Stella, Get Your Gun
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I reached up and felt the mound of tangled hair. I was avoiding his eyes, avoiding everything about him, and still I felt my body respond. Damn him! I forced myself to keep on going, raking my fingers through the tangles and trying my best to ignore him. Was it my imagination, or was he even more arrogant than he had been in high school?
I started to climb the steps, stopped when the pain in my ankle made further progress impossible, and took a deep breath. Stilettos just had to be the only shoes in my car other than flip-flops. A calmer person would have packed before leaving town. But then a calmer person wouldn’t have shot up her boyfriend’s trailer with her service weapon. At least I’d brought my personal gun, another Glock. Protection beat footwear any day, didn’t it?
“What’s wrong with your foot?” Jake asked. He was right behind me, his hand reaching out to cup my elbow in support.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? That didn’t look like nothing. It looked like you couldn’t walk on it. I mean, it is wrapped in an Ace bandage. There must be something wrong with it.”
I looked back at him, shook my head and then started out again on the other foot, willing myself to walk up the stairs.
“You are just as pigheaded as ever,” he muttered behind me. “Probably tripped on those spiky shoes of yours. You never used to dress like a…”
I whirled around. “Like a what?” I said slowly. “Go on, say it. Like what?”
Jake raised one hand in defense. “Well, you know, like a movie star.”
I didn’t think for a second that Jake Carpenter had meant a G-rated movie star, but Nina’s reappearance precluded any further argument.
“There’re two of them,” she whispered loudly. “They’re going through all the medicine cabinets and asking Aunt Lucy a bunch of questions.” Nina rolled her eyes. “Of course, she’s not making any sense.”
I clutched the banister and hauled myself up the last steps. “Where is she?” I asked.
“In the living room. Almost everybody else left.” Nina took in my disheveled appearance, then looked behind me at Jake and started to smirk. “You don’t waste time, do you?” she whispered to me. “Damn. If my Spike wasn’t so jealous, I’d be chasing him, too!”
“I am not chasing him,” I hissed back.
“Well…” Jake said. “She did attempt to tackle me, but that’s only because her bum ankle makes her move slow.”
“Shut up, Jake!” I pushed past Nina and left her to handle him.
I could hear Aunt Lucy’s tremulous voice coming from the living room, responding to questions that were murmured in voices too low to make out clearly.
I rounded the corner into the living room just as Aunt Lucy said, “Of course I knew where he kept his pills. I was the one gave them to him before he left every day—otherwise, he might’ve forgotten.” Aunt Lucy shook her head slowly and looked at a spot on the floor in front of her feet. “Who’d have thought they wouldn’t do any good when the time came?”
“Can I help you?” I said, limping in between the two plainclothes detectives and Aunt Lucy.
They looked up, clearly startled and yet recognizing the tone, the cop voice that, while asking a question, was really making a demand. The woman, in her thirties, dumpy and overweight, rose to her feet, an attitude brewing. She was a bleached, brassy blonde in a cheap gray polyester suit. Her pumps were sensible and her stockings had a run that snaked crookedly up her left leg. She made matters worse by wearing blue eye shadow and thick black eyeliner.
“Excuse me,” she began.
“You’re excused. Now, let’s take this into the kitchen, where perhaps you can show me your search warrant and explain why this expedition is so necessary at such an inconvenient time.” I stuck out my right arm, stiff, like a crossing guard, further cutting them off from Aunt Lucy.
The guy, older, gray buzz cut, his face lined with sun and smoke wrinkles, stood up, giving the senior-officer nod to his junior partner and indicating a move to the kitchen would be better than an incident in the living room.
I trailed behind them like a cattle dog nipping at their heels, jerking my head in the direction of the living room when I spotted Nina and Jake. Nina was a little slow on the uptake, but Jake steered her past us and out of the way.
“Now,” I said when we reached the kitchen, “I’m guessing you don’t have a warrant.”
“Listen, you,” the stocky blonde said.
I looked down at her and raised an eyebrow. “So, we should add rude to your list of character defects?” Before she could answer, I turned to her partner. “I’m thinking you were thinking to get into the house while my aunt was still reeling from the grief of burying her husband. Maybe you were thinking that because she’s old and a little infirm mentally, you could take advantage of her.” I shook my head. “That makes you stupid, in addition to rude and quite possibly incompetent.”
