“Kick-ass competence and comedy are a match made in heaven, when the author is Nancy Bartholomew!”

—Jill M. Smith, Romantic Times BOOKClub Magazine

“Stella! Wait!” Pete cried. “Honey, really, come inside. Let’s talk about this.”

I saw Lou Ann behind Pete, hastily pulling on her jeans and hopping around on one leg. She was panicked, and that made me perversely happy. I put the car into neutral and opened the driver’s side door. Pete looked hopeful, probably thinking that with just the right approach he could smooth the entire thing over.

“Well,” I said. “I guess you’d better pick one of us. Are you ready to start over, too?”

Pete looked puzzled, but Lloyd, the black-and-white-spotted mutt, bounded down the steps and leaped into the car.

“Pete?” I said, my voice a sweet coo of encouragement.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Bite my smooth tender ass!”

With that, Lloyd and I drove away.

Dear Reader,

We’re thrilled to bring you another exhilarating month of captivating women and explosive action! Our Bombshell heroines will take you for the ride of your life as they come under fire from all directions. With lives at stake and emotions on edge, these women stand and deliver memorable stories that will keep you riveted from cover to cover.

When the going gets tough, feisty Stella Valocchi gets going, in Stella, Get Your Gun, by Nancy Bartholomew. Her boyfriend’s a lying rat, her uncle's been murdered and her sexy ex is back in town, but trust Stella—compared to last week, things are looking up….

Loyal CIA agent Samantha St. John has been locked up—for treason! With the reluctant help of her wary partner, Sam will hunt for the real traitor—who bears an uncanny resemblance to Sam herself—in Double-Cross, by Meredith Fletcher, the latest adventure in the twelve-book ATHENA FORCE continuity series.

Don’t miss the twists and turns as a former operative is sucked back into the spy life to right the wrongs done to her family, in author Natalie Dunbar’s exciting thriller, Private Agenda.

And finally, a secret agent needs a break—but when her final mission goes wrong, she’s pushed to the limit and has to take on a rookie partner. Luckily she’s still got her deadliest weapon…it’s Killer Instinct, by Cindy Dees.

When it comes to excitement, we’re pulling no punches! Please send me your comments c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279.

Sincerely,

Natashya Wilson

Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Bombshell

Stella, Get Your Gun
Nancy Bartholomew

www.millsandboon.co.uk

NANCY BARTHOLOMEW

didn’t seem like the Bombshell type at first. Sure, she grew up in Philadelphia, but she was a gentle minister’s daughter. Sometimes, though, true wildness simmers just below the surface. Nancy started singing country music in biker bars before she graduated from high school. (And yes, her dad was there, sitting in the front row, watching over his little girl!) She graduated from college with a degree in psychology and promptly moved into the inner city, where she found work dragging addicted inner-city teenagers into drug and alcohol rehabilitation. She then moved south to Atlanta and worked as the director of a substance abuse treatment program for court-ordered offenders. Then Nancy turned to the final frontier…parenthood. This drove her to writing. Now Nancy lives in North Carolina, rides with the police on a regular basis, raises two hooligan teenage boys, and tries to keep up with her writing, her psychotherapy practice and her garden. She hopes you’ll love her “daughter,” Stella Valocchi, and thanks you from the bottom of her heart for reading this book.

For Marti

Mentor, Midwife, True Blue Friend

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 1

In retrospect, perhaps kidnapping Lloyd was a bad idea, not that I regret it. I most certainly do not regret kidnapping Lloyd. It improved both our lives, and I can say that in all honesty, even if my law-enforcement career and reputation have gone straight to the dogs. Before Lloyd, my life was in the toilet, so anything short of the sewer is an improvement. I know what you’re thinking—how can a woman feel her life is on the upswing when she’s just been shot at, arrested and thrown in jail? Trust me, compared to last week, life is most definitely looking up.

Last week I was just a junior patrol officer looking to make detective. All I wanted was my shot at the big time, and thanks to “Needle Nose” Robanski, I thought I was about to realize this lifelong ambition.

