A Bad Day for Sorry: A Crime Novel (20 page)

“Don’t look at me.
I
don’t want none of it,” Chrissy said. “Listen up, sugar,” Stella said. “Tucker isn’t here. These men don’t know where he is, and it sounds like Darla doesn’t know either. I’m afraid this might just be a dead end.”

Chrissy nodded, frowning.

“All right,” she said, never taking her eyes off the Merton men. “We’re going to leave now. But if you find out anything—and
I do mean anything—about my little boy, you call me right away. ’Cause if you don’t, I
will
find out and I
will
hunt you down. Now get me something to write on.”

As Chrissy wrote their cell phone numbers on the back of a takeout menu, underlining the digits three times and circling them, Stella noted that any traces of the earlier Chrissy—the one who battled her fears with nothing stronger than Oreo cookies—were long gone.

With two avenues
left to explore—Pitt and the hornet’s nest of corruption brewing in the northeast end of town—Stella made an executive decision as they got back in the Jeep and Chrissy pulled away from the curb at what was, for her, a sedate pace.

“Sweet pea, I think it might be time to let the law do its thing,” she said. “If Pitt’s got Tucker, the longer we wait, the further he could be taking him.”

“You’re saying Pitt wants to keep Tucker for himself, like that?”

“Well . . . I’m just saying, we got to consider all the scenarios here. That’s one of them.”

Chrissy frowned doubtfully. “I seen them tapes. What was that, England or something? Where they got that little girl in the grocery store and snipped off all her hair in the bathroom and put her in boy clothes. But Stella, that’s
over there
. Pitt wouldn’t ever do like that.”

“How can you be sure, Chrissy?”

“Well, I
know
him, is all. He’s tryin’ to
court
me to death.”

Stella tried to figure out a polite way to ask how sneaking
over for noontime quickies counted as courting, or if there were some other romantic behaviors she wasn’t aware of. “But let’s say . . . I mean, here’s Pitt, wanting you to, ah, to date him again. And on the other hand, there’s a baby he thinks is his, and we know how that can get a man’s spurs up, right? So if you had to guess, sugar, and meaning no disrespect, which would you say is
front and center
in Pitt’s mind? You or Tucker?”

Chrissy slowed to a few miles an hour to avoid a yellow dog lying in the street, snoozing in the afternoon sun. “He wants the whole package, Stella. Me ’n Tucker and the white picket fence shit. I’d’ve been tempted too ’cause I
am
fond of that man, but I just know myself a little too well, you see what I mean?”

“Uh, not exactly . . .”

“Well, just that you know how some men scratch your itch a little but they still leave you feeling restless. And then there’s the ones that do it for you and then some, you know? Like a little bit a what they got goes a long way, they just kind of shiver you all over. Inside, outside, and twice on Sundays . . . see? Pitt’s the first kind of man, and that’s how I ended up steppin’ out on him when we was married, and I just know I’d do it again.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s the gift of being in your late twenties, is you get mature. You
know
yourself.”

“Hell, if you’ve managed that already, you must be some kind of genius,” Stella exclaimed. “It took me until I was almost fifty.”

“Well . . . you’re smart in
other
ways,” Chrissy said kindly, driving lazily across the center line as she turned to give Stella a reassuring pat on the knee. Chrissy, who’d barely let the
needle drop below eighty on the way over, was negotiating the streets of Harrisonville like a blind old lady.

“But how do you explain him leaving town then?”

“What you said—he could be visiting someone or catching a show in Branson or something. Course, that was back when you were still shuttin’ me out of this here investigation, so I don’t guess you even believed them poor excuses when you said ’em.”

Ouch
. The girl had a point, and Stella swallowed hard, guilt weighing heavy on her. “There still might be a logical reason . . .”

“Tell you what, let’s just save that for now. What I’m worried about is, you said if the law gets on this and word gets back to them Kansas City gangsters and Roy Dean
is
involved with all that, then it could be even more dangerous for Tucker if he’s with Roy Dean.”

