A Bad Day for Pretty

by Sophie Littlefield

  Which he wouldn’t be for quite a while, as the football game was in full swing. She could hear it wafting from the house to the left of Vines’s, where a woman in a fuzzy pink sweatsuit swung lazily on a glider, sipping on a glass bottle.

  When Stella got a little closer, she saw that it was a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Stella knew from experience that there was a kick in that bottle. “What’s the score?” she called, producing her friendliest smile.

  “Hell if I know,” the woman said. “I come out here to get away from it.”

  “Oh. Ah … I was looking for Wil Vines. Have you seen him around lately?”

  The woman glanced up from her magazine and regarded Stella suspiciously. “You trying to sell him something?”

  “Oh—no, ma’am. I’m his … second cousin. I thought he ought to know that my, uh, dad’s on life support. His great-uncle?”

  “That wouldn’t be his great uncle,” the woman said doubtfully. “If you’re Wil’s second cousin, then your dad’s his second cousin once removed.”

  “Oh. Yes. We just say great uncle to make it all simpler. But they were close, those two.”

  “He into the model trains, too?”

  “The … trains?”

  “You know, the model trains Wil’s got in the basement? Them train guys are always over here lookin’ at that setup he’s got. Wil’s just awful proud of them. He keeps sayin’ how he’s gonna have the whole neighborhood over to see them, time he gets it all set up just so.”

  Stella hadn’t seen so much as a single length of miniature track, despite a thorough scouring of the house and basement. Visitors to Wil’s place might have been enthusiastic, indeed, but it wasn’t itty-bitty trains that were getting them all hopped up. “Is that right. No, um, we’re just a close-knit family. Why, we do love that Brandy he took up with … such a shame those two split.”

  The woman raised her plucked and penciled eyebrows. “Is that right? I didn’t find her to be all that friendly, myself.”

  “Well, maybe if she’d managed to get settled in,” Stella gambled. “After all, how long were they together, just…”

  “Near upon two years,” the woman said. “I believe that’s plenty long enough to make a civilized call on a person’s next-door neighbor. I tell you, I don’t know what Wil saw in her.”

  Oops. “Seeing as he’s such a gentleman,” Stella guessed, crossing her fingers behind her back.

  The woman nodded. “Uh-huh, that’s right. And working two jobs, no less, when she couldn’t hang on to a job to save her life. Why I think she was out of work more than she was in it, layin’ around that backyard in her bathing suit while decent folk are out trying to earn a living.”

  “Oh? I forgot Wil got that other job. The uh, uh, what was it…”

  “Cozy Closets,” the woman said. “He does the measuring for them, on top of all that construction work. Course there won’t be so much of that now that winter’s coming.”

  Well, that was interesting. If Vines was measuring for closets, that was taking him into lots of folks’ houses, where he could get a real good look around at their valuables, figure out their coming-and-going schedule, and then make another call a few weeks down the road when the hapless homeowners didn’t even know they needed the services of a plumber or a furnace repairman. And meanwhile, Vines would be relieving them of whatever goodies he could sneak out to the van.

  “He always was the industrious one,” she said.

  “Isn’t that the truth.” The woman sighed, giving the glider a good solid shove with a pink-sneakered toe. “I tell you, I wish my mama would of sat me down before I got married and explained that pretty don’t count for near as much in a man as decency and hard work.”

  “You’re telling me,” Stella said. On the way to the car, it occurred to her that she ought to have business cards made just for occasions like this.

  Of Course, then she’d have so much business that she wouldn’t have time to sleep, Stella realized as she headed up the interstate toward Fayette. She was practically halfway there already, and figured Neb might appreciate the visit.

  She queued up her Driving & Thinking playlist, one she saved special for times like this. The iPod and the interface kit for the Jeep had been a get-well present from Noelle, and Stella had to admit it sure did beat carrying all those old CDs around. Eliza Gilkyson started up “Coast,” her sittin’-on-the-porch-with-you voice dancing in and out of the gentle guitar picking.

