“I’m kind of fuzzy about the details,” Stella said. “I was, ah, having some drama in my own personal life back then.”
Donna looked at her blankly; then comprehension lit up her gaze. “Oh,” she said. “That was when, uh, Ollie died.”
A faint blush crept across her cheeks. Everyone in Prosper knew the official version of Ollie’s death, of course; how the old sheriff—Burt Knoll, Goat’s predecessor—answered a call from a neighbor worried about strange sounds coming from the Hardesty home, and discovered Ollie’s forehead caved in and Stella sitting on the floor next to him, holding a wrench.
Everyone knew, too, how the judge had folks lined up out the door of his office wanting to offer up accounts of Ollie smacking or threatening or being just plain unconscionably mean to his wife at some point in their twenty-six-year marriage.
But naturally enough, no one really talked about it after Stella’s acquittal. She herself didn’t remember the details of that day for several months, and by then a little seed of an idea had begun to germinate in her mind, a growing conviction that no woman should have to put up with abuse by her husband or boyfriend, and—to Stella’s surprise—that she might just have a calling to help put a stop to it. After all, she already had one notch in her belt, so to speak.
As all this remembering and realizing and deciding was going on, Stella maintained a very tenuous hold on the finer details of her life. Other than getting herself up in the morning and back to bed at night, she pretty much ignored the rest of the world and let it take care of itself.
“So,” she said now, “why don’t you pretend I wasn’t around back then. Like I was off visiting my sister in California or something. Tell me everything.”
Donna took a deep breath and a fortifying lump of coffee cake. “Well, now, Neb’s back went out January of that year … and he had his surgery in February, and the rehab and all went good ’cept for by then he’d got a taste for that poison, only course I didn’t know it. That whole summer was—well, you know. What with them pills and all.”
“A haze,” Stella suggested.
“You might say. Now, that was Howell’s last year before he retired, so Neb was still the assistant groundskeeper.”
Howell Laurey used to be the head caretaker, an ancient grizzled man who’d been running the place since the ’80s, less effectively every year, until they’d finally hired Neb to pick up the slack while Howell wheezed toward his twenty years and full retirement benefits. Stella vaguely recalled how the landscaping overgrew its bounds toward the end of Howell’s tenure, how the buildings sprang leaks and paint peeled and fences went unmended, while Howell doddered painfully around with the assistance of a cane as gnarled as he was.
“Howell and Neb did a half-ass job right up through fair time,” Donna continued, “and the town got some complaints. Porta-potties not getting emptied, gates not opened on time, trash around the midway, like that. But the thing people complained about most wasn’t even their fault—everyone wanted better food at the track now that it was all spiffed up.”
“It wasn’t great before,” Stella said, remembering the old structure, a carportlike shed with rough wooden shelves, from which the Sunrise Optimist Club sold Hostess Fruit Pies and bags of chips and sodas and lemonade.
“Yeah. So they got plans for the new shack, got all the supplies ordered, and Neb got to work on it.”
“How did he manage?” Stella asked. “With his, you know, troubles.”
“You’d be surprised,” Donna said. “That Oxy is evil. It makes you feel so good, you got your energy, you feel like you can do anything. ’Specially once he started railing it.”
“Railing?”
“You grate the coating off them little pills … grind ’em up, and bam—there you go. Folks get where they don’t want to wait for the time-release.”
Stella grimaced. There was a reason she stuck with her pal Johnnie Walker Black. A little discretion, a responsible use policy, as it were, and she managed just fine. “Where was he getting it?”
Donna picked up a pink paper napkin and tore it in half, slowly. Then she tore it again. “Got into the retirement money,” she muttered. “There’s folks out there that’ll sell you anything. I didn’t know for a long time. Cain’t believe it now, but Neb was just so good at hiding it. And you know, that Oxy, you can cover it up. Not forever, but for a while there at the start of it, Neb just seemed kinda extra energetic, and then he’d go and sleep for twelve hours and wake up feeling like he had the flu.”
“Well, sure, honey,” Stella said soothingly. “Nobody would ever have guessed. Don’t you feel bad about it.”
