A Bad Day for Scandal Read Online Free Page A

been a whole lot to look at on a good day, and the expression he gave her before slumping to the floor was one of mildly disappointed surprise, as though Stella had served him tuna mac twice in one week.
    Besides Ollie, there had been that crew of Kansas City mobsters down at the lake last summer. They were a lot more pissed-off looking about being killed—and considerably bloodier—than Ollie. And then there were the mummified remains of Brenda Cassell that she’d accidentally gotten wrapped up with—not literally, of course—but Stella had never really got a clear view of that body before getting hired to figure out who did it.
    The man in Priss’s trunk was different from the rest of the bodies on Stella’s list in one key way: He was decidedly not fresh. His odor confirmed it, if his unflattering coloring left any doubt. And to Stella’s surprise, that made a considerable difference. She felt her tummy gurgle and surge in horror and realized she was close to losing the pleasantly digesting remains of the corned beef and Irish soda bread.
    Priss turned just in time to see Stella lurch across the gravel drive to a row of winter-deadened lilacs that were in need of a good pruning. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Stella, how are you going to dispose of him if you can’t even stand to look at him?”
    *   *   *
    Stella’s yakking did have one happy side effect, which was to get her invited inside the house, out of the cold.
    “But you must be quiet,” Priss cautioned, holding a manicured finger to her lips as she opened the front door. “Liman is asleep—and he is ignorant of what has transpired.”
    Liman’s ignorance was legendary, but Stella didn’t bother to point that out. There was no way she was going to take the job Priss was offering her, but she also was well aware of why the gal had come to her rather than seeking out some other thuggery expert, and the situation called for a little finesse.
    Stella didn’t kill husbands or boyfriends for her clients. The only deaths she was responsible for were of the self-defense variety—and Stella had no problem including Ollie’s demise in that category, since thirty years of getting smacked around surely justified some defensive maneuvers on her part, and Stella had long ago forgiven herself for unleashing them all in one three-second torrent.
    She wasn’t a killer for hire, but—understandably, since rumors of mayhem and mercilessness were part of her stock-in-trade—she didn’t dispel that perception either. There had been half a dozen occasions when her case strategy had included intimidating and threatening a wrong-doing man right out of town—even out of state—with a clear understanding that return visits and, in fact, any sort of contact at all were actively discouraged. These men were missing, though they weren’t missed enough for anyone to go filing reports or hire detectives to find out what parts they’d lit out for, and if folks presumed them dead, why, who was Stella to argue?
    But that didn’t mean that Stella had any intention of getting started in the murder business. Not even in the abetting of it, which getting rid of Priss’s dead body would surely be.
    “I’ll come in and get warm,” she said, “and then I’m going to turn around and head for home. You can count on me to keep my mouth shut, but that problem you got there, you started it and I’m afraid you’re going to have to be the one to finish it.”
    “Oh, why don’t you wait until we’ve had a chance to discuss things further, before you make a final decision on that,” Priss murmured in a low voice. She tiptoed down the hall and peered into a darkened room, listened for a moment, then gently closed the door. When she came back, she pointed to a chair in front of the fireplace, which looked as though it hadn’t been used in a long while, if the Hustler and Off-Road magazines stacked in sloppy piles on the hearth were any indication. “I’d offer you a