A Bad Day for Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page B

You’ll take care of Chip?”
    In her sister’s wobbly, teary voice Stella heard echoes of every childhood scrape they’d ever got into. She’d stuck up for her baby sister on the playground, told mean girls to back off, taken a swing at the boy who first broke Gracellen’s heart, patched her cuts and bruises, helped her study, and shared her chores. She’d always been there when it counted, and that wasn’t about to change now.
    “What exactly do you want me to do?” Stella asked carefully. Gracie knew very little about her off-hours activities, and she hoped to keep it that way.
    “Just, if you could go fetch him? And maybe bring him down to stay with you a while until we figure what to do next? Chess is going to go talk to the bank, see maybe about the retirement money—”
    “But Gracie, if these fellows are pros, don’t you suppose they have their eye on his place? How do you suppose they’re gonna feel about me driving him away like we’re off on a Sunday picnic? Plus also what if he doesn’t want to come with me?”
    “No Stella, see, that’s what makes it work, is who’s gonna think twice about you showing up? In that old car a yours, wearing some old jog suit, why, you could be the cleaning lady.”
    Stella bristled at the wide swath of insult her sister had just painted, not bothering to point out that washed-up gambling addicts didn’t generally employ domestic help. “Yeah, okay, fine, I’ll do it.” She sighed. “I’ll go get your boy. Speaking of those brownies, you still make ’em with the cream cheese and the pecan toffee bits?”
    “Oh, yes,” her sister said, relief flooding her voice. “I’m gonna go mix up a batch right now. I’ll have Chess take ’em to work for the UPS. Why Stella, they’ll be waiting at your house soon’s you straighten out this thing with Chip.”
    After she wrote down all the details and hung up the phone, Stella reflected that there had been many occasions when she’d dived into danger for far less than one of Gracellen’s brownies, which had taken the blue ribbon at the Sawyer County Fair in 1972, beating out even Flora Meldercone’s coconut three-layer cake, which had been rumored to be the foundation of all three of her marriages.

 
    Chapter Four
    It didn’t take nearly as long for Stella to explain the latest turn of events to BJ as it had for Gracellen to lay it out for her, especially as she stuck to a streamlined and not entirely accurate version. For instance, she steered clear of the “fraud,” “gambling,” and “severed ear” aspects of the story, saying only that her sister’s stepson had got himself into a bit of a jam and she needed to make an unexpected trip north to Wisconsin to straighten things out.
    Stella was accustomed to doctoring up the versions of the truth that she doled out to those around her. That practice was made necessary by the nature of her work, which had the disadvantage of making her a candidate for arrest and jail and even, if folks believed some of the rumors going around in certain circles, the prospect of a long stint in the section of the prison from which folks never returned.
    Yes, there were some who believed Stella Hardesty was a cold-blooded murderer. Technically, she supposed she was, given the whole Ollie thing, but both the Sawyer County judge and her own conscience—and popular opinion in town as well—had long since let her off the hook for that one, given the thirty-year spate of bruises and loosened teeth and sprains and black eyes and concussions she’d put up with from the man before the incident with the wrench.
    She’d been happy to be let off the hook, but once she started helping other women out with their abusive men, she discovered that there were advantages to cultivating a certain mystique. When Stella corralled a wife beater and straightened him out with any of the many tools and props of her profession, she had found that it often helped to imply that other wrongdoing