His face reddened and the little bulldog beside him puffed out her chest and prepared to yap some more. I interrupted her before she started.
“I’ll be in touch with our lawyer. If you have some burning need to search the house, get a warrant. You could have circumvented a lot of grief by simply telling my cousin or me, straight up, what the fuck was going on and what you needed from us. Instead you busted in here and upset my aunt.”
The guy was studying me, working his jaw muscles in an attempt to calm down. He knew that if he wanted anything at all from us, he’d need to eat some dirt and try a more civilized tack.
“Okay,” he said at last. “I apologize. Sometimes we get wrapped up in the case and forget our manners.”
“You see?” I said, turning to look at the bulldog. “Wasn’t that easy?” I smiled, broad and phony. I looked down at the little woman. “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar,” I said. “Don’t worry if you don’t get that one right away—it’s like a proverb. It might require some thought to figure it all out.”
The senior officer circumvented the blonde’s next explosion by saying, “I’m Detective Slovineck and this is my partner, Detective Poltrone.”
I nodded, not offering my name. “And what is it we can do for you, Officers?”
I felt Jake step silently into the doorway. I knew he was listening and watching, ready to help should I need assistance, which I, of course, wouldn’t require even upon pain of death or arrest.
“The initial toxicology report came back on Mr. Valocchi,” he said. “Long story short, we have confirmed that this was a homicide and not an accidental death or suicide as we at first thought. Apparently he was forced to ingest his entire bottle of nitroglycerine, resulting in his death. We needed to talk to the victim’s wife about who might’ve done this and also take all the medication with us for testing by the lab.”
I felt an icy hand clutch at my heart. So Aunt Lucy was right. Uncle Benny had been murdered.
“You’re saying someone gave my uncle too much of his medicine? Maybe he just took too much. Maybe the pain was real bad and he panicked.”
Detective Slovineck shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Whoever did this crammed the entire bottle of pills under his tongue and down his throat. There were signs that your uncle struggled, bruising on his neck and defensive wounds that showed he tried to prevent what happened. That’s why we’re ruling out our initial impression that this was a suicide. We’ll wait for confirmation from the coroner’s office, of course, but that’s what it looks like now. We need the rest of his medications to give to the M.E.”
It was as if the words just wouldn’t sink into my head. Why would anyone want to hurt my uncle? I looked at the two officers, trying to put myself in their place. They would start with the most obvious suspects. They would start with Aunt Lucy, because after all, who else would stand to benefit from Uncle Benny’s death?
“Okay,” I said. “Did you get the bottles you need?”
“I got the ones in the bedroom and his bathroom,” Detective Poltrone said to Slovineck, “but she said there were more in here.” She looked around, her eyes lighting on a string of bottles that lined the windowsill behind the kitchen sink.
“You can take them,” I said, “but be sure they’re his and not hers.”
I stepped to the sink, watching as Poltrone put on a latex glove and picked the bottles up one by one, dropping them into plastic evidence bags, which were then carefully sealed and labeled.
I stepped to the door leading outside and into the driveway. I opened it wide and gestured.
“My aunt is in no condition to answer questions today,” I said. “If you want to talk to her, call tomorrow and I’ll set it up.” I paused and looked at them. “That is, as long as her attorney feels this would be appropriate.”
Detective Slovineck was staring at me again. “You on the job?” he asked.
“Was,” I said. “Garden Beach, Florida.”
He nodded, but it wasn’t collegial. It was the wary nod of an adversary sizing up the competition and finding it worthy. “You can always tell,” he muttered. “We’ll be in touch.”
I closed the door, leaned my head against the frame and sighed with relief and fatigue.
“That honey-and-vinegar thing,” I heard Jake say behind me, “you know, it works both ways.”
I closed my eyes, lifted my head a couple of inches and banged it slowly against the door frame. Why was that man still here? This was quickly followed by another thought. I turned around and faced Jake.
“Aunt Lucy said you were the one who found my uncle,” I said. “He was at your shop, wasn’t he?”
Jake nodded, waiting for me to continue.
“I know about the money he gave you, too,” I said.
I didn’t have to say another word. Jake’s eyes smoldered with barely suppressed rage. He knew where I was heading. He stared at me for one long moment, then turned away, disgust clearly written all over his face. I heard the sounds of his footsteps moving through the living room and into the narrow foyer hallway. A moment later I heard the soft slam of Aunt Lucy’s front door.
