A Bad Day for Scandal (25 page)

“Who?” Stella demanded, taking the umbrella from Todd when she noticed he was shaking slightly, and hurrying him back into the house with a glance around the terrace—there were no signs of anything amiss.

Adriana closed the door behind them and locked it firmly. “Now, young man, what are you talking about?”

“Someone knocked on the door after y’all went out the back, and it was this dude in like a hat pulled over his face with just the eyes cut out? You know, like in the movies when they rob banks and shit?”

“My
lands,
” Adriana said.

“And I kind of jumped out of the way, because I got to say he freaked me out, I mean the dude was wearing all black like a fuckin’ ninja or something, I mean, sorry, Mrs. Wolfort—”

“Thank you,” she said primly. “You know, coarse language makes the speaker coarse. It will serve you well to remember that. My Milton—”

“What happened then?” Stella demanded.

“Well, he kinda looked at me and looked around and I’m all backing up—”

“Was he
armed
?” Stella said, heart seizing with cold fear. Facing down attackers was one thing for a hardened criminal like herself, but Todd was a mere boy, a defenseless
child.
Instinctively, she grabbed his arm and dragged him into a half hug, which he didn’t wriggle out of for at least a few seconds.

“Nah, not that I could see.”

“And then—”

“So he starts running around, I guess looking for you-all or something, and I saw you had that thing full of umbrellas by the front door—”

“It’s hand painted,” Adriana said. “Milton brought it back from India. Quite valuable, really.”

“—so I grabbed the biggest one and ran through that room with all them red curtains and he was coming past the stairs going the other way and I just kinda whaled on him and he fell down and after a minute he got up and went out the front again.”

“You hit the guy with the umbrella,” Stella clarified. “Whereabouts?”

“I guess around here,” Todd said, pointing to his rib cage.

“And he didn’t say anything?”

“Nope, nothing.”

“How big was he, Todd?”

Todd frowned and looked from one of them to the other. “Maybe an inch taller than you, Stella. He weren’t real big or nothing.”

“Well, no matter what size he was, felling him was quite an accomplishment, young man,” Adriana said warmly. “How about a nice cookie?”

“You’re sure?” Stella asked. Salty probably cleared six feet, though not by much. “He couldn’t have been a little taller?”

Todd shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Stella rubbed her temples, which were beginning to throb with the aftereffects of the adrenaline. “Oh, Sherilee’s gonna kill me,” she muttered. “What was I thinking, getting you practically murdered, and on a school night, too.”

“We don’t have to tell her,” Todd said. “I mean, maybe you could, like, buy my silence?”

Chapter Twenty-five

Stella didn’t doubt Adriana’s desire to help, but when the sheriff’s car raced by going the other direction, lights flashing, she realized with a sinking feeling that in the excitement of finding bodies in her pond and nearly being attacked, the old lady hadn’t managed to keep the plan straight.

For instance, the part about waiting half an hour to give Stella a chance to get clear of the scene and deliver Todd home had evidently been forgotten. She had only about five minutes’ lead on Goat, who flashed her an openmouthed look of what might have been horror, or shock, or out-and-out fury through the window of his cruiser as he went tearing by.

When her phone rang a moment later, she wasn’t the least bit surprised. She glanced at the caller ID and, seeing that it was Goat, turned up the music to drown him out. Catherine Britt was singing “Swingin’ Door:”

I ain’t your gas-up, rest-stop swingin’ door

Stella and Todd sang along, belting out the high notes, until she got to the Groffes’ driveway, trying hard not to notice the second and third time her phone rang.

“Remember our deal,” she said sternly.

“Twenty bucks now, twenty bucks when they find the guy.”

“No, I meant the part about keeping your mouth shut.”

“Whatever.”

“And being real,
real
careful to keep the house locked and stay out of trouble for a while.”

Todd shot her a crooked grin and ran up the steps to his front door. Stella waited until Sherilee poked her head out and waved before driving a few doors down to her own house.

She felt a little guilty about not letting Sherilee know what had happened, but she figured she’d feel about ten times more guilty knowing she’d deprived the poor woman of the very little sleep she got before another long day at the office.

