A Bad Day for Mercy Read online

  BJ lifted his head from her breasts and gave her a heavy-lidded gaze, his cheeks flushed dark with exertion and, Stella fervently hoped, lust. “You’re beautiful,” he clarified, before diving back into his happy task, and that gave Stella the extra assurance she was looking for. She put her hands on his and gave them a little push, willing BJ to surge past tentative to, say, willful and unstoppable, or at least untamed and demanding, or even needful and greedy. For one wild and headstrong moment he slid his hands under her rear and squeezed, but then he retreated, his hands coming to rest once more in the no-combat zone of her general waist area while he continued his gentle exploration of the valley between her breasts.

  Stella tried once more, giving his hands a less subtle shove in a downward direction, but he resisted, adding a polite little moan—and a memory came unbidden into Stella’s mind: Goat, here, on this couch, during a makeout session a few months ago. He had not been tentative. He had not been polite. He had been all wanting and taking and insisting, and the thought of the way he’d nearly thrown her down and grabbed great handfuls of her soft and willing flesh caused a moan of her own to escape her lips.

  BJ froze.

  Stella’s eyes flew open and she found herself staring at BJ’s chin, and she had time to note that he’d missed a little patch with the razor before he was scrambling off her as fast and furiously as though he had discovered he’d accidentally mounted a prize boar. Before Stella had a chance to protest or demand an explanation, she looked past BJ and saw the source of his consternation, and suddenly she was racing BJ in an effort to look as though they hadn’t just been doing precisely what they had been doing.

  “Is that—Mr. Brodersen, is that you?” Todd Groffe asked with unprecedented awe, his fourteen-year-old jaw dropping impressively.

  “Hello, Todd,” Stella said briskly, standing and dusting off the front of her capri pants as though she’d been doing nothing more exciting than pulling a few stray weeds from the flower bed. “Say hello as though you were not brought up in a barn.”

  “Does the sheriff know he’s here?” Todd stage-whispered, never taking his eyes off BJ, who was making furtive adjustments to his trousers while crossing his legs and sliding as far away on the couch as he could.

  “He’s not—I don’t—what are you doing here, anyway?” Stella managed to get out. “Don’t you and your hoodlum pals have a date to smoke crack behind the Arco or something?”

  “We done smoked it,” Todd said, his voice settling back to his too-bored-to-be-bothered register now that the excitement had waned, along with BJ’s ardor. “And we also knocked over Dumfree Liquors and all got blow jobs and burned us up a flag, so you can just hold on to your lecture, Stella. It’s too late for savin’ me.”

  “Is that right,” Stella said, getting her composure back. She picked up a throw pillow that had fallen victim to the recent lust storm, fluffed it, and placed it primly between herself and BJ while Todd sprawled in the easy chair. “What did Chanel think of that business?”

  She noted with satisfaction that Todd’s smart-ass smirk disappeared in a flash of sweet and tender adolescent self-doubt. Todd tugged at the collar of his T-shirt, which inexplicably bore an image of a duck with a human skull and a cigarette hanging out of its beak.

  “I said, how is your young lady friend?” Stella repeated smugly.

  “She’s fine, I guess,” he mumbled.

  “And her mother?”

  “Fine, prob’ly.” Todd slid further down in the chair until his bony butt hovered off the edge.

  “And old Mrs. Tanaka? Out at Crestview Care?”

  Todd scowled. “How’m I s’posed to know, Stella?”

  Stella beamed with triumph. Winning a round with her young neighbor gave her all manner of satisfaction, especially now that he was getting older and cagier. His romance with the hottest girl in eighth grade had been given a boost not long ago when Noelle gave him a makeover, which he had assiduously kept up with gallons of goopy hair product. Noelle, who apparently had decided that Todd was a perfect substitute for the little brother she never had, bought him ridiculous T-shirts and baggy plaid shorts and overpriced jeans at the mall over in Coffey, thirty miles away, where she lived. When she came for her weekend visits, the two of them talked music and movies and school while they did Noelle’s laundry.