Chapter 5
I awoke the next morning in my old bed, surrounded by cabbage-rose wallpaper and the faint scent of cedar. For a moment I was disoriented. Nothing seemed familiar. As I stared around the room, my eyes brought the angled ceiling into focus, and I remembered everything with a skidding ache that seemed to drain the world of color and promise.
Lloyd was gone. The indentation at the foot of the bed where he’d slept was cool to the touch. I fumbled with my watch and saw that morning was quickly slipping away. The sound of murmured voices rose from the first floor as I headed into the bathroom. How had I managed to sleep for so long?
I hastily pulled on my jeans and T-shirt and started down the stairs. My body responded by sending out dual throbbing drumbeats of pain, one from my ankle and the other from my hungover head.
“Idiot,” I muttered to myself. I eased slowly down the steps, listening to the sound of Aunt Lucy’s voice growing louder as I approached the first floor. She was in the kitchen talking to someone.
“I know you’re inside that dog,” she said. “There’s no sense trying to hide from me. I’m a big girl and I can handle change.”
I reached the doorway just as Aunt Lucy turned away from the stove, a plate of eggs and bacon in her hand. Her white curls stood out like runaway corkscrews. She was wearing a faded pink floral housecoat, fluffy pink bunny slippers and a blue silk scarf knotted like a bandit’s mask around her neck.
Lloyd the dog sat at the kitchen table wearing one of my uncle’s fishing hats. When I stepped into the room he looked up at me and sighed. He was probably thinking I’d arrived to rescue him, but was ambivalent because Aunt Lucy was approaching him with the plate of food.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s Lloyd doing wearing Uncle Benny’s hat?”
Aunt Lucy put the plate down in front of Lloyd and beamed up at me. “Well, honey, maybe you’d better have a cup of coffee first.” She peered at me, stepping closer and sniffing suspiciously. “And a couple of aspirin, too, I’ll wager. You got into the liquor cabinet last night, didn’t you?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She was back at the stove, opening a cabinet and reaching for the pill bottle.
“Yep, your uncle here was bad to drink now and again, weren’t you, honey?” she said.
Her back was to us, so I figured I’d misheard her. I looked over at Lloyd. Aunt Lucy had put the Yellow Pages on the kitchen chair so Lloyd could reach the table at a proper height. He sat there, his shaggy black-and-white spotted fur gleaming in the brightly lit kitchen, wearing Uncle Benny’s hat without complaint and wolfing down the plate of eggs as fast as he could go. After all, it wasn’t every day a dog got this kind of treatment.
Lloyd looked up and met my gaze for a fraction of a second. He was grinning.
“Aunt Lucy, Lloyd doesn’t need to sit up at the table. He’s fine to eat from the floor. In fact, I’m gonna run out and get him some dog food in just a little bit—”
Aunt Lucy interrupted me. “No! Don’t do that! Don’t you know anything?”
She stomped over and placed a thick mug filled to the brim with coffee in front of me. The coffee sloshed, spilling onto the table, but Aunt Lucy didn’t notice. She was gazing at Lloyd with a fond, loving expression on her face.
“Aunt Lucy, that’s Lloyd. He’s my dog, remember?”
I said the words slowly, making sure they had time to sink in just in case she needed a new prescription for her glasses.
Aunt Lucy leaned over and patted me on the back. “That’s what they’d have us think,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “But I know better, and so do you.”
She slipped into a chair beside Lloyd and stroked one of his paws. Lloyd growled softly, afraid she was going to undo his sudden good fortune.
“Oh, you poor, dear sweetie,” she said with a light giggle. “You always did like your food, now, didn’t you?”
Her face clouded over for a second. “You know, that was part of your problem. You ate all those things that weren’t good for you, like Vienna sausage and potted meat.” She gripped Lloyd’s paw a little tighter and stared right into his big, brown doggie eyes. “That’s turkey bacon you’re eating, you know,” she said. “You can’t even tell the difference, can you?”
I took a long pull on my coffee and tried to figure out an approach to dealing with Aunt Lucy. Surely to goodness, Glenn Ford had grown enough to include at least one psychiatrist.
“Yep,” I said as I leaned back in my chair and stretched, attempting to appear very casual about Aunt Lucy’s sudden departure from reality. “Old Lloyd’s a good dog.”
