by Unknown
Goat Jones told her she had more stick than a cocklebur after she hounded him to widen the search and ignored every order he gave her to stay away from him and his men while they scoured the county. He called her a few other things, too—the words bulldog and no-sense and damn stubborn fool came to mind.
Goat said he’d be right over, grousing only a little that she wouldn’t give him any details on the phone. Stella peeked in at Chrissy, who was nibbling morosely at a cookie, and hightailed it to her bathroom, where she got out the modest arsenal of beauty products that she kept in an empty Jif peanut butter jar, and went to work.
It wasn’t that she was fixing up for the sheriff, exactly. Because that would be ridiculous. For one thing, their work generally put them on opposite sides of the law. That alone made the man, if not exactly an enemy, certainly not a person she should be fraternizing with.
And anyway they didn’t run in the same social circles. Goat was a regular at the Friday night poker game at the firehouse—the same game Ollie had played in for years, the game all of Ollie’s old friends still belonged to. Not that it was fair to paint them with the same brush as her dead husband, but they had become a little standoffish since she nearly stood trial for killing Ollie.
Goat got himself invited to the game as a sort of law enforcement courtesy. His deputies, Ian Sloat and Mike Kutzler, had been playing for years, and it wouldn’t have looked right to exclude Goat, even though he was still a newcomer to the area. He had lived in Prosper for only a couple of years, having been hired in to replace old Sheriff Burt Knoll after he died of a heart attack while cheering on his grandson at a go-kart race.
Most of the poker players had lived in Prosper for decades, if not their entire lives. They were courteous to Goat, but maybe “friend” was too strong a word; outside the poker game, she knew they didn’t barbecue together or bowl in the same league or even jaw too long if they ran into each other at the Home Depot. Still, at the rate of four hours a week for two years, that was . . . oh, hell, a few hundred hours anyway that Goat and her late husband’s drinking buddies shared each other’s company, and in Stella’s book that made Goat guilty of poor taste in the company he kept, if nothing else.
Stella splashed cold water on her face and slapped her cheeks a few times in an effort to get a little color into them. She leaned in close to the mirror and didn’t like what she saw: it had been a while since she’d taken a pair of tweezers to her eyebrows, and they seemed to have made expansion plans on their own. The battle she was waging on her wrinkles, armed with the jumbo tub of Avon Anew Clinical Deep Crease Concentrate that her sister had sent her last Christmas, didn’t seem like it was trending in her favor. The wrinkles were still there, and if she wasn’t mistaken, the ones around her eyes had hatched a plan to reach down and shake hands with her laugh lines.
Stella scrambled through the Jif jar, tossing aside shampoo sample packets and emery boards and a dozen lipsticks in unflattering shades—she was a sucker for those Clinique gift-with-purchase deals—until she found the tube of Avon Radiant Lifting Foundation. Another gift from Gracellen. Praying it hadn’t passed its sell-by date, she squeezed a little onto her finger and dabbed at the worst spots on her face.
Her hair had escaped its barrette and sprang out in an unruly mass. That was entirely Stella’s fault. For most of her life she’d been vain about her thick, wavy light brown hair, keeping it trimmed and conditioned and blown dry. She’d just gotten in a few bad habits in the last couple of years, that’s all. Missing yesterday’s appointment with Jane over at Hair Lines hadn’t helped any.
She grabbed her hairbrush and yanked it forcibly through, ignoring the pain. Unfortunately, taking out the tangles also served to play up the line of demarcation between her gray roots and the shade that Jane had mixed up at her last visit.
Stella was overdue for a goodly amount of maintenance work.
She gave up and put down the brush. She made a face at the mirror, figuring she’d done all she could on short notice.
At the door to her bedroom, she had a thought, and dashed back to the bathroom. She dumped the Jif jar out in the sink and found what she was looking for at the bottom of the pile: a small bottle of White Diamonds. She sprayed behind her ears and on her wrists, sniffed deeply, and added one last spritz down her bra.
In the living room Chrissy had made a sizable dent in the Oreos. “Good girl,” Stella murmured, helping herself to one. “Got to keep your strength up.”
