“I’m, uh, sorry,” Stella said. From noon to two on Saturdays, the Paper Piecing Posse took over the shop to work on their latest quilt projects. The technique, which Chrissy had mastered with the alacrity and skill with which she tackled anything related to computers or sewing machines, involved tiny paper patterns that got stitched into fabric designs and pulled out with tweezers afterward. The problem was that a few of the ladies, mature ladies with imprecise eyesight, liked to have Chrissy go after all the tiniest shreds of paper that got stuck in seams—and these were the same ladies who tended to miss all the bits of paper and fabric and thread that ended up on the floor, so that late afternoon usually meant a vacuuming marathon with the special attachments to get into every little nook and cranny in the shop.
Chrissy harrumphed. “I’ll take them needleturn gals any day. Or even those fussy-ass hand-quilters.”
Chrissy, whose own quilting projects tended toward the artsy and abstract end of the spectrum, actually had far more patience with her more traditional students than she let on. Pride kept her grumpy, and Stella was willing to play along—especially when it was so easy and so amusing to get the girl’s ire up.
“Well, poor you—imagine that, a plague of women wantin’ to stitch, and in a
sewing
shop, no less. It’s practically criminal.”
“Just sayin’, I hope that trip up north ain’t turnin’ into some sorta pleasure cruise while I’m back here slaving away.”
“Uh, Chrissy—what exactly would I be cruising
on
?”
“Well, they got a great lake or something up there, don’t they?” Chrissy was a quick study at virtually everything she undertook, but there were vast areas where she had neither experience nor interest, many of them centering on subjects most people studied in high school, a time in Chrissy’s life that had been spent on pursuits like boys and sunning and drinking rum coolers. Geography was one of the subjects to which she’d yet to turn her attention.
“Well, yeah, like the entire north and east edges. But you don’t exactly—Chrissy, it’s like hundreds of miles long. Big as a state, like maybe West Virginia, or maybe Vermont plus Massachusetts, practically.”
“It
is
?” The girl’s astonishment seemed genuine.
“Yeah. Look, we got to get out there one of these days, show you a little of the world.”
“Uh-huh. So how are you?”
Stella gave her assistant a quick run-down, including the loss and subsequent return of Todd, the gruesome discovery of half a body on her nephew’s kitchen table, and the leads she’d tracked down so far.
“So you got
two
hormonal teenage boys, a bloody murder, illegal doctorin’, a business feud, a illegal immigrant situation, all of it circlin’ around a relative you don’t hardly even know, and tomorrow’s your birthday. Well, ain’t you managed to step into just a fine mess.”
“Well—yeah, I mean, I don’t know how much of that’s actually relevant…”
There was a longish pause while Stella could practically hear Chrissy calculating and thinking. “And you feel like you got to stay up there and figure it all out just ’cause it’s blood. Well, family, anyway.”
“Mmm.”
“Even though you might be better off lettin’ things lie than stirrin’ them up.”
Stella sighed. “Chip seems to really like her, Chrissy. If we get the cops on it, she’ll be deported. And she seems … well, she seems nice. Plus there’s her son to think about. I mean, Chrissy, he’s just a
boy.
”
“Uh-huh. Well … it may interest you to know that we had a unexpected visitor over here to the shop this morning.”
“Yeah?”
“I was totin’ up a couple of yards of that Hobbs Thermore batting for Janice Sheeter and I look out the window and there’s the sheriff’s cruiser pullin’ up in the parking lot.”
Stella’s heart did a little skip at the news. “Sheriff Jones?”
“No, Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from Hazzard County. Who do you think, Stella? He comes in and I’m acting all innocent, I tell him good morning, and don’t you know he wanders around for a good ten minutes looking at every damn one of them Horn sewing cabinets. Why, he went up to that one Airlift Embroidery model and got down on the floor and looked up into the joints. I thought he was gonna ask could he test it out.”
“And you didn’t ask to help him, Chrissy?” Stella kicked herself for not being there for his visit. “Didn’t ask him was there something you could do for him?”
“Oh, I asked him all right, but he just seemed determined to wander around for a while getting his courage up.”
“Courage up for what?”
“To ask where
you
were, of course. Said he’d been by the house and wasn’t anyone there.”
