A Bad Day for Sorry

remember that?”

Chrissy put on a look of tremendous concentration, pinching her bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger. “Well… we went to Easter dinner at Roy Dean’s folks’ place and I don’t remember him being busted up in the face then, so I guess it must have been after.”

“So that leaves, uh, Friday the twenty-fourth, and then you’re into May. May first’s a Friday. You think it was the twenty-fourth?”

More thinking. Chrissy’s brow wrinkled with intense concentration. “Oh, Sheriff, I just don’t know. I’m sorry, sir.”

Goat reached over and patted her knee awkwardly. “That’s all right, hon,” he said gently.

Stella noticed the gesture with surprise. Goat was hardly a warm and fuzzy creature. She had never heard him use any form of endearment before, but maybe Chrissy’s pathetic expression had swayed the stubborn man. A point for their team.

“And you’re sure you don’t know who he might have seen that night?”

“No.”

“Do you think his brother Arthur would have been there?”

“Well, maybe. Sometimes they’d go together, sometimes not. You know how brothers are. Sometimes Roy Dean’d get mad at him for some silly little thing and not talk to him for a day or two.”

Goat scribbled in his pad a little more. “How about since then? Any more fights? Did you overhear any arguments, maybe on the phone?”

“No, nothing like that,” Chrissy said, a little too quickly.

Stella guessed she knew what that meant. Usually women came to her when there had been an uptick in the abuse heaped on them by their men. Sometimes there was a huge confrontation, but more often it was just that the abuse became more and more frequent until the women never had time to recover in between, to convince themselves that it was worth sticking around, that they’d imagined how bad it was, that things would change. In the end, one last straw, usually not so different from those that came before, would be the one that broke the camel’s back and sent them to Stella’s doorstep.

She peeked at Goat and saw he’d knit his eyebrows together in a look of consternation; Chrissy’s quick denial hadn’t got past the man.

Stella also noticed, before she had a chance to stop herself, that Goat had some fine-looking eyebrows: for a man who was out of the hair business on the top of his head, he’d got him some nice thick all-business brows with a rakish slant to them that made him look like the close cousin of a handsome devil.

Goat caught her looking. Winked at her.

Winked! Just when Stella figured she had a handle on the man, he’d go and do something like that, shake her foundations. Maybe that was his goal, to get her flummoxed enough that she’d let her guard down. As Stella blushed, he turned back to Chrissy.

“Any change in his work habits?”

“Well… I don’t think so. I mean him and Arthur Junior been helping their dad on a job at Parkade Elementary School over in Colfax. It’s a big job, so he’s been gone regular, and he doesn’t call me during he day less he needs something.”

“Arthur Junior still on that job?”

“I guess.”

“You haven’t talked to him since Roy Dean left?”

“No… me and Arthur Junior, we don’t get along so good. I can’t ever think what to say around him. I don’t guess he much likes me.”

Stella narrowed her eyes. That was news to her, news she would have preferred Chrissy save for later. She coughed lightly, trying to signal to Chrissy to put a sock in it.

Goat didn’t seem to notice. “I’ll talk to him. What about their folks? Mr. and Mrs. Shaw. Have you talked to them?”

“No sir. I just usually wait until I see them. We go over for Sunday dinner once a month or so, and his mom and I catch up then. Roy Dean sees his dad on the job most days.”

“But didn’t his dad call around looking for Roy Dean yesterday when he didn’t show up for work?”

“Well…” This time Chrissy glanced at Stella before answering. “See, it’s not all that unusual… if Roy Dean or Arthur Junior take a day off here and there.… They cover for each other, you know? If one of them is feeling poorly or something like that?”

Stella couldn’t help it—she rolled her eyes heavenward. Feeling poorly—yeah, she could guess what that was about. She had plenty of her own mornings when she was feeling that brand of poorly. She, however, went and opened up the shop, hangover or no. She didn’t give herself a day off as a reward for misbehaving the night before.

Goat evidently got the drift. He gave those eyebrows a bit of a workout and cleared his throat.

“I see. Okay, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your boy. Tucker, was it?”

“Oh, yes. Here, I got pictures.” Chrissy sat up straight in her chair and grabbed her purse off the table. She dug in it and found a cheap little plastic flip book and handed it to Goat.

He paged through the book, taking a few moments over each photo. “Well, if he isn’t a little dickens,” Goat said, smiling, and Chrissy brightened.

He handed the book to Stella. Tucker was adorable, a big, chubby-handed baby who was laughing in nearly every picture. He had his mother’s wide blue eyes and silky pale hair.

Stella glanced over at the fireplace mantel, where she still kept one of Noelle’s baby pictures; her daughter had been a big, happy baby too, a good sleeper and nearly always contented.

Funny how they turned out.

Stella turned back to the conversation and noticed that Goat was watching her. “That your daughter in that picture?” he asked.

Stella nodded. She didn’t plan to say anything more on the subject, but to her surprise she suddenly couldn’t say any more, because her throat closed up and her eyes stung. Well, it was no wonder, was it, what with all this talk about missing kids.

Of course, Noelle was twenty-eight now, and she wasn’t exactly missing; she just wasn’t speaking to her mother.

“Tucker’s eighteen months and thirteen days old,” Chrissy said. “I got his fingerprints done at the Home Depot on Safe Kids Day. You want me to go home and get the card?”

Goat snapped his notebook shut and slid his pen into the ring binding. “Well, I don’t see any need for that just now, Chrissy. I don’t want you to worry too much about Roy Dean and Tucker just yet. There’s all kinds of reasons why he might be gone, hear, and you’ve given me lots of ideas for where to look for him.”

“You’re going to start right now?” The longing in Chrissy’s voice tugged at Stella’s heart; the girl was desperate enough to get her baby back that she was eager to launch a hunt for her no-good husband.

“Might as well. I’ll be in touch soon’s I find out anything. You think of something, or hear from him, you call me.” He stood, unfolding his lanky legs like a carpenter’s rule, and took a card from his pocket and laid it on the coffee table in front of Chrissy. After a moment’s hesitation, he laid a second one in front of Stella. “I suppose you might as well have one too.”

He gave her that same long, studied, know-too-much look before he threw in a grin, nodded to Chrissy, and made his way to the door. Stella stood and watched him warily. “Thanks for coming so quick,” she said.

“Anytime.” He shut the front door with care, holding the handle so it wouldn’t slam. Through the screen Stella and Chrissy listened to him start up his department-issue Charger and drive off.

“Well,” Stella said uncertainly. “I guess that went about as well as it could have.”

“He sure is tall,” Chrissy said, “for a sheriff.”

“Why, you known any short ones?”

“Short what?”

“Sheriffs, hon.” Stella’s opinion of Chrissy was taking a turn for the dumber, and she was sorry to see it. Dumb wasn’t going to help find Roy Dean any quicker. Still, it could just be the stress of the situation. Poor girl had a lot on her mind, and besides, talking to Goat did weird things to Stella’s own brain, so she supposed she shouldn’t judge Chrissy too harshly.