Read Online A Bad Day for Sorry: A Crime Novel by Sophie Littlefield - Free Book Online Page A

squinted at her and wiped his hands on a rag he kept attached to his belt, then offered it to shake.
    “Stella Hardesty, isn’t it?” he said.
    “Yes sir. Good memory.”
    “Well, you’ve had your face in the paper in the last year or two, if I’m not mistaken.”
    “Oh, that.” Stella could feel a flush rise to her face. That had been a close call; she’d been hailed a hero for dragging Phil Rivka out of his burning house. In truth, she’d intended only to torch the garage and Phil’s treasured Camaro, the one he bought the day after he sent his wife, Irma, to the hospital with series of injuries requiring overnight observation.
    Luckily, even Sawyer County’s crack fire investigation squad hadn’t figured out how Stella got the blaze started in the first place, which was a good thing. Stella had refined her technique since then, and there was no longer much risk of her killing herself or anyone else with a botched attempt.
    Despite Stella’s protests, photos of her and a very dejected-looking Phil had appeared not only in the local papers but all the way up in
The Kansas City Star.
Goat himself had called to congratulate her on her heroics. And to apologize for having been out on another call during the rescue. “If I’d been there,” he’d said in that inscrutable voice of his, “maybe we’d have figured what got that fire started in the first place.”
    “Guess you’re a bit of a hero,” Arthur continued, but he sounded more wary than admiring.
    “No, no, not me. Hey, I was wondering if Roy Dean or Arthur Junior were working with you today.”
    Arthur didn’t answer right away. He took a tin of Skoal out of his pocket and slowly opened it, then just stared at the brown-black shreds of tobacco inside. Stella stared right along with him.
    Nowadays you couldn’t find many fans of chew. Every doctor’s office in the county had warnings posted—mouth cancer, throat cancer. And Lord knows the spitting and the chawingwere nasty, vile habits; the black bits stuck between the teeth didn’t do much for a guy’s appeal.
    But Stella had a soft spot for the stuff. Her dad used to treat himself to a chew now and then, out on the back steps where her mother wouldn’t have to watch, and Stella’s own first sweetheart kept a tin in the glove box of his truck, hidden from his parents. He’d have a chew sometimes after football practice when he and Stella went for drives in the country.
    “Er, do you mind . . . ,” Arthur said.
    “No, no, go ahead.”
    Arthur took a healthy pinch between his forefinger and thumb, and tucked it expertly in the pocket between his cheek and gum. For a moment he closed his eyes and concentrated on the tobacco. Then he opened his eyes and breathed a sigh that conveyed a world-weariness far beyond his fifty or so years.
    “Neither of my boys is working here today,” he said.
    “They take the day off?”
    “Well, now, we don’t really do like that. Wish I could say different, but the boys got themselves all involved in these side businesses of theirs, and I’m lucky to have them along more than a day or two a week.”
    “Side businesses? How do you mean?”
    “Oh, this and that. Arthur Junior, he got on part-time at the Wal-Mart Tire Center, and he’s been doing a program up at ITT on the weekends. You know, all the electronics they got in the cars these days, you practically have to have a degree in computer science to work on them.”
    “What about Roy Dean?”
    Arthur didn’t look at her but gazed out across the parkinglot to the fields beyond. Alfalfa, lush and low-growing, poked its purple-flowered stems toward the blistering sun. “Well, you know, Roy Dean, he’s always got some idea or other. Last year he got himself hooked up with this multilevel marketing outfit. Nothing but a pyramid scheme, really. That didn’t end up all that well, and we had words. Now he don’t much tell me what he has going on.”
    Stella noted the sad note in Arthur’s voice.