“Oh! No. Well, there was Sheriff Knoll, of course, and he was about medium, I guess.”
“Chrissy.” Stella sat back down, scooted a little closer to Chrissy, and leaned in close. “This is important. What you told the sheriff, was that all true?”
Chrissy nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
“Did you leave anything out?”
“You mean, like what he done to me lately? Yes, I guess I did.” Chrissy lifted up her shirt, showed the shadow of a wide black-and-blue bruise that stretched across her rib cage. “He’s got more careful about hitting me on the arms, ’cause sometimes it showed. Done this one with his fist though. And got me right above the butt, too, here.”
“All since that fight in the bar?”
Chrissy sighed. “Yes, these ones… they’re taking their time fading. I never do heal up very quick. But before that it kind of seemed like things might be looking up a bit, you know?”
Stella didn’t say it, but she remembered well. How you’d go a week or two, a month, sometimes maybe three with nothing. Start thinking things had changed, that your man wasn’t really so different from other guys, that he’d just come through a bad patch, that was all. That if you were just a little extra careful, a little more attentive, it would be different this time.
Until one day he saw fit to remind you.
“Okay. Well now, look. I want you to go on home and try not to worry, just like the sheriff says. If he calls you, you tell him whatever he wants to know. But then you call me up and tell me about it, hear?”
Chrissy nodded, only a little wobbly. “I just want Tucker back. I’ll do anything to get Tucker.”
“Me too, sweetheart. And I’m going to work hard to make that happen. We’ll get your boy. But if Roy Dean comes back too, then we’re going to be right back where we started. And we need to make sure that you’re still ready to do what needs done. Do you follow what I’m saying?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re gonna whup Roy Dean’s ass.”
For the first time that day, Stella managed a smile. “That’s right,” she said. “That’s the spirit.”
THREE
By the time Stella pulled into the Parkade Elementary parking lot, the day had moved into asphalt-melting, breezeless midafternoon. The place looked to be locked down tight as a drum, but there were a few cars in the lot, and Stella figured the handful of teachers and administrators still hanging around during summer vacation had themselves barricaded in with the air-conditioning.
Over at the far end of the parking lot was a white pickup with SHAW PAINTING spelled out in a mostly straight line in black stick-on lettering. It wasn’t a bad-looking truck, maybe six or eight years old, with a recent- enough wash. A nice Dee Zee aluminum toolbox was bolted in the bed, and a utility rack had a variety of tools and ladders lashed to it, neat and orderly. Stella’s dad always said you could tell a lot about a man’s character by looking at his workshop. If he didn’t respect his tools, according to Buster Collier, then he likely didn’t respect himself either, and you could forget about him respecting anyone else.
Well, this sure as hell wasn’t Roy Dean’s truck, then.
Stella got out, lugging her water bottle—she was trying to be mindful of staying hydrated in this heat, and she figured the iced tea had worn off by now—and leaving the gun behind in the box. She took a discreet sniff under her arm: not too bad, considering that this was one of those days when you’re sweating two minutes after you get out of the shower. This meeting wasn’t any beauty contest, of course; but the morning’s encounter with the mirror had Stella in a self-conscious frame of mind.
Stella ignored the VISITORS, PLEASE CHECK IN AT THE MAIN OFFICE SIGN and started across the campus. In addition to the main building, there were several others, a two-story gymnasium and a science lab and a long, low shed labeled FUNBEARS AFTER-SCHOOL CARE.
It was around the far side of this last one that Stella found Arthur Senior, up on a ladder painting the trim a creamy color a few shades warmer than white. In contrast, the old paint looked dingy.
“That looks nice,” Stella said. “Amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do.”
Arthur set his paintbrush carefully down on the pan that was attached to the ladder, and backed his way down. Once his feet were on the ground he squinted at her and wiped his hands on a rag he kept attached to his belt, then offered it to shake.
“Stella Hardesty, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes sir. Good memory.”
“Well, you’ve had your face in the paper in the last year or two, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Oh, that.” Stella could feel a flush rise to her face. That had been a close call; she’d been hailed a hero for dragging Phil Rivka out of his burning house. In truth, she’d intended only to torch the garage and Phil’s treasured Camaro, the one he bought the day after he sent his wife, Irma, to the hospital with series of injuries requiring overnight observation.
Luckily, even Sawyer County’s crack fire investigation squad hadn’t figured out how Stella got the blaze started in the first place, which was a good thing. Stella had refined her technique since then, and there was no longer much risk of her killing herself or anyone else with a botched attempt.
Despite Stella’s protests, photos of her and a very dejected-looking Phil had appeared not only in the local papers but all the way up in
“Guess you’re a bit of a hero,” Arthur continued, but he sounded more wary than admiring.
“No, no, not me. Hey, I was wondering if Roy Dean or Arthur Junior were working with you today.”
Arthur didn’t answer right away. He took a tin of Skoal out of his pocket and slowly opened it, then just stared at the brown-black shreds of tobacco inside. Stella stared right along with him.
Nowadays you couldn’t find many fans of chew. Every doctor’s office in the county had warnings posted— mouth cancer, throat cancer. And Lord knows the spitting and the chawing were nasty, vile habits; the black bits stuck between the teeth didn’t do much for a guy’s appeal.
But Stella had a soft spot for the stuff. Her dad used to treat himself to a chew now and then, out on the back steps where her mother wouldn’t have to watch, and Stella’s own first sweetheart kept a tin in the glove box of his truck, hidden from his parents. He’d have a chew sometimes after football practice when he and Stella went for drives in the country.
“Er, do you mind…,” Arthur said.
“No, no, go ahead.”
Arthur took a healthy pinch between his forefinger and thumb, and tucked it expertly in the pocket between his cheek and gum. For a moment he closed his eyes and concentrated on the tobacco. Then he opened his eyes and breathed a sigh that conveyed a world-weariness far beyond his fifty or so years.
“Neither of my boys is working here today,” he said.
“They take the day off?”
“Well, now, we don’t really do like that. Wish I could say different, but the boys got themselves all involved in these side businesses of theirs, and I’m lucky to have them along more than a day or two a week.”
“Side businesses? How do you mean?”
“Oh, this and that. Arthur Junior, he got on part-time at the Wal-Mart Tire Center, and he’s been doing a program up at ITT on the weekends. You know, all the electronics they got in the cars these days, you practically have to have a degree in computer science to work on them.”
“What about Roy Dean?”
Arthur didn’t look at her but gazed out across the parking lot to the fields beyond. Alfalfa, lush and low- growing, poked its purple-flowered stems toward the blistering sun. “Well, you know, Roy Dean, he’s always got some idea or other. Last year he got himself hooked up with this multilevel marketing outfit. Nothing but a pyramid scheme, really. That didn’t end up all that well, and we had words. Now he don’t much tell me what he has going