“He went by my house?”
“Yeah, ’cause he thought it was your birthday. Said he remembered it was in May and had in his head it was today. So he went by your house and Stella, what do you suppose the odds were he had a big bouquet a flowers out in the cruiser and a box a chocolates and a plan to give you exactly what you been needin’?”
“Chrissy!” As crude as the girl’s speculation was, Stella had been wondering the same thing, and the instant zippy ramp-up of her hormones was plenty of proof that, despite her earlier suspicions to the contrary, she was still a woman of red-blooded wants and needs.
“Well, I’m just sayin’. Seemed to me like he’s planning to set up camp starin’ at your house until you get back. How’s it gonna look when you come drivin’ up in your boy-toy’s monster truck?”
“What did you tell him, anyway?”
“Only that you went up to visit relatives. I mean, c’mon, Stella, I’m good at this shit. I left it all open-ended, let him think what he wants, right?”
Stella was silent for a minute, thinking things through. “Tomorrow’s Sunday. What’re you gonna do with your day off?”
“Well, I was gonna bake you that caramel cake you like so well, and see did you and Noelle want to go bowling, but since you hightailed it out of town, I might have to go on a date.”
“When are you going to tell me who this man is?”
“Not yet, Stella, don’t get all excited. Got to see does this one stick or not.”
“Sugar, I can’t believe you said that. They all want to stick. You’re the one who unsticks ’em before they can catch their breath.” Chrissy’s romantic life featured a constant stream of men who couldn’t believe their good fortune, dating such a pretty, sexy, fun-loving kind of woman, right up until the moment she gently disentangled them and sent them on their way.
“Well, now, this time I’m not so sure.”
Stella hung up wondering if it was starting to get a little chilly down in the underworld, because the day Chrissy got settled on a man would be the day hell froze clear over.
Chapter Thirteen
The walk home was even pokier and dawdlier than the walk to the restaurant, because after the boys took off to explore whatever delights awaited in the sleepy streets of downtown Smythe, there was no particular reason to hurry. Stella was no longer hungry, and that freed up her brain to explore the various possibilities of the case.
When they got to the house, however, an old white Saab was parked in the driveway. Sitting on the porch, in the plastic chair next to a plastic table with a vase full of plastic tulips—all Natalya’s doing, no doubt—was a middle-aged woman with long silver hair held back by a leather clip. Her eyes were closed and she nodded faintly. She held her right forearm with her left hand, her fingers flying over her smooth and freckled skin to the beat that Stella belatedly realized was coming from the earbuds hidden under the masses of untamed hair.
Only when they were a couple of feet away did the woman’s eyes fly open. She jumped up, knocking the chair over backward; she grabbed on to the table for support but it was no more substantial than the chair, and the vase toppled to the ground and the tulips went flying. “Oh,” she said, yanking the earbuds from her ears and trying to untangle the cord that wound around her arm and into the folds of a long crinkly embroidered skirt.
“Well, hello, Alana,” Natalya called with little enthusiasm.
“Friend of yours?” Stella asked.
“This woman, she is Benton sister.”
“God damn,” Chip muttered.
The woman was tugging at the cord, which had somehow gotten tangled in the folds of her skirt and trailed down to her knotted leather sandals. She gave the cord a hard yank and it came flying up and snapped against her face.
“Ow,
ow
!” she exclaimed, covering one eye with her hand.
“Are you all right?” Stella asked, but the woman waved her away with her free hand and jumped around for a moment, causing Stella to wonder if she was about to lose an eyeball. Finally she calmed down and took the hand away from her face, blinking and grimacing.
“Hello, Natalya,” she said in a thin, reedy voice. “I’m sorry, I would have called, but…”
“Benton is hardly ever allowing me mobile phone,” Natalya said coldly. “It is wonder you are finding me here.”
“It took some doing,” Alana said. “May I come in?”
“Is business you have with me that can be done on porch.” Natalya’s tone grew frostier still as her accent deepened.
“This isn’t good,” Chip muttered to Stella.
“Just hush a minute,” Stella replied, digging her nails into the soft skin on the inside of his arm. In Stella’s experience, a great many situations—especially those with uncertain outcomes—were best handled by giving as little as possible away.
