she hesitated to admit it, Arthur Junior was a shinier penny than she’d expected. Which made his anxiety that much more striking. A dumbass gets scared, you can chalk it up to cowardice or sheer stupidity. But a guy like this…
“Tell me, Arthur Junior,” she said, voice low and serious. “What do you think has happened to your brother? I mean, leave off for a minute whether he took Tucker or not.”
Arthur Junior shook his head. “I think he figured he could outsmart Benning. Roy Dean’s played both sides of everything since we were in grade school. Hell, he double-dealt me out of my allowance more times’n I can remember. So I guess he probably talked them into giving him some sort of job, running packages—”
“By which you mean drugs,” Stella interrupted.
“Drugs, sure, or maybe those stolen car parts, load ’em into a truck or something, drive them to some central location. Or money—it’s not like they deposit all that cash down at Sawyer County Bank, you know? Roy Dean can be convincing. So if he started that in April, that’s a couple of months he could have been trying to work his way up until one day he figures he’ll just keep a little for himself or hold back some of the load to resell or something. I mean, if there’s an angle, Roy Dean’d find it.”
“But—what then? What are you thinking?”
“Mrs. Hardesty,” Arthur Junior said miserably, pushing his coffee cup in a circle on the table, “I’m thinking it’s possible he got himself killed, the dumb shit.”
Stella sat with that a minute, considered the angles. Sure, she’d read lots of crime novels; they were her favorite. But that was the kind of thing that happened in L.A. or New York—if it really ever happened at all. Would anyone bother to kill a local loser over a few hundred bucks worth of swag?
“Seems kind of… ruthless. You know: overkill.”
Arthur Junior was silent a moment, but then he looked Stella in the eye and said, “Some might say the same about your methods, Mrs. Hardesty. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.”
Well. Now that was saying a mouthful. Stella resisted the urge to protest, and wondered. Was it really possible the mob had taken up residence here, not ten miles from where she was born and raised, without her knowing?
She had to talk to Goat. If anyone knew anything about it, he would. But how was she going to pull that off without tipping him off to everything else?
“Go back to the Tucker thing for a second,” she said. “You can’t think of any reason—any at all—he might have had for taking him? Getting back at Chrissy, maybe?”
“No, that’s just crazy,” Arthur Junior said. “It’s not like he was all that fond of the kid. I never saw Roy Dean give him a second look, anytime they were over at Mom and Dad’s. I just don’t think he’d go in for the inconvenience, diapers and feeding him and all, when there’s other ways he could’ve messed up Chrissy’s life easier.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, but Chrissy thinks Roy Dean might’ve took Tucker with him. He came over to the house on Saturday morning, and there was a, call it a short discussion, and then Chrissy got called away for a bit, and when she got back they were both gone, and Roy Dean’s car, too. And the diaper bag.” Stella didn’t mention the fact that another, equally viable suspect had hidden naked on the premises during this exchange, before making a stealthy and unexplained exit. No need to cloud the issue.
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe Roy Dean figured, if he was in trouble, they wouldn’t off him in front of the kid, or something.”
“Damn it all,” Stella said, with conviction. “Look, Arthur Junior, this has been a lovely meal, but I’m afraid we got to hit the road here. Tomorrow’s gonna start early, and at my age, it takes a while to get my beauty sleep in.”
She threw some money down on the table and stood up.
“Yeah,” Arthur Junior said, giving his untouched meal a forlorn glance as he followed her. “Only I don’t think beauty sleep’s gonna help this time.”
FOUR
You sure you got all that?” Stella asked, watching Chrissy’s stubby fingers, with their sparkly lavender nails, move over the keys of the old cash register. It was nearly nine o’clock, Hardesty Sewing Machine Sales & Repair’s official opening hour, though the street outside wasn’t exactly overrun with eager customers.
“Um-hum. Unit price, then that dept shift key. Then dept number and, um, PLU…” She tapped the keys slowly and deliberately until the drawer popped open. “And personal checks okay if I know the person.”
“Not if you know the person, Chrissy, if you
Chrissy knit her eyebrows together. “I still don’t get how I’m supposed to know if somebody’s going to
“Well, think, sugar. Like, you wouldn’t take a check from Crandall Jakes, now would you?”
Chrissy’s eyes widened. “Oh no I wouldn’t. That man lets his dogs get knocked up and then drowns the puppies, I know it for fact. Don’t even
“Well, yeah, but…” Stella considered trying to explain that it was Crandall’s two stints at County for tax evasion and social security fraud that were more to the point.
“What do you suppose he’d want to buy here, anyway?” Chrissy continued, looking around the shop at the walls hung with racks of sewing notions, the quilting and embroidery machines set up with sample scraps of fabric under the presser feet, the racks of books and patterns.
“Forget him, he was a bad example. Oh, Chrissy, just use your judgment. I won’t be gone all that long anyway.”
“Okay.” Chrissy hitched her feet up on the rungs of the stool and patted the stack of magazines Stella bought her at the 7-Eleven. “I’ll just read and maybe dust a little and be fine here.”
“I know you will, darlin’.”
“Wouldn’t it be just great if they got Tucker up in the trailer out there?” Chrissy asked with a little smile. “Like if maybe Roy Dean asked ’em to babysit while he did some errands for Mr. Benning and them all? Heck, you know how men are, they’re prob’ly feedin’ him those little powder sugar doughnuts and lettin’ him watch pro wrestling.”
“Uh… yeah, that would be nice,” Stella said, slinging her big old brown leather purse over her shoulder. It was a little heavier than usual today since she’d taken the precaution of adding the Ruger. She’d picked it more for luck than anything—it reminded her of her dad, though she’d never seen him fire it. She’d cleaned and oiled it when she got home from dropping Arthur Junior off, listening to the radio and thinking. “But don’t go getting your hopes up, hear? We got to be ready for the possibility we’re in for a bit of a haul here, remember, like we talked about?”
Chrissy nodded but refused to look at Stella. She used a long lavender nail to scratch at the sales tax chart taped to the counter and pursed her sticky pink-glossed lips. “I know, I just said it would be
On the drive to Benning’s Stella wondered if she’d done the right thing, soft-pedaling the information she’d wrung out of Arthur Junior last night. She’d told Chrissy that she’d run into someone at the divorce party who told her Roy Dean was just helping out some friends of Mr. Benning with some business that might include trips up to the city, which could explain why he was away. Stella allowed as to how Benning’s business might not be on the proper side of legal, but that didn’t faze Chrissy in the least, seeing as how her brothers and cousins and uncles had already done a fair job of setting her expectations for the conducting of business firmly in gray territory.
Stella hadn’t mentioned Arthur Junior’s fears that Roy Dean might already be dead. Chrissy, convinced as she was that Roy Dean had her son, would no doubt make the intuitive leap straight to real, frightening danger for Tucker. And Stella needed the girl to stay calm, if only so she didn’t have to stay home and babysit her.
She also didn’t tell Chrissy about the visit to Pitt Akers’s apartment. Stella was more than a little concerned about the empty rooms, the cat food stockpiled with what looked like several weeks’ supply. She’d snuck a look at