  Did you ever think that it would be like this?

  Ah, the price you pay for lo-ove …

  Stella’s thoughts wandered ahead to her visit with Neb. She wasn’t exactly keen on visiting the jail, a place she half figured she’d be calling home someday, what with all the varieties of lawbreaking she found herself having to commit.

  Why was she bothering with Neb, anyway? At this point, it seemed pretty certain that the man was guilty. It was a shame if it was the demon Oxy that made him do it, but Stella figured that taking a life was serious enough business that she ought not get in the way of the law on this one.

  On the other hand … he wasn’t proven guilty yet. And Stella wasn’t confident that Priscilla, Donna’s attorney niece, would be much help.

  A thought nagged distressingly close to the surface of Stella’s mind, tickling her guilt buttons. If this was one of her regular clients, which was to say one of her woman clients, nothing would get in the way of Stella making sure she got exactly as much defending and protecting and avenging as Stella could possibly provide, long hours and personal danger be damned. If the waters were muddy, if the gal appeared a bit guilty of this, a little responsible for that, Stella would disregard those factors in her quest for the overriding balance of good stomping the crap out of evil.

  Of course, her clients generally had a fair amount of beat-down victimhood stored up that made them significantly more sympathetic in the harsh light of Stella’s consideration. What about Neb? Fond of the man as Stella was, much as she’d thought of the Donovans as practically an extension of family, you couldn’t exactly make the case that anyone had beaten or threatened him onto the troubled paths that led to addiction and cult involvement. He’d more or less made his own bed and climbed on in.

  The outskirts of Fayette came into view, alfalfa fields giving way to saggy-porched bungalows with wash hanging on clotheslines. A tall sign announced welcome to fayette Pride of sawyer county! courtesy of your elks lions kiwanis optimists fayette womens club.

  The thing was, Stella had always wished for a brother. A big brother, preferably, a tough and scrappy boy who would have beat the tar out of anyone who picked on her. Neb, for all his faults, was the grown-up version of the boy Stella longed for. Generally a man of few words, get him on one of the topics for which he carried a burning passion—his wife, say, or the Cardinals’ chances for the play-offs, or the fact that Hinomoto and Sitoh were building circles around American tractors—and he’d hold forth with a fervent light in his eye.

  In a way, that was what led to his entanglement with the Eternal Realm of the Savior cult. Neb was attracted to beauty and righteousness and fiery rhetoric. The fact that he’d gone overboard and thrown his lot in with a bunch of zealots—well, there’d likely been more than a few belts of corn whiskey, not to mention all those confusing warm feelings that drinking with distant relatives can bring on, where the folks you can’t stand the rest of the year suddenly strike you as kind of charming in their i survived the donovan family reunion T-shirts—Stella could see that. Not smart, but understandable.

  What she could not see was the kind of brutality that led a man to kill. Stella sighed as she took the exit toward the center of town. Maybe she ought to call up Dr. Herman again. She’d asked him about what Neb might have forgotten—but what she really should have asked was if the drugs could so scramble a person’s brain that they’d mix up their fundamental principles and values to the point that a decent family man suddenly figured it was a good idea to bash or strangle or
shoot some blond-bobbed gal and shove her into a pool of concrete, watching the gloppy gunk burble over her like so much Duncan Hines frosting and smoothing it over with nary a niggling bit of guilt.

  THIRTEEN

  It was a damn good thing Stella was a woman of the cloth.

  She’d almost forgotten that little fact about herself. It was only after the Fayette County Jail corrections officer manning the desk had patiently explained that visiting hours were over for the day—and then explained it a second time with considerably less patience when Stella pressed the point—that she noticed a small hand-lettered sign tacked to the wall behind the officer’s desk.

  CLERGY PRESENT IDENTIFICATION FOR ADMITTANCE DURING NON-VISITING HOURS

  “Well, I declare,” Stella said softly.

