“One carat each in the center stone, point-two-five carat total diamond weight. Those are near-flawless diamonds, by the way, VVS clarity. A beautiful piece that would be cherished by many generations.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. If I had something like this I expect I’d want to be buried in them.”
Fred laughed heartily, and Stella decided she liked him. She handed the earring back. “Just out of curiosity, how much are these?”
Fred consulted a tiny tag tucked into the tray, squinting at the numerals. “One thousand seven hundred and thirty dollars.”
Stella nodded. She hadn’t really expected a bargain, and though she’d been tempted for a moment—it being her birthday and all—there were a lot of other things that she could do with that kind of money. Pay Potter’s Auto to get her Jeep out of hock, for one. Add it to her carpet fund, for another—the carpet in the bedrooms of her house had not been changed since Noelle was a little girl, and it showed.
“Well, I sure do appreciate your time.”
“Come back and see us again sometime. And if you, ah, should happen to see Natalya, do let her know that we’ve received some lovely new pieces.”
* * *
Stella sat in the Subaru for a moment, thinking. It was nearly six o’clock, the springtime sun still high above the horizon as people strolled past, enjoying the evening.
Smythe was a nice town the way that Prosper was a nice town—there was nothing really exceptional about it. No historical significance or architectural marvels. No garden club had busted its butt beautifying the public spaces, and no wealthy benefactors had left fortunes for fancy renovations, but the citizens of the town were doing their part in small ways, tending front lawns and sidewalks, setting out pots of flowers, freshening up paint, and polishing brass.
The hospital complex where the surgery center was located was a recent appendage, much as the Prosper Office Park had been built at the edge of town in the eighties, a clumsy addition at odds with the rest of the town’s spirit. Prosper’s office park remained largely vacant, the hordes of high-tech businesses who found themselves itching to settle in the heart of Missouri having never materialized, to the consternation of the chamber of commerce. St. Olaf’s, on the other hand, appeared to be thriving. With the money it brought into the community, it might make the difference for Smythe’s future, allowing it to attract even more business and becoming, perhaps, an attractive commuter town for Madison residents who couldn’t tolerate the hustle and bustle.
If it turned out that Natalya wasn’t a murderer—and if Gracellen and Chess could be talked into inviting the couple out to stay until they got on their feet—Stella figured there would be things they would miss about Smythe. Sure, Natalya was a recent transplant, but surely her nearly two years in the Midwest had endeared the place to her. Stella didn’t know much about Russia, but she imagined lines of freezing women in black coats and woolly scarves and fur-lined hats, waiting for hours in snowy cobblestone streets for a string of fish or a loaf of stale rye bread.
Sure, she’d seen the CNN folks talking about commerce coming to Russia, technology and capitalism and so forth, and she was willing to believe that there were people driving sports cars and opening nightclubs and building banks all over the place. In her experience, though, the ladies who raised the kids and kept the houses and took care of the elderly were the last to benefit from an influx of any kind of good luck. She’d had too many clients whose husbands received windfalls only to spend them on mistresses or fast cars or wide-screen televisions.
Had Natalya had an experience like that with Luke’s father, whoever he was? Had he left her pregnant and alone in some tiny grotto to fend for herself and her baby? Stella could understand how that might leave a lady feeling unrepentant about any manipulating and tricking she had to do to support her child after that, how such a lady might figure that the male gender owed her big-time. A mail-order wedding might look mighty appealing to such a woman, what with its clearly laid out expectations, its mutual benefits.
Could a woman like that—a user, an opportunist—ever again feel real love?
Not your business, Stella’s conscience chastised her. She wasn’t here on a matchmaking or even a match-un-making mission.
Her phone rang. Speak of the devil—the display read BENTON PARCH, and for a moment Stella had the jarring sensation of being summoned by the dead. But of course it was Natalya’s, and now that Benton was a corpse and hence unable to pay any of his bills, presumably it would soon be cut off.
“Hello?”
“Stella? You are coming home soon?”
