“Well, I don’t…”
“I was a couple of years ahead of her, but everyone said it. Everyone.”
“So you get to the pond,” Stella prompted.
“Yeah, we parked on the far side and it wasn’t too hard, we got Liman dumped in no trouble, he floated out a ways and just kind of sunk down real peaceful. That wasn’t bad. And then we’re dragging the other guy and we’re, you know, trying not to breathe his smell and all, and Priss all of a sudden drops her end and flips her hair and says,
Look at us, a couple of women doing men’s work,
and I’m all,
What the hell?
And she says men are dumb beasts, you can get them to do anything you want when it’s all fun and games, but when you got trouble, it’s women got to clean up the mess.”
Stella couldn’t help thinking that wasn’t too far off of her own philosophy, but she could see where it was a delicate and subjective matter. “You didn’t care for that,” she guessed.
“I said, what do you mean, get them to do anything you want? And she gives me this look like she feels
sorry
for me, and she says, come on, I think we both know what I’m talking about. And I’m all, you have something to say to me, just
say
it, and she … she…”
Doraleigh was beginning to choke up again, which Stella had to believe wasn’t great for her visibility. “It’s okay,” she said as soothingly as she could.
“It’s
not
okay. She says, well, all I ever had to do to Salty was give him this one look and he’d do, he’d do anything I wanted.”
“Oh.”
“And she wasn’t even
sorry.
It was like she thought I’d agree with her or something. My own
husband
? I couldn’t get Salty to take out the trash if I offered to flash my tits at a Cards game.”
“Okay, I think I—”
“Now you see where I’m going?” Doraleigh demanded, giving the road a cursory glance and tugging the wheel back into a roughly straight direction. “Now you understand? I just grabbed one of those bungees off those guys and I got her before she figured out what I was doing.”
“You strangled Priss with a bungee cord.”
“Well, yeah, Miz Hardesty, what do you think I been trying to tell you? I mean, Salty couldn’t even help himself around her, she was
that
evil.”
Poor Salty, Stella thought, getting tangled up with two such utterly reprehensible, unredeemable women. Only, he was the one who’d kept going back for more, wasn’t he? Wasn’t like there was anyone holding a gun to his head to make him keep pursuing Priss after she’d dumped him.
That gave Stella an idea. Of course, she didn’t have an actual gun on her any longer—and if Doraleigh had an ounce of sense, the girl would have tucked it away someplace safe so she didn’t hurt herself with it, but unfortunately she struck Stella as the kind of girl who’d run headlong into trouble, so it was probably sitting on the passenger seat nice and handy for Doraleigh to shoot her with if she got the hankering.
So one course of action was to simply barrel through the car’s midsection, between the two captain’s chairs with their child seats strapped firmly in place, and make a grab for it. But if she was wrong, if Doraleigh had the gun in her purse or pocket or, for that matter, in her hand, something was bound to get fucked up and they’d end up shooting and veering into oncoming traffic, which wouldn’t be a good outcome for anyone.
So Stella rolled onto her side a bit farther, one of the river rocks squishing into her ribs, and reviewed the contents of the floor, considering and discarding food wrappers, empty juice boxes, a stuffed frog … until her gaze lighted on the remains of a plastic car that had once worn a jaunty grin painted on its hood but now, after apparently being stepped on by someone of considerable weight, sported a broken windshield with plastic shards poking out in several directions.
Stella palmed the car, keeping an eye on Doraleigh, who was back to fiddling with the radio, trying to tune out the persistent static. She worked one of the shards back and forth until it tore free from the toy, and regarded her makeshift weapon, a four-inch strip of soft plastic whose edges were soft and flexible, but which ended in a sharpish point.
It would have to do.
Stella closed her eyes and took three slow, deep breaths, the way she’d learned in physical therapy. She conjured up her peaceful vision, the one that Glynnis, her therapist, had suggested she choose to center herself before every session. Stella had told Glynnis that the vision was a tall sunflower bending softly in a breeze, but the truth was that what she saw when she closed her eyes and breathed deep was the very fine rear view of the sheriff, from the broad no-nonsense shoulders straining the limits of his uniform shirt, down to that sweet, tight ass, down those long, long legs to those polished black brogues.
