A Bad Day for Mercy (7 page)

She waited a while and knocked again, but when even a soft pounding failed to raise anyone to answer the door, she went back to the truck. As gently as she could, she opened the driver’s side door and rooted around the jump seat, collecting the Tupperware that contained her breaking-in tools. Not that she anticipated any trouble from Chip or any ladies he might be entertaining, but this had gone from a straightforward rousting from bed to a slightly more complicated scenario, and Stella made it a policy to meet complications appropriately armed.

Todd had moved slightly, his arm now flung up over his head, his soft snores as gentle and sweet as a puppy’s growl, and Stella gave him a little pat before heading back to the house. She made quick work of the flimsy mortise lock on the door and pushed it open, finding herself in a dim living room that contained some mismatched furniture and a few silk flower arrangements and an overarching scent of potpourri with notes of cleaning products and something organic and unpleasant. Stella was trying to suppress both nausea and a sneeze when she heard rustling from the back of the house and found herself unable to announce her presence due to what felt like a sudden asphyxiation by Crystal Rain scent.

When she followed the source of the sounds into the kitchen, Stella beheld a scenario that took a few minutes to comprehend, the various parts so at odds that they almost threw a switch in her tired brain. A man resembling Chip, except twenty pounds closer to a healthy weight and with a sheen to his feather-cut brown hair, was bent over the table holding a wicked-looking blade and a large meat fork. Whisking away draining fluids with a rag was a pretty dark-haired woman with a voluptuous build that was barely covered by a tank top and an apron, her extraordinarily pale shoulders and long legs visible underneath. And between the two of them, sliced and piled and trussed like a thanksgiving turkey, was what was left of a man—specifically, about three-quarters of the upper half.

Chapter Seven

“Oh!” the woman shrieked, taking a step back.

“Good heavens,” Stella exclaimed, nausea surging with renewed vigor.

“Aunt Stella? Is that
you
?” the young man who evidently actually
was
Chip asked, setting down his blade but holding on to the meat fork, which he’d been poised to poke into the exposed innards of the unfortunate torso on the table. The body’s head was resting on a folded dish towel, its mouth slightly ajar, its lids only half lowered, appearing to watch the procedures with something like bemused patience, as though he supposed he’d be a sport and put up with this unexpected interruption to his dismemberment and maybe even offer a beer from the fridge if only his hand was still attached.

“What—how—”

Stella discovered that she was pointing her little SIG at the strange tableau. She didn’t recall pulling it out of her purse, but even in her state of shock and disgust she had the wherewithal to be pleased that her reflexes were so finely tuned.

Although it wasn’t clear what she would shoot, or what effect shooting might have.

“Chip, what on
earth
are y’all up to?” she managed.

“Oh, this looks bad, I know,” Chip said, “but I can explain. Here, watch you don’t slip, there’s … urr,
stuff
on the floor.” As though she were holding a sandwich rather than a gun, Chip grabbed a fresh rag and got down on his knees and set to mopping. “This here’s Natalya Markovic, by the way. My girlfriend.”

“Hello,” the woman said in heavily accented English, bobbing her head up and down enthusiastically. “I am very pleased to meet.”

On closer inspection Stella realized that there was something a little off about the woman. Her mouth and chin were swollen on one side, as though she’d been hit with a baseball. Also, she was older than her initial impression. Fine lines bracketed her expressive brown eyes. She was still a real looker, though, possibly of the Eastern European variety, and she made Stella self-conscious of the fact that any makeup that had survived the mashing with BJ had long since melted into the wrinkles and under her eyes.

“I’m Stella Hardesty. Um, what are you two doing cutting up this … this person?”

“Oh, Chip is cutting, I am
cleaning,
” Natalya clarified. As if to illustrate the difference she seized a bottle of Crystal Rain Windex and gave the table an energetic spray. “I say we must be very clean.”

“Natalya kind of has a thing about keeping things neat and sterile,” Chip said, straightening and tossing the rag in the sink, where a pile of rags was collecting. “If you knew her background you’d understand. Uh, I’d give you a hug but…”

“That’s okay,” Stella said. She felt sort of silly with the gun in her hand, as it didn’t look like either one of them had any imminent plans to slice her up, too, so she slid it back in her purse. Then followed one of those awkward moments when she didn’t know exactly what to do with her hands; she clasped the purse handle in front of her and felt even more out of place, as though she were about to sing backup for a particularly realistic-looking stage show of a murder musical. “I’m, um. Sorry to bust in on you this way, but you didn’t answer the door.”