Naturally, Goat knocked on the door just as soon as she had the whole cookie in her mouth. Stella backhanded the crumbs off her lips and swallowed hard as she went to open the door, managing to get the thing stuck in her throat. She had to cough out a greeting.
“Goat,” she gasped, holding the door wide and gesturing him in. “Good of you to come.” A bit of cookie lodged stubbornly and she hacked some more.
“You okay there, Dusty?” Goat asked, but damn the man, he didn’t look so much concerned as amused. Light streaming through the picture window bounced off his shiny bald head and sparkled up his bluer-than-blue eyes, and he gave her one of his sideways grins. “Want me to whack you on the back a time or two?”
“Don’t you dare,” Stella said with as much dignity as she could manage. “Please sit.”
She reclaimed her own spot on the couch and sipped primly at her tea. Once she’d cleared her air passage so that she could talk without spraying crumbs, she gestured at Chrissy, who had managed to get herself more or less into a sit-up-straight position in the chair to greet the sheriff.
“Chrissy, you know Sheriff Jones, don’t you, dear? And Sheriff, this is Chrissy Shaw. She’s one of the Lardner girls. Out Road Twelve, the soybean Lardners.”
There were two strains of Lardners in town. The soybean Lardners were the wrong ones to hail from, if you had any choice in the matter. Ralph Lardner was a lazy mountain of flesh who did more sitting on his ass and ordering his boys around the farm than he did actual labor, and the family skill set lent itself more to quick-and-dirty methods rather than true craftsmanship, so the Lardner sons were constantly patching the siding on the barns and resetting leaning fence posts and attacking late-season weeds with industrial-strength fungicide in watering cans, killing off their mother’s flower garden at least once a year.
The other Lardner in town was named Gray. Ralph and Gray were distant cousins, but it would take degrees in both history and math to trace out the exact nature of their blood relationship. The lineage had split long enough back that Gray’s side had managed to build a modest fortune buying up rich land along Sugar Creek on the south end of town. While Ralph’s crew mined stony, hard-packed dirt for a bedraggled crop every year, Gray had to just look at his land sideways and it seemed happy to send up burgeoning fields of corn, alfalfa, prizewinning squash—whatever he had a mind to grow.
Ralph’s boys seemed bent on following in their father’s sorry footsteps. His girls, on the other hand, tended to marry the first boy who asked, just to get off that unlucky land.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” the sheriff said, shaking Chrissy’s limp hand with exaggerated care before settling his lanky frame into Ollie’s old La-Z-Boy.
Damn, but the man was tall, Stella couldn’t help thinking for the thousandth time. Had to be six foot four, with acres of muscle running along his broad shoulders visible even under that homely tan uniform shirt. In his spare time, Goat had what was generally viewed as a strange hobby: he liked to lash his kayak to the top of his pickup truck and drive to any of the hundreds of put-in spots along the northern shore of the Lake of the Ozarks, as close as twenty miles away as the crow flies. Then he’d spend the day paddling around the inlets and channels and bights along the jagged shore.
All that paddling clearly built up a man’s physique.
“Nice to meet you, Sheriff . . . sir,” Chrissy said, a rosy blush stealing across her pale, full cheeks, and she looked at the carpet rather than at Goat. Stella might have thought the girl was s
hy, but she knew better: stammering uncertainty was the blood-dictated response that all the Ralph Lardner kin had to the law. She guessed that the idea was that if your pa or brothers weren’t guilty of something at this particular juncture, odds were good that they had just come from or were plotting to soon commit some sort of law-skirting activity.
“Chrissy’s a good girl,” Stella said, hoping to head off any conclusions Goat might be tempted to draw.
“Oh, I’m sure she is. I’m sure you are,” he repeated, giving Chrissy a reassuring smile.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you over,” Stella said.
“Well yes, Dusty, I am, but I’m also wondering if you’re planning to offer me a glass of that tea.”
“Oh!” Stella felt the blood flow to her cheeks as she hauled herself up out of the couch. “I meant to, I’m sorry, I just, ah . . .”