Needle Nose was on a one-man crime spree somewhere in Garden Beach, Florida. He had a nasty knack for waylaying exotic dancers, beating them beyond recognition and then finishing the job with a filet knife. I figured I was going to be the one to catch him. I guess I just didn’t realize it would take more than a bottle of blond hair dye, stiletto heels and a fake leather loincloth to do the job. Undercover police work takes conviction. You have to sell yourself in your perp’s world. You have to be one of them and not just pass as a cheap imitation. So I was out there, selling myself, the night old Needle Nose made his appearance.

The manager of the Solitaire Gentleman’s Club, Alfonso Lewis, wasn’t too pleased with my performance. He kept calling my sergeant and complaining I was bad for business, that I had no “customer service orientation.” I ask you, did you ever try to conceal a microphone in a padded bra the size of a postage stamp? Do you know what it feels like to have a hard plastic button nibbling away at your right boob while you’re simultaneously bending down to deliver a drink and trying to keep some jerk’s hand from slipping between your legs?

It was a challenge, but I handled it because I was a professional, and because I wanted Needle Nose Robanski almost as much as I wanted the promotion that catching him would ensure.

My partner, Lou Ann Ross, called in sick that night, so the sergeant sent a rookie to man the surveillance van in the parking lot. He didn’t send just any rookie, either; he sent Leon. Leon was twenty-one, maybe five foot six and weighed in at just under 130 pounds. He’d been with a training coach for three solid rotations before someone finally stuck him on our squad and warned us not to give him anything too important to do. Leon was a hair away from unemployment, and I was his last shot at redemption.

When I saw him pull up, I could only assume that catching Needle Nose must not have been too important to the Garden Beach Police Department. Covering my ass must’ve ranked up there with mundane chores like dispensing parking tickets. Maybe sending Leon was the department’s way of saying that our undercover operation wasn’t paying off. Needle Nose Robanski wasn’t taking the bait and had probably left town.

Still, when I stepped out onto the loading dock of the club a little after 1:00 a.m., I assumed Leon had me covered. I needed a break. I’d just come close to committing a vicious assault of my own, and had Alfonso not been tailing me like a bird dog, I might’ve gotten away with more than just teaching my nasty little customer a few things about respect and anatomy.

I slipped out the back door, shutting it firmly behind me, and paused to catch my breath. “Leon,” I said softly, believing he was secure in his listening post across the lot, “I’m taking a break. I’m gonna sit in my car and eat a sandwich.”

I stood there for another moment or two, scanning the lot, and then headed down the steps. It was a beautiful fall night, with a clear sky and bright stars. Living on the Florida Panhandle was heaven to a displaced Yankee. I let myself relax a little. I got careless and that was all it took. Needle Nose caught me off guard just as I inserted the key into the driver’s side door. He slammed me into the hard metal of my car and clamped his thick hand over my mouth.

“Don’t fucking move or I’ll cut you,” he said. To make sure I took him seriously, he jabbed the tip of his knife into my side, the cold metal nicking my bare skin and drawing a thin trickle of blood.

A surge of adrenaline hit me, dead center in my chest, sucking my heart up into my throat. This was it, the real thing, the moment I’d trained for—a face-to-face encounter with a bad guy.

Needle Nose was huge compared to me. He must’ve outweighed me by seventy pounds and had a good eight inches on my five feet four inches. To make matters worse, he had bad breath and a weapon. I would’ve given anything for my Glock.

I waited for Leon, hoping he’d left the tape running in the camera and on the recorder. I listened hard for the sound of the van door opening but heard nothing. Needle Nose pulled me back against his chest, one arm wrapped around my neck while his other hand held the knife against my exposed skin. He twisted away from the vehicle and began moving toward the Dumpster, half pushing and half dragging me with him.