“Do you know,” Donna said softly, fixing Stella with wide, troubled green eyes, “for a while I thought he might be having an affair. They say a new woman can perk a man right up, make him care about things he hasn’t cared about in years. Time I … time I…”
Donna’s voice wobbled with stored-up tears, and Stella gently pressed her own pink paper napkin into Donna’s free hand. “It’s okay.”
Donna cleared her throat. “Time I found out it was just, you know, drugs, I was so relieved it wasn’t a woman, I could have cried.”
“Of course you were relieved,” Stella said. “Listen, I wonder … would you have Neb’s doctor’s number handy? I might give him a call.”
“Why, sure, if you think it would help. You think maybe Dr. Herman could tell the sheriff and them that Neb was too bad hurt to have done that concrete pouring?”
“Oh—was he?”
“Well, no, not really, ’cause the doctor said he could go back to all his regular activities a few months after the surgery.” Donna chewed her lip. “But maybe if you explained how important it was…”
“Donna,” Stella chided, “doctors got a code of ethics. They can’t be lying like that, even for a good cause.”
“Oh. Oh, well.” Donna got up and fetched a little berry-printed address book from a shelf above a tidy desk in the corner of the kitchen. She slipped on a pair of reading glasses and ran a chewed-on fingernail down the H page until she found the number, then copied it onto a piece of pink notepaper.
“Thanks,” Stella said, and tucked it into her pocket. “Now, back to the snack shack…”
“Yes,” Donna said. “Right.” She blew her nose daintily on a tissue plucked from a strawberry-printed box cover on the counter, and cleared her throat. “Neb always has loved building things. Even being high, he liked getting out there and working on it.”
“Was Howell helping out?”
“Yes—yes he was, but he didn’t do much other than set his bottom on a barrel and tell the other fellas what to do.”
“Who else do you mean, when you say ‘other fellas’?”
“Well, they had that boy Cory Layfield helping out, remember, his uncle was—”
“Layfield, Layfield,” Stella interrupted. The name was familiar.
“Yes, his uncle had shingles. Or something like that. Cory came down from Rolla to help out when he was sick, and while he was here, he picked up a little work around town. Nice boy. We had him out to dinner once or twice.”
“Well, we got to figure Howell didn’t go abducting and murdering any ladies, don’t you think?”
“I can’t see as the old guy had that kind of pep in him,” Donna agreed.
“And Neb didn’t do it.” Stella kept her professional skepticism out of her voice. There was more looking into the man to be done, but Donna didn’t need to know that.
“He certainly did not, ” Donna huffed, as if reading Stella’s mind.
“Well, you know what that says to me … could be Cory Layfield isn’t quite so nice a boy as you think he is.”
SIX
Stella pulled slowly into her driveway, noting the piles of downed branches lying around her yard. A few were sizable, entire limbs ripped from the sweetgum trees that shaded her house and the red oaks lining the street. Now there was a calorie-blasting few hours waiting to happen. She’d have to see if old Mr. Bayer a
cross the street would let her borrow the chain saw to cut up the biggest branches.
One of the ceramic flowerpots that flanked the front door lay on its side, cracked and shattered, clots of dirt and broken geraniums spilling out onto the walk. A four-foot section of gutter had come loose from the roof and hung, swaying gently, clumps of damp leaves stuck to its sides.
Stella opened the garage door with the remote and navigated carefully between the yard tools and other clutter stacked along the sides, turning off the ignition when she hit the tennis ball suspended from the ceiling.
She let herself in the door to the house, and was hit with the stench of garbage. She entered the kitchen and saw that the floor was littered with the contents of the trash: coffee grounds were scattered in a three-yard radius, orange peels were tossed everywhere, papers fluttered in the breeze from the outside. A package of stale bread had been torn open, but only crumbs remained. Yogurt containers, takeout boxes, Lean Cuisine packaging, clots of cold spaghetti … all had been dragged around the kitchen, globs of gunk of unknown provenance smeared on every surface.
A rhythmic thumping sound came from under the kitchen table.