She gave herself a moment to focus on her vision, letting it fill her senses with a feeling of peace and belonging in the universe, and then she sprang from the seat and through the car as fast as she could, slamming into the back of the driver’s seat and hooking an arm around the headrest and Doraleigh’s neck, jabbing her in the space behind her ear with the plastic shard with the other hand.
“What are you doing?” Doraleigh shrieked as the car wove dangerously into the other lane before she righted it at the very last moment.
“Don’t talk,” Stella said quickly. “Keep your eyes on the road and keep driving. What I have here is a
kris
knife. It’s Javanese, and it’s small, but it’s engineered to be completely fucking deadly, and it’s digging into your sternomastoid which is just
dangerously
close to your jugular. If I stick you just so, you’ll bleed to death, and there won’t be anything anyone can do to help you. Not many people know exactly how to get around all the nerves and tendons and whatnot, but an old army medic taught me and I guarantee you I won’t miss if you give me reason.”
It was a lot of tall-tale-telling to get done in one breath, and Stella was shaking with adrenaline and the sheer effort of the lie by the time she finished. She glanced at the passenger seat and, sure enough, there was her little gun glinting in the summer sun.
Doraleigh nodded slowly, straining away from the plastic shard. “Don’t hurt me,” she whispered. “I got kids that depend on me.”
“I ain’t going to do anything at all to you,” Stella said. “Long as you do what I tell you.”
“What happened to you, anyway?” Doraleigh asked in a plaintive voice. “You used to be such a nice lady. I remember when you used to volunteer in the school office.”
Stella sighed. “I’m still a nice lady. Only, a different kind of nice.”
She glanced out the window, checked the slant of the winter sun to get her bearings, and recognized a black ridge of cliffs that rose up out of the ground to the right a few miles away, and realized where Doraleigh had been planning to dump her.
“Homer Reservoir,” she said admiringly. “Not bad. If you would a tipped me into the far end, I probably would have got all tangled up in the water weeds and shit, and they wouldn’t of found me until the Second Coming.”
“That was the idea,” Doraleigh said glumly.
Stella dug a little deeper with the shard. “Well, better luck next time you decide to off somebody. Now, why don’t you take a nice wide U-turn and head us back to town.”
Chapter Thirty-one
She would have called ahead, but reaching for her phone would have meant letting loose her headlock on Doraleigh, plus even though she had Goat on speed dial, she was afraid she’d hit the wrong keys in all the excitement, and it seemed to her the situation had become plenty confusing enough.
When they pulled into the sheriff’s department parking lot, she was relieved to see Goat’s cruiser in its customary spot—and dismayed to see that the Fayette folks were still in town, the crime scene van and Daphne’s unmarked Chevy Lumina parked in the guest spaces.
“Pull right up to the front door,” Stella suggested, and Doraleigh sighed mightily and eased the minivan’s front bumper within a few feet of the glass double doors that were a holdover from the Hardee’s days. “Now, lay on the horn.”
It took a couple more applications of the “knife,” but Doraleigh finally set to honking. Irene was the first out, squinting in a burst of weak late-afternoon sunlight, and Stella reached past Doraleigh and poked the window button. When it slid halfway down, she hollered, “Get the sheriff, please, Irene!” and the old gal ducked back inside without a word.
But it wasn’t just Goat who emerged from the building a few minutes later. He was followed by Mike Kutzler and Ian Sloat; Detective Simmons, who was running her hands furiously through her feathered ’70s-style shag; as well as Officers Hewson and Long, the two crime scene techs that Stella knew slightly from the last time the team had come to town. It was a wonder any of them still had their jobs, after the debacle they’d shunted onto Goat and his deputies, but it was a sad truth of law enforcement that often it wasn’t the cream that rose to the top, but the dregs.
Stella had an inspiration. “Tell ’em you’ll only make a full confession to Sheriff Jones,” she whispered quickly into Doraleigh’s ear. “The way you want to play this is, keep it local. The minute you get into county hands, why, you’ll fry for sure. Ask for a private audience with Goat, and you’ve got a chance.”
The knot of lawmen and -women circled the minivan. There was a bit of excitement when the Bersa was spotted on the passenger seat, but Mike dug a wrinkled hankie out of his pocket and opened the passenger door and picked it up gingerly.