I knew what would come next; I’d read all the reports. It was always the same M.O. He would take me behind the trash bin, slit my clothes off, rape me, beat me and then cut me beyond all recognition. Good thing I had the full support of the Garden Beach Police Department behind me; otherwise, I might’ve been in trouble.

When Needle Nose rounded the trash bin, I decided not to count on backup. It was time to make my move. Unfortunately, he made his move first. He slipped his knife up behind my bra strap and sliced it cleanly before I could react or even really process what he’d done. It was too late to stop and regroup; I was already taking action, faking a stumble to the left. His knife hand flew out to the side as he cut the strap. He was forced to try to grab me with his left hand.

I used his own momentum to duck back under him, grabbing his wrist as I went, twisting and jerking his arm up as hard as I could. I was rewarded with the sound of ripping tendons and ligaments, followed by a sharp scream of pain as Needle Nose fell forward and I landed on top of him.

I hung on to his thick wrist as he bucked like a bronco. I was riding him and trying to drive the heel of my stiletto into his knife hand when Leon finally materialized.

“Stop!” he cried in his squeaky adolescent voice. “Garden Beach Police! Stop or I’ll shoot!”

But Needle Nose never heard him. As Leon arrived, the sharp point of my heel had connected with the meaty flesh of his underarm, sinking in with a sickening squish that forced Needle Nose to drop the knife. Blood began to rain down on the two of us as I fought to control him. The guy wouldn’t quit. If anything, he fought harder, but then, so did I.

I lurched forward, grabbed Needle Nose by his stringy hair, jerked his head back and then, with a force I didn’t know I had, slammed his face into the concrete slab beneath us. His head connected with a sickening thud that seemed to knock the fight right out of him. I smiled as Needle Nose gave up, his body shuddering into an involuntary surrender.

I was a little disappointed when he didn’t rally. My energy was still in fight-to-survive mode and I didn’t want to stop, not yet at least. I was in touch with my violent side and I was thinking I liked it. I was thinking I’d come a long way from the mousy little girl who joined the academy on a dare. I was riding the crest of an adrenaline high, and finally I was one with Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone and Demi Moore. This was good versus evil. This was karma delivering a massive dose of cosmic justice. This was my life…and I loved it.

“Are you all right?” Leon was staring at me, his face frozen in a terrified grimace of bravado and something else I couldn’t quite read. He didn’t make a move to help me, just stared, mouth open and eyes wide.

“Leon, why are you just standing there? Quit pointing the gun at me and help me cuff the son of a bitch!”

Leon’s face was scarlet. He lowered his weapon, tried to reach for the handcuffs and struggled without success for thirty seconds.

“Put the gun in your holster, then take out the handcuffs,” I said, feeling the impatience rising to the point of boiling over. “You did call for backup, right?” I demanded.

“Backup?” He sounded as if he were repeating a foreign language.

“Yeah, you know, where they send some help to take this dirtbag to jail?”

Leon had the cuffs now and handed them to me, turning his head aside as he did so. “Yeah, I’ll do that right now.” He started to key his mike, leaving me to try to cuff a now writhing Needle Nose all by myself.

“Leon?” I said.

“Yeah?” He looked back at me for a second, then down at the ground like a schoolkid.

“Would you mind securing the suspect’s weapon first, then helping me get the bracelets on before you call?”

Leon lurched forward and grabbed the knife from the ground. Once he’d tossed it out of harm’s way, he grabbed the suspect’s bleeding arm and jerked it awkwardly in my direction, his head averted as if touching the wounded man was extremely distasteful.

“Leon,” I said, “watch what you’re doing! What is wrong with you?”

I started to swing my leg off of Needle Nose and pull him up, but Leon was too close, hovering over me like a forty-pound baby robin.

“Ma’am?” he said, his voice even squeakier than before.

“What is it, Leon?”

“Um, do you know that you’re naked?” he asked.

I looked down, saw the girls flying free in the night air and remembered Needle Nose’s deft handiwork.