  Todd was family, even if they didn’t have a box for that particular relationship on the U.S. Census Bureau form.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “only I’m thinkin’ that little mark on your neck didn’t exactly get there all by itself, see what I’m sayin’?”

  Todd’s hand flew to the hickey that peeped up over his collar like a smudge of ketchup and blushed a furious purple. Good. They were even, and she could count on the boy’s silence—for now, at least.

  “Mr. Brodersen was just about to—” Stella began. Then she was interrupted by the phone again. She pulled it out and squinted at the display. Gracellen. She didn’t much feel like listening to the static, so she returned it to her pocket. “Mr. Brodersen was about to go to his bowling night. And I imagine you were on your way someplace important, too, right, Todd?”

  “Bowling don’t start until seven thirty,” BJ said helpfully. “I might could stay a bit longer.”

  Stella gave him a thin-lipped smile. Now that that first wave of lustful feelings had been forced off the road by Todd’s untimely arrival, a measure of uncertainty had crept into her mind. Things had been moving awful fast—after all, she and BJ had never even been on a proper date—and also too slow, if that made any sense. She needed some time, some solitary time, to review in her mind the dance of passion that BJ had been performing on her and figure out if they were hearing the same tune, so to speak.

  His tongue had been … just so darn fleshy.

  Stella felt her face warm at the thought and fixed a glare on Todd, who was sifting through the bowl of mixed nuts that Stella had set out, picking out all the cashews and tossing them into his mouth.

  “Let me say it plain, Todd,” she said. “Time for you to go on home. Your mama’s gonna be home with the girls by now.”

  Todd had adorable seven-year-old twin sisters and a mother who attempted to keep up with three kids and a job and a house and a stack of bills that would make a weaker woman weep, as well as an ex-husband whose life had recently become a bit more interesting, though Sherilee didn’t know it. Alongside the sewing machine shop Stella had inherited from her dead son-of-a-bitch husband, she had her second, secret business that involved straightening out all manner of abusers and deadbeats and worthless husbands and boyfriends. Ordinarily a fee was involved, a sum tailored to a woman’s means, but in Sherilee’s case Stella was doing a little pro bono work.

  After all, Royal Groffe was hardly the worst offender Stella had ever encountered. He’d just let late payment of his child support become a habit since moving from up near the northeast corner of Missouri to Kansas City, where there was more call for experienced pipe fitters—as well as a lot more nightlife to spend his paycheck on. Sherilee was not the complaining sort, so it had taken several months of late payments—months in which she lay awake nights trying to figure out how to stretch a paycheck to cover food for her children while still keeping the lights on—before she’d let slip to Stella how worried she was.

  Stella had driven up to Kansas City, where she visited the job site where Royal was employed. From what she could tell, sitting in her Jeep Liberty and nibbling Junior Mints to pass the time while she observed him through her Zhumell short-barrel waterproof binoculars, a pair she favored because they fit easily in her purse, he was a skilled and dedicated worker. That was a check in the plus column, the way Stella saw it, since that meant he was likely to stay steadily employed. Still, Stella met him in the parking lot after work and gave him a manicure with a 30-watt woodburning tool plugged into the power converter she kept in the Jeep and ran off its cigarette lighter, to explain that his lax attitude about sending support payments constitute
d a check in the minus column.

  Since then his checks had arrived early.

  Todd’s scowl deepened, and he tossed the last of the nuts into his mouth and chewed glumly. “Mom said stay outta the house while she fixes dinner.”

  Stella’s ears pricked up at that. Sherilee never sent Todd out of the house, with the exception of Sunday nights, when he came over to watch TV with Stella while Sherilee took her girls out for ice cream or a movie or to feed the ducks at Nickel Pond. Until recently she’d had a standing date with her son on Saturday nights, but now that Todd was weighted down with a girlfriend as well as a flock of equally hormonal and sullen friends, he generally made his own weekend plans, which made Sherilee all the more determined to spend as much time with her boy as she could after work. As for Todd, as much as he complained about his pesky little sisters and his mother’s draconian discipline, he took his man-of-the-house role seriously enough to make Stella’s heart ache.

