Chrissy exclaimed, her cornflower-blue eyes snapping, her generous gloss-sticky lips thinning to a hard line. “I know what I’m doing, all right. I’m workin’ for shit wages for a woman with no more education than I got. And if any provin’ needs done, I reckon you’ll be eatin’ those words for dinner, so I wouldn’t go around callin’ me no kinda—”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Stella called hurriedly as she backed out the door. As she practically ran for the Jeep, she remembered a truth she’d picked up in recent years, something she really ought to have put on a sign and hung up out front:
The less a woman has to lose, the quicker you better get out of her way.
Stella Knocked sharply on Goat’s office door for the second time. His office had a very large window—on account of the sheriff’s offices being housed in what was once a Hardee’s restaurant, with the kitchen now converted to records storage and a supply closet and a conference room, and the staff offices carved from what used to be the dining room.
A spanking-new Hardee’s had been built out State Road Nine in the mid-’90s, where traffic from the interstate was more likely to find it, but Stella had eaten in the old one often enough in her younger days that she still got a flashback every time she opened the double glass doors from the parking lot, one of the building’s features that had gone unmodified. She could almost smell the char on the charbroiled burgers.
The big windows had been covered with mini-blinds in a pinkish shade of mauve to match the industrial carpeting and wallpaper from the remodel, but Stella had learned that crouching down at the right angle from a vantage point in the shrubbery gave a person a pretty clear view of the goings-on inside, so she knew that Goat was at his desk. Besides, Irene Dorsey, the departmental receptionist and records officer, stage-whispered, “He’s hiding,” with a theatrical nod in the direction of the sheriff’s office.
Stella could feel Irene’s curious gaze on her as she waited impatiently for Goat to give up the ruse. Irene was a holdover from Sheriff Burt Knoll’s administration, but she’d made the transition to the new sheriff with ease. It wasn’t hard to do—her working style of listening attentively and then doing things exactly as she damn well pleased went equally unchallenged by both administrations.
Goat was no dummy. Sheriff Knoll hadn’t been either. Both knew better than to go trying to fix something that wasn’t broke, and Irene—with her sharp memory undiminished by age, her unyielding loyalty to the long arm of the law, and her matronly scent of rose water and Jean Naté dusting powder—worked plenty well just the way she was.
“He’s been hiding since that crew took the body and hightailed it back up to Fayette yesterday,” Irene clarified in a slightly louder whisper. “That Detective Simmons says she’s coming on back in her own car this afternoon, and Goat don’t want nothing to do with her.”
Stella turned away from the sheriff’s door and considered Irene thoughtfully. Seventy if she was a day, Irene seemed to think she had the entire town fooled about her age due to her zealous if not entirely professional home hair coloring. Her thin strands were dyed a relentless black, and not only did she keep up with the roots, but she often ended up dyeing the skin that encroached on her hairline, too, giving her a special-effects horror movie effect—as though she was wearing a gray latex skullcap with a wig attached.
Irene was holding a copy of In Touch out as far as her arms extended in front of her, peering over the tops of a pair of coral pink–framed reading glasses. She licked her thumb, then her forefinger, before turning a page.
“So … what do you think of those folks from up in Fayette, anyway?” Stella asked Irene.
“Well, now, they been here before. Once in 2000, once a few years before that.” If Irene had an opinion on the
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Stella called hurriedly as she backed out the door. As she practically ran for the Jeep, she remembered a truth she’d picked up in recent years, something she really ought to have put on a sign and hung up out front:
The less a woman has to lose, the quicker you better get out of her way.
Stella Knocked sharply on Goat’s office door for the second time. His office had a very large window—on account of the sheriff’s offices being housed in what was once a Hardee’s restaurant, with the kitchen now converted to records storage and a supply closet and a conference room, and the staff offices carved from what used to be the dining room.
A spanking-new Hardee’s had been built out State Road Nine in the mid-’90s, where traffic from the interstate was more likely to find it, but Stella had eaten in the old one often enough in her younger days that she still got a flashback every time she opened the double glass doors from the parking lot, one of the building’s features that had gone unmodified. She could almost smell the char on the charbroiled burgers.
The big windows had been covered with mini-blinds in a pinkish shade of mauve to match the industrial carpeting and wallpaper from the remodel, but Stella had learned that crouching down at the right angle from a vantage point in the shrubbery gave a person a pretty clear view of the goings-on inside, so she knew that Goat was at his desk. Besides, Irene Dorsey, the departmental receptionist and records officer, stage-whispered, “He’s hiding,” with a theatrical nod in the direction of the sheriff’s office.
Stella could feel Irene’s curious gaze on her as she waited impatiently for Goat to give up the ruse. Irene was a holdover from Sheriff Burt Knoll’s administration, but she’d made the transition to the new sheriff with ease. It wasn’t hard to do—her working style of listening attentively and then doing things exactly as she damn well pleased went equally unchallenged by both administrations.
Goat was no dummy. Sheriff Knoll hadn’t been either. Both knew better than to go trying to fix something that wasn’t broke, and Irene—with her sharp memory undiminished by age, her unyielding loyalty to the long arm of the law, and her matronly scent of rose water and Jean Naté dusting powder—worked plenty well just the way she was.
“He’s been hiding since that crew took the body and hightailed it back up to Fayette yesterday,” Irene clarified in a slightly louder whisper. “That Detective Simmons says she’s coming on back in her own car this afternoon, and Goat don’t want nothing to do with her.”
Stella turned away from the sheriff’s door and considered Irene thoughtfully. Seventy if she was a day, Irene seemed to think she had the entire town fooled about her age due to her zealous if not entirely professional home hair coloring. Her thin strands were dyed a relentless black, and not only did she keep up with the roots, but she often ended up dyeing the skin that encroached on her hairline, too, giving her a special-effects horror movie effect—as though she was wearing a gray latex skullcap with a wig attached.
Irene was holding a copy of In Touch out as far as her arms extended in front of her, peering over the tops of a pair of coral pink–framed reading glasses. She licked her thumb, then her forefinger, before turning a page.
“So … what do you think of those folks from up in Fayette, anyway?” Stella asked Irene.
“Well, now, they been here before. Once in 2000, once a few years before that.” If Irene had an opinion on the
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