Goat, meanwhile, stared in the open driver window, ducking down to get eye level with Stella. “What have you got for us today, Miz Hardesty?” he asked politely, giving away nothing in his clipped, cool tones.
“Only a double murderer,” Stella said. “This here’s the Porters’ killer, in the flesh.”
“I ain’t talkin’ to no one but you, Sheriff,” Doraleigh said with conviction. “Now, can you take that knife outta my neck, Stella?”
Daphne had her gun drawn and trained somewhere around the headrest. Stella figured the woman would be just as happy to shoot her as Doraleigh, so she decided to play it by the book.
“I’d, uh, like to surrender my weapon to you, Sheriff Jones,” she said. “Maybe if you could open the slider—”
“I advise you not to,” Daphne barked.
“Oh, can it, Simmons,” Goat said without giving her a glance. He slid the door open and regarded Stella—and her makeshift weapon—with surprise, and then amusement.
“My, my,” he said softly.
“What’s she got?” Ian called from the other side of the car. Daphne’s gun was unmistakably aimed at her now, Stella thought, so she moved very slowly as she handed the plastic shard over to Goat.
“Never you mind that,” Goat rumbled, never taking his eyes off Stella as he slipped the plastic into his pocket. “All you need to know is, Miz Hardesty certainly knows how to handle a weapon.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Two weeks into April, the house was decorated top to bottom. Goat had come around as promised and brought every single Easter box down from the attic, including some that hadn’t been opened in a decade.
Goat also brought the surprising news that Keller McManus had managed to die all on his own, without any intervention by would-be killers, when he mixed Viagra and Ecstasy in an effort to give Priss an evening she’d never forget after the duel—despite the poor showing he’d made against Addney Walsingham—and surprised her with a spectacular coronary event instead. “Blew out his pipes but good,” was the way Goat interpreted the autopsy report.
Stella spent a few minutes thinking it was a damn shame that Priss hadn’t just called the cops like a rational person, but then she realized that all that mattered to Priss was her own coldhearted self, and she’d never jeopardize her business just to give a guy an orderly exit from the world. If she’d called the law the minute Keller dropped dead, Elegant Company might have gotten itself investigated and Priss might have had to find herself a new occupation, but at least she’d still be alive. As it was, half the town showed up at the Porters’ funeral, giving it an almost festival air, but few tears were shed.
A more exhaustive search than the one Stella and Chrissy made failed to turn up a will, and with Priss’s only close relative dead right along with her, her extensive estate reverted to the state, where it would spend eons tied up in probate, being piddled away in legal fees.
Stella figured it might be a fitting end to the Priss Porter empire.
On a cold but clear Friday evening, Goat stopped by with takeout from China Paradise. Noelle and Cinnamon were doing laundry and playing checkers in the living room—the pair seemed to have become friends with, as far as Stella could tell, no benefits at all other than those of companionship and a bounty of shared interests. Everyone seemed content to let Noelle’s sexual orientation remain an ongoing mystery.
After a thoroughly mediocre meal, Noelle and Cinnamon cleaned the kitchen and Stella and Goat stole a private moment in the living room.
“Got a couple of presents for you,” Goat said. “Sorry I didn’t wrap ’em.”
He handed her an evidence bag containing a blurry, cracked piece of paper. Only after Stella slipped on her reading glasses did she finally make out that it might or might not have once been a photo of a woman standing over a man. She glanced up quickly at Goat, who was polishing his own reading specs on his soft chamois shirt.
“Found that in a pond,” he said. Then he handed her a second plastic bag.
The items inside—four of them—were small and gray and oblong with metal thingies that stuck out the ends. Flash drives, Stella was willing to bet. She could feel the blood flooding her face. Now Goat wasn’t looking anywhere near her vicinity.
“Oh, damn,” he said, hand going to his pocket. “Called out again. And on a cold night like tonight.”
“I didn’t hear your phone,” Stella said in a shaky voice, clutching the bag of drives tightly in her suddenly clammy hand.
“Got it on vibrate. Well, sorry I couldn’t stay.”
Stella was sorry, too, in a
you can never get enough of Goat Jones
sort of way, but she was also very glad to have time to process the fact that he’d just saved her ass eight ways to Sunday.