A Bad Day for Sorry: A Crime Novel by Sophie Littlefield Page A

sir.”
    Goat reached over and patted her knee awkwardly. “That’s all right, hon,” he said gently.
    Stella noticed the gesture with surprise. Goat was hardly a warm and fuzzy creature. She had never heard him use any form of endearment before, but maybe Chrissy’s pathetic expression had swayed the stubborn man. A point for their team.
    “And you’re sure you don’t know who he might have seen that night?”
    “No.”
    “Do you think his brother Arthur would have been there?”
    “Well, maybe. Sometimes they’d go together, sometimes not. You know how brothers are. Sometimes Roy Dean’d get mad at him for some silly little thing and not talk to him for a day or two.”
    Goat scribbled in his pad a little more. “How about since then? Any more fights? Did you overhear any arguments, maybe on the phone?”
    “No, nothing like that,” Chrissy said, a little too quickly.
    Stella guessed she knew what that meant. Usually women came to her when there had been an uptick in the abuse heaped on them by their men. Sometimes there was a huge confrontation, but more often it was just that the abuse became more and more frequent until the women never had time to recover in between, to convince themselves that it was worth sticking around, that they’d imagined how bad it was, that things would change. In the end, one last straw, usually not so different from those that came before, would be the one that broke the camel’s back and sent them to Stella’s doorstep.
    She peeked at Goat and saw he’d knit his eyebrows together in a look of consternation; Chrissy’s quick denial hadn’t got past the man.
    Stella also noticed, before she had a chance to stop herself, that Goat had some fine-looking eyebrows: for a man who was out of the hair business on the top of his head, he’d got him some nice thick all-business brows with a rakish slant to them that made him look like the close cousin of a handsome devil.
    Goat caught her looking. Winked at her.
    Winked!
Just when Stella figured she had a handle on the man, he’d go and do something like that, shake her foundations. Maybe that was his goal, to get her flummoxed enough that she’d let her guard down. As Stella blushed, he turned back to Chrissy.
    “Any change in his work habits?”
    “Well . . . I don’t think so. I mean him and Arthur Junior been helping their dad on a job at Parkade Elementary School over in Colfax. It’s a big job, so he’s been gone regular, and he doesn’t call me during he day less he needs something.”
    “Arthur Junior still on that job?”
    “I guess.”
    “You haven’t talked to him since Roy Dean left?”
    “No . . . me and Arthur Junior, we don’t get along so good. I can’t ever think what to say around him. I don’t guess he much likes me.”
    Stella narrowed her eyes. That was news to her, news she would have preferred Chrissy save for later. She coughed lightly, trying to signal to Chrissy to put a sock in it.
    Goat didn’t seem to notice. “I’ll talk to him. What about their folks? Mr. and Mrs. Shaw. Have you talked to them?”
    “No sir. I just usually wait until I see them. We go over for Sunday dinner once a month or so, and his mom and I catch up then. Roy Dean sees his dad on the job most days.”
    “But didn’t his dad call around looking for Roy Dean yesterday when he didn’t show up for work?”
    “Well . . .” This time Chrissy glanced at Stella before answering. “See, it’s not all
that
unusual . . . if Roy Dean or Arthur Junior take a day off here and there. . . . They cover for each other, you know? If one of them is feeling poorly or something like that?”
    Stella couldn’t help it—she rolled her eyes heavenward. Feeling poorly—yeah, she could guess what that was about. She had plenty of her own mornings when she was feeling that brand of poorly.
She,
however, went and opened up the shop, hangover or no. She didn’t give herself a day off as a reward for misbehaving the night