Was it Stella’s imagination or was there a new opaqueness in Natalya’s voice? Had Fred, perhaps spurred by Stella’s visit, given her a call to try to talk her into one of his expensive trinkets—and mentioned the visit from Benton’s sister-in-law?
Natalya was a shrewd woman. Stella had no doubt she would figure out instantly that “Alana” was really Stella … and draw further conclusions from there.
Like the possibility that she was under suspicion, for instance.
“Yeah, sure … soon. Ish. I’m, um, I’m following up on something out, ah, out of town a ways.”
“What is this you are following?”
Stella’s mind raced trying to come up with a convincing yet innocent possibility, but she stalled. “Uh … I’d rather finish following it up and then tell you about it.”
“Okay.” Natalya sounded displeased. “I am hoping you are coming home before dinnertime so I can cook for you something before I am going to have late dinner with Chip.”
“Oh, I already ate. Anyway, you don’t have to cook for me, I can take care of myself, and Chip gave me a key. I can let myself in and watch some TV or something.”
“Oh.” Natalya’s disappointment seemed to deepen. Was she hoping to have a little one-on-one time with Stella—and if so, why? Stella wasn’t naive enough to think she was looking forward to another knitting lesson; the only thing Stella could figure out that would inspire this sort of urgency would be if Natalya’s self-preservation instincts had been piqued.
Could the woman be planning something even more dramatic than a heart-to-heart? If she’d already killed once, would it bother her terribly to kill again—especially if she was convinced that Stella was threatening the future she had so carefully built?
“Did you have … something special in mind? You and Chip?”
“No, not special. Sometimes we like the Thai food, sometimes we are trying new things. Chip is big eater for skinny man. Is lucky.”
“Well … tell you what. Don’t plan around me. I’ll come by when I finish up, but I won’t expect you to be waiting up for me or anything.”
Natalya was clearly not happy to leave things loose, but Stella hung up after a cheerful signoff. Let Natalya wonder; if she was considering anything cagey it was better not to let her get the upper hand in advance. Meanwhile, Stella figured it was time to do a little further research into whether Natalya could have pulled off Benton’s demise in the first place.
Ordinarily she’d get Chrissy to come over and prowl the Internet for her, but Chrissy was undoubtedly out with her secret lover.
Besides, Stella had a better source than the Internet for what she needed to know.
Chapter Twenty-three
Doug was not happy to see her.
Stella stepped to the side of the front door after she rang the bell. The easiest trick in the world—any eight-year-old could have managed it more nimbly than she—and yet Doug fell for it, leaning out into the dusky evening with some sort of sandwich in one hand.
Stella stepped smoothly in front of him and basically startled him back into the house, pulling the door shut behind her and giving him a gentle shove with her palm on his chest.
“Why don’t you stop right about there,” Stella said, as he stumbled backward. “I thought I told you to get rid of those ugly-ass girl-pants.”
Doug looked down at his drawstring hemp
trousers as though surprised to discover them slung low on his hips, under the sort of faded river driver shirt that Stella’s dad had worn on winter weekends to fix his truck.
“Yeah, those,” Stella sighed. “Look, this is just pathetic. I’m going to have you write down your address and then I’m going to have JC Penney send you a pair of pants. All’s I ask is you take a picture of yourself in them and text it to me.”
“I can’t believe you came back here over that,” Doug moaned. “I mean, I didn’t think you were serious.”
“I’m always serious. Once you get to know me better you’ll realize that.”
“So are we doing the kitchen table again?” he asked resignedly.
“Well now, I don’t suppose that’s necessary, if you promise to behave.” Stella didn’t bother to point out the fact that she’d come unarmed, seeing as this was a friendly call. “I’m not here to bust your chops. I just needed a medical expert for a few questions I have about a … case I’m working on, and I thought of you. Seemed a shame to let that expensive education of yours go to waste.”
“I should have you talk to my dad,” the young man said glumly. “He seems plenty happy to let it all go down the drain, won’t even consider the bigger picture.”
