Stella, Get Your Gun

Chapter 2

Lloyd and I drove around Garden Beach for the better part of an hour before I came to any conclusions or developed a working plan. My cell phone rang continuously and I finally had to turn it off so I could think without interruption. It seemed to me that I’d lost just about everything I’d come to Garden Beach to find. Losing Pete was probably the least of my worries. I’d also lost my partner—the person who was supposed to be watching my back had been flat on hers with my boyfriend. That hurt, but even that wasn’t my biggest loss.

Garden Beach, Florida, was a small town with a small police force. Pete and I couldn’t coexist in the same department. He was the department’s hero, the wonder cop who always got his man, or now, woman. It wouldn’t take long for Pete and Lou Ann to spread the rumor that I was unstable and that they were the two injured parties. They’d tell people about me firing my service weapon at them. My reputation, and worse, my opportunities with the force, would be dead, and even Needle Nose Robanski’s capture wouldn’t salvage that. No, if I was going to remain in law enforcement, I’d have to move on.

At 5:00 a.m., I pulled into the police department parking lot.

“I’ll be right back,” I promised Lloyd, and limped in through the rear entrance. I slowly made my way down the empty corridor to Randy’s closet of an office, stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I reached into my purse for the gun, dropped the magazine out, and left the police-issued Glock sitting empty in his top desk drawer. I grabbed my shield and felt tears stinging my eyelids as I ran my fingers over the gold-and-silver badge one last time. I dropped it into the drawer beside the gun, closed it and walked out of the office before I could change my mind.

I went into the women’s dressing room next, spun the combination to my locker and found the street clothes I’d worn in to work the night before—a pair of denim shorts, flip-flops and a worn T-shirt that said Garden Beach Police Softball League. I changed, slammed the locker shut and left before the first shift people started arriving. My ankle throbbed and I felt like shit. How had I so totally screwed up my life in such a short amount of time?

I spent the next three and a half hours with Lloyd, sitting on the beach, drinking coffee, feeding Lloyd a chicken biscuit I ordered but then couldn’t stomach and saying goodbye to my old life. I was feeling about as sorry for myself as Needle Nose was probably feeling over in the county lockup. Only, maybe Needle Nose was luckier. His future was all behind him. He could count on a trial followed by a thousand-year jail term. I had no idea what was going to happen with me.

At 9:03 a.m., I walked into the credit union and withdrew every last dime from my joint account with Pete. The grand total came to $384.96. I took the money and didn’t look back. What goes around comes around, I thought. Besides, he could always sell the clothes and few personal items I’d left behind, couldn’t he?

“Look at this, Lloyd,” I said when I got back to the car. “That’s all we had to show for ourselves, just under four hundred dollars. Ridiculous, huh?”

Lloyd looked over at me and smiled. His doggy tongue hung out the left side of his mouth, and his soft black-and-white ears drooped across his face, half hiding his eyes.

“I know it’s a small fortune to you. Hey, maybe that’s why your mama didn’t take you with her when she left. Maybe there just wasn’t enough dog-food money to go around, huh?”

I think this hurt Lloyd’s feelings because he sighed softly and turned away from me.

“Lloyd,” I said, trying to make it up to him, “both of us have been in bad spots before. You lost your mom, and I lost both my parents. You’ve probably had your share of bad love affairs and, well, we both know how my love life is going. But we can’t focus on the negative. We’ve got to be positive. Things are bound to look up.”

Lloyd didn’t seem too encouraged by this line of reasoning. He moaned, keeping his attention focused on the passing scenery.

“What I’m trying to say is, we’re survivors. We’ll get by.” My pep talk was starting to depress me, so I changed strategies. “What we need here is a little T.L.C and a fresh start. You’re going to like it where we’re going.”

I pulled the Camaro up onto A1-A and started to accelerate. Behind us, I could see the sparkling blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the sugary white sands that ran along the panhandle. It had been my oasis from the cold gray north, but no longer. I was leaving and maybe never coming back. I’d run away to Florida so I could find myself, so I could become someone else, someone I liked. What was I left with after six years of re-creating? I looked back at the ocean again. It had all been a mirage, a colorful, warm oasis that vanished when you stretched out your hand to touch it.

“Okay, Lloyd, it’s like Uncle Benny always says, ‘No matter where you go, there you are!’”

Lloyd belched.