“You made sure it shut after you, didn’t you?” Chip asked. “Maybe I better go check.”

“We must stay very careful,” Natalya piped up. “There can be more trouble.”

Stella found that her head was starting to swim with the oddity of the situation. “Who exactly are you worried about?” She pointed delicately at the remains of the gentleman on the table. “I mean, if you’re willing to do something like this, and I assume you figure this guy had it coming—”

“Oh, we did not kill this man!” Natalya said, her eyes widening in surprise and indignation. “We are come home from movies and here he is, on porch. We are dragging him inside before anyone can see.”

“Wait,” Stella said. “Who—look here, can you start from the top for me? Because I’m kind of confused.”

“Well, is Chip night off, but he is always working overnight shift so we are all the time staying up very late. So we go to movie at theater and is after midnight when we come home, because we are getting drink at Best Western bar, is open late and having good price, so he is show here after, hmmm, maybe is after nine o’clock and before one o’clock.”

“Uh, thanks, but what I meant is, just who is this guy?”

Chip, who had jogged to the front door and tested the knob, sidled back into the room and surveyed his handiwork, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Aunt Stella, what you’re looking at there is a bad man.”

“Well, part of him, anyway,” Stella observed.

“Oh no, we got the whole shebang.” Chip pointed to a corner of the kitchen. On a plastic sheet lay a neat pile of jumbo-sized Ziplocs, most fogged with moisture that obscured their contents; the top one, however, contained what certainly resembled a chunk of human flesh, possibly a forearm. “We’re just, you know, making him easier to dispose of.”

“Where you fixing to do that?” Stella demanded. “And if you didn’t kill him, how do you figure it’s your job, anyway?”

“Oh, I know,” Chip said, nodding in fervent agreement. “It totally
sucks
that we got to do this, but who else are we gonna get?”

“Um…” Stella hesitated for a moment, wondering if her stepnephew-in-law had gone seriously around the bend. “If what you’re telling me is that you came home and found this person laid out dead on your porch all unexpected-like, you mighta called up the cops, for a start. I could be wrong, but I’d figure they might be interested enough to take a break from their traffic stops and whatnot to come take a look, even up here in Wisconsin.”

“Oh no, that is terrible mistake,” Natalya said. “Man who is killing him, he is desperate. He is maybe killing us, too.”

“Who wants to kill you? And what is the warning about? Look, Chip, I don’t mean to be rude, but is this connected to your gambling issues?” Only then did a thought strike her. “Wait a minute—what the hell! You’ve got both your ears! I can’t believe I didn’t—”

She shook her head in disgust. Talk about a lapse in deductive detecting skills. Chip’s ears were definitely both still attached to his head, though they were missing the multiple studs and little hoops that he was wearing the last time Stella saw him.

“Oh, that,” Chip said, coloring. He touched his ear self-consciously, as though he’d been caught out in the process of naughtily regenerating it. His face colored the deep red of shame and embarrassment. “I guess Gracellen told you, huh.”

“Well yes, Chip, your stepmom called me just about out of her mind when she got a fucking
ear
in a fucking
box,
” Stella said.

“Oh no,” Natalya exclaimed, her face turning a similar deep red shade.

“Uh, Stella,” Chip said sheepishly. “Could you … uh … Natalya don’t like that kind of language. Our home is a profanity-free zone.”

Stella stared at him in disbelief. “You want me to fu— to, uh, watch my
language
when you two are in the middle of reenacting the Texas Chainsaw Massacre here?”

Natalya squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands to her ears and began humming, a soulful, wistful sound that immediately made Stella feel like she’d stepped on a baby bunny.

“Aw, hell,” she muttered, before tapping Natalya gently on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, Natalya. Sometimes I speak before I think. I’ll try to be more careful.”

