straps, getting everything settled where it was supposed to go.
BJ’s wasn’t a place Stella visited unless it was in the line of duty. It was a little rough even for her. It wasn’t that she was afraid; get the meanest cuss drunk, and his reflexes would go to hell and he’d be no match for her, especially with the Raven in her purse. It was just that it wasn’t all that much fun to hang out in a place where optimism was in as short supply as overtime pay, tempers were thin, and old grievances lay thick on the ground.
Things went quiet when Stella walked in. She ignored the pool tables at the far end of the long, narrow room, the few square wooden tables where customers sat in twos and threes, and headed for an empty stool at the end of the bar near the bathrooms.
BJ’s wasn’t much to look at. You could tell before you put a hand on the bar or a table that it would come away sticky. Some of the wooden chairs didn’t match, and the bar stools were popping their brass studs and losing the padding on their vinyl seats. The walls were decorated with an assortment of titty posters and neon beer signs, some lit, some busted. A single framed softball photo gave evidence that at some point Big Johnson had gotten it into his head to sponsor a team, an event that must have caused the league a fair amount of consternation.
Big Johnson himself wandered down the bar to greet Stella. There was a waitress on duty as well, but she was on the floor with a tray, plonking down pitchers and trying to avoid having her rear end pinched any more than was necessary.
“Stella,” Big Johnson said, leaning his muscular, hairy forearms on the bar in front of him. Big Johnson had moved to town and bought this place after serving in the first Iraq dustup, and he already had his nickname then. Naturally there was some talk of whether it just referred to the fact that he was a solid 240 on a six-three frame, or whether there were further reasons, but if he’d shed any light on the question, Stella hadn’t heard about it.
She might not have minded finding out for herself, actually. But there was that delicate issue of dating people in the workplace—and as long as Big Johnson kept attracting the kind of clientele that was hanging around the joint now, the bar was likely to continue to be on Stella’s professional rounds.
“B.J., good to see you. Been a while.”
“Yeah. Last time you were in here, lessee, you dragged out one of my best customers, and he don’t come around no more.”
Stella felt herself blushing, but she doubted he could tell in the dim light.
“Yes, well—I just wanted to give him his Christmas card. Forgot to mail it and I’d been carrying it around in my purse. You know how that goes. Far as him coming around here… well, I hear he’s not partying much these days.”
Big Johnson gave her a ghost of a smile and a twitch that might have been a wink. “Aw, we ain’t missed him much. What’re you drinking tonight?”
“Let’s see.” Stella pretended to think it over, tapping her nose with her forefinger and glancing along the shelves behind the bar. “Well now, I guess you better make it Johnnie Black with a Bud back.”
Big Johnson went off to get the drinks, and Stella glanced down the row of drinkers at the bar. There he was, and she didn’t even have to go chasing him down: Arthur Junior was keeping company with a brassy redhead, the two of them giggling over something, their noses almost touching. Interesting. Last Stella heard, Arthur Junior had hooked up with a gal from Ogden County, but she hadn’t been a redhead. Oh, well, he was known to have quite a few smooth moves; probably the reason Gemma Shaw despaired of having any grandchildren off him anytime soon.
Any
Big Johnson came back with the drinks and set them down in front of Stella. “You know,” he said, clearing his throat and looking somewhere over her shoulder, “I don’t believe I ever got your Christmas card either, now that you mention it.”
Stella raised an eyebrow. Could it be? Was Big Johnson actually
“Oh.” Nice—
“Yeah…’course, I didn’t send any myself, this year. You know, the holidays snuck up on me and what-all, had my brother’s family come stay…”
Big Johnson trailed off and cleared his throat again, backed off the bar, and still didn’t look her in the face.
“What I mean to say, though,” he said, grabbing a rag off the sink and taking a wild swipe at the stretch of bar in front of him, “was that if I
Then he was off, practically jogging down the bar to where customers were hollering for him.
Well. Dang. Now that was interesting. Stella took a biggish sip of her whiskey and then a nice long cool drink of her beer, the foam tickling her upper lip. There was something going on with B.J., that was for sure.
It was nice. But it wasn’t quite exactly the mmm-hmmm-yeah that generally signaled powerful attraction to Stella.
She thought about it some more. Waited a few minutes to see if a reaction was just sneaking up on her. But no: Big Johnson, sweet as he was, didn’t light any roaring fires under her. Which was just too darn bad, because there wasn’t exactly an abundance of suitors lining up at her door.
Truth was, ever since Ollie died, Stella had been pretty reluctant even to think about men—except for the ones whose skulls she was knocking together, of course. Those thirty years of paying for a single grievous mistake in the man department had put her off her feed a bit.
But… it
Unfortunately, there was only one man in a hundred miles in any direction that really got her engines purring, and that was—damn it—the one man who was absolutely, positively, off-limits, the one who could send her world upside down and not in a good way—the kind of way that would have her serving time at the Sawyer County jail up in Fayette.
“Hey, Mrs. Hardesty.”
Stella jerked out of her reverie and turned to face the man who had spoken to her. Well, well.
“Hello, Arthur Junior.”
“Dad said he saw you out on the job.”
“Yes—yes, I did bump into him there.” Stella turned to Arthur Junior’s companion, who was standing behind him looking bored and teetering on her spike-heeled sandals. It appeared that Arthur Junior’s date was accustomed to deficits in his manners, but Stella believed in starting every relationship off on the right foot. “Hello, dear. I’m Stella Hardesty. My, you have lovely hair.”
That got the gal’s attention. She lifted her chin and flashed a smile. Had a darling little gap between her front teeth, nice skin, a smattering of freckles. “Hello, ma’am. I’m Silver Mason. Pleased to meet you.”
Ouch—that goddamn “ma’am.” When was that word going to ease on out of the language?
“Mason… would that be the Masons out Route 12? I went to school with a couple of the girls.”
“No, sorry, I’m from Saint Louis. I came out here for work. I’m an intensive care nurse over at Lutheran.”
Arthur Junior frowned impatiently. “I just figured I should find out what your interest in the family was, Mrs. Hardesty.”
“Well now, Arthur Junior, I wouldn’t say it’s the whole family, exactly, just your brother Roy Dean. He seems to have gone missing, and I was wondering if there was any chance he might’ve taken something along with him that doesn’t belong to him.”
The cast of Arthur Junior’s expression shifted, and Stella could see plain as day that a variety of emotions were doing battle on his face. A twitchy little tic appeared at the edge of his jaw, and his eyes narrowed to slits. After a few moments he turned to Silver.
“Darlin’, I’m afraid this is going to take a few minutes. Just some boring business shit. Would you mind if I talked to Mrs. Hardesty alone for a bit?”