“Okay, so he wasn’t the first to say it, he was just repeating it. That doesn’t make it any less true. I’m taking you home. We’ll go see Uncle Benny and Aunt Lucy. We could use a vacation, huh, boy? Maybe after a couple of weeks we’ll figure out where to go from there, all right? At least we left before they fired us. I could still work for another department. Maybe.”

Lloyd barked once and turned to look out the passenger-side window again. No matter where you go, there you are, I thought.

I reached over and switched on the radio. Granted, things were bleak, but that was a good thing, right? I mean, what was left to lose? What more could go wrong?

Ten miles later, Lloyd threw up his salvaged chicken-biscuit breakfast. It took another five miles to find an exit with a gas station and another thirty minutes to clean every crack and crevasse of the front passenger seat. By the time we got back on the road, I’d revised my opinion of our collective future. We were in the dismal swamp of life and sinking like elephants in quicksand. There was no happy ending and there would be no re-creating reality with pink-tinted glasses. Life just plain old sucked.

I turned the radio up and let Sheryl Crowe fill the empty space in my head. I didn’t want to think anymore. My logic was filled with more black holes than outer space, and thinking had become my biggest liability.

Lloyd must’ve agreed with me, because he didn’t say anything for the next 1,100 miles. We drove like participants in an around-the-world scavenger hunt, only stopping for gas and fast food. We slept in snatches at rest areas until at last, after twenty-eight hours on the road, we hit the familiar territory of my old hometown.

Lloyd woke up in time for our big arrival in Glenn Ford, Pennsylvania. He stretched and pulled himself up to stare out the windshield at the gray sky and billboards that advertised local businesses, whining a little and probably wishing I’d pull over and let him pee.

“Honest, Lloyd, it’s only two more miles. We’re about to cruise through midtown Glenn Ford. Look, there’s Banker’s Union. That’s where I had my first savings account!”

Lloyd was very unimpressed. When I turned onto the main drag I started the travelogue in earnest.

“Look, Lloyd, that’s Guinta’s drugstore. I used to stop in there every day on my way home from school and drink a vanilla soda.” Lloyd actually closed his eyes and shook his head softly. “Lloyd, there’s the place where they make the best hoagies! Lloyd! You’re missing small-town America. Come on, look!”

But Lloyd didn’t look and I didn’t have time to say another word. There was a loud explosion somewhere in the front of my car, and driving became difficult as the Camaro suddenly pulled hard to the right. Lloyd barked, and I gripped the wheel and with some effort pulled us up onto the tarmac of Carpenter’s Auto Body Shop, narrowly missing a rusted-out Oldsmobile.

I stared up at the sign. Carpenter’s Auto Body. Surely Jake hadn’t become a mechanic? I edged the car up a few more feet, felt the pull of the flattened tire and knew I had no other option. We were stuck here, Jake or no Jake.

I looked at Lloyd, then reached over and stroked his head. “It’s all right, sweetie,” I said. “We’re home. At least the car had the good sense not to blow until we made it.” I looked out the window at the unfamiliar auto shop and smiled. “Hey, we even broke down in a gas station! Isn’t it great? I told you life would look up!”

I swear Lloyd rolled his eyes at me.

The sign on the door of the shop said Closed in big orange letters. I looked at my watch; it was almost 11:00 a.m. How could it be closed? It wasn’t a holiday. I opened the car door, stepped out onto the tarmac and stretched. No sign of life anywhere. I walked around the front of the car slowly, obviously inspecting the right front tire. It was flat as a pancake.

I walked around to the back of the car, popped the trunk and stared inside at the space where the spare should’ve been, and then remembered I’d taken it out so I could fit my undercover equipment in its place. I shivered, realizing that the outskirts of Philadelphia were a lot colder than the Florida Panhandle in mid-November.

This was so not what I needed. A flat tire, no spare and me wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I stared back up at the darkened auto body shop. Maybe they were all inside drinking coffee and eating bagels. Maybe if I walked up to the door and banged, someone would take pity on me and come fix the flat.

I trotted up to the storefront and cupped my hands to the glass, peering intently into the darkened interior. A bald man wearing a grease-smudged gray uniform was in the room behind the cash register, sitting at the desk and looking intently at a stack of papers sprawled out in front of him. I sighed, relieved that at least he wasn’t Jake Carpenter, and knocked on the glass.

The man froze, looked at me, then away, as if he could erase my presence by ignoring me.

“Oh, come on, please!” I cried.