“Thank you,” the woman said. A second later she nearly knocked Stella over with a hug whose strength belied the woman’s dainty build. She smelled of a generous dousing of perfume overlaid with notes of bleach and Windex, and she sniffed delicately into Stella’s shoulder. “Oh, is so good to meet family of Chip.”

Stella hugged back, feeling an oddly maternal inclination. Stella was five-six but could tuck Natalya comfortably under her chin. “China doll” popped into her mind. She remembered the one time Chip had brought a girl to Thanksgiving dinner; she had been a vacant-eyed, gum-chewing girl with more eyeliner than conversational skill. Natalya was an improvement, at least in the grooming and enthusiasm departments. Stella gently disentangled herself from the hug and scowled at Chip. “So what gives with the ear thing?”

“Oh. Well, it wasn’t mine.”

“Yeah, I think we established that.”

“I, uh, got it at work. I was just trying—I mean, I get that I overstepped, it was wrong, blah blah blah. But Jesus, Stella, my folks are loaded, I mean Gramps practically shits cash, it’s not like they’ll even miss it—”

“Chip!”
Natalya gasped.

“Sorry, sorry, sweetie—”

“What did you need thirty thousand bucks for anyway?” Stella demanded, deciding to leave aside her newfound knowledge of the Papadakis family’s precarious financial situation for the moment.

“Thirty thousand!”
Natalya squawked. “Chip! You said—”

Chip took on a pained expression and held up a palm. “Stella, if you could just—ah, hell, Natalya, I’m sorry, I might have given you ummm, a slightly—”

“But you said—”

“I just didn’t want you to worry, honey,” Chip said miserably. He jammed his hands in his pockets and assumed a hangdog expression. “If I’d told you the truth, I mean you were saying it was hopeless already and all…”

“But you say Benton wants five thousand dollars only!”

“Natalya, believe me, if it was only five thousand dollars, it would have been done by now,” Chip said passionately, cupping her face in his hands. Stella had to suppress an “ewww” moment, considering where his hands had recently been, but Natalya gazed upon him with a fiery combination of anguish and adoration. “I’d’ve sold my car, my—my plasma, my
sperm,
whatever it took!”

“Wait just a second here,” Stella demanded, resisting the urge to pry the pair apart to get their attention. “What exactly was the thirty thousand bucks
for
?”

“It’s this ass— uh, this guy,” Chip said, pointing a finger at the mess on the table. “It’s all his fault.”

“He is husband,” Natalya sniffed, nodding.

“He’s your
husband
?”

“Natalya came here as a, she came here from Russia to be a bride. Benton—this here’s Benton Parch—they met online and he brought her over and married her. But then she met me, and, well—”

“He is
bad
man,” Natalya interjected hastily. “Bad husband. I am here almost two years. I work hard, I keep house. At first I try to make Benton happy, but he…” Her eyes filled with shining tears, but she wiped them impatiently away. “Is never good enough.”

“
He
did that to her,” Chip said darkly, pointing at her lips.

“Wow,” Stella said. Never, in the years she’d seen a variety of bruises and lacerations and swelling and all manner of injury delivered at the hands of a man, had she seen anything quite like the swelling and malformation that marred Natalya’s otherwise appealing face. Her professional curiosity was piqued, and she leaned in for a better look. “How, though, is what I got to ask? I mean did he…”

“Wait, I don’t mean he did that
himself,
” Chip clarified. “He
paid
a guy to do it.”

Even up close, Stella couldn’t see signs of laceration or bruising, just the swelling and a shiny patchiness to the lips, kind of like the fake leather on her knockoff Dooney & Bourke handbag. “Guy musta used something with a rounded edge…”

“He use
Botox,
” Natalya said. “Only not very good at it.”

“Now honey,” Chip murmured soothingly. “It’s hardly noticeable.”

Natalya beamed. “You see why I am fall in love with Chip—”

Their eyes met and their mad romantic attraction threatened to propel themselves into each other’s arms again, so Stella held up a hand to keep their attention. “Your husband paid a guy to inject you? Not a doctor, I take it.”

“He see picture in magazine, talk friend at work who his wife have Botox super cheap. Get phone number for practice doctor, we meet him when school is closed. Benton tell him what to do, he likes the big lips,
big
big, like model from Brazil.”