  “You still here?” Officer Halpern—identified by the little plastic tag askew on a uniform that needed a good pressing—managed to glare and sneer at the same time. Stella couldn’t blame him too much, as he probably had to deal with unhappy folks all the time, folks who’d made the trip to see their incarcerated loved ones outside the appointed hours and didn’t care to be turned away.

  “I believe I forgot to mention that I am an ordained minister,” Stella said in as reverent a tone as she could muster. She folded her hands piously in front of her and added a benevolent smile.

  Halpern snorted. Stella wondered how you had to screw up at prison guard school to land not just the weekend, but second shift, a time when all the other guards presumably had dates or family obligations or even just a cold brew and some Saturday-night television lined up. Well, she’d drawn the short end of the stick enough times herself to have some sympathy for the guy.

  “Let me just get my ID,” she said, and rummaged through her purse for the worn case in which she kept all the cards that wouldn’t fit in her wallet: the buy-eleven-bagels-get-one free cards with only a punch or two, the worn Serenity Prayer card, an OfficeMax Rewards card. Near the back she found it—Universal Life Everlasting Church was emblazoned in fancy gold lettering across the top, and her name—reverend stella jean hardesty—printed below. It was even signed by a Mortimer Blaise Cunningham, Vice President and Coordinating Minister.

  And—best of all—it featured a photo of Stella that had been snapped after Thanksgiving dinner at Jelloman’s a year ago, late in the day after everyone had got into the eggnog. Stella thought her slack expression and rosy glow—courtesy of the Bacardi folks—could easily be mistaken for devout piety. Jelloman had taken pictures of his guests and then lined up mail-order ordination for all his best friends for Christmas, and Stella had been a card-carrying member of the clergy ever since.

  Apparently Halpern thought she looked plenty holy, too, because after squinting at the ID for a few moments, he scrambled to his feet and picked up the phone’s handset. “I’m sorry, Reverend,” he said as he dialed a few numbers. “You just wouldn’t believe all the folks trying to get in here after hours. Next time you just show that card right off and we’ll get you in quick.”

  “Thank you, son,” Stella said gravely, and assumed her most beatific expression.

  “Kinhara?” Halpern barked into the phone. “Need an escort to Nebah. … Nebah…”

  “Nebuchadnezzar Donovan,” Stella stage-whispered. “It’s a biblical name.”

  Halpern nodded smartly. “To Mr. Donovan. A member of the clergy is here to see him.”

  Kinhara seemed less impressed with Stella’s credentials. In fact, Kinhara, a gangly gal with an abbreviated nose and bangs in her eyes, didn’t seem too impressed with much of anything, including the contents of Stella’s purse and the results of the wanding she delivered with a lackluster “stand on that line there.”

  “I got to take you to the cell,” she said over her shoulder as she led Stella down a hall with painted cinder block walls and waxed linoleum floors. It was clean enough, but a fly buzzed by Stella’s ear and the air was stale and overwarm. “Phones in the visitor booths ain’t workin’ right.”

  “How long have they been broken?” Stella asked, curious. Given the slightly run-down state of the place, she figured maybe the old Hardee’s wasn’t such a bad deal for the Prosper team after all.

  Kinhara snorted. “Oh, they work fine—when they want to. Maintenance’ll come around and wouldn’t you know that’s the day there ain’t a thing wrong with them. Then the next day nothin’. Put the phone to your ear and all’s you hear is like a buzz or some such. And getting those maintenance guys to come—mmm-mmm.”

  She shook her head sorrowfully as they came to a heavy metal door with a small glass window. She unlocked it with a keypad and they entered a vestibule with an identical door on the other side. Once the first door clanged shut, she tapped in the code for the second one and they went through.

  But in the brief moment they were in the small space between the doors, Stella experienced a little heart-quickening note of panic. The closeness of the walls, the silence of the room, the view down the halls in either direction, not a window in sight—this, Stella figured, was what it must feel like to be locked up.

  She didn’t like it.

  Not one bit.

