hour, and he better be there.”
“Sure. Just give me the address.”
“He
“Oh. Well, could I at least have a name?”
“He’ll know, okay? He’ll know damn well who it is—just tell him Darla said he better be here.”
Stella slowly lowered the receiver back to the cradle on her nightstand. She finished with her hair and went out to the living room, hesitating in front of the TV and wondering what to tell Chrissy. On screen, Will Ferrell was saying the Baby Jesus prayer. Somehow it seemed fitting.
“Chrissy… sweet pea… you happen to know a gal named Darla? Might have been keeping company with Roy Dean?”
Chrissy shook her head, glancing away from the television. “No, but I feel sorry for her if she has been.”
“Yeah. It’s just…” Stella considered describing the conversation she’d just had, but without knowing who and where the girl was, there was nothing they could do for now, other than get Chrissy completely riled up—just when Stella had finally gotten her all settled down. “Well, nothing that won’t keep until tomorrow.”
At least, until noon. Somehow, between now and then, Stella had to find Darla. Which shouldn’t be too impossible, in a town the size of Prosper. Though if Roy Dean had taken his lovin’ out of town, she could quickly have a monster search on her hands.
Stella sighed. One damn problem at a time. Right now she had a date with a park bench.
“Hey darlin’, I got to run out for a bit,” she said.
“You meeting up with the sheriff?” Chrissy asked, sitting up straight. She had changed into what Stella figured passed for pajamas: a pink T-shirt with a kitten screen-printed on the front and the words
“Why would you think that?”
“Well, just ’cause of him calling earlier. I figured maybe you called him back and he talked you into a date.”
“Oh…” Stella was about to dismiss Chrissy’s guess, but the truth was she didn’t have any better excuses. “Going out for Pringles” would work, but it might not give her enough time. “Yes, you got me, girl,” she said. “Ought to make you into a detective or something.”
That got her a wide grin. “You think?”
Stella took care to lock the door as she left.
On the way to the golf course, she went back over what her caller had said. The thing about the hundred bucks was a joke. Stella had about fifty-five dollars in her purse, what was left from her once-a-week ATM visit. Taking out another hundred would put her a little too close to overdraft territory for comfort.
Stella had some money put away. Not a whole lot, but enough, if she was careful, to get by on as long as the store continued to bring in its usual unspectacular haul every month.
Because of the circumstances of Ollie’s death, insurance hadn’t paid out a penny. Luckily, when Stella’s mother passed, there had been enough to pay off the mortgage and the car loan and set some aside. After Ollie died, Stella used a chunk to employ herself a fancy financial adviser up in Independence. The man taught her a few things Ollie’d never seen fit to explain, and recommended a few books. Now Stella knew enough to scrape by.
The idea, of course, was to supplement her income with her little side business. And sometimes that actually happened. The bonus the Kansas coff ee importer’s wife had given her, for instance, had paid for the new dishwasher and gas range. But many of her clients had to work out payment plans, and Stella never had the heart to turn anyone away for lack of creative financing.
She had one gal who settled her account by making drapes for every room in Stella’s house. That one was worth it: seeing the ex-girlfriend of the chief of police of a small town near the Iowa border—a woman who’d once believed that no one could help defend her from the most powerful man in town—up on a ladder installing the curtains, whistling and shimmying to an old Pointer Sisters song, was a rare privilege.
She had a couple women who sent her plain envelopes of cash every month. Sometimes it was a few twenties, sometimes more. Occasionally less.
With Chrissy, Stella hadn’t even bothered bringing up the subject of a payment plan beyond the fistful of rolled fives, tens, and twenties the girl handed over at her initial consultation. Chrissy already had too much on her mind. No matter; they’d work it out eventually.
Stella pulled into the access road that ran along the park. Bright streetlights had been installed in the parking lot, an improvement she welcomed. As she parked, she could make out a figure sitting exactly where he’d promised to be, on a bench they’d sunk in concrete across the pond. He was a heavyset man, and sat with his arms stretched out casually along the back of the bench, legs crossed.
Had it not been dark out, he could have been there to feed the ducks.
Stella patted the outline of her gun and slipped her car keys into her pocket. As she made her way around the pond, following the curvy outline of the fancy schmancy brick walk, she was relieved that the man made no move toward his pockets. When she got within twenty feet, she could see his eyes shining in the moonlight.
“Hello,” she called. “Here I am, right on time.”
“I appreciate that. Can’t stand a tardy bitch, myself,” the man said, and chuckled. His voice was slightly high-pitched and had a flat, nasal quality, and he seemed to find himself plenty amusing, which irritated Stella.
“So what is it you have to tell me?” she asked.
She heard the slightest shuffle behind her, coming from the left side of the path, away from the pond—a leaf against a rock, or maybe trash blowing—and turned to look.
At that moment something came at her from the right: a low, broad dark shape moving fast thudded into her hip and knocked her to the ground. Stella reached for the Raven, but before she could get to it her arms were yanked hard from behind. There were two of them—plus the man on the bench, who was getting up slowly, like he had all the time in the world.
“Check this out,” she heard a voice say. She felt hands roving her body as the other guy held her, kicking and struggling, in place. The man searching her wore a stocking cap with eyeholes, pulled low on his face. His hands found her holster; in the next second it was yanked from her waist. For a second she was sure she was about to be shot with her own gun, a feeling that intensified when she felt its barrel pressed against the hollow behind her right ear. She scrunched up her whole face and waited for the shot.
In what she figured was her final half second on earth, Stella marveled at a new revelation: waiting to get shot was different from waiting for a man to punch you on a jaw that was still healing from the last time, or hit you on the temple with a beer bottle, or knee you in the gut.
Or maybe it was Stella herself who was different, who had changed since the last time she’d been victim to the violent reckoning that Ollie routinely dished out. Three years, sixteen days, in fact—that counter had been put in motion when Ollie slumped to the floor and bled out, a counter that would never be turned off again.
Three years, sixteen days of freedom. Of calling her own shots.
And what she felt now wasn’t anything like she used to feel. It wasn’t dull dread, a sense of the inevitable, a wish that he’d just get on with it, even a longing for the relief that would come from being knocked out.
What Stella Hardesty felt, with the barrel of her own gun jabbed a few inches from her brain, was mighty pissed off. To her surprise, it suddenly mattered a great deal to her that she not go down for the last time here, by the little mud pond on the edge of town, at the hands of two men she didn’t even know.
“You
She had the satisfaction of seeing him double over and start to vomit before she took a hit to the face that sent her sprawling.
And a second one that sent her out.