She retreated to the kitchen to fetch another glass, cursing under her breath. Damn, damn, damn. She had the hardest time keeping her wits about her when Goat was around, and that annoyed her plenty. She possessed, after all, a slick and hardened criminal mind; she’d committed any number of misdemeanors and felonies. She generally stayed icy cool in sticky situations, so why was she such a stuttering mess around the man?
It wasn’t like she was afraid old Goat was going to put two and two together anytime soon. Those who knew her business weren’t talking. Those who suspected . . . well, they weren’t talking much either, and Stella figured they all had their reasons: some didn’t want to end up on her bad side; others figured the world was a sight better place if she was left in peace to do her job.
Of course, there was the small and niggling problem that Goat, she suspected, was far smarter than he let on. And eventually, someone was going to break the time-honored rule of small-town living and engage in a little conjecturing with him—outsider or not. When that day came, it would be the sort of reckoning that would make all of her previous brushes with the law look like playground entertainment.
Yet another reason to spend as little time with the man as possible.
“Here,” she said accusingly, thrusting the glass at him.
“Well, I suppose I’ll just pour myself,” Goat said, accepting the glass. He reached for the pitcher, raising his pinkie in an exaggerated fancy-schmancy pose. “Don’t you exert yourself none, Dusty. Am I allowed to have a cookie, or are those just for the ladies?”
Stella picked up the plate and smacked it down in front of him. There were only three or four cookies left. Poor Chrissy had eaten most of them—who could blame her? “And stop calling me Dusty.”
“Why’s he call you that, anyway?” Chrissy stage-whispered in a perfectly audible voice, still keeping her eyes cast down.
“ ’Cause he hasn’t got any manners, I guess,” Stella said.
Goat laughed. “That’s not right. It’s just ’cause she’s a bad old Hardesty. Get it—‘desty,’ ‘dusty.’ She’s not like a regular gal, Miss. Why, she frequents disreputable taverns, cusses a blue streak, probably chews tobacco when nobody’s looking. Can’t exactly call her ‘Rosebud’ so—”
“That’s enough,” Stella said sharply, and she must of put a little extra mean-it in her voice because suddenly everyone was very quiet and Goat slowly lowered his iced tea glass to the coffee table and gave her a long, studied look.
“What I mean to say is, I think I’m a little old for some juvenile nickname, so if you don’t mind, you can just start calling me Stella, like every other person in this town. Goat.” Maybe it wasn’t necessary to add that last bit, but Stella was steamed enough to go for it.
“Well, why d’you call him that?” Chrissy asked the carpet. Clearly, she was no student of conversational subtext.
Stella sighed. “Now, hon, why don’t we just lay this whole names business to rest. We got plenty else to talk about here.”
“No, Miss, I don’t mind answering,” Goat said, but he kept his gaze trained steady on Stella, and by the wicked sparkle in his eyes Stella could tell she’d managed to get his ire up. Smart, she chided herself, way to provoke the law when she needed him most. “See, when I got divorced, my first wife saw fit to tell everyone that the problem was that I’m as randy as a—”
“Stop right there,” Stella snapped. Chrissy might be one of the dimmer bulbs in a family that wasn’t lit up bright with smarts to start with, but Stella didn’t think it was right to take advantage of her gullible nature with any sort of teasing. Not to mention the terrible day the poor girl was having. “It’s just that the sheriff has been stubborn from the day he was born. It was his own mama who gave him that nickname.”
“What kind of stubborn?” Chrissy asked, darting shy little glances in the man’s direction. Her mama had obviously not gotten around to teaching her that it wasn’t polite to talk about people right in front of them as though they weren’t there.
“Well, the wrong kind, of course. Like a goat. You ever try to lead one around? Wherever you try to drag it, the goat figures it wants to be headed the other way.”
“Oh. I see.” Chrissy nodded. “Well, Sheriff, I imagine I’ll just call you ‘Sheriff Jones,’ if it’s all the same to you.”
“That’d be just fine, Miss.”
After that there was a brief silence while Stella’s two guests stole polite glances at each other.
“Chrissy’s husband, Roy Dean, has run off,” Stella said. Time to get down to business. “He’s been gone since yesterday morning. And he took little Tucker with him.”
