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

before.
    Goat evidently got the drift. He gave those eyebrows a bit of a workout and cleared his throat.
    “I see. Okay, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your boy. Tucker, was it?”
    “Oh, yes. Here, I got pictures.” Chrissy sat up straight in her chair and grabbed her purse off the table. She dug in it and found a cheap little plastic flip book and handed it to Goat.
    He paged through the book, taking a few moments over each photo. “Well, if he isn’t a little dickens,” Goat said, smiling, and Chrissy brightened.
    He handed the book to Stella. Tucker was adorable, a big, chubby-handed baby who was laughing in nearly every picture. He had his mother’s wide blue eyes and silky pale hair.
    Stella glanced over at the fireplace mantel, where she stillkept one of Noelle’s baby pictures; her daughter had been a big, happy baby too, a good sleeper and nearly always contented.
    Funny how they turned out.
    Stella turned back to the conversation and noticed that Goat was watching her. “That your daughter in that picture?” he asked.
    Stella nodded. She didn’t plan to say anything more on the subject, but to her surprise she suddenly
couldn’t
say any more, because her throat closed up and her eyes stung. Well, it was no wonder, was it, what with all this talk about missing kids.
    Of course, Noelle was twenty-eight now, and she wasn’t exactly
missing
; she just wasn’t speaking to her mother.
    “Tucker’s eighteen months and thirteen days old,” Chrissy said. “I got his fingerprints done at the Home Depot on Safe Kids Day. You want me to go home and get the card?”
    Goat snapped his notebook shut and slid his pen into the ring binding. “Well, I don’t see any need for that just now, Chrissy. I don’t want you to worry too much about Roy Dean and Tucker just yet. There’s all kinds of reasons why he might be gone, hear, and you’ve given me lots of ideas for where to look for him.”
    “You’re going to start right now?” The longing in Chrissy’s voice tugged at Stella’s heart; the girl was desperate enough to get her baby back that she was eager to launch a hunt for her no-good husband.
    “Might as well. I’ll be in touch soon’s I find out anything. You think of something, or hear from him, you call me.” He stood, unfolding his lanky legs like a carpenter’s rule, and took a card from his pocket and laid it on the coffee table in front of Chrissy. After a moment’s hesitation, he laid a second one in front of Stella. “I suppose you might as well have one too.”
    He gave her that same long, studied, know-too-much look before he threw in a grin, nodded to Chrissy, and made his way to the door. Stella stood and watched him warily. “Thanks for coming so quick,” she said.
    “Anytime.” He shut the front door with care, holding the handle so it wouldn’t slam. Through the screen Stella and Chrissy listened to him start up his department-issue Charger and drive off.
    “Well,” Stella said uncertainly. “I guess that went about as well as it could have.”
    “He sure is
tall,
” Chrissy said, “for a sheriff.”
    “Why, you known any short ones?”
    “Short what?”
    “Sheriffs, hon.” Stella’s opinion of Chrissy was taking a turn for the dumber, and she was sorry to see it. Dumb wasn’t going to help find Roy Dean any quicker. Still, it could just be the stress of the situation. Poor girl had a lot on her mind, and besides, talking to Goat did weird things to Stella’s own brain, so she supposed she shouldn’t judge Chrissy too harshly.
    “Oh! No. Well, there was Sheriff Knoll, of course, and he was about medium, I guess.”
    “Chrissy.” Stella sat back down, scooted a little closer to Chrissy, and leaned in close. “This is important. What you told the sheriff, was that all true?”
    Chrissy nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
    “Did you leave anything out?”
    “You mean, like what he done to me lately? Yes, I guess I did.” Chrissy lifted up her shirt, showed