“Hi there,” Stella said, stepping forward with a big smile on her face. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met. My name is Stella Hardesty.”
“I’m Alana Parch-Javetz,” the woman said, hesitating before offering her limp fingertips for Stella to shake. “I’m Benton’s sister. Are you a friend of Natalya, or of … I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
“My ass, you don’t,” Chip muttered, but then he, too, forced a pleasant expression and spoke up. “Chester Papadakis. So nice to see you again.”
“Well, I suppose you are coming in if you have discussion,” Natalya said. “Is terribly uncivilized talking on porch.”
She swept past Alana as though she were royalty on parade and unlocked her front door, not bothering to look over her shoulder to make sure the rest of them followed. Alana, in the lead, stumbled over the threshold and nearly fell, catching herself only by grabbing the back of the sofa inside the living room, her pale storklike legs akimbo. Stella tried to find a resemblance between the ungainly woman and the part of Benton Parch with which she was acquainted but came up short.
“I’ll come right to the point,” Alana said, once she had regained her footing. “As you know, Benton and I talk every Sunday.”
“Even if is not convenient,” Natalya said, her face darkening with fury. “I am marry your brother almost two year. Every Sunday I am putting dinner on table at six o’clock like Benton say is right time to eat, and every Sunday you are calling at few minutes after six. He ask you to not be calling at time for dinner and you are calling every week.”
Alana’s pinched expression grew even more irate. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Once my brother married you, the only way I could even talk to him was to call on the phone—”
“I am inviting you every week!” Natalya shrieked.
“Yes, if I want to clog my arteries with all that—that fat-laden diet you insist on cooking. Bad enough you’re poisoning Benton, but—”
“Poisoning? Poisoning! I am making food of Russia! I am taking care of husband!”
“He gained thirty-five pounds the year after he married her,” Alana said to Stella. “She’ll be the death of him.”
Stella exchanged a quick glance with Chip, whose own complexion was taking on a grayish pallor. “Can I get anyone a cup of—”
“What is it you are wanting?” Natalya demanded, arms folded over her chest. Though Natalya was six inches shorter than Alana, and hardly a robust woman, Stella would have bet on her in a matchup. She found her affection for the woman growing as she glowered at the uninvited guest.
Alana dug around in her purse, a floppy arrangement of knotted jute and wooden beads, eventually coming up with a tattered envelope. She drew out a sheaf of stapled papers and a needlepointed glasses case, sliding a pair of half-moon specs onto her long, narrow nose, so that she looked a bit like a witch with her long unruly hair and sour expression.
“As I started to say, I speak to Benton every Sunday, but for the last two Sundays I haven’t been able to reach him. I know you’ve been shacking up over here—”
“Hey!” Chip protested.
“—since the middle of April, and I’d be just as happy as you, I’m sure, to declare our association well and truly done with, but unfortunately you are still legally married to my brother and I’ve run out of ideas to find him, short of hiring a private detective.”
There was a long silence, and then Stella decided to chime in. “Isn’t that funny,” she said carefully. “How Natalya’s been looking for Benton, too.”
“What do
you
want from him?” Alana demanded.
“As your attorney I advise you not to answer that,” Stella said quickly. “Ms. Parch … what was it?”
“Parch-Javetz,” the woman sniffed. “Hyphenated since marriage.”
“Uh-huh. Anyway, Ms. Parch—that is to say, Ms.
Natalya
Parch, just to avoid confusion—has retained me to oversee her interests as she pursues a divorce from Mr. Parch.”
Natalya stared at her, wide-eyed with surprise. “I … That’s … yes,” she finally stammered.
“Perhaps your interests are not so far apart after all,” Stella suggested. “May I ask what brings you here today?”
“Well, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I was ever happy my brother married her,” Alana said, refusing to look at Natalya. “She’s never made him happy. She’s made him miserable since the day he plucked that tramp off the boat.”
“I am giving him best years of my life!” Natalya spat in outrage.
“Not to mention the fact she dragged that bastard child of hers into my brother’s home. The two of them only ever wanted his money.”
Natalya made a sound in her throat—half human, half animal—and lunged for Alana. Luckily Chip had a tight hold on her hand, which he’d been clutching in a proprietary fashion, and was able to reel her back in before she could inflict any damage.