Stella picked her way carefully across the floor to investigate. Crouching down and pushing one of the dinette chairs out of the way, she saw a medium-sized white-and-black dog lying on its back, eyes rolling back in its head, tongue hanging out of its mouth and tail wagging so hard, it smacked against the table leg. Incriminating bits of food were stuck to its snout.
“Shit,” Stella breathed softly. “Who the fuck are you?”
At the sound of her voice, the dog’s tail-whapping sped up to a frantic pace and it nudged closer to her with a lavish waggle of its hind legs. Then it rolled to its stomach, looked up at her with wide eyes the color of root beer, and flattened itself as low as it could, chin flat on the floor, and whined.
That tail never stopped wagging.
Stella noticed another smell in the olfactory stew and glanced around for its source … ah, there, over by the fridge—evidently the dog couldn’t wait to get outside to relieve itself.
Stella hauled herself up off the floor with effort and threw her keys on the table. Only then did she spot the note. Written in a juvenile scrawl in maroon marker on a torn envelope were these words:
Her name is Roxy, she like’s scrambled eggs
Don’t tell mom she’s here!!!!!!!!
“Figures,” Stella muttered. She recognized the handwriting—it belonged to Todd Groffe. The boy knew where her spare key was, and while she couldn’t be sure why he’d sicced this small canine vessel of destruction on her, she was willing to guess.
The dog had the look of a runaway. Stomach slightly caved in, it hadn’t eaten in a while—hence its zeal with the trash, perhaps—but there were signs that until recently it had been a cared-for dog, a pet. Its coat was smooth, without burrs or scabs; its ears hadn’t been torn or chewed in a fight. It had no collar, no tags, but Stella felt sure it had belonged to someone not long ago.
She. She had belonged to someone. Stella sighed and knelt back down next to the dog, and laid a hand on her back, where a trio of large black spots made a sort of saddle design. Her fur was agreeably soft, and Stella gave in and petted her, tracing the black-speckled sides and stomach with her fingers, smoothing back the cockeyed, soft triangular ears, the dog rolling her eyes and grinning in ecstasy and whining happily.
Much as she hated to admit it, Roxy seemed like a nice dog, with the sweet temperament of an animal at the passive end of the spectrum. She didn’t act like a dog that had been abused—kicked or hit or worse. What she had, instead, was that love-me-please-please-please eagerness that seemed born into a pup every other litter or so, the boundless trust and friendliness that in the right house made a perfect child’s pet, a loyal dog that would allow itself to be pawed and gnawed and dressed in doll’s clothes.
In the wrong house, this sort of dog seemed to invite abuse. Much like some women—the sweet, naïve ones—when they got together with a man whose evil streak was of the vicious woman-hurting sort, it seemed like they couldn’t do anything to prevent the meanness heaped on them. Stella hated that, hated the way the innocent sometimes drew fury to themselves like flies to honey.
But no one had done this dog wrong. How she had come to be in Todd’s company was a mystery, but the reason she was now boarding at Stella’s was not: Sherilee was allergic. Not the-occasional-sneeze allergic, but red-eyed, mucousy, hive-raising, miserable allergic. Stella had seen the evidence herself on the prior occasions that Todd tried to smuggle animals into the house: the kitten in his closet, the guinea pig he brought home from school after forging a note in his mother’s hand explaining to his teacher that the Groffes would be delighted to care for the classroom pet, Peanut, over spring break.
Peanut had spent spring break at Stella’s, instead, and Todd had spent it grounded.
But the dog was a whole new level of bold disregard for his mother’s comfort and respiratory health. Stella wondered where Todd could possibly have hidden her—and what he’d told Sherilee when Roxy was discovered. Sherilee would never have allowed her son to dump the dog on Stella; that must have been a covert op.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Stella said. “And—and you’re in big trouble. Big, big trouble.” She debated locking the dog in the bathroom while she cleaned the kitchen, but with her luck, Roxy’s tanks wouldn’t be empty, and she’d end up with a puddle on the bath mat.