I looked back at Leon. “Is that a problem for you, Leon?” I said. “Because I am fully aware of that fact and will attend to it once we have secured the suspect.”

He gulped. I pushed up and tried to stand, pulling a screaming, bleeding Needle Nose along with me. Leon attempted to help, but accidentally tripped me in his attempt not to look at my tits.

That is how I wound up in the examining room next to Needle Nose at the Bay County Medical Center.

“It’s only a sprain,” the doctor said. “Keep it wrapped and you’ll be back to normal in a week.” He looked at Leon’s uniform shirt, buttons straining across my chest, and then back at the clipboard he held out in front of him.

“So this was an undercover thing, huh?” he said.

“No, Doc,” I answered. “I always wear a loincloth with my shirt. It makes it so I can run faster and leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

He glanced back at me, or rather at my breasts, and swallowed. “You need anything for pain?”

“They don’t,” I said, “and my foot’s fine, too.”

His face reddened and he left without another word.

“Stella,” my sergeant said, “why’d you do that? He’s only a kid.”

I looked at the sergeant and grinned. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I just couldn’t help myself. Did you see how red his face got?”

The sergeant rolled his eyes. “Stella, you gotta work the public-relations angle here. What’s Pete gonna say when I tell him how you acted?”

That got my attention. “You’re not going to tell Pete, Randy,” I said. “I’m serious. He doesn’t need to hear about tonight from anybody but me, okay? Let me tell him myself.”

The sergeant sighed. “Stella, I gotta work with the man. You only gotta live with him. He’ll go easy on you, but me, I gotta cover my ass. How’s it gonna look, me letting you get hurt on your first undercover gig, huh? Besides, it’ll be all over the department by tomorrow. You can’t keep a thing like this quiet. I’m putting you in for a commendation.”

I frowned. “I don’t want a commendation, Randy—I want to make detective.”

Randy rubbed the five-o’clock shadow that made his already dark skin seem three shades darker. “You gotta be patient, Stella. You’ve only been with the department, what, four years?”

I nodded, feeling a knot tighten in my stomach. It was the good-old-boy system that kept me and Randy from getting ahead and he and I both knew it. It had nothing to do with time in or how well you performed.

“Just try, all right, Randy?” He nodded and held the door open while I hobbled out. “Leon brought your car over,” he said, and handed me the keys.

“Oh, great! You let him drive it?”

Randy smiled. “Stella, you gotta have more patience with Leon. He’ll get the hang of it sooner or later. Besides,” he added, “Leon was the only guy left on the squad tonight. We’re short-staffed. I had no other option. I never thought this—”

“Don’t worry about it, Randy. I know you were doing the best you could.”

I hadn’t told him about Leon and I wasn’t going to—nope, that was something I was saving for a personal face-to-face with the rookie.

“All right,” I said. “Whatever. Just don’t call Pete. Let me go home and tell him myself. Maybe I can make him see it in a positive light. I’ll tell him I tripped.”

“Stella,” Randy warned, “he’s the best officer in the department. He’s gonna find out.”

“Yeah, but maybe I can cushion the blow for him first.” I grinned. “That is one of the benefits of the job, you know. I get to keep the loincloth, and the girls at the club taught me a couple of moves I didn’t even know were physically possible. Maybe I can try my act out on Pete and he’ll—”

“Stella,” Randy said, “just go home and stay off your foot! I don’t want to see you back at work for a week, okay?”

“My plan exactly,” I said, and grinned at him as if I really meant it.

You gotta get up early to fool a cop like Pete O’Brian. He had a nose for trouble and would spot a lie a million miles away. I had to be more than a little clever.

I plotted Pete’s ambush the entire way home. He’d be asleep, naked like always, and I’d take him by surprise, slipping between the sheets, running my tongue all over his sexy, strong body. What man could resist a little midnight rendezvous?

