A Bad Day for Pretty

by Sophie Littlefield

  Stella didn’t figure Brandy for giving a man the silent treatment, though—not when spite wouldn’t get her anywhere she wanted to go. The gal had to be working some new angle.

  “You tried the cell and the house phone?”

  “Yeah, and I was about to go by the house and check, when … well, you know, Daphne called about hauling Neb in. Things moved kind of fast after that.”

  Stella could only imagine. With that note they’d taken off the body, and the blood evidence to boot, it was no wonder they’d grabbed him up so quick. Putting Brandy out of her mind for the moment, she decided to see if she could get anything more out of Goat, any details about the body that she could use. At the very least, maybe she could confirm its identity.

  “I know you can’t tell me who the dead woman is,” she said. “But it seems to me that if I guess right, you could maybe tell me that I wasn’t wrong, or something.”

  “Stella…”

  “It’s Laura Cassel, isn’t it?”

  Goat didn’t look so much surprised as resigned. He sighed heavily and picked a pretzel out of the basket, broke it in half, and tossed the pieces into his mouth. He stared at her thoughtfully as he chewed, then followed up with the rest of his beer. Stella signaled to the bartender to bring him a new one.

  “I ain’t even gonna ask you where you got that from. I mean, unless you feel like telling me.”

  No chance. “Um, just … around. Lucky guess.”

  “I know it’s not Irene.…”

  “No, Goat, I swear on—on my folks’ graves, it’s not Irene.”

  “Good. ’Cause I do not want to fire that woman. Whole damn place would fall apart, I’d never find anything again. And if I ever find out you’ve been trying to dig something out of her…”

  “I won’t,” Stella said, though she had to cross her fingers under the table on that one. Though digging Goat’s whereabouts out of Irene hardly seemed like it should count, seeing as he was a public servant and all, who had to answer to the public, of which Stella figured she was a bona fide member.

  “Good. Now, look here, Stella. You and me, we got to come to some sort of understanding. You got to realize that my job is on the line each and every time there is even a possibility of, even the implication of a possibility of, me sharing information with you.”

  “Well, first of all, I’m the most discreet person I know. And it ain’t like I’m asking for something for nothing,” Stella said hotly. “It’s, you know, a two-way flow here. Plus we both want the same thing, which is to figure out who the hell killed Laura. Plus can’t you just call me an anonymous source or something? I mean what are you worried about, your girlfriend Daphne—”

  “This ain’t about Daphne,” Goat snapped. “Or anybody else. It’s about what’s right. Bottom line, I can’t do my job the way it’s got to be done if I’m compromising the integrity of the investigation, the evidence, all of that.”

  “All’s I’m asking,” Stella said, and then stopped when the bartender—an indifferent-looking fireplug of a squat ruddy-faced man—plunked a new beer in front of Goat and took away the empty. She waited until he was out of earshot. “What I’m asking is, and we can make this about an unidentified victim, is if y’all are thinking this is a random thing or a lovers’-type quarrel or, I don’t know, a hate crime or a robbery or what. I mean, you got to see why I’m asking—so I can figure out if there’s any way Neb might be responsible or not.”

  There was another long pause while Goat took the foam off his beer and dropped the level some. He watched her the whole time, and Stella forced herself not to blink first, even though his gaze on her felt disconcertingly electric.

  “Look here,” he said finally. “Neb’s a man. And, well, I do know a little something about your, you know, leisure-time hobbies, let’s call ’em. And what I don’t get is how you got hooked up with, uh, Neb’s welfare here, him being a man like I said. I guess I might feel a little better about this conversation we’re having if I understood your interest in the case.”

  With the tables flipped over on her, Stella felt her skin flush. She’d long wondered how much Goat knew, or suspected, about her little justice business.

  There was a level, deep below the surface, where women in need connected with each other, where they found out about solutions of last resort, where Stella’s number was passed along in whispers and secrecy was guaranteed by all those terrible layers of fear and desperation.