  So whenever Todd seemed determined to stay away from home, Stella had learned to be suspicious. She reached for the backpack Todd had tossed on the rug and dragged it close before Todd could stop her.

  “Hey!” he protested. “Ain’t no call to be goin’ through my stuff, Stella!”

  “Shouldn’t bother you none, if you ain’t got anything to hide,” she said placidly.

  “That’s illegal search!” he protested, and looked like he was going to launch himself at Stella, but when BJ glared and lifted himself an inch off the chintz cushions, Todd sank back in the chair. BJ was six foot three in sock feet, and Todd hadn’t yet finished growing.

  “Aha!” Stella crowed, finding a can of Krylon International Harvester Red paint in the bottom of the pack among the broken pencils and empty Cheeto bags and crumpled papers. “At it again, are you?”

  When Royal Groffe had undertaken a renewed effort to deliver his support payments on time, he’d apparently been so swayed by Stella’s visit that he’d begun bringing the checks in person. Sherilee had marveled that he stayed on the porch respectfully cooling his heels, his hair combed carefully and his hands clasped in front of him like a Sunday preacher. She’d asked him in out of good manners more than anything else, and while his daughters peeped curiously around the corner at this man who was barely more than a memory, Todd remembered enough about his father to be plunged into a fit of burst illusions and broken promises and forgotten birthdays.

  To say that the boy was bitter would be an understatement. The second time his father had come inside for a glass of sweet tea, Todd snuck around to where Royal’s silver Mazda was parked alongside the curb and hastily tagged it on the driver’s side. When Royal came out of the house after his fifteen-minute visit, he was greeted by foot-tall red letters along the driver’s side that spelled out

  I AM ANA

  —which caused him no end of confusion until he rounded the corner and discovered that the cryptic message continued around the back end of the car, clear across the license plate and bumper:

  SSHOLE

  … which pretty much cleared it up.

  Royal had begun to make a fuss about tanning his son’s hide and taking the cost of repairs out of his support payments. When his ranting turned to threats and yelling, Sherilee called Stella with a desperate plea to come get Todd before he launched his scrawny teenaged self at his father and got himself into even more trouble. Stella wandered down in a pink velour jogging suit and gave Royal a sweet smile. If Sherilee was surprised to see her ex swallow his temper and drive meekly away, she hid it well.

  Still, Stella wasn’t sure she’d be able to save the boy a second time. She did a swift calculation: Friday was payday, but the support check came only twice a month, and she couldn’t remember whether this was a pay week or not.

  “Todd Groffe,” she said, “what have you done now?”

  “Nothing! I swear, Stella, that’s just in there from last time. I ain’t got around to putting it back in the garage, is all.”

  “Young man, I best not discover that you are lying to this fine lady,” BJ said, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

  Todd made an unintelligible sound, staring at the carpet with his hands jammed in his pockets. Stella suppressed a smile and allowed herself to enjoy BJ’s simmering glower before she turned her attention back to Todd. “So if I go look out the picture window, I won’t see your dad’s car over at your mom’s?”

  Todd managed a look of grievous injury. “’Course not!”

  Stella, however, knew better. She sighed and pushed herself off the couch.

  “Less by ‘over at Mom’s,’ you mean, like, parked out front or something,” Todd added hastily. “He, uh, might be visiting, I guess.”

  Sure enough, Stella spied the outline of the car in the quick-falling evening.

  A passing car lit up the street with twin beams, and Stella was already turning away when something about the vehicle caught her attention, and she turned back.

  A sheriff’s vehicle. Specifically, the squeaky-clean cruiser operated by the top law enforcement dog of Sawyer County, none other than Goat Jones himself.

  Chapter Three

  Stella practically leaped back from the window. Was he spying on her? Surely not … well, she’d been known to cruise past the sheriff’s department herself, from time to time, hoping for a glimpse of his long-legged form, but that was different, wasn’t it?