I saw his shoulders slump. He looked up, squinting with little coffee-bean eyes. “We’re closed,” he called, then turned his attention back to the paperwork in front of him.

“I know,” I said, “but my car’s front tire just blew and…”

He looked up again, frowning, clearly annoyed at the continued intrusion.

“I’m freezing! Come on! Really, it’ll only take a minute. Please, I’ll pay you double, okay?”

“Come back this afternoon and we’ll take a look at it,” he said.

This was not the Glenn Ford I knew. When I’d lived here the people were friendly, always ready to help a woman in distress. What was wrong with this idiot?

“Listen,” I said, pitching my voice as loud as I could without screaming at the fool, “I don’t have anywhere else to go. I’d change the tire myself, but my spare is gone, and…” Words failed me. I felt tears queuing up at the edges of my eyes and knew I was about to completely lose it. “Damn it, I said please, I said I’d pay you double. Hell, if I knew how to plug a tire, I’d offer to fix it myself. Now what more is it going to take? Do I need to flag down a passing motorist and hope they have a spare my size? Do I need to call a tow truck, the police, EMS? What?”

The man’s eyes widened; clearly he thought a maniac was accosting him. He rubbed his oil-stained fingers across his bald skull and gave up.

“All right, all right, keep your shirt on!”

He stood up, walked around the desk and through the leaf in the countertop to unlock the front door. I watched him approach, my cop instincts inspecting him and fitting him into a preliminary category. He was the kind of guy you didn’t turn your back on, short, stocky, muscular build, tattoos and a bad attitude. He was sizing me up, too, in a nasty, see-you-naked way that made me hug my arms closer to my chest.

“Wait in here,” he said before he’d even pulled the door wide enough for me to pass through. He was gone before I could say a word, grabbing tools as he scuttled over to inspect the Camaro’s tire.

Lloyd went crazy, barking like a demon maniac, teeth bared, eyes showing white and pawing at the window in an attempt to protect me from my knight in shining armor.

I opened the door and started across the lot. “Lloyd, stop that!” I yelled. “He won’t hurt you,” I added, praying Lloyd wouldn’t scare the guy off the job.

The mechanic looked back over his shoulder at me and scowled. “I told you wait inside,” he said. “I ain’t scared of no dog!”

That was good, because Lloyd clearly liked the guy about as much as I did, and hadn’t backed off his display of killer instinct one bit.

I ducked back inside the shop. The guy was a fruitcake, probably an ax murderer in his spare time. I looked past the counter into the office. It looked as if a cyclone had blown through, papers mounded on top of the desk, files open and spilling over onto the floor. It was a wonder the place stayed in business.

When he brought the tire into the shop, I walked to the doorway and watched him. His fingers flew across the rubber surface, locating the nail that was responsible for the flat and quickly working to plug it. His shop was as organized and neat as his office was chaotic.

I stepped back into the reception area, not wanting my savior to see me and get any more irritated, and waited for him to finish. I sat in a cold vinyl chair, closed my eyes and rested my head back against the wall. In ten more minutes, I told myself, it would all be better. I’d be sitting in Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny’s warm, sunny kitchen, eating homemade cinnamon buns and drinking strong black coffee. I’d be home and nothing else mattered after that.

I guess I must’ve drifted off. The next thing I was aware of was the tinkle of the bell over the shop door. I sprang to my feet as the mechanic stepped into the room. “It’s done,” he said. “You can go now.”

“How much do I owe you?” I said, trying to smile, but stopping at the sour look on his face.

“Five bucks,” he said.

I dug into my pockets, pulling out cash and searching for the right bills. “Oh, come on,” I said, “it’s gotta be more than that. You opened up for me.”

“Five is fine,” he said, his voice almost a snarl.

I handed him a ten. “I don’t want any change. I’m sorry I disturbed you. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t…”

“See ya,” he grunted, pushing the door open and waiting expectantly.

Some perverse part of me, seeing his rush to get me out of his hair, made me linger, walking slowly toward him. “You usually closed on Thursdays?” I asked. “I mean, in case I ever need more work done, I can remember not to bother you on Thursday.”

“No,” he said. “Death in the family.”

That took me back. Of course. He wasn’t always like this, he’d lost someone close to him. That explained everything. I looked back at the office. What if his wife had just died? Maybe she was in charge of the office, the bookkeeping and everything, and suddenly, here he was trying to find the papers he needed to arrange for her funeral.

