A Bad Day for Sorry: A Crime Novel (14 page)

“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—”

Chrissy’s hand shot out so fast that Stella jumped. Chrissy made a crisscross motion in front of Lila’s face, snapping her fingers twice.

“Lookie here,” she said, voice full of menace. “I have had a very bad couple of days. I have sat back and took what assholes like you have been dishing out for way too long, and I’m about sick of it. I am
not
dumb. I am
not
helpless. And I’m not taking any more shit. I’m done, and I’m about to get very, very pissed off and I’m tellin’ you now I don’t think you want to be around when that happens, hear?”

Lila’s eyes went wide, and she gripped the handle of her handbag hard. Her sister shifted slightly so she was standing behind Lila.

“Um, now . . . ,” Stella began, but realized she didn’t really feel like scolding Chrissy. This anger of hers might not be such a bad thing. In fact, it just might be something they could use.

She grabbed the book Lila wanted from the rack and slipped it into a plastic merchandise bag along with the binding tape. “You got a deal,” she said, and gently pushing Chrissy out of the way, rang up the sale and quickly counted out the ladies’ change.

Lila Snopes took the bag and the change without comment. She shoved the money in her purse, and the two old ladies scuttled out of the store without a backward glance.

When they were gone, there was a long silence. Chrissy
stared at the shop door and took a few deep breaths. After a few moments she turned to Stella with a nearly placid expression and handed her a Post-it note.

“I took a message for you,” she said.

Stella squinted at the note. In curvy lettering was written: “Call me on my cell.”

“That’s great,” she said. “Thanks. Call who?”

Chrissy looked at her in surprise. “Well, the sheriff, of course.”

Stella’s heart did a little rollover, but she kept her expression neutral. “Oh. ’Cause see on the note, it just says . . .” She pointed to the Post-it. “Never mind. When did he call?”

“He didn’t call, he stopped by. After that lady was here the first time. Maybe an hour ago?”

“What did he say? I mean, besides to call.”

“Well, mostly he told me not to worry. But you know what, Stella? I’ve been thinking. I think y’all ought to stop trying to make me feel better. I mean, I’m Tucker’s
mama
. I need to know what all’s going on, so I can help find him.”

Stella hesitated. She admired the girl’s guts and was relieved to see Chrissy provoked out of her listless funk. But her instinct was to tell Chrissy to stay out of it. It wasn’t just that she’d always worked alone—there was also the promise she had made to herself after Lorelle Cavenaugh died: that she would never do anything to endanger a client again.

Chrissy was still a client.

Letting Chrissy anywhere near Benning and the rest of them—or letting her tag along on the hunt for Pitt Akers—was insanity.

“Anything else?” she asked carefully.

“Sheriff Jones asked where
you
were. Oh, you know, I guess I could have given him your cell phone number. I didn’t even think of that.”

“That’s okay. He’s got it,” Stella said. “Did you tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“Where I was. You know, out at Benning’s.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t. ’Cause you remember, you said—”

“I remember. But when it’s the sheriff who’s asking—no, scratch that.” She had been about to tell Chrissy that, despite her earlier warning to keep Stella’s errand a secret, the sheriff was an exception. But that wasn’t really true. As much as Stella was sort of wishing she’d been back in time for his visit, she wasn’t ready yet to fill him in on her search.

She needed to find out a little more about Benning’s side dealings. After her visit, she was more inclined to worry about that angle: there was something about the way Arthur Junior had reacted when she mentioned Tucker. Earl Benning was shiftier and meaner-looking than she remembered, that was true; and yet when he kept insisting he didn’t know anything about Tucker, there was an element of something resembling fear in his eyes, a nervous quality to his voice.

Enough to make Stella think twice. Just because she couldn’t figure out
why
Roy Dean might have taken Tucker to the salvage yard didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. Some men, she had learned, didn’t always need good reasons to do bad things.

Earlier, as she left Benning’s, Stella had taken a good look at his house. A recent-model silver Camaro was parked in front of a glossy black Ford F-450, and around the side a pair of Sea-Doos were loaded on a trailer. On the other side of the house,
on a larger trailer, a sweet blue and white closed-hull Ski Nautique was pulled up under a carport. On the porch, a long-legged bleached-blond gal in a bikini top and a pair of cutoffs lounged in a deck chair.

Cars, boats, toys, and women . . . none of those came for free, at least not for a man like Benning.

Stella needed to find out where the money was coming from. That would lead her to the business Earl and his friends were conducting. And that information, with any luck, would lead her to Roy Dean.

And from there, just maybe, to Tucker.

But if she went to Goat now, with nothing but a hunch, he was bound to go in and ask a bunch of questions and give Earl plenty of time to cover his tracks. While Goat was going through channels, talking to judges, getting search warrants, their chances of getting Tucker back would be slipping away. It was times like these that reminded Stella how convenient it was to be on the more casual side of law enforcing. Luckily, she had a few contacts who would help her get the information she needed without having to involve Goat.

On the other hand, if Pitt Akers had Tucker, waiting was exactly the wrong thing to do. In the case of family abductions—not that Pitt was family, but the man evidently imagined himself to be—early days were critical, and they needed to get on his trail before he had a chance to take the boy so far away that no one could find him.

Stella felt her veins go icy at the thought, and the images of lost children from the Internet flashed through her mind. She’d never forgive herself if she waited too long, if Pitt was even now driving out west to California or down to Mexico
or up to Canada, Tucker sitting in a wet diaper and wailing for his mother.