  Stella was unshakably certain that Goat hadn’t infiltrated that secret system. No man, not even—maybe especially not—a lawman would ever be allowed in that place.

  And that, on second thought, was the reason Stella could never tell him any more about what she did. No matter how much she believed in his decency, or trusted his intentions. She had to keep him as far as she could from the secret core of her business, where women had very little trust left to call upon.

  “Neb’s a friend,” she said. “Like a brother to me, really. I’d—I’d just do anything to prove he didn’t do it. Besides, you know me, I’ve just got a real curious mind. Plus—I just might have something to trade. Something to help you folks out with your, you know, investigation.”

  “Trade?” Goat said sharply.

  “Yeah. I’m going to give you a suspect. A good one, that you all don’t know about yet. Only before I do, here’s what I want: You got to tell me what you know about Laura. And I ain’t asking for anything I couldn’t find out on my own, if I had more time, I’m just asking for you to—what do you call it, expedite the process some.”

  “Stella, you know I can’t tell you who—”

  “And you don’t even have to identify the victim, the way I figure it. Let’s just say that you knew a thing or two about that Laura Cassel woman, like maybe she was a friend or an acquaintance or something, it doesn’t really matter, you’re just someone who happens to know a few little facts about her, facts I could ask any of her friends or family about, if I had more time, which we both know I don’t, not if I’m going to be my most helpful with this mess.”

  Stella had spoken in a rush to get it all out without Goat interrupting, and now she sipped at her beer and peered at him over the top of her glass to see how it went over. Goat’s scowl stayed fixed for a moment while he regarded her straight-on, and then he seemed to relax just a fraction of a bit. He leaned back against the booth and folded his arms across his chest.

  “So … I guess I might know her,” he allowed. “She was thirty-five years old, single, never been married. Had her a nice little town house over in Picot and a late-model Toyota. Worked as a drug rep for one of the big companies. Which, as I guess I don’t need to tell you, don’t look too good for your addict buddy.”

  Stella kept a poker face. Ex -addict, she was thinking, but she couldn’t blame Goat for his suspicions. “What kind of family does she have?”

  “Just her parents,” Goat said. “No siblings. Aunts, uncles, cousins all over in Kansas. Folks there in Picot, the dad runs a printing business, mom teaches grade school.”

  “Did you talk to them?”

  “Yeah … I did.”

  Stella could tell that Goat was torn about giving her details of the conversation. She waited with lips parted, not daring to prod him any further.

  After another long draw on his beer and some more inscrutable thinking, he continued. “They got a nice little place up there, a couple acres. Pictures of that gal all over the house, like to break a person’s heart, they still got her baby pictures on the breakfront. Softball team, graduation, pictures from family vacations. Said she still kept up with her best friends from high school, most of them were married now and Laura was like an auntie to their kids, and they were always trying to set her up and get her married off, but her mother said she just hadn’t met the right guy.”

  “She wasn’t seeing anyone back then?”

  “Well, her parents thought she was, but she said she didn’t want to talk about it. They said they figured it was an old b
oyfriend, one she’d got back with a couple of times. You know, the kind of situation where they never quite break up, neither one really moves on? All that drama.”

  If Goat caught the similarities to his own marital status, he didn’t let on. And Stella certainly wasn’t about to point it out. “Did they, uh, like the boyfriend?”

  “No … no, I would say it was pretty clear they didn’t think much of him. The dad said he didn’t have any initiative, you know, how he wouldn’t ever amount to anything.”

  “Dads talk that way, I guess. Nobody good enough for their little girl, and all.”

  “Yeah. But the mom didn’t like him either. She didn’t exactly come out and say it, but I could tell. Like she didn’t much trust him.”

  Well, now, that was interesting. “Don’t suppose you’d want to share his particulars?”

  “No, I’m pretty sure I don’t. Hell, Stella, I got Mike on that. Can’t you trust the department to do anything without your interfering? I promise, if it turns out this guy was anywhere near Laura back when she was killed, he’ll get looked at better than any civilian can do, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it, Stella. Stay out of that one. Now, what have you got for me?”