Inside, the party was still going, but it was considerably subdued. Four or five of the girls were clustered around the kitchen table playing Monopoly—or rather a variation of the game that apparently involved rolling the dice and drinking without advancing any of the playing pieces. Paper money was strewn all over the table and floor, and at Stella’s arrival, an enthusiastic if slurred cheer went up.

“Hi, Mrs. Hardesty,” one of the gals whose name she hadn’t caught earlier said. “Sorry about the chili ’n all.”

Stella followed her gaze to the corner of the kitchen, where Roxy had her head inside the big stew kettle, licking the last of the chili from the bottom of the pot.

“Oh, my,” Stella said. “Did she eat the entire thing?”

“Oh, no, we ate most of it and then she knocked it off the stove, and we had to let it cool before we could mop it up, you know? Only she beat us to it.”

“We was playin’
charades,
” another guest clarified, as if that explained the lapse in attention. “You know how that gets.”

“Uh-huh. Is, er, Mr. Brodersen still here?”

“Oh, no, he’n the sheriff left right quick after y’all did.”

“We thought they was gonna go to it in the driveway. My, but they got it bad for you, Mrs. Hardesty,” the tall brunette said with unmistakable admiration.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s the case,” Stella demurred, secretly pleased. “Has anyone seen my daughter?”

Looks were exchanged, and the gal holding the dice dropped one on the floor. “Um. She left.”

“With Joy?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. Joy’s right over there,” she said, pointing to the living room, where—sure enough—Joy had kicked off her sneakers and curled up under an afghan and gone to sleep. She wasn’t the only one; one of the young men had conked out in a chair, head slung back, mouth slack. It reminded Stella of Noelle’s high school days, when she would have her friends over and they’d stay up late watching TV and Stella would fix them popcorn and Rice Krispies Treats, and they’d all end up sleeping on the living room floor, Stella fluffing blankets over them when she got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

“Well, where did she go?”

More looks were exchanged. Finally the brunette sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “She left with Cinnamon Ferlinghetti.”

Stella glanced from one to another of the guests and demanded, “Is that a
bad
thing? Had they been drinking?”

“Oh no, ma’am, Cinnamon don’t
drink.
She’s a teetotaler, is what she is.”

“Well, then—”

“Tell her,” a little freckled gal suggested in the delicate, exaggerated fashion of someone who was one Jell-O shooter away from sleeping on the bathroom floor. “She deserves to know.”

“Just, Cinnamon’s kinda a heartbreaker, a little bit.”

“The catch-and-release
queen,
” the freckly gal sighed, and there was general nodding and concurring. “Cinnamon can’t much resist startin’ up things, ’specially with someone smokin’ hot like Noelle, but they never do seem to stick.”

“Oh,” Stella said, pinching the bridge of her nose up high in the place where headaches occasionally seemed to cluster. “I see.”

There followed the sort of embarrassed silence that only drunk people are capable of, but by the time Stella decided she had done the best she could, and sent up a quick prayer asking the Big Guy to sort everything out as He saw fit, the festive Monopoly game was gathering momentum again.

*   *   *

In the morning, there
were a few more revelers crashed in the living room. Since Hardesty Sewing Machine Repair & Sales was closed on Tuesdays, Stella didn’t bother rushing as she got all the blankets and afghans she could find and covered them all up, and set a pot of coffee on.

For herself, she stopped at the Doughnette Diner and got herself a large Irish crème–flavored coffee and a couple of glazed chocolate cake doughnuts. That was the problem with having a doughnut—for days after, you couldn’t stop thinking how darn good they sounded every morning. It was like getting a Journey song stuck in your head, a problem only the passing of time could heal.

She called Chrissy from the parking lot and apologized for talking with her mouth full as she related the events of the night before.

“Gee, Stella, way to go, dragging a young’un into your life of crime.”

Stella bristled at the suggestion. “There wasn’t any actual shootin’ or anything—”

“Oh, well, that’s all right, then.”

“Well, what would you of done?” Stella sighed. “You know, Chrissy, I’m gonna be glad when all your mom’s company’s gone so she can watch Tucker again and you can come on these errands with me.”

“Aw, that’s sweet—you miss me!”

