Stella kept walking, keeping her eyes on the gravel and clumps of weeds on the ground in front of her, but her heart did a little speed-up. “You mean my shop,” she said. “The sewing machine shop. I did some nice business last year, but—”
“That ain’t what I mean, Stella
“Clearly, you’re no dummy,” Stella agreed. “Though I’m not sure what you’re talking about with—”
“Can it, Stella. Let’s just get this said. I know what-all you do, and if I wanted, I could get a lot more information pretty quick. You know, in the form that might be useful for law types. See where I’m going? I run a nice, tight shop here, but I don’t like the idea of anyone coming around snooping into my business, any more’n you probably like someone coming around doing it to you. So here’s what I propose. I don’t have any idea where Roy Dean is. Yeah, he’s brought a few cars around, and we buy now and then, but I run a clean shop and if he can’t provide title, I take a pass. So I haven’t seen him in what, two, three weeks. I can check the books if you want to know what we last bought off him, though seems like it was an Odyssey, front-end collision, if I’m not mistaken. As far as that boy, I didn’t even know Roy Dean had a kid. It never came up.”
“He doesn’t. Tucker’s his wife’s. Chrissy’s.”
Benning shrugged and nodded. “Well, there you go. No reason for him to be hauling the kid around anyway, then. Wish I could help you, but looks like we’re just a dead end for you.”
Benning took a left and led her down a rough section of road that veered back toward the main lot. Stella glanced behind her shoulder and could just make out the edges of a shed big enough to fit Arthur Junior’s description past the fields of cars and several structures holding various parts suspended from metal gridwork. Reluctantly, she followed Benning.
“You say ‘we,’ ” Stella said. “Who all you got working here, anyways?”
Benning shrugged impatiently. “I got a part-timer most days. Chuck Keltner, you probably know his mom, and a guy moved up here from Morrisville. Not full-time, you know, no benefits or nothing. Mostly it’s me for the big stuff.”
“Yeah, see, way I hear it, you got some out-of-town interest, too.”
Benning said nothing, but Stella could sense him tense up next to her.
“Some friends of yours maybe bringing you in on some other avenues,” Stella continued. “Look, like I said, it’s no concern to me. You want to grow a little pot patch on your back forty, whatever. Just trying to keep this a two- way flow of information, hear what I’m saying?”
“If I knew anything, I’d tell you,” Benning said, his voice soft. “But you’re way off the mark with that last comment. Yeah, I got some friends come down from the city from time to time. We go out on the lake, fish a little. Play cards. Hunt or whatever. I don’t know who’s been giving you your information, but let me tell you, the biggest thing around here is maybe a little weekend party from time to time, and if someone stuck their nosy face in and saw something that wasn’t there, well, that would be their problem, see where I’m going?”
“I think I see,” Stella said, keeping her own voice low. “Anytime you had a bunch of visitors after hours, maybe taking the party over to some of your other facilities on the site, why, you’re just eating pretzels and playing Crazy Eights. That about the size of it?”
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Benning said, nodding. “Now you’re getting it. Roy Dean’s not exactly on my A-list, and we sure don’t have no little kids around when we party, so I guess that’s about all I can do for you today. Unless you want to see if we can find something to fix up that rust bucket.”
They had arrived back at Chrissy’s car. The sun had climbed higher in the sky, and the heat shimmered inches above the opaque, faded paint on the car’s roof and hood.
“I appreciate the offer,” Stella said as the dogs hurtled across their pen, braying and crashing into the fence, “but I think I’ve changed my mind about it since talking to you.”
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“Well, this little ride don’t look like much on the outside,” Stella said. “Lots of miles, just like I got. But under the hood? That’s a scrappy little engine. Gave me plenty more get-up-and-go than I was expecting.”
“That so.”
“Yeah.” Stella got in the car and rolled down the window. She gave Benning her sweetest smile as she stuck the key in the ignition and fired up the little Celica. “Sometimes you just can’t tell from looking how much trouble your ride’s going to give you.”
Hardesty Sewing Machine Sales & Repair shared a parking lot with China Paradise, a generally decent restaurant run by the eternally grumpy Roseann Lu. When Stella pulled into the lot at eleven thirty, she figured the three cars already parked there were Roseann’s customers, getting an early start on the lunch special.
In her shop, though, she was surprised to find Chrissy with not one but two customers, Lila Snopes and a second woman in her sixties, both of them talking at once. Chrissy’s wide, pale blue eyes darted from one to the other, and when she saw Stella she blurted, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back! We got us a situation here!”
Lila turned away from the counter and, at the sight of Stella, pursed her features into a frown that caused the many wrinkles around her smoker’s mouth to focus in like arrows. “Not a situation, just a case of the customer is always right,” she said primly.
“Hello, Lila,” Stella said. She noted a heavy resemblance in the woman’s companion: same steely, severe bob haircut, same pronounced chin and flaccid cheeks. “And this must be your sister.”
“I’m Delores,” the woman said, nodding.
“I called Delores to tell her you were running the binding two-for-one,” Lila said. “I love the wide stuff for quilts. I’m stocking up.”
She pointed to the counter, where packages of binding were piled up high. Her sister had her own pile. There were probably thirty packages between the two of them.
Stella took a deep breath and said, “Sorry, ladies, but I’m not running any specials. I think there’s been some misunderstanding.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell them,” Chrissy stage-whispered in a singsongy voice.
“No misunderstanding I can figure,” Lila said. “I was in here at ten and I bought two packs of the inch and a half. Kelly green. And your girl here charged me for one. So I says, you charged me for one, deary, and she says no, that’s no mistake, that’s what you told her to do.”
“I said no such thing!” Chrissy said. “I said I was just doing what Miz Hardesty told me, and it wasn’t my fault the cash register wasn’t ringing up the numbers right.”
“Well, you took my money, didn’t you?” Lila said, the jut of her chin taking on an even more stubborn set. “Way I see it, that means you agreed on the two-for-one.”
Lila’s sister nodded along to everything her sister said, and Chrissy’s face was getting blotchy and red. “Now let’s just slow down a minute, ladies,” Stella said. “This is Chrissy’s first day on the job, and she’s still getting used to our… system. I don’t think—”
“I did drive up from Quail Valley,” Delores said primly. “Seein’ as you had the special.”
Stella tapped her foot on the floor. Did the math in her head. “Okay,” she said after a minute. “How’s this. Twenty-five percent off. That’s the best I can do.”
“Well… how about you throw in one of those serger books I know you ain’t sold in two years,” Lila sniffed. “And maybe you ought to consider getting some more qualified help.”
Chrissy went very still for a moment, and Stella was trying to figure out how to diffuse the old bitch’s comments, when she noticed something interesting.
A deep purple flush was creeping upward from Chrissy’s collarbones, and her eyes had narrowed to slits. She slowly drew herself up to her full height and drew in a breath, and then she made her hands into tight fists before extending her fingers out like a boxer getting taped for a fight.
“Excuse me, lady, what did you just say?” she demanded, her voice very soft.
Lila put her hands on her hips and glared back. “Just that seein’ as you’re not even able to run a simple cash register or add up a purchase, maybe Stella here ought to—”