  “There’s this guy,” she said carefully. Stella’s experience with the vagaries of human nature had taught her to play her hole card with caution. “Now, you know that I would never dream of telling you how to run an investigation. But it seems to me if there’s someone who had access to the crime scene, someone with an itinerant-type past”—that was stretching it a bit—“with a mean streak and a reputation for knocking heads”—and that was pure fabrication—“that you folks might want to know about it.”

  Goat lowered his eyebrows, fine expressive dark brows that communicated oceans of sentiment. “Stella, if you know something you haven’t been telling me, and this an active investigation, you know way better than to—”

  “Calm down, calm down,” Stella said hastily. “It’s something I only just found out.” Lie number three.

  “Yeah? So?”

  “His name is Cory Layfield. Did some work for Neb on the side, some of the heavy lifting out at the fairgrounds. Young kid, twenty or so. And you got to admit, if Neb was all hopped up and still recovering from a recent surgery, and what’s concrete weigh, got to be all kinds of cubic tons or metric tons or something—”

  “Quit sellin’,” Goat said, his voice low and gravelly and threatening, irritation sparking glints in his eyes, which had dialed down from indigo to a shade closer to ebony in the poor bar lighting. “I do know my ass from my elbow. I think I can judge if this guy’s worth lookin’ into.”

  “Well, there’s one more thing. I, uh, I mean, just in case it’s connected, like if it’s maybe the same guy. Like if he figured out I was looking into things. Well, it’s just that there was someone maybe trying to break into my house the other night, and I got his footprint—well, like a cast of his footprint, I guess you would say—which I thought you might want to use to compare or whatever if you find him—”

  “Someone tried to break into your house?”

  “Well, I mean, I assume that’s what he was doing, there was like gouges on the windowsill and whatnot plus him tromping around in the mud—”

  “Stella, goddamn it, why didn’t you call me then? Shit, you have got to be the most stubborn, impossible, reckless female I have ever in my days—oh, for fuck’s sake—if you could just—I mean, just, just one speck of common sense—”

  There it was, that little shiver-me-timbers thrill Goat unleashed on her whenever he was angry. Stella figured there must be something very wrong about the way she enjoyed provoking him, about the liquidy yum sensations in her gut when his voice went all deep and growly.

  It was crazy. After all, she’d spent several decades letting an angry man take out all his meanness on her. You’d think any sane woman who’d been through what she had would turn and run at the first sign of a man’s bad mood.

  Only … when Goat got mad, despite the glowering, despite the snarling, it was very clear to Stella that he was all bark and no bite. That he’d sooner saw off a leg than let fly on a woman. That he’d been brought up with the old-fashioned kind of ideas that made a man stop in his tracks and remove his cap, offer an arm, light a cigarette. Pound the shit out of a guy who sneaked into his woman’s yard.

  The thrill, Stella admitted to herself, was pushing Goat right to the edge and knowing he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. He was like a beetle on his back, waving his legs in the air, and though he might make noise and throw lightning bolts, Stella knew that nothing in the world would ever make Goat hurt her on purpose.

  And that was so thrilling, so new, so delightful, that Stella wanted to keep him there, to incite him a little, get him all riled up, just for the thrill of it. Just because … she could.

  Was that what they meant by feminine wiles? Was this the trick that other women, women smart enough not to marry the first man who asked or stick around once the beating started, kept ready in their arsenals? For a delicious slow second, Stella considered meeting Goat’s irritation with lowered eyelids, with a slow swipe of her tongue along her lower lip, with a few more sassy words guaranteed to get his ire even further up.

  And then her stupid cell phone rang, the annoying trilling flutey tones instantly evaporating the thin layer of bad girl that Stella had worked so hard to conjure.

  “’Scuse me,” she muttered, and got the cursed thing out of her purse, flipping it open without bothering to check the ID screen. “Yeah, what.”

  “Stella, don’t you hang up!” It was Brandy’s unmistakably breathy voice. “You’re the only one can help now. I’ve been kidnapped and left to die.”