“Well . . .” There was an uncomfortable amount of truth in what Chrissy said. Stella still couldn’t piece together a logical reason why Roy Dean would have taken Tucker, but if he’d done something stupid and pissed off the mafia, it wouldn’t matter if he’d taken the Hope Diamond or a can of pork and beans into their midst: either way, he wasn’t likely to come out again. And if
that
was the case, their only hope of getting the boy was to somehow get inside their inner circle and take him back themselves. “I guess . . . if you’re sure about this . . . me and you are going to have to go turn over some rocks.”

“What sort of rocks?”

“Ugly, nasty ones. The rocks rolling around at Benning’s. Only look here, Chrissy. I think there’s every chance in the world I’ve poked a mad dog in the eye that don’t have anything
to do with Tucker. I mean, even if Roy Dean took him through there on his way out of town, there’s no reason those men would want anything to do with a little boy.”

“Yeah . . . I guess. But I know Roy Dean. He wouldn’t be able to stay away from a bunch of losers like that. Prob’ly made him feel all important. Mr.
Big
Man.”

Without warning, she hit the gas, and they screeched forward down the couple of blocks leading back to the state road. A man working the front of his lawn with an edger jumped out of the way just in time as she barreled past him.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Stella asked as Chrissy turned the wrong way down 9.

“Just a quick stop at Wal-Mart. We’re gonna need some supplies if we’re going to bust into that place.”

“But—but Wal-Mart’s the other way.”

“Not that Wal-Mart. We’re going to the other one, over in Casey.”

Stella’s head throbbed, and she gently massaged her temples, avoiding the bruised and stitched areas of her face as well as she could.

“I almost hate to ask, but what are we shopping for exactly?”

Chrissy glanced over at Stella, an all-business expression on her face. “Clothes for sneaking around in. I figure we got to get back over to Benning’s tonight, after dark, and look around. Best we wear black so we don’t stand out. Or camo, maybe. They make practically everything in camo these days, you know.”

“Oh.” Stella had to hand it to Chrissy for jumping right in to the details, which were still fuzzy in Stella’s own mind. Of
course, Chrissy had the advantage of not having a concussion. “So . . . we’ll head out there tonight.”

“Yeah, well, we need to go when they’re closed, right? I mean, it’s not like they’re going to be happy to see you again, ’specially since it’s probably them as beat you up. You think we ought to get some of those night vision glasses?”

“I don’t know. . . . I think they’re pretty expensive.”

; “Yeah. Thanks to our stupid government,” Chrissy said, disgusted. “They pay six hundred dollars for a toilet seat, they probably want, like, a thousand bucks for those glasses.”

Stella was lost. “How does the government figure into what Wal-Mart charges?”

“Oh come on, Stella, don’t be naïve. The government doesn’t want us to defend ourselves. Or bear arms or anything like that. They put a special tax on things that it’s our constitutional right to buy, and then the money goes straight into their pockets. Or they use it for all those programs where they spy on what’s in your trash and read your mail. It’s true—I saw a special on it.”

“Uh, yeah.” Stella decided not to argue; she was still a little light-headed. “That’s too bad. I do have a good flashlight, though.”

“Good, ’cause we don’t want to buy too much. Because the checker might notice. I was kind of thinking we want to draw as little attention as we can to ourselves here. That’s why we’re driving over to the Wal-Mart in Casey, you know?”

“Good thinking, sugar,” Stella said. “Plus, there’s an Arby’s near there, isn’t there?”

Chrissy perked up and nodded. “Yes, I think there is. I sure love that roast beef, don’t you? The way they slice it up so nice
and thin? My sister Sue won’t eat it because she says it’s all parts mashed up fine and then re-formed, but I say, why, that’s the same as Spam, ain’t it? And everybody likes Spam.”

“That they do,” Stella said, smiling despite the pain in her busted lip. “That they do.”

Stella figured she
needed to go long on iron and protein, so she had a Super Roast Beef sandwich. It was time to quit messing around and treat the situation like what it was: serious.

Within the hour they were back in Stella’s kitchen. Stella laid old towels on the kitchen table and got down her shoebox of gun-cleaning supplies from a cabinet over the refrigerator. She had brought the Ruger in from the Jeep; it was already clean, but it felt good to break it down and go through the motions.

Across the table, Chrissy carefully disassembled the Makarov, laying the filthy parts out in a neat row. She picked up the cleaning rod and the solvent and went to work on the receiver, humming softly.

“Jesus, Chrissy, anybody ever clean their firearms over at your house?”