  In all the times Stella had imagined the day when the law caught up with her, when the string of bashed and intimidated husbands she left in her wake somehow engineered her ruin, she’d never allowed herself to think about the reality of prison.

  She didn’t like to be closed in. All those years ago, shut into the little basement storm cellar, the thundering and howling of the twister audible even as her mama sang and clapped her hands to distract her—the memory of that day came back with a ferocity that pounded at her temples and left her hands clammy and her stomach churning. She’d waited along with her mother and her sister, eyes on the bolted door, thinking about Daddy and Uncle Horace as Patches whined and pawed helplessly at the floor.

  Mama kept saying everything would be fine. But Mama had been wrong.

  “Getting the maintenance guys to come,” she mumbled, repeating the last thing Kinhara had said, stumbling after her and touching the wall for support as they approached the long row of cells, white metal grids forming the wall between them and the prisoners.

  “Yeah, you know state budgets. Governor couldn’t fund the paper to wipe his own ass, you ask me. We ain’t had a raise in two years. And them maintenance guys, they got them covering all the admin buildings and impound and the garage, cut their staff in half, they can’t hardly keep up. … Here we go.”

  They stopped in front of the white grid, and Stella peered through. There, in a narrow rectangular cell, sat Neb, looking much diminished on his plastic-covered cot. The small space was crammed with a tiny sink and steel toilet and shelf and abbreviated desk, but somehow Neb still managed to look lost, his hands clasped in front of him, his head bowed.

  “Hello, Mr. Donovan,” Stella said, clearing her throat. “I’m here for my clergy visit.”

  Neb leapt to his feet, appearing both startled and relieved. He approached the bars and wrapped his rough, callused hands around them. “Stella! What clergy? Who all’d you bring with you?”

  “Nobody,” Stella said, winking and furtively giving him a cut-throat gesture. “Seein’ as I’m an ordained reverend and all. I’m here to pray with you. In private. ”

  She turned to Kinhara. “I’ll let you know when I’m through,” she said. “Thanks for the escort.”

  Kinhara hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “I’ll fetch us a couple a chairs, but won’t hardly be private, ’cause I got to stay here with you. I got a magazine, though, and I won’t pay you no mind.”

  She dragged a couple of metal chairs from the end of the cells. They made a screeching sound on the floor. Stella accepted one, and Neb fetched his own matching chair from under the little desk. They sat down, their knees inches apart but separated by the bars. Stella reached through for a squeeze and Neb squeezed back with surprising strength. Stella tried not to wince.

  “I’ll be right in here,” Kinhara
said, dragging her own chair down the row a ways. Voices from the other cells greeted her, but she ignored them and pulled out her magazine. “You got fifteen minutes, just like if you was at the booth.”

  “What was that clergy thing about?” Neb asked quietly once Kinhara turned her attention to her True Romance, scratching at a spot below his left ear. Stella took it for a nervous gesture, one he’d apparently been employing all afternoon, as the skin was rubbed raw. He was not going to make a very sturdy prisoner, Stella decided.

  “I just had to say I was a reverend to get in here.”

  “Oh. I guess that’s okay.”

  “You doing all right?”

  “I suppose.” More scratching. “The food sucks. You know how they always say that, in prison movies? That the food sucks? Well, it really does. This thing they brought in here, Idon’t know if it was supposed to be some sorta tofu or somethin’—man, you do not want to know what it did to my digestive system.”

  Stella darted a glance at the dull-finished steel toilet in the corner and figured he was probably right—she didn’t much want to know.

  “Course, one good thing was, I guess they’ll finally believe I’m off the OxyContin, seein’ as I had to pee in a cup. Twice.”

  “Gave you a medical exam, huh?”

  “Medical, mental, searched—well, pretty much everywhere they could think of, I guess. Hey, Stella, you know I didn’t do it, right? That I didn’t kill nobody?”

  Stella couldn’t quite meet Neb’s eyes. She wanted to tell him she believed him—but after her visit to Dr. Herman, she couldn’t be sure. Oh, she believed he thought he was innocent, all right.