“Who’s Tucker?” Goat asked.
At that, Chrissy’s features, which had been schooled into her best approximation of mindful interest, melted into a blubbery puddle. Stella handed her the box of Kleenex she kept at the ready on the side table next to the couch; smacked-around wives often found it came in handy. “Tucker’s my little baby boy,” she wailed. “He’s not even two years old yet.”
“Oh, well, I’m sorry to hear that. But it’s only been one day—”
“And Tucker ain’t even his!” Chrissy continued to sniffle. “Roy Dean never paid that child any mind before. I don’t know why he’d want to go and run off with him!”
Goat looked at Stella, eyebrows raised.
“Chrissy was married before,” she explained. “To Pitt Akers, from the Akers over up south of Sedalia.”
“But he wasn’t the father either,” Chrissy cut in, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. She was getting herself under control a little.
“No?” Goat asked politely. “I think I might ought to start noting some of this down.” He pulled out a little notebook and flipped to a fresh page. “Now, whose boy is your Tucker?”
“Well, I’m not entirely sure, see, because that was right about when I broke up with the fella I’d been seeing after Pitt and I split up, and there was this one night out at my cousin’s—”
Goat held up a palm to stop her. “I guess I don’t need to know that,” he said.
“What Tucker is, is a child from a previous relationship,” Stella clarified, hoping to save Chrissy a little embarrassment.
“That’s right,” Chrissy said, nodding. “That’s exactly what he is.”
“Now, had your husband been talking about taking any trips, going to visit kin, anything like that?”
“Oh, no sir, Roy Dean’s not one for a lot of visiting. And his folks are all around here.”
That was an understatement; Shaws were firmly rooted in Prosper. Some of them probably hadn’t left Sawyer County in years. Roy Dean’s daddy had a painting business he’d got from his own daddy, and now Roy Dean and his brother Arthur were on the books. Tucker, if Roy Dean’d taken more of a shine to the boy, could have looked forward to a painting career himself.
“Was there anybody he had a beef with?”
Chrissy shot Stella a wide-eyed glance, no doubt wondering if she herself counted. Stella gave her a tiny little shake of the head, hoping the girl would have the sense not to talk about the problems between her and
Roy Dean. Assuming Roy Dean turned up, and Chrissy had the need to take care of him in some manner or other down the road, it wouldn’t do for the sheriff to know too much about their relationship.
“Um, no,” Chrissy said. “I mean, yes, he got into a fight now and then. He’s kind of quick-tempered, I guess you’d say.”
“Who’s he fight with?”
“Well, just whoever’s there when the mood comes on, I guess. I mean it’s usually somebody says something Roy Dean don’t like, when he’s been drinkin’ too much. Ain’t that usually how it goes?”
“Can you give me a for-instance?” Goat sat with his pen poised and ready to go, but he hadn’t written much yet. So far this wasn’t a terribly unique tale that Chrissy was telling.
Despite its name, Prosper was not a place where people lived extravagant lives. Times had gotten hard in the eighties, and not improved much since. Besides farming, there was the pork-processing plant, and a sad little office park that had never been fully occupied. The businesses ran along the shabby side of legitimate. There was a used-office-furniture dealer, the headquarters of a regional fried-chicken chain, an outfit that installed prefab sheds in people’s backyards, so they had somewhere to put all the junk that didn’t fit in the garage.
Prosper had developed an undercurrent of dissatisfaction, of cynicism, that Stella didn’t remember from her own childhood there. Fifty years ago, when she was born, rural Missouri still strove to live up to the wholesome ideals generated by the postwar era. Men like her father worked hard to buy a house, to get ahead. The American Legion hall and a few of the local churches had been built by volunteers during that era of civic responsibility. As Stella and her sister attended Prosper Elementary and played in the streets and parks and back yards of town, the world seemed like a safe and orderly place. Sure, Prosper had its town drunk, its ne’er-do-wells, its hard cases, but they routinely got their clocks fixed by Sheriff Knoll: after a lecture and a couple nights in the lockup, sheepish spells of better behavior nearly always followed.