I stressed the word dog. Aunt Lucy turned away from Lloyd for a second and focused on me.
“Let’s not be too concrete,” she said, her voice tightening. “Do you or do you not believe in reincarnation?”
My head was pounding. This was going to be another long day.
“Well, I, um, I guess I never really gave it too much thought, Aunt Lucy. You know, with us being Catholic, I sort of figured the Blessed Virgin story was enough to handle without actually venturing into the afterlife and all.”
Aunt Lucy released Lloyd’s paw and brought both hands down hard on the table. “Horse pucky!” she said in a loud, firm tone.
“Horse pucky, the part about the Blessed Virgin?” I asked, knowing with a certainty that this was not at all what she meant.
“Stella Luna Maria Valocchi,” Aunt Lucy said, “you know exactly what I mean! Wake up and smell the coffee! This is the twenty-first century. Get with the program!” Aunt Lucy gestured in Lloyd’s direction. “Don’t tell me you don’t know who that is! Look in his eyes and tell me that isn’t your uncle Benny.”
Aunt Lucy sighed and reached for Lloyd’s paw again. He was finished eating, so he licked her fingers, either thanking her or looking for forgotten food morsels. To Aunt Lucy it was a sign from the great beyond.
“You see!” she cried triumphantly. “He always kissed me after he ate!”
Behind us someone snorted softly. Nina, her hair looking exactly as it had yesterday, wild and unkempt, stood framed in the doorway. Her mascara was smeared into raccoon rings of thick black around her bloodshot blue eyes, giving her a decidedly dangerous appearance.
“You see?” she muttered as she passed behind my chair on her way to the coffee pot. “Like a loon.”
I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. Clearly I had done something terrible to piss God off to this extent. What other reason could there be for leaving me here in my aunt’s kitchen, the sudden defender of the Catholic faith?
“Well, Aunt Lucy,” I began, “I don’t know about the afterlife. I mean, I don’t think none of us can say for certain what happens, but I’ve known Lloyd for about a year now, and in all that time, he’s always been a dog.”
Nina had poured her coffee and was leaning against the counter, just out of Aunt Lucy’s sight, rolling her eyes. Lloyd moaned softly and let loose with a thick doggie belch.
“You see?” Aunt Lucy said. “Benny always had the heartburn.”
Nina was shaking her head and making circular coo-coo motions with her left index finger. I ignored her and turned my attention back to Aunt Lucy’s mental status. Aunt Lucy could not be crazy, at least not permanently.
“You know,” I said, ready to try again, “I don’t think Uncle Benny would come back so quick. I mean, isn’t there some sort of waiting period, like an orientation process? Besides, Lloyd has his own soul. What would happen to it if Uncle Benny took over? Don’t they reincarnate you into a new body, you know, so you start with a clean slate?”
Aunt Lucy frowned, then with a sudden quick motion, reached across the table and slapped me upside my head.
“Is that what your Uncle Benny paid that college for? So you could come out with a closed mind? Think a little, Stella! That dog and your uncle ain’t so very different. They are of like minds. Didn’t you ever hear of that phenomenon before? Like minds, where two think as one? That’s how come they can accommodate so many people in so few bodies! It’s your communal unconscious. I saw it on the Discovery channel.”
Aunt Lucy grinned. “I hope I come back as a kitty,” she said, giving Lloyd a flirty look. “Then your uncle Benny here can chase me around the house. Just like the old days, eh, honey?” She laughed until tears flowed down her cheeks.
I didn’t know what to do. Nina certainly wasn’t going to be of any help. Hell, she was what, twenty years old? I had no doubt she’d be on the next plane back to L.A. Aunt Lucy was clearly non-compos mentis, or at least temporarily out to lunch. And Lloyd was currently very content to masquerade as my uncle.
I took a deep breath and decided to ignore the reincarnation delusion for the time being.
“Aunt Lucy,” I said, “we need to make sure all of Uncle Benny’s affairs are in order. You know, make sure he gave you power of attorney, get the will probated and take care of the paperwork part of all this….” I let my voice trail off for a second, then continued. “I’d be glad to help you with it if you want.” Hell, in her current state, she might decide Lloyd would make all the decisions.
Before she could answer, I jumped in. “I doubt Lloyd can read, and anyway, Uncle Benny’s got enough stress just getting used to his new life. The least we can do is sort out the details.”