I could tell him about Needle Nose later, and then he could strut around and tell me how he should’ve been there to take care of me. I could act as if I really needed him to save me from myself, which might not be too much of an act given the night’s events. I could even play the whole thing down, so he wouldn’t get jealous. I knew Pete would be just a little bit jealous. He always wanted to be the hero. One day I might break him of it, but not now. For now, I’d just keep training, honing my skills and trying to keep Pete from ever realizing that I was getting to be one hell of a cop. He’d come to accept me as an equal, maybe, one day, just not now.

I shook the negative feelings off and drove. I had the next couple of hours all planned by the time I turned into the trailer park. Pete might not like assertive, even aggressive, females on the job, but in bed it challenged him. Sex with Pete was great.

I cut the lights, turned off the engine and coasted to a stop in front of our single-wide trailer. Pete loved surprises, especially naked, under-the-covers surprises. Well, he was going to see a new side of me tonight, all right, the blond exotic-dancer temptress was on her way to blow his mind in a way he wouldn’t soon forget.

Too bad my partner, Lou Ann, beat me to it.

I saw her car sitting on the pad next to Pete’s Jeep. Had she heard about Needle Nose and come to tell Pete? I hopped out of the Camaro and let the door shut quietly behind me while I fumbled for my house key. She could have listened to the scanner and heard about me being hurt. She came over to reassure Pete and wait for me, I told myself, but the explanation didn’t quite fit. In the first place, why would Lou Ann and Pete wait for me in the dark? Secondly, Lloyd was sitting on the stoop and there was only one reason why Lloyd ever sat outside on the stoop.

I walked slowly across the grass to the trailer, my heart pounding hard against my chest. There was a very dim light flickering in the master bedroom. As I drew closer, the not so gentle shaking of the trailer walls crumbled my frail tower of denial.

I walked up to Lloyd and patted him on the head. He looked up at me with huge brown sympathetic dog eyes and whined.

“I share your pain,” I whispered. “Is this why your real mom left?”

Lloyd licked my hand and looked away. I’d struck a nerve. We both knew, in our heart of hearts, that the only reason Pete kept the little black-and-white spotted mutt around was that he hoped maybe one day Tracy would come back for him. He never said as much, but you could tell. It was all in the way he ignored the dog but refused to get rid of him, or in the way he sighed sometimes and said, “Tracy used to…” Before now, I’d prayed Tracy never returned to claim her prize. Now I realized why she’d left in such a hurry, never to return.

Lloyd whined again, reclaiming my attention by butting his head against my leg. The only time Lloyd camped out on the back steps was when Pete and I had sex. Lloyd’s nerves couldn’t take it. He always tried to jump up on the bed and rescue us from ourselves. This distraction seriously irritated Pete, so Lloyd got shoved unceremoniously out the back door, where he waited with an almost unbearable level of trembling separation anxiety.

“You’re a good boy, Lloyd,” I said, and bent to pet him again. “Now you stay here and let me handle this.” Only I didn’t have any idea of what I was going to do, or how I was going to deal with my partner and my boyfriend betraying me. It was one thing to stay tough on the outside, but inside I was shaking harder than Lloyd.

I slipped into the kitchen, padding barefoot across the floor in an attempt to catch them unaware. This stealth was completely unnecessary. You could’ve driven a truck through the quaking trailer and not disturbed Pete and Lou Ann. When I reached the doorway, he had her up on all fours in the center of our bed. Her enormous breasts swung back and forth as he hung on to her hips, driving into her with everything he had.

“You’ve been a bad little girl, haven’t you?” he snarled, slapping her fat butt with a loud crack.

Lou Ann was pleading. “No, Daddy, don’t spank little Lou Ann!”

“Bad girl!” Pete cried, and brought his hand down again with a sharp smack. “Bad, bad girl!”

“Oh, I’d say she isn’t the only bad kid in the classroom,” I said.

They jumped apart, Pete shoving Lou Ann so hard she collapsed in front of him with a gasp and had to struggle to flip back over.

I don’t know when I pulled the gun out of my pocketbook. All I know is, I was standing there and it was in my hand, and the violent side of me was in complete control again.

