Sophie Littlefield - A Bad Day for Sorry

She snapped on the lights. Illumination did little to improve the surroundings—scuffed white walls, dingy gray carpet, tired plaid sofas—but at least Pitt kept the place clean. There was no cat smell; Stella even detected a faint scent of Clorox. “Might oughtta have kept this one, Chrissy,” Stella murmured as she started looking around. “Knows how to clean.”

If she’d planned on any serious digging, she would have splurged and used a pair of disposable latex gloves from the box she kept under her bathroom sink, but they were so danged expensive compared to the Ziplocs. Worrying about fingerprints was probably ridiculous anyway; Stella highly doubted whether the crime scene techs would be coming down from the county seat in Fayette anytime soon to go looking for Tucker. Still, anything worth doing, as her dad used to say, was worth doing right.

There was little to see. Pitt, it appeared, had been leading a monklike existence since divorcing Chrissy, aside from his Polaroid collection, which Stella found in an envelope on his bureau. One glimpse convinced her she didn’t need to see any more of that, but she slipped the packet into her pocket anyway—one less thing for Chrissy to worry about.

Other than the racy photos, scouring Pitt’s place was about as exciting as watching paint dry. A couple of Costco uniform shirts hung in the closet. Tightie whities and V-neck T-shirts and over-the-calf athletic socks were neatly folded in the drawers. Pitt owned an impressive collection of household cleaners—409 and Windex, among other things—but nothing seemed out of place.

As she turned to leave, the cat appeared, one cautious paw at a time, from under the living room sofa, and stalked imperiously into the kitchen, where it lapped at a full water bowl. Watching the cat, Stella noticed something she’d missed earlier; there was not one but two very full bowls of cat food set out on a vinyl place mat on the floor. One had a small dent, a few of the little orange triangular nuggets having spilled to the floor, but the other was mounded high and undisturbed.

“Looks like your master wanted to make sure you had plenty to eat,” Stella said, “while he was away. Where’d he go, anyway?”

No response. Typical. Stella left without saying good-bye, having confirmed that she was still a dog person; she wanted a pet that interacted a little.

So it looked like Pitt had left town for a while. Interesting.

Stella returned her spaghetti box to the back of the Jeep and hit the road, thinking that in the morning she’d have to try to find out where Pitt had gone. She made the drive to BJ’s Bar with the window rolled down, despite the damage it did to her well-sprayed hairdo. Sometimes you just had to feel the wind on your face.

On her way from the parking lot to the front door, she patted her hair back into place and hitched up her bra straps, getting everything settled where it was supposed to go.

BJ’s wasn’t a place Stella visited unless it was in the line of duty. It was a little rough even for her. It wasn’t that she was afraid; get the meanest cuss drunk, and his reflexes would go to hell and he’d be no match for her, especially with the Raven in her purse. It was just that it wasn’t all that much fun to hang out in a place where optimism was in as short supply as overtime pay, tempers were thin, and old grievances lay thick on the ground.

Things went quiet when Stella walked in. She ignored the pool tables at the far end of the long, narrow room, the few square wooden tables where customers sat in twos and threes, and headed for an empty stool at the end of the bar near the bathrooms.

BJ’s wasn’t much to look at. You could tell before you put a hand on the bar or a table that it would come away sticky. Some of the wooden chairs didn’t match, and the bar stools were popping their brass studs and losing the padding on their vinyl seats. The walls were decorated with an assortment of titty posters and neon beer signs, some lit, some busted. A single framed softball photo gave evidence that at some point Big Johnson had gotten it into his head to sponsor a team, an event that must have caused the league a fair amount of consternation.

Big Johnson himself wandered down the bar to greet Stella. There was a waitress on duty as well, but she was on the floor with a tray, plonking down pitchers and trying to avoid having her rear end pinched any more than was necessary.

“Stella,” Big Johnson said, leaning his muscular, hairy forearms on the bar in front of him. Big Johnson had moved to town and bought this place after serving in the first Iraq dustup, and he already had his nickname then. Naturally there was some talk of whether it just referred to the fact that he was a solid 240 on a six-three frame, or whether there were further reasons, but if he’d shed any light on the question, Stella hadn’t heard about it.

She might not have minded finding out for herself, actually. But there was that delicate issue of dating people in the workplace—and as long as Big Johnson kept attracting the kind of clientele that was hanging around the joint now, the bar was likely to continue to be on Stella’s professional rounds.

“B.J., good to see you. Been a while.”

“Yeah. Last time you were in here, lessee, you dragged out one of my best customers, and he don’t come around no more.”

Stella felt herself blushing, but she doubted he could tell in the dim light.

“Yes, well—I just wanted to give him his Christmas card. Forgot to mail it and I’d been carrying it around in my purse. You know how that goes. Far as him coming around here… well, I hear he’s not partying much these days.”

Big Johnson gave her a ghost of a smile and a twitch that might have been a wink. “Aw, we ain’t missed him much. What’re you drinking tonight?”

“Let’s see.” Stella pretended to think it over, tapping her nose with her forefinger and glancing along the shelves behind the bar. “Well now, I guess you better make it Johnnie Black with a Bud back.”

Big Johnson went off to get the drinks, and Stella glanced down the row of drinkers at the bar. There he was, and she didn’t even have to go chasing him down: Arthur Junior was keeping company with a brassy redhead, the two of them giggling over something, their noses almost touching. Interesting. Last Stella heard, Arthur Junior had hooked up with a gal from Ogden County, but she hadn’t been a redhead. Oh, well, he was known to have quite a few smooth moves; probably the reason Gemma Shaw despaired of having any grandchildren off him anytime soon.

Any legitimate grandchildren, that is.

Big Johnson came back with the drinks and set them down in front of Stella. “You know,” he said, clearing his throat and looking somewhere over her shoulder, “I don’t believe I ever got your Christmas card either, now that you mention it.”

Stella raised an eyebrow. Could it be? Was Big Johnson actually flirting with her? Her stomach did a little back-and-forth slide, and she felt heat rise to her face. The light was mercifully low: one of life’s funny truths is that the worse the lighting in a bar, the better a lady tends to look.

“Oh.” Nice— idiot, she scolded herself, but couldn’t for the life of her think of what else to say.

“Yeah…’course, I didn’t send any myself, this year. You know, the holidays snuck up on me and what-all, had my brother’s family come stay…”

Big Johnson trailed off and cleared his throat again, backed off the bar, and still didn’t look her in the face.

“What I mean to say, though,” he said, grabbing a rag off the sink and taking a wild swipe at the stretch of bar in front of him, “was that if I did send cards, I woulda sent you one.”