“Maybe a little. I guess you’re too busy to come check out this Addney Walsingham guy with me.”

“Oh, I promised Carmela we could do a craft project, since the shop’s closed today.”

Carmela was Chrissy’s oldest niece. She stuck out like a sore thumb in the Lardner clan. Quiet, serious, and bookish, nine-year-old Carmela adored her aunt Chrissy. And since her own mom’s interest in her had waned since she went to live with a guy she met at a revival the summer before, Chrissy had been trying to fill in some of the gaps.

“What are you doing, making pot holders?”

“No, it’s the coolest thing—found it on the Internet. Did you know you can make a holster out of an old milk jug?”

“You’re teaching Carmela to make a
holster
? What’s next, you two gonna make a pistol out of office supplies?”

“Stella,” Chrissy chided. “It’s a
present.
For her dad. Pete’s got a little .38, fits okay in the pocket of a pair of Dockers or what have you, but on the weekends he wants something he can tote if he’s wearin’ jeans.”

Stella thought about that for a minute. “Okay. I’ll bite. How do you make it?”

“Oh, this is so cool. You heat the milk jug with a hair dryer, see, it softens it right up. Then you staple all around the gun to get the shape right, cut it out, and wrap up the whole thing with duct tape—it’s perfect, and you wouldn’t believe how slick you can draw against that plastic.”

“Huh. That’s damn ingenious, I got to say.”

“Hey, Stella, how’s a gun better than a man?”

Stella smiled. She could think of a few ways—depending on the man. And the gun. “How?”

“If you admire a friend’s gun, and tell her so, she’ll probably let you try it out a few times.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Addney Walsingham lived in a part of Kansas City that could only be described as past its prime, in a beat-down apartment building that shared a parking lot with a liquor store and an Everything for a Buck. Everything seemed to be broken—the asphalt parking lot was cracked and busted up; a rusting car sat on four flat tires in one of the garage stalls; the mailboxes lurched on a bent pole where some careless driver had taken a swipe at it. Even the numeral
6
on Walsingham’s door had lost a nail and spun upside down, making it look like a
9.

Stella peered at the door, considering her options. She’d circled the lot slowly, determining that the apartments had no back exits, just smallish windows on what was probably the bedrooms. The only signs of activity were a gnarled old gentleman hosing off the sidewalk in front of the Triple-X Video store across the street, and a lady with a twin stroller full of bags of groceries but no twins, not even a single baby, who was rolling slowly and serenely down the street.

Stella unlocked the steel box bolted to the floor of the Jeep where she stashed her guns when they weren’t in use, and considered her options. The Bersa was more suited to threatening amateurs, especially smallish ones, as it didn’t have a whole lot of firepower. Not knowing what to expect from Walsingham, she chose the 9 mm Mak PA that she’d picked up used from a guy who was trading up. The thing had a sort of old-fashioned look to it, and it was a pain to find the surplus ammo, but it fit nicely in the hand and got the job done.

She folded a lacy crocheted sweater over her gun hand and headed for the door, swinging the Tupperware full of lock tools in the other. The sweater was strictly for show—Stella figured the day she started sporting pastel twin sets was the day they might as well put her out to pasture—but it was an amazingly effective bit of camouflage. Folks saw the sweater and just couldn’t help their brains from forming a picture of a nice granny. Hell, outfit the Special Forces from the Tog Shop catalog, and you could probably send them right into the most dangerous hot spots on the planet without drawing any attention.

She knocked softly. No point interrupting Walsingham’s neighbors’ morning business, if any of them were home.

“What,” a pleasant-enough male voice said after a few seconds. “Who’s that, then?”

“Census Bureau,” Stella said. It was an old standby, not terribly creative, but she hadn’t been expecting to find anyone home.

After a longish pause and a curious scuffling sound, the voice spoke again, closer to the front door. “Cen-
what
?”

“I’m with the Census,” Stella repeated. “Just need to ask you a few questions about the household. Won’t take but a minute.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not interested.”

“Oh, it’s mandatory,” Stella said, slipping a little extra sugar into her voice. “You mostly just have to sign it.”

“Just leave it out there. I’m, um, I’m in my bathrobe.”