“Sure they do, the ones they use. But I didn’t want to take Daddy’s everyday guns, you know? On account of he might need ’em and all.”

Stella, wondering what constituted the need for an everyday handgun, remembered her pledge to be more respectful of the girl and kept her mouth shut.

“You clean guns much?” she asked instead.

“Of course,” Chrissy said, rolling her eyes. “Daddy made
all us girls learn to take care of the rifles before he let us shoot squirrels. We had a couple of Marlins and they never had a speck on ’em. We used to have contests to see who could get them took apart and put back together the quickest.”

That was quite a vision; Stella imagined the little tykes lined up at the supper table waiting their turn at the guns, a row of Lardner girls with blond pigtails and rosy cheeks.

“Well then, I guess I’ll let you clean that thing up. After that we’re gonna go out and shoot a few cans. Sound all right?”

“Yeah.”

For a while they worked in silence. Stella went over the Ruger with a tiny utility brush and then polished it with a silicone cloth.

“Stella?” Chrissy said after a while.

“Mmm-hmm?”

“You got anything to snack on? I have to tell you, I’m just a little bit nervous. And when I get nervous I get hungry, you know?”

Stella knew. She was the same way. She also got hungry when she was worried or pissed off about something or bored. She smiled. “How about I make us some popcorn?”

“Oh, that’d be perfect.”

Stella got out her mother’s old soup pot. Added the oil and a good layer of kernels. Put a stick of butter in the microwave to melt and shook the pot when the corn started popping inside.

She tossed the popcorn with the butter and a few good shakes of salt and set the bowl in the middle of the table. As the two of them sat munching on the popcorn and sipping ginger ale and cleaning the guns, Stella noticed she was feeling something that she hadn’t felt for a long time.

The scent of gun oil mingled with the buttery popcorn aroma, and the silence between her and Chrissy was companionable. Stella closed her eyes for a moment and remembered other times she’d sat around this very same table.

It had been her parents’ kitchen table. On Sundays, Stella liked to sit with her dad while he shined his shoes before church, handing him the rags and the tins of polish and the big brush, happy to be his assistant in such an important chore.

Later, her parents got a new table and gave the old one to Stella and Ollie. Noelle used to sit at the table for her after-school snack, coloring with her crayons, her little legs swinging, not long enough to touch the floor.

When Noelle was in high school, Stella waited up for her to come back from dates with Schooner, the high school boyfriend Stella wished she’d held on to, the one Noelle liked before she developed a taste for losers. They would sit at the table and sip tea and Noelle would describe every little detail of the pizza they’d shared or the movie they saw and Stella would listen and try to hold on to every moment, knowing her baby was growing up.

Now she was at this same table with Chrissy, and as much as she missed her own daughter, she was happy to have the girl’s company.

The thought that she was dragging Chrissy into the midst of a bunch of crazed, armed criminals hit her in the gut—followed fast by a memory of Lorelle. Or rather, of Lorelle’s feet, white and bloodless and puckered from all that time in the water, floating just below the murky surface in the rain barrel.

“You know,” she said, voice shaky, as Chrissy scoured out
the spare magazine with a cotton patch. “You don’t have to come along tonight. I can do this by myself.”

Chrissy snorted. “Like hell. I’m not staying here.”

“It’s just—you know. There’s a chance things could blow up. You should think about what you’re getting into.”

“I guess I know enough. Roy Dean’s done something stupider than I ever thought he could. Got himself involved with guys mean enough that they’ll beat up an old lady. Oh, I mean, not
old
old, but . . . you know.”

“Jeez, Chrissy, I’m
fifty
, not eighty.”

“You
are
?” Chrissy whistled, and Stella felt a little better. “No kidding. My mom’s like forty-eight and you’re in way better shape than her. She can’t probably even run two blocks without sitting down to rest.”

“Well . . . thanks.” Stella brightened a little. The first time she’d gone jogging, in an old pair of Keds and baggy leggings, she’d made it halfway around the block before she had to stop and walk home, wheezing the entire way. Now she was up to ten-mile runs through town and out dusty farm roads. She might not look it, but she was in the best shape of her life, which was a good thing, since she was planning to take on a bunch of guys who were a lot more fresh-minted.