“Stella, you okay?” Chrissy asked, peering at her carefully. “You look like you’re about to faint there.”

Stella forced a smile. She crumpled up the Post-it note and made a rim shot on the wastebasket across the room. Tomorrow—if she was no closer to finding Tucker by tomorrow, she’d tell Goat everything. “I’m good. Come on, Princess. Let’s eat.”

After a no-worse-than-usual lunch of lemon chicken and greasy chow mein served with a bare minimum of chat by Roseann Lu, which Chrissy consumed with gusto befitting a far tastier meal, they returned to the shop and Chrissy set to pacing back and forth. Stella had an inspiration.

From the back room, where she kept spare inventory and cleaning supplies and Costco-sized containers of pretzels and beef jerky, she brought out a large cardboard box. “Fran Colvin started this back when we had that teacher in here doing the quilts,” she said. “Poor Fran, she died before she could finish it.”

“Got that chicken bone in her throat, didn’t she,” Chrissy said, coming to take a look.

“Yup. Anyway, how about I teach you how to do this?”

Chrissy hesitated. “Ain’t there something I can do that’s, you know, for Tucker?”

“But that’s just it,” Stella said. “We’ll make him a quilt. And when he gets home, you’ll be able to tuck him in under it.”

“Oh,” Chrissy said. For a long moment, Stella wasn’t sure she was going to go for it. The girl had a far-off look to her, part longing and part grief and a fast-growing part nail-spitting fury.

The thunderclouds building in Chrissy’s pale eyes worried Stella. The last thing she needed at this point was a loose cannon.

“All right,” Chrissy finally agreed. “Let’s do it.”

Stella explained the basics, then started working the phone, dialing trusted friends—many of them former clients—all over the county, and out to the far edges of the state, to let them know about the missing little towheaded boy last seen wearing denim overalls with a baseball embroidered on the bib. If Pitt—or Roy Dean, for that matter—stopped for a burger or a bathroom break or to pick up a pack of diapers, there would be a lot of women on the lookout, women whose lives had taught them to be observant and resourceful. It wasn’t an AMBER Alert, but it was a start.

She also called a few people who had access to official-type information, the type of information that wasn’t generally available to the average citizen.

Between calls, Stella showed Chrissy how to cut the fabric using a ruler and rotary cutter. The rotary cutter looked like a pink-handled pizza wheel, but its blade was razor sharp and easily sliced through several layers of fabric at a time. When the patches were cut, Stella taught Chrissy to join them into blocks, lining up seams and trimming the thread tails, then pressing the finished blocks at the ironing board. When Chrissy held up her first nine-patch, a homely, uneven affair of blue and brown fabric, she smiled faintly.

“
I
made that,” she said. “Damn!”

Stella rested a hand on Chrissy’s shoulder. “Tell you what,” she said. “Sewing’s good therapy. There were plenty of times when I didn’t feel much like dealing with my life. You know?
And I’d sit there at my machine—probably sewed a million miles in seams, just thinking about things.”

Chrissy looked doubtful. “This is okay and all, but I’d still rather be
doing
something,” she said. “Not just sittin’.”

Stella thought how Chrissy had looked just yesterday, puddled in the chair in her living room, eating her way through her worries. She was amazed at the girl’s transformation. She’d got some fight back in her. Telling off the dreadful sisters seemed to be just what she needed.

Chrissy reminded Stella of herself, in a way, on the day when she’d finally had enough of Ollie’s abuse and made the transformation from passive victim to hell-for-leather avenger.

Nobody had told her, that day, to sit down and relax. Nobody had offered to help her set things right, either. Maybe it was a mistake to try to settle Chrissy down, to keep a lid on her newfound anger . . . but at the same time, Stella couldn’t figure out any way to include her without putting her into danger. And that was something she simply wasn’t willing to do.

She wasn’t going to let another woman get hurt—or killed—on her watch. She had to do the job alone.

“I hear you,” she said, not meeting Chrissy’s gaze. “But really, there’s not a lot we can do today. Until we start hearing back from these folks, we just got to be patient.”

“Who all’d you call, anyway?”

“Oh . . . just friends, here and there.”

“Stella.” There was reproof in Chrissy’s voice. “I know you think I couldn’t hear you fishin’ around for stuff you ain’t supposed to know, but I
am
sittin right here not ten feet from you. And I got young hearing. Now, who was it?”

“Well . . . the DMV, for one,” Stella said, giving in. She supposed there was no harm in letting Chrissy in on some of her strategy. “I wrote down some plate numbers out at Benning’s. I want to see if they’re all registered to him direct.”

“They just gonna tell you that?” Chrissy asked.

“Well, not exactly. But I got a friend . . .”

“Uh-huh.” From her expression, Stella could tell she’d made the leap.

“Friends that owe me favors, actually.”

“That’s good with me,” Chrissy said. “Who else?”

“Well, I got some law enforcement . . . contacts, I guess you’d call ’em, up in Kansas City. Thought I’d see if they have any ideas about what kind of . . . side business Benning and his friends might be running down here.”

She didn’t like the way Chrissy’s eyes narrowed; the girl’s wheels were spinning. Stella didn’t want to mention the mob or organized crime. She saw no point in scaring her.

Chrissy lowered her pinned patches of fabric to the table. “And what kind of business
are
they running, Stella?”

Stella bit her lip. “Well, I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t be trying to find out, now would I?”

After a few more seconds of frank and suspicious gazing, Chrissy picked up the quilt block again and went back to work.

“But you’re going to tell me soon’s you learn something, right?” she said.