“Oh, lemme guess, you asked him for money.”
“Well yeah, after you-all came out and scared the shit out of me the other day, I’ve been trying to get Benton’s cash together.”
“Oh … I don’t know if I’d be in any kind of terrible rush over that.”
“But Mrs. Hardesty, he doesn’t seem like the second-chance type, not like you are.”
“Don’t go tryin’ to butter me up. I’m here ’cause I got to find out about something, and I got a couple of things I need to say first.”
“Yeah?”
“How about if you make some of that French drip coffee before we start?”
That seemed to energize the young medical student. He set down his sandwich and offered her a chair—at the same table where he’d been so unceremoniously shackled—and started lining up supplies. Stella watched with fascination. First he filled an electric kettle with water and plugged it in. Then he took a brushed-aluminum canister out of the freezer and set it on the counter. Finally he took a fancy lidded glass carafe from the cabinet.
“Humor me here,” Stella said. “Just what the hell are you doing there?”
Doug glanced at her in confusion. “Making coffee, like you said.”
Stella had to admit that the aroma was heavenly, but if she ever started carrying on this way in her own kitchen, say for Chrissy or Jelloman or Goat or Noelle, she was liable to get laughed out of her own house. Only Sherilee, with her perfect manners, might let her slide.
Something to think about.
“Here’s how this is going to work,” Stella said. “I’m going to ask you a question that might or might not, depending on how curious you are, get you to wondering. Your job, though, is not to put your own what-ifs or whys into the picture. Just tell me what I need to know, and when I’m done, you forget all about this conversation. We clear?”
“Yeah.”
“So what I want to know is, how you could go about killing a man without leaving any marks on him. This would be a … let’s say a man in his fifties, average height, stocky. I’m not sayin’ that a CSI team couldn’t figure it out, just tell me about a situation where the average onlooker wouldn’t be able to tell. No marks on the body, no bruises, cuts, that sort of thing.”
Doug raised his eyebrows. “Well … all kinds of ways, really. Suffocation, that would be the easiest, though depending on if the guy was conscious, you’re nearly always going to have a lot of fighting back and I guess that would leave marks. You’d have to ask a forensic guy—”
“I don’t have a forensic guy. I have you.”
“Yeah, all I meant was if you wanted to ask about victim behavior and what, ahhh, self-harm and so forth might result. But sure. I see what you’re saying. So, suffocation, strangulation, depending on what was used. A cord, wire, whatever, that’s gonna leave a mark … Now you could inject or inhale a poison, ingest it, absorb it through the skin. All kinds of possibilities there, depending what your … uh … your hypothetical person could have on him or be forced to consume.”
“Just give me a for instance or two.”
“Well, if this is a street drug setting, you got your GHB, though that can involve vomiting and convulsions … Barbiturates are good. Tricyclics, if you take enough. Really, there’s lots of options.”
Stella felt her spirits deflate. It wasn’t going to be simple—it might not even be possible ever to know how Benton was killed.
“Gimme a sec here to think.”
She half-watched Doug puttering with his fancy supplies, pouring a cup of the heavenly-smelling brew into a cup that looked like a talented third grader had made it in ceramics class and forgotten to glaze it before firing. It had probably been made by aboriginal craftspeople somewhere, which Stella could appreciate, except it was just so ugly. Still, when Doug handed it to her and she inhaled the fragrant steam, she no longer minded.
“Damn, this is a hell of a cup of coffee.”
Doug beamed with pride. “Thanks, Mrs. Hardesty.”
He really wasn’t such a bad guy, Stella thought, relenting. Just irresponsible and immature. What was it with today’s young people—they refused to grow up, to accept responsibility, until later and later in their lives. Stella couldn’t imagine being nearly thirty and still calling home to be floated for loans. Noelle and Chrissy, both roughly the same age as Doug, had been providing for themselves—ineptly at times, scraping by and relying on elbow grease and the ingenuity of desperation—for a decade. Maybe a little hardship—the very thing every parent, including Stella, worked so hard to shield her children from—was actually the secret to reaching adulthood.
