Sophie Littlefield - A Bad Day for Sorry

Then he was off, practically jogging down the bar to where customers were hollering for him.

Well. Dang. Now that was interesting. Stella took a biggish sip of her whiskey and then a nice long cool drink of her beer, the foam tickling her upper lip. There was something going on with B.J., that was for sure.

It was nice. But it wasn’t quite exactly the mmm-hmmm-yeah that generally signaled powerful attraction to Stella.

She thought about it some more. Waited a few minutes to see if a reaction was just sneaking up on her. But no: Big Johnson, sweet as he was, didn’t light any roaring fires under her. Which was just too darn bad, because there wasn’t exactly an abundance of suitors lining up at her door.

Truth was, ever since Ollie died, Stella had been pretty reluctant even to think about men—except for the ones whose skulls she was knocking together, of course. Those thirty years of paying for a single grievous mistake in the man department had put her off her feed a bit.

But… it had been three years. Long enough for even Stella’s rusty, ill-used parts to start clamoring to get put to use again. Hell, she was a grown woman; there shouldn’t be any shame to admitting, at least to herself, that she’d started thinking about sex again. Checking out butts at the Home Depot, spotting an appealingly crooked smile or a snazzy goatee or a nice tan… harmless, right?

Unfortunately, there was only one man in a hundred miles in any direction that really got her engines purring, and that was—damn it—the one man who was absolutely, positively, off-limits, the one who could send her world upside down and not in a good way—the kind of way that would have her serving time at the Sawyer County jail up in Fayette.

“Hey, Mrs. Hardesty.”

Stella jerked out of her reverie and turned to face the man who had spoken to her. Well, well.

“Hello, Arthur Junior.”

“Dad said he saw you out on the job.”

“Yes—yes, I did bump into him there.” Stella turned to Arthur Junior’s companion, who was standing behind him looking bored and teetering on her spike-heeled sandals. It appeared that Arthur Junior’s date was accustomed to deficits in his manners, but Stella believed in starting every relationship off on the right foot. “Hello, dear. I’m Stella Hardesty. My, you have lovely hair.”

That got the gal’s attention. She lifted her chin and flashed a smile. Had a darling little gap between her front teeth, nice skin, a smattering of freckles. “Hello, ma’am. I’m Silver Mason. Pleased to meet you.”

Ouch—that goddamn “ma’am.” When was that word going to ease on out of the language?

“Mason… would that be the Masons out Route 12? I went to school with a couple of the girls.”

“No, sorry, I’m from Saint Louis. I came out here for work. I’m an intensive care nurse over at Lutheran.”

Arthur Junior frowned impatiently. “I just figured I should find out what your interest in the family was, Mrs. Hardesty.”

“Well now, Arthur Junior, I wouldn’t say it’s the whole family, exactly, just your brother Roy Dean. He seems to have gone missing, and I was wondering if there was any chance he might’ve taken something along with him that doesn’t belong to him.”

The cast of Arthur Junior’s expression shifted, and Stella could see plain as day that a variety of emotions were doing battle on his face. A twitchy little tic appeared at the edge of his jaw, and his eyes narrowed to slits. After a few moments he turned to Silver.

“Darlin’, I’m afraid this is going to take a few minutes. Just some boring business shit. Would you mind if I talked to Mrs. Hardesty alone for a bit?”

Silver gave him a sunny smile. “Oh, that’s fine. I’ll go watch the darts for a bit.”

They watched her walk away. Silver had a nice little figure, a narrow waist and ample curves; for a fleeting moment Stella felt wistful remembering the long-ago time when she could still sashay her way to a man’s attention.

“You might think about hanging on to this one,” she said. “Looks nice, talks nice, gainfully employed…”

“Yeah. So listen, I don’t know what my dumb-fuck brother’s gone and done now, hear? I’ve got no part of his dealings. He stopped showing up on Dad’s job about a month ago, won’t answer my calls or nothing. Hell, he hasn’t even been out for Sunday dinner, and Mom’s about to hit the roof. To be honest, Mrs. Hardesty, I ain’t seen him for two, three weeks now.”

Stella evaluated Arthur Junior. She was inclined to believe him. The criminology course said she should look for facial tics, perspiration, and fidgeting—all things that were tough to see in a dark bar.

“Now, Arthur Junior, there’s a chance you could be lying to me, sweetie, and I’d have no way of knowing it. I wonder if I mentioned that the thing Roy Dean took off with is needed in the worst way by a friend of mine. No, now, I’m not saying you know anything about this mess—and I’m not saying you don’t. You may have heard… when it comes to my friends, I take their needs pretty seriously.”

The faint little flicker in Arthur Junior’s eyes clued Stella in: he’d heard. She didn’t know how much he knew, but it looked like it was enough. There were days when it paid to have rumors floating around about how you’d ruined a numbskull’s day with a bit of old-fashioned violent reckoning.

“I hear you, Mrs. Hardesty.” Arthur Junior bit his lip but didn’t take his eyes off her face. “What is it you think Roy Dean took?”

Stella considered her options. She generally had a policy against revealing any of the facts of a case unless absolutely necessary. And given her new information about Pitt Akers, along with Roy Dean’s general lack of affection for Tucker, it almost didn’t seem worth stirring up a fuss over such a long shot. Still, time was critical, and she couldn’t see any reason not to get as many eyes looking out for Tucker as possible.

“A little boy,” she said. “Chrissy’s boy, Tucker.”

Arthur Junior said nothing for a moment. It clearly wasn’t the answer he expected to hear. He frowned, the lines appearing on his forehead making him look a lot like his father.

“Why would he go and do that ?”

“I really don’t know. I’m just trying to connect with anyone who was with Tucker right before he disappeared. And your brother was there, at Chrissy’s, picking up some belongings he’d left.”

Arthur Junior took a deep breath and let it out real slow. He stared off at Silver, who was chatting with a couple of local gals over by the dartboard; then turned and looked back down the bar at the assembly of drinkers.

“Look here, maybe we better go somewhere else to talk. Let me just get rid of Silver. If I give her my keys, can you run me home after?”

The evening was shaping up to be full of surprises. “That would be no problem, Arthur Junior,” Stella said.

While he left to make his arrangements, she sucked down the rest of the whiskey and beer. Didn’t make any sense to waste it.

“Anywhere particular yougot in mind to go?” Stella asked, once they pulled out of Big Johnson’s parking lot in the Jeep.

“Yeah. Head out Old State Road Nine.”

“You gonna clue me in where we’re headed?”

“In a bit.”

Stella nodded to herself and drove along, well within the speed limit. She was drive-safe, her BAC adequately low due to her sizable frame and the big dinner she’d had and a tolerance maintained with a healthy daily dose of Johnnie Black, but there was still no sense calling attention to herself.

A bright slice of moon lit up the road with a soft glow.

“I’m older than Roy Dean by two years,” Arthur Junior said after a while. “Bigger, too. Taller, at any rate. But do you know, by the time I was ten Roy Dean would sneak up on me and take me down when I wasn’t lookin’.”