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. “I’ll leave you alone now.”

I stepped out onto the tarmac and heard the lock click behind me. Aunt Lucy would know all about it. Here I’d been thinking the worst when this guy had just lost his wife or maybe one of his kids. I slid behind the wheel and looked over at Lloyd.

“You see what being a cop’ll do to you?” I said. “It jaundices you toward life. It blinds you to the good in human beings. I’m telling you, Lloyd, in my next life, job, whatever, I’m gonna be something optimistic, you know, like the lay version of a nun. Maybe I’ll go into social work.” I remembered the overburdened therapists at the mental-health center in Garden Beach and thought better of the idea. “Okay, maybe I’ll take up exotic dancing. That way, I’ll be improving men’s mental health while actually getting paid for it!”

Lloyd wasn’t listening. He was looking out the window at the darkened shop and growling.

“Lloyd,” I said, “if your instincts are that good, how come you didn’t warn me about Pete, huh?”

Lloyd’s head whipped back in my direction at the mention of Pete’s name and he yipped, a quick, short bark that I interpreted as an apology.

“Okay, you’re right,” I muttered. “You told me so.” We turned off Lancaster Avenue onto Sunset Drive. “Here we go. We’re home,” I said. I coasted slower as we rounded the corner and approached Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny’s tiny Dutch colonial.

The street was lined on both sides with cars. “Looks like they got company,” I said. “Maybe it’s Aunt Lucy’s altar guild.” But there were too many cars for it to be a simple ladies’ meeting.

A blue sedan pulled away from the curb close to the house, and I pulled in, parked and looked up at the house where I’d spent the last four years of my childhood. There was a white funeral wreath on the door.

My throat tightened. I stared up at the flowers and felt denial take over. It couldn’t be. I was tired. It was just a decoration, nothing special. The cars meant nothing. My skin began to prickle. Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny, they’d been fine when I’d seen them last Christmas; no one had called to say they were ill. They would’ve called. Someone would have called. What was going on?

I opened the car door and stepped out onto the street, feeling as if time had somehow slowed to a frozen halt. I rounded the car and opened Lloyd’s door mechanically, watching him jump out onto the sidewalk and make a beeline for a nearby bush. It was like watching a movie.

I felt myself cross the yard, felt the cold air stinging my cheeks without registering the fact that it was cold. I was fixated on the white carnations in the wreath, staring at them as I walked closer and closer to the front door.

As I started up the front steps, the door suddenly swung open. My cousin Nina from California stood there, unsmiling, her black-lined eyes rimmed with red. She looked like an updated, shorter version of her mother, Aunt Lucy’s oldest sister, Myrna. She’s dyed her hair, I thought, taking in the peroxide-blond choppy cut and the pink tips that stood out like miniature signal flags all over her head. I felt frozen, removed from the strange movie that was my homecoming.

“Where the hell have you been?” she said, hands on hips, black vinyl miniskirt tight against her stick-thin thighs. “Well, at least you got here. I guess somebody finally reached you. We only called about five thousand times. I thought cops always had their cell phones on. Isn’t it like a law?”

“What happened?” I asked. I could hear voices behind her and caught flashes of people moving around inside the house.

Nina shrugged, stepping out onto the porch and pulling the door almost shut as she moved. “Heart attack, I guess,” she said. “He had his tablets but they didn’t do any good. By the time the ambulance got there, he was gone.”

“Uncle Benny?” I whispered, tears flooding my eyes. “He’s dead?”

Nina stared at me, frowning. “Stella, hello? Yes, Uncle Benny’s dead. What did you think?” She frowned harder. “How come you’re dressed like that?” she asked. “I mean, even I knew it was cold. And what’s wrong with your foot? Why’s it wrapped up like that?” She looked past me, her eyes lighting on Lloyd. “You brought your dog with you? You couldn’t find somebody to watch him?”

The questions came, rapid-fire, one after another, without a pause to hear the answers. I couldn’t have answered her, though; I was too overwhelmed to speak.

“You’d better get your suitcase and come on,” she said. “We’ve got to leave for the funeral parlor in an hour. They’re sending limos for the family.”

She turned and started to open the door, realized I wasn’t moving and turned back around.

“Are you coming?”

“I didn’t bring…” I began. “I didn’t know…”

Nina closed the door again. She turned and descended the steps slowly, opening her arms to me as she approached.

“Oh, my God! You didn’t know! What did they tell you?”