Maybe getting caught with the on-the-side scalpel job was actually the best thing to happen to Doug. Having the fear put in him, the threat of losing everything he’d worked for—maybe that was what would now make him a little more grateful, make him take his life a little more seriously.
Stella took a sip of the hot brew and smiled. She was glad to be a part of the young man’s education. “Okay, so I hear you saying you couldn’t really detect a poisoning, not as a, what do you call it, lay observer. Anything else? Any other ways you could off someone, maybe a little more creatively?”
Doug thought, extending his legs and crossing them at the ankles, his hands clasped behind his head. “Well, there’s compression. They used to torture people by putting stones on their chests until they couldn’t breathe.”
Chest compression. Something clicked in Stella’s mind. “Could a really tight shirt—I mean a really, really tight-fitting shirt do the trick?”
Doug frowned. “Probably not on its own. Although if the person was already having trouble getting enough air into his airways—like if he was having an allergic reaction—then sure.”
“What kind of allergy?”
“Well, any, really—pollen, ragweed, dust mites…”
Stella stared into the swirling black mists of her cup. Natalya, if she really had been responsible for Benton’s death, obviously had not done it herself, since she’d been out with Chip at the time his corpse was delivered to the door. Of course, she could easily have paid someone to drop him off, after engineering the simplest of “accidents.” By Chip’s admission, Benton had been wearing a ManTee—but how could she find out if he had allergies? She couldn’t very well ask Natalya without provoking her suspicions.
“You’ve been real helpful, Doug,” Stella said, getting up from the table, anxious to follow up this new direction.
“Sorry I couldn’t do more. It’s a tough question.”
“Yeah, I know. I just thought it was worth checking into. But hey—” She picked up her half-full mug and toasted him with it. “It wasn’t an entirely wasted trip.”
Out in the car, she dialed A
lana. It was a risk—if she was the real killer, this line of inquiry might tip her off that Stella was getting close, but maybe then she’d get nervous and give herself away.
“I’m on a rehearsal break,” Alana said after Stella apologized for calling so late. “What do you need? Has Benton turned up yet?”
“’Fraid not, but I’m helping Natalya sort out her health insurance.”
“Which my idiot brother is no doubt paying for.”
“Well, that’s the problem, actually. She’s switching to private coverage, but since she’s still legally married, she has to list Benton as an alternate insured, and there’s a few things on the form we need to check off. She could wait until he turns up, but if we get this in before the new policy period, it’d save Benton some cash.”
“Yeah? What do you need to know?”
“Okay, let’s see … smoker?”
“No, which she could have told you—”
“I’m just being thorough. History of heart disease?”
“No.”
“Allergies?”
“Dander and feathers—severe.”
Bingo.
“Okay, I think that’s all I need for now. Have a nice rehearsal, hear?”
Alana hung up without saying good-bye.
Chapter Twenty-four
It was nearly eight o’clock by the time she got back to the house. The windows were dark, as she had hoped they would be; with Natalya and Chip off to dinner, Stella could search the house without raising suspicion. She didn’t really expect to find a hidden cat or duck that had been used to send Benton into the allergic fit that killed him, but you never knew what you’d turn up when you went looking.
Stella dug in her purse for Chip’s spare key, which was attached to a key chain bearing another of his Gamblers Anonymous tokens. She’d barely picked it out from the disarray in the bottom of the bag when a movement from the left caught her eye, a flash of white against the brown brick of the little recessed entryway.
A year ago Stella had made a grave miscalculation and gone to meet an informant in a dark, isolated area without sufficiently checking out her surroundings. She’d had time in the hospital afterward to stew and regret and reconsider sufficiently that she’d taken precautions to make sure such a thing never happened again. Specifically, she asked her Shaolin kung fu instructor, a certain Mr. Hou who owned a Chevy dealership in Independence, to teach her a few effective responses to use in situations where an attacker had the advantage.
A Bad Day for Mercy Page 21