Aunt Lucy smiled softly. “It’s all right if you don’t believe me, Stella,” she said. “You’re a good girl. You remind me of your uncle the way you take care of me.” Her eyes softened and filled with unshed tears. “I would appreciate it if you would look things over, just so you and your uncle’s executor can be on the same page about everything. Benny’s papers are in the desk in the study.” She glanced at Lloyd, then back at me. “Oh, and Stella?”
“Yeah, Aunt Lucy?”
“Even a moron knows dogs can’t read! There are limitations, you know. Reincarnation doesn’t mean a dog suddenly has superpowers. What do you think I am, nuts?”
With this, Aunt Lucy stood up and walked back to her place by the stove. “Sit down and quit making them faces, Nina,” she said, reaching over to smack her with a wooden spoon. “You think I couldn’t see your reflection in the toaster?”
Nina scurried out of Aunt Lucy’s reach, slid into a chair at the table and buried her face in the morning paper.
“I’m making eggs and turkey bacon,” Aunt Lucy said. “Any objections?” Neither of us said a word. “Good,” she said. “Then later, Nina, you can do the dishes while Stella looks over your uncle’s papers. I’m taking Benny fishing.”
Lloyd looked at me and grinned, clearly pleased with his new life.
“You’d better watch it,” I warned him in a whisper. “What goes around comes around. Don’t get all cocky—this is temporary.”
Nina raised her head and looked at the two of us. “What? She’s got you talking to the dog now?”
I made a face at Nina and turned back to my coffee. I was making a mental to-do list: sort out Uncle Benny’s legal affairs so Aunt Lucy could understand them and run her life. Take Aunt Lucy to a psychiatrist so she could tell real from imaginary, and find out what kind of maniac would murder a kindly old man like my uncle. The other, less pressing questions could get sorted out later—like why I always picked the wrong men and what I should do with the rest of my life.
Dorothy had it all mixed up when she told Toto “There’s no place like home.” What she meant to say was, “Home is no place to go crawling back to,” or in the words of that old-guy poet, “Your ass can’t go home again, ’cause even home doesn’t stay the same.”
Chapter 6
I stood in the ancient bathtub upstairs for what seemed like hours, drowning myself in an endless stream of hot water, waiting for the others to leave. I couldn’t face the piles of legal mumbo jumbo and manage the continuing circus of Aunt Lucy’s delusions and Nina’s attitude at the same time, so I hid out like a coward and waited for them to leave.
I heard Nina stomp up the narrow staircase, stop outside the bathroom door and call my name softly. I ignored her. A moment later Aunt Lucy yelled out. “I found the car keys, honey. Let’s go! The fish don’t bite after noon, you know!”
Nina groaned and stomped back down the steps, her platform heels tapping out a rough, staccato warning that she was not at all pleased with her new duties as Aunt Lucy’s keeper and chauffeur. A moment later the door slammed and the house was left in abrupt, welcome silence. I shut off the water, pulled back the shower curtain and stepped out onto the bath mat, wrapping a thick pink towel around my body and enjoying my sudden freedom.
I was toweling off my hair in front of the bedroom mirror when I heard them return. The back door opened, footsteps crossed the kitchen floor and below me I could hear someone moving through the downstairs.
“Probably forgot her stud collar,” I muttered to myself. “Or sunscreen for her tattoos.” I smiled at the mental image of ultrahip Nina trapped in a Jon boat with Aunt Lucy and the newly reincarnated Uncle Benny.
I walked to the top of the stairs and was about to call out when I heard the heavy crash of metal upon glass. A male voice swore, words I couldn’t hear clearly, and my heart leaped to my throat. I spun around, stepped back into the bedroom and grabbed my Glock up from its resting place on the bedside table. I scanned the room, double-checking. There was one phone in the house and it was downstairs in the kitchen. My cell phone was out in the car.
I sighed and slowly started down the steps. No call to 911. No backup.
“One in the chamber, twelve in the magazine and intruders in the house. No problem,” I reassured myself.
I crept down the stairs, around the corner and stopped at the end of the long hallway. They were in my uncle’s study, working quickly, pulling out drawers and rifling through papers.
Fucking predators, I thought. Must’ve read the obituary, must’ve watched the house waiting for her to leave. Jesus!