  FIFTEEN

  What the—?” Stella started, and was instantly interrupted.

  “Now, listen good, Stella,” Brandy said. Her voice had a strangled, terrified quality to it that went a long way to convincing Stella to do as she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell y’all sooner, but I know who killed that gal in the track.”

  “You what?”

  “I said, I know who did it. The whole reason I came to Prosper was for protection. I thought I’d be safe with Goat, only now he’s gone and kidnapped me ’cause I know too much. I can identify him. Which is what I’m about to do, but you got to promise me you’ll take care of this yourself.”

  “Me? What—?”

  “And not Goat. Hear? He’s a good man, and now I think about it, I guess you can have him, seein’ as I’m probably gonna be dead here in a bit, but he can’t do what needs done to this guy. Only you can do it.”

  “For criminy’s sakes, who the—?”

  “It’s Wil Vines. My old boyfriend. That’s who killed her. And blew up my car. It was like a warning or whatever, but now he thinks I was fixin’ to tell Goat, which is why he’s going to kill me, only I didn’t tell Goat, I only—”

  “Your boyfriend killed the woman at the track?” Stella’s mind practically ran over itself trying to absorb the new information.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you—”

  “But why don’t you want Goat to know? He’s—”

  “Is he there?” Despite her predicament, Brandy managed to get a fair amount of outrage and suspicion into her voice. “’Cause he can not know about this.”

  “But he’s the—”

  “Promise me,” Brandy hissed with such force that Stella drew back from the phone a little.

  Stella had no idea what was going on, and she had half a mind to suspect that Brandy was up to another of her tricks, except what if she was telling the truth and—

  As if reading her mind, Brandy yelped, “My battery is about to die, Stella. Now, do you want to hear the rest or not?”

  “All right … Noelle,” Stella said haltingly. She glanced at Goat to see if he bought the ruse; he picked up his beer and drained a good stretch of it. There was enough noise in the bar that she figured he couldn�
��t hear Brandy, screeching or not.

  “Now, listen good. Wil, he’s up to all kinds of shit. That’s why I finally left him, he’s never let go a chance to make a dirty buck. Drugs, stealing, all kinds of—”

  “But why’d he … you know, what did he have to do with that gal?”

  “Well, that I don’t quite have a handle on. But I know he did it. He come home that night, the night they laid in that foundation, all covered with concrete dust and tells me this story how it was guns he buried in there. All this song and dance about how he was just holding ’em for a guy but they were hot and he didn’t want ’em traced back to him, he just tossed ’em into the foundation and wouldn’t you know I fell for that like I fell for every other line of bullshit he ever fed me. Men.” She spat the last of her impassioned speech, and Stella figured they had that little bit in common, anyway; both of them let down by poor representatives of the other gender.

  But she wasn’t sure that was enough to convince her to go after a killer without the backup of the law, even if it did mean clearing Neb. After all, Wil sounded like a worse brand of trouble than she had him figured for.

  But it was a heck of a lot of coincidence to swallow for the two cases to be connected. What were the odds of Goat’s saucy ex appearing at the very same time that her ex’s murder victim got unearthed?

  “Why don’t you just tell … our friend?” she demanded. “Let him deal with it?”

  “Stella, don’t forget that I know what you do,” Brandy said, her voice dropping conspiratorially. “To men. The ones as have it coming, anyway. So you can quit pretending. Now, look, you got to kill Wil. If Goat gets him, there’s gonna be all kinds of red tape and he’ll probably end up getting off on some dumb-ass technicality and then he would have killed me for nothing. You got to find him first and, and, you know, drop him like a rabid dog.”

  Stella didn’t bother to point out that Brandy was operating on bad information—that she wasn’t available to hire for murder, even for a good cause. “You ain’t, uh, gone yet,” she said instead. Trying to speak in euphemisms to keep Goat in the dark was difficult. “Don’t you want me to find him and get him to tell me the, ah, location, and come get you?”