“I wouldn’t move,” I said, when Pete appeared to be considering it. “Really.”

I aimed and put the first bullet into the wall beside his head.

Pete froze and put his hands out in front of his body like a traffic cop. “All right, baby, all right. Now, just calm down. I can explain.”

“Fuck you, Pete!” I said. “You can’t explain fucking my partner any more than Lou Ann here can explain fucking my boyfriend, can you, honey?” I put the second bullet into the mattress six inches away from her thick left thigh and was rewarded with a terrified shriek.

“How long have you two been meeting like this?” I asked, trying to recall all of Lou Ann’s recent sick days.

“Baby, I swear, this was the first time!” Pete said. “Now baby, really…” He started to shift toward me, and I lifted the gun, aiming it dead center at his chest.

“Do you feel like trying me, sweetheart?” I asked. “Because I don’t care if you do. Dead is dead, but I’m thinking I just might take the family jewels instead. Wouldn’t that give you a little more to think about? Wouldn’t that be just the right thing for this particular occasion?” I lowered the gun a few millimeters and smiled as his balls shrank up behind his already invisible penis. “Bad boy,” I murmured. “Bad, bad boy!”

I looked over at Lou Ann for a fraction of a second, knowing Pete would make a move if he found an opening. “So, you tell Dave and the kids you’re fucking Pete, or did you save that for me to do?” I asked her.

Lou Ann’s face paled. “Oh, Stella, don’t do that!” she cried.

I could feel my body begin to tremble with rage and grief. I couldn’t stay in the trailer too much longer or I really would hurt somebody, like maybe myself.

“So what did I do to deserve this, Pete?” I said, looking back at him, never moving the Glock from its target.

“Baby, you didn’t have a thing to do with this….” he began.

“Damn straight, I didn’t,” I said. “And I never will, not ever again.” I backed up a step. “That’s the trouble with weak men,” I said. “They can’t handle strong women. You and Lou Ann ought to be perfect for each other.”

I kept walking backward, keeping Pete in my sights, daring him to leave the bed before I turned and walked out of his life forever. I took in every detail of the room, memorizing everything, the way Pete and Lou Ann looked together naked, the way the sheets and blankets puddled in a heap at the foot of the bed, the fear in Lou Ann’s eyes and the blank look on Pete’s face. I was forcing myself to commit the unthinkable to memory so that I would never, ever be tempted by Pete’s charm to forgive him and start over. No, this was a lesson I was going to learn and never need to repeat, a lesson I’d somehow forgotten to learn from other lovers in the past and one that was almost killing me now.

I felt the shaking begin to get worse as I closed the kitchen door behind me and stepped out onto the stoop. I almost tripped over Lloyd in my hurry to get down the stairs and escape before anything worse could happen.

He yipped as I squashed his paw and stared up at me with his huge dark eyes.

“You were trying to tell me, weren’t you?” I said as I passed him.

I kept on going, crossing the dry, crunchy grass and half-running toward the car. I jumped in, started the engine and threw the car into Drive as Pete appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“Stella! Wait!” he cried.

I put my foot on the accelerator, lurched forward, pulling even with the back steps, then stomped on the brakes.

“Honey, really, come on inside. Let’s talk about this,” he said. “Come on, Stel, where are you going to go, huh? Come on, baby.”

I saw a flash of Lou Ann behind him, hastily pulling on her jeans and hopping around on one leg. She was panicked; I knew that much, and that made me perversely happy.

I put the car into Neutral and opened the driver’s side door. Pete looked hopeful, probably thinking that with just the right approach he could smooth the entire thing over.

“Well,” I said. “I guess you’d better pick one of us. Tracy left you. She’s never coming back. Are you going to keep on waiting for a miracle, or are you ready to start over, too?”

Pete looked puzzled, then almost relieved, but it was Lloyd who never wavered. He bounded down off the steps, crossed the yard and leaped into the car with a joyful bound of doggy delight.

