or the pile of magnetic signage Stella found piled neatly on a workbench:

  MORTIMER & SONS PLUMBING

  CENTRAL MISSOURI HEATING AND AIR CONDITIONING

  CHEERY MAIDS—LET US CLEAN SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO!

  LISA DEE’S FLORIST BALLOONS GIFTS

  Stella rifled through the stack, then set it back, neatening up the edges. Well, now this was interesting. She found it hard to believe that Wil ran all these businesses out of his home, and it wasn’t that difficult to imagine that the quick-change nature of the anonymous van and the signs lent itself to the kind of mischief that the law generally frowned on. Like dealing drugs out of the back, for instance. Or snatching college girls from parking lots and dismembering them—Stella remembered Shirlette Castro’s words with a shudder. Or, at the very least, making the kind of house calls that left homeowners scratching their heads and wondering how they could have misplaced the jewelry and silver.

  It was always possible that the van and the signs were a new hobby, something Wil Vines had taken up to get his mind off his breakup, but Stella figured this added to the list of questions she’d have to ask Brandy.

  Stella was letting herself out of the garage when her phone went off, making her jump. She still wasn’t used to her new ringtone, a trill of instrumental flute music that she thought would be a nice change from the head-banging crap Todd put on every time he got his hands on her phone, but which was turning out to be surprisingly annoying.

  “Hello?”

  “Stella, this is Irene. I just thought you might want to know that that Detective Simmons just took off outta here, headed back to Fayette.”

  A warm little goody-goody sensation ticked in Stella’s stomach, but she kept her voice neutral. “Ain’t that a shame. Guess she didn’t care much for our local color, huh.”

  “That ain’t quite it, hon. She took Neb Donovan with her. And he’s headed for jail.”

  Donna Donovan’s hysterical call followed not twenty seconds after Stella hung up with Irene.

  “Stella, they cain’t take him off to jail like this!” she wailed. “He didn’t do anything wrong!”

  Stella kept her thoughts on the matter to herself. The unsettling visit with Dr. Herman had changed her perspective on her favorite parolee, and not in a good way. “Calm on down, honey,” she said soothingly nonetheless. “Just ’cause he’s arrested, doesn’t mean he’s guilty.”

  “But they don’t have any, any evidence!”

  As a matter of fact, Irene had let slip that they did, but she wouldn’t say what it was.

  “Listen, Donna,” Stella said. “There’s a couple of names I’d like to run by you. All’s I want to know is whether these names mean anything to you. Even if you just think you might have heard them somewhere, and you don’t know where, I want you to tell me.”

  “Why? What’s that about?”

  “It’s about … just maybe ways of helping me prove Neb didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Like alibis or something?”

  “Uh, yeah, kind of like that. So one of them is Ashley de Boer.”

  There was a brief pause, during which Stella could hear Donna breathing on the phone. She sounded winded, like she’d jogged up a flight of stairs, but Stella knew it was her nerves. It was a wonder the woman didn’t fly into pieces, she was so upset.

  “No,” she finally said. “I’ve never heard of her.”

  “All right. How about June Dunovich?”

  “Well, sure, Stella, everyone knows about her—she gambled away her and Rex’s savings and ran off with a fellow that worked on the riverboats. Don’t tell me they think she’s the one dead out at the track?”

  “It’s been suggested,” Stella admitted. “But just as a, you know, remote possibility.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s June. Everyone says she and her new man went out to New Mexico. I knew her from when the boys were in Little League, and she was a hot one even then. Sticky fingers, too, we always figured she was stealing the money she collected for the team parties. I mean, I doubt anyone got mad enough over that to kill her.”

  “Okay.” It had been a distant possibility anyway. “There’s just one more—Laura Cassel.”

  This time Donna didn’t even hesitate. “No. I have never heard of her. Is she another one that’s missing?”

  “Yes, she was from up in Picot, never showed up to work one day. Thirtyish gal, single. The timing’s about right. There wouldn’t be … uh, any reason
that Neb might have met someone? You know, away from work?”

  Stella chose her words as carefully as she could, but there just wasn’t any pretty way to say it. She was thinking drug dealer, maybe someone who hooked Neb up with the black market OxyContin he’d been hoovering up back then, but given the fact that all these names were women, she feared she knew exactly where Donna would go.

  And she was right. “Are you saying there was a woman?” Donna demanded, voice rising in pitch. “That he was having an affair?”

  “No, I am not saying that, Donna. There could be a thousand reasons he might have met some woman, and I mean just met her, all innocent, like maybe waiting in a doctor’s office or I don’t know, ordering supplies for work or, or maybe shopping to buy you a birthday present—”

  She was reaching, and they both knew it. “Neb isn’t like that,” Donna said, voice hoarse. “He doesn’t—he’s shy, Stella, when he ain’t with me. That’s why we always go everywhere together. He’s not one to go and introduce himself to any strangers or like that. He prefers it if I make the small talk. He just, you know, he likes to listen and—and—”

  “What about … maybe who he was getting his Oxy from? Could that have been a woman?”

  “Oh, no, Stella,” Donna said. “I don’t think so, Neb would of told me.”

  She ended up, as Stella had feared from the start of the conversation, in sniffles. At least she wasn’t sobbing, but Stella still felt like a real heel when she begged off the phone, promising to check in again later and extracting a promise from Donna that she would call her niece, the fresh-minted law school graduate, and get her started on some sort of defense strategy.

  “You just find the person who did this,” Donna wailed. “You find ’em, Stella, so I can get Neb home where he belongs.”

  Stella stood indecisively on the walk between Wil Vines’s house and garage for a moment and then shrugged—Neb wasn’t going anywhere, and it would be a shame to cut this snooping expedition short.

  Stella slipped around the side of the house and, after looking both ways, out to the street. In the time that she’d been inside, the sky had darkened; there were traces of blue here and there, but an accumulation of white clouds rolled into a ridge of gray and purple. It looked like rain again. Stella remembered her little footprint project and considered calling Todd to go get it into the house, as it should have been hardened by now, but she didn’t want to risk having him come over until Jelloman was in place.