A Bad Day for Sorry: A Crime Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

bother her. In fact, it still felt decadent and rebellious. Occasionally, though, Stella spent a whole day cleaning the place from top to bottom.
    Today would have been such a day. Except that around tenthirty, the doorbell rang. Stella peeled off her yellow rubber gloves and set down the bucket of soapy water and the brush she’d been using to scrub the kitchen floor, and answered the door.
    Chrissy Shaw stood on her front porch wearing a strappy purple top that showed off her pillowy breasts as well as the fading bruises along her shoulders and upper arms. She crossed her arms over her chest and shifted from one high platform sandal to the other, her face swollen from crying.
    Stella’s heart sank. She hadn’t expected to see the girl for a while. Usually, her clients stayed away after a job. She didn’t take it personally—they usually just needed to distance themselves. Not everyone was as comfortable dishing out Stella’s brand of justice as she was. No matter how relieved they were with the results, it could be a messy business.
    When a client came back this quick it usually meant something had gone wrong.
    “Is Roy Dean bothering you?” Stella demanded, holding the door wide for Chrissy to enter.
    “No’m,” Chrissy mumbled. She had on tight denim shorts that barely covered her jiggly rear, and she tugged at the fringed hems as she clopped past Stella. She trailed some kind of perfume that smelled like it came out of one of those peel-and-rub ads in
Cosmopolitan
magazine—a little musky, a little papery. Could be the girl had just spritzed on a little over-much to cover up skipping today’s shower; Stella employed that technique herself from time to time.
    Chrissy walked into Stella’s living room and lost her momentum. She turned to the couch, the love seat, Ollie’s old La-Z-Boy and considered each one, but couldn’t seem to make upher mind. She pressed the back of her hand to her forehead and managed a pathetic little whimper. Chrissy was in her middle twenties, but if you didn’t know better you might guess she was eighteen.
    “Hell, sugar, don’t matter where you plant your butt, we’ll still be having the same conversation,” Stella said. “Tell you what, while you’re deciding, why don’t I get us some iced tea.”
    When she came back with the tray a few minutes later, Chrissy had slumped low in the love seat and was leaking tears down her plump cheeks, pale blond hair sticking to her sweat-damp skin. Her wide blue eyes were ringed with smudgy mascara.
    “Oh, dear,” Stella said. “I know it seems bad now, but whatever Roy Dean’s done, it’s nowhere near the worst problem someone’s come here to talk about. Nothing I can’t help you fix, anyway.”
    Chrissy wiped her nose along her knuckles and sniffled. “Yeah? Well, guess what, I think this time I might a brung you a problem you ain’t had before.”
    Stella sat down on the couch and picked up a long silver spoon off the tray and gave her glass of tea a swirl. Oh, these girls. Every one of them sure they had a new story to tell. Honestly, it tried her patience sometimes, until she remembered what it felt like to be in their shoes. When you were the one getting smacked around, trash-talked, cheated on, and generally treated worse than any man would treat a tick-infested hound dog, then yeah, your story seemed like the most singular piece of news on earth.
    “Is that right, dolly.” Stella screwed down the lid on herimpatience and settled in to hear the whole story. “Well, you tell me all about it, and then we’ll figure out what to do. But here, wet your whistle before you get rolling.”
    Chrissy accepted a glass of tea but set it down on the table without sipping. “Roy Dean’s gone and run off.”
    “Now honey, he isn’t gone, he’s just been staying out at a trailer down close to Shooter’s Cove,” Stella said, wondering if the girl had been foolish enough to go looking for him. Sometimes, even after suffering