Stella glanced at the clock. Nearly nine. After the visit to Donna Donovan, she’d put in a full day with Roseann Lau cleaning up from the storm around the parking lot and the restaurant and shop, and helping Capper Tackett across the street board up the front window of Tackett Stamp & Coin, which had been shattered by an errant hubcap sent hurtling its way by the previous day’s winds. It was likely to be a few days before the glass repairman would be available.
Once the window had been secured and the street restored to order, Stella called over to Dr. Herman’s office and finessed an appointment with him for the next day. All it took was pretending that she was Mrs. Donovan, and that her husband was curled up on the floor in a rictus of pain; she expressed her fears that Neb had somehow massacred another disk in his back, and assured the receptionist that she’d alternate heat and cold to give her poor husband a measure of comfort.
Then she and Chrissy and Roseann and Capper and a few other Third Street merchants had dinner at China Paradise. Roseann, grumpy as ever, threw in a free order of steamed dumplings. Tucker ate most of them before the party broke up so he could have his bath.
Now it was time for Stella’s standing appointment with Johnnie Walker Black, maybe a nice hot shower, and then bed; she was exhausted. She didn’t have the energy for this mess.
Damn dog. She looked for kitchen twine in the cupboard, didn’t find any, and finally turned up a couple of extension cords. She tied one around Roxy’s neck in a square knot and looped the other around to make a sort of leash and set out the back door.
“This ain’t no walk,” Stella said as Roxy bounded ahead of her, delighted to be outside, straining on the extension cord. “This is just once around the backyard to pee.”
Roxy, though, had other ideas; she stopped to sniff at every rock, plant, fallen leaf, stick, and hole in the yard. Her white-whiskered black snout sniffed delicately, but when something interested her, she pawed and scratched with abandon, the low whine in the back of her throat expressing pure interest and delight.
Stella realized she was letting the dog lead her around. “That’s enough,” she snapped, and yanked on the cord, dragging Roxy back toward the house. She debated tying the dog up to the back porch, but the cords’ knots didn’t look like they’d hold. “Look here. You can come back in, but you’re sleeping in the garage tonight.”
Roxy gave her a quizzical look, the whiskers on one side of her face tilting up curiously, and sat still while Stella untied her in the kitchen. When Stella got a broom and dust
pan, Roxy’s jaunty expression deflated and she slunk to the corner of the room, where she lay on her belly and rested her chin on her paws. She tracked Stella’s every move, her long-lashed eyes mournful and, if such a thing were possible, apologetic.
“Don’t give me that look,” Stella grumbled, but once she had the floor swept and the trash rebagged and hauled out to the garbage cans in the garage, she gave the dog another look, hands on hips.
Sighing, she wet a washcloth and dabbed a bit of her good lavender-scented liquid hand soap on it. “Hell,” she sighed, “if we’re going to hang out, you got to keep up your end. No need to look low-class just ’cause you’ve traveled a rough road … know what I mean?”
She gently sudsed up the dog’s snout, then washed the grime off her paws and legs and a few spots here and there where bits of pasta sauce were stuck to her fur. She rinsed the washcloth and carefully dabbed the soap away from the dog’s soft coat, finishing up with a fluffing from a fresh dishcloth. She surveyed her handiwork, Roxy regarding her solemnly in return.
Then Roxy picked up her paw, deliberately, almost delicately, and laid it on Stella’s forearm—and Stella knew she was done for.
“Shit,” she said. “I don’t need a dog. I don’t want a dog. You got owners already, don’t you? Some nice family somewhere?”
There was a noise behind her, the door from the garage opening, and a gentle cough. Roxy tensed up and started making a low rumble in her throat, and the fur stood up along her back. Stella whirled around, and found herself staring at the woman who’d interrupted her evening with Goat Jones.
“Brandy,” she said. “Did you miss out on the knocking lessons when you were a kid?”
“Oh, excuse me,” the woman said. This evening she was wearing a shimmering red pantsuit, a whole lot of ruching in the jacket making it fit as close as if she’d wrapped herself up in red florist foil. “I saw the lights on, and the door to the garage was open—”
“That’s because I was taking out the trash,” Stella said, emphasizing that last word.
A Bad Day for Pretty Page 6