“Pete?” I said, my voice a sweet coo of encouragement.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Bite my smooth, tender ass!”

With that, Lloyd and I drove away, laying rubber down the narrow trailer park road, screeching out onto the main drive and flying away from Pete and Lou Ann as fast as we could, the cool night air slapping our faces and drying the tears that for some reason lasted only a few minutes.

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?”

“Nothing,” I whispered. “I didn’t know.”

Chapter 3

It was a lovely funeral. Strange, but nonetheless beautiful. The only hint of a hitch came when Aunt Lucy said she wanted Uncle Benny propped up in the casket for the viewing, but between the more sensible cousins and the funeral home director, calmer heads had prevailed.

The funeral director explained that they couldn’t prop Uncle Benny up in the casket, that certain natural events would occur to make this impossible, so Aunt Lucy gave in and went standard on the visitation. But she did manage to insist that Uncle Benny be dressed in his fishing vest and lure hat.

“I want people to remember him like he was, not like he is,” she said, and her voice cracked just slightly, letting us all know that if we pushed it, she’d lose it.

Nina leaned over and muttered in my ear. “Too bad you couldn’t get here any sooner,” she said. “Aunt Lucy actually wanted to bury Uncle Benny in his Jon boat. It took some doing to talk her out of that one, I’ll tell you!” She looked over at Aunt Lucy and smiled innocently, then turned back to me. “She’s lost it, Stella. Ever since the stroke, she’s been loopy.”

I looked at my aunt, trying to do an assessment of her mental capacities. She looked just as she always had, only older. She had always been a small butterball of energy and enthusiasm. Uncle Benny’s death had stifled that, but had a stroke made her crazy? I was reluctant to believe that.

“She’s got some strange ideas, Stella,” Nina continued. “I mean, sure, she’s always had strange ideas, but I mean really weird stuff. She thinks she’s the next Einstein or something. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I mean, she can’t live on her own—she’s too nuts to handle the bills, let alone drive or take care of herself!”

Aunt Lucy stopped talking to the funeral director, glared at Nina and said, “I heard that, young lady! I don’t think anybody who runs off with a rock musician and gets certain intimate portions of her anatomy pierced has much room to be calling the kettle black.”

The room fell silent as everyone turned their attention toward the object of Aunt Lucy’s displeasure. Nina’s face turned scarlet, her chin inched up a defiant two inches and she stalked off, her spiky pink-and-blond hair waving like a midsummer wheat field in Iowa.

“You know what her problem is?” Aunt Lucy said. “She moved to California. Them people out there just ain’t right. One day that entire part of the continent is gonna fall right off into the ocean. Then where will they be, huh? That’s right. Reno, Nevada’s gonna be prime oceanfront property—you mark my words.”

I looked over at Uncle Benny. He was lying in a gunmetal-gray casket, his favorite Garcia rod tucked into the satin padding beside him. His hat was listing drunkenly to one side, and there was a lipstick smear on his right cheek from where Aunt Lucy had kissed him goodbye. At the foot of the casket was a shiny red metal cooler loaded with gleaming cans of ice-cold Budweiser.

“We’re popping a top for Benny,” one of my eighteen-year-old cousins explained somberly. “Drinking’s legal in church—at least if you’re Catholic.”

In the background, Dean Martin sang “Amore” and Orlando Wilson floated across a big-screen TV, silently instructing his audience on proper casting techniques.

“You see the flowers, Stella?” Aunt Lucy asked, suddenly materializing by my side. She pointed to a huge funeral wreath shaped like a leaping bass and mounted on a tall wire frame. Gone Fishing, it read. “Ain’t they beautiful?” she breathed. “And them over there.” She gestured to a wreath of red, white and blue daisies that read Sleep With The Fishes, Big Guy! She smiled. “They’re from the boys down at the Saint Anthony’s Lodge.”