  Though the idea that he might be making a check on her gave Stella a little thrill that was tempered by the thought that this particular trip over to her side of town would have netted Goat an eyeful of BJ’s truck in addition to a nice view of her sugar maple in full leaf.

  Maybe Goat wouldn’t recognize it.

  Right. There was no one in a thirty-mile radius who didn’t know damn well that the only such truck around belonged to BJ.

  Stella gave the drapes a frustrated yank, drawing them closed across the picture window. Then she had second thoughts, wondering if closed curtains would make Goat think she was up to some sort of hanky-panky, and yanked them back open.

  She rounded on Todd, catching herself before she unleashed the full force of her irritation on the boy.

  “So that is your dad’s car I see out there.”

  “But I swear I ain’t done nothin’ to it. Promise.” Todd gave her a look of such tremulous conviction that Stella’s doubts receded a little. Maybe the boy had learned his lesson last time. Maybe Royal truly was trying to be a better man. Maybe there was a chance, if not for reconciliation, at least for a thawing of relations between father and son, and that was nothing to sneeze at. A boy needed a father figure, after all.

  “All right,” Stella sighed, wondering if she’d regret it later. “But you leave now and get your ass home and make sure you please-and-thank-you your way through your dad’s visit, hear?”

  Todd nodded vigorously. “Yes, ma’am.”

  He slipped out the door before Stella could wonder too much about that particular leave-taking comment. She didn’t remember Todd Groffe ever uttering another “yes ma’am,” a discrepancy that bore further investigation. Now wasn’t the time, though—when the phone rang for the third time and without even having to glance at it Stella knew it had to be Gracellen. Her sister was persistent, and there was no better way to get her ire up than to ignore her, which Stella had spent much of their childhood doing, the four-year difference in their ages being just long enough to make Gracellen a constant pest.

  “Do you mind if I take this call?” she asked as demurely as she could manage. “I won’t be but a second.”

  “Why sure, Stella.” BJ settled back against the sofa and regarded her with a little smile that implied that watching her talk on the phone was his idea of top-notch entertainment.

  “Hello, Gracie,” Stella said pleasantly.

  “Stellie, Chip’s ear’s come in the mail!”

  There was no static this time, but Stella took the phone away from the phone and stared at it, confused, before trying again. “What’s that you s
aid?”

  “In a little box like what might hold a necklace, wrapped up in plastic, it’s his ear!”

  Her sister’s voice dissolved into a tremulous wail. Despite many decades among wealthy Californians, all it took was the first trace of upset and the Missouri returned to Gracellen’s voice in full force.

  “Gracie, have you been drinking?”

  “Stella, I have just drove us all the way down the durn mountain cause Chess’s got one a his tension headaches on account a the ear and I am right clear at the end of my wits here and I would appreciate if you would—”

  “Okay, okay, Gracie,” Stella said. “Let’s take this step by step. Now when you say Chip, you mean Chester the third, right?”

  Gracie’s husband Chess was actually Chester Papadakis the second, and his son—by a first wife—was Chester the third. With all those Chesters running around Sacramento they’d had to be a little creative with the nicknaming.

  “Yes, yes, of course that’s who I mean.”

  Stella squeezed her eyes shut and took a breath. She pressed the phone against her shirt and composed herself before opening her eyes and smiling sweetly. “BJ, if it’s all right, I might just take this…”

  “Sure, sure, sure,” BJ said, beaming even more broadly, as if she’d announced a plan to do a striptease rather than take a private call.

  Stella hurried down the hall to the most private room in the house. Once she got the bathroom door locked, she hissed into the phone. “So Chip’s ear … you mean his, um, actual—”

  “The thing he hears outta,” Gracie wailed with renewed grief. “Or used to hear outta anyway, ’cause now I reckon he’s hearin’ outta a hole in the side a his head seein’ as he ain’t got a ear anymore.”

  “I’m still having a little trouble here, Gracie. What makes you think that the ear is, you know, Chip’s?”

  “Oh, Stella, you know how he had those piercings that made Chess so darn mad?”