“It’s lovely, Aunt Lucy,” I said, but I was really thinking that I’d dropped into a bad day in a psychiatric unit.

Aunt Lucy took my arm and led me closer to the casket. “Look who’s here, honey,” she said to Uncle Benny. “It’s our Stella. Don’t she look pretty with her hair done blond? Of course the clothes belong to Nina, but that’s on account of Stella came sudden.”

I squirmed, tugging at Nina’s black pleated miniskirt. I tried my best not to topple over in the stilettos I’d been forced to drag out from my undercover equipment. Uncle Benny didn’t seem to mind. He appeared to be concentrating on nailing the big one. His eyes were closed and his mouth was frozen in a sewn-shut, lopsided grin. The body in the casket in no way resembled the uncle I loved.

“You couldn’t get them to put in the cigar?” I asked.

Aunt Lucy shrugged. “It was bad for his health, anyway.” She looked back at the crowd. “This is some turnout,” she said. “I think almost the entire town is here. It’s been like this since he died, people turning up with food or beer, all of them talking about the good turns he did for them or the ways he helped them out when times were tough. He done things I never knew about, Stel. The man was a saint.”

The pews in the funeral home chapel were filling up as people filed in for the service. In the background, Dean Martin had finished “Amore,” and was now replaced by Andy Williams singing “Moon River.”

“He don’t look so dead to me, Stella,” Aunt Lucy said. I gazed down at the tiny woman and saw tears begin to track across her withered cheeks. She reached behind me, pulled a can of beer from the cooler and opened it. With great care, she placed it beside Uncle Benny’s left hand, removing another untouched can that had grown warm. “I was kinda hoping maybe the beer would bring him back, you know?” She sounded like a little child, pleading for one more chance.

“I know, honey,” I said. “It’s hard to believe he’s really gone.”

Andy Williams stopped singing, and the soft strains of organ music signaled the start of the service. The big-screen TV went dark momentarily as Orlando Wilson’s fishing tips were replaced by a larger-than-life-size portrait of my uncle, out on his boat in the middle of Kerr Park Lake, reeling in a “big one.”

Aunt Lucy seemed to snap out of her melancholy reverie. “Let’s get this show on the road,” she said as the funeral director started walking purposefully toward us. She lifted her head, wiped her eyes and allowed herself to be led into the family pew that was located off to the side of the tiny chapel.

I trailed along behind her, filing into the box and settling myself next to my aunt. The organ swelled to a crescendo, cueing us all to stand. We opened our leaflets and began singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”

Nina nudged me. “Okay, you can’t possibly think this is normal,” she whispered.

I shrugged, irritated. So what if Aunt Lucy was a bit unconventional? It was Uncle Benny’s favorite song. Maybe singing it comforted her. Wasn’t that what funerals were supposed to do, comfort those left behind? Maybe everybody was jumping on the Aunt-Lucy’s-lost-it bandwagon just a little too quickly. Of course, that was before the service started and Jake Carpenter walked to the front of the chapel, looked right into my eyes and took my breath away.

Ten years, a river of bad memories, and the man still had the same intoxicating effect on me.

“Aunt Lucy, what’s he doing here? Where’s Father Mark?” I whispered.

Aunt Lucy frowned. Her eyes filled with tears as she stared up at me. “He wouldn’t come, Stella,” she said. “I thought you knew.”

I just looked at her, feeling crazy. “Knew what?”

The last strains of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” died away, and Aunt Lucy’s voice carried in hushed silence. “They said Benny killed himself, Stella, but he wouldn’t do that. Jake’s the one who found him down at the garage. If you ask me, someone did this to my Benny! That man wouldn’t kill himself. No way, and he wouldn’t up and die on me without a fight!”

The congregation reacted and the sound of their voices almost drowned out Aunt Lucy’s next bombshell. “I know you don’t like him, honey, but Jake’s the only one who listens to me.” She smiled. “It was just a lucky break for us—he’s an ordained minister.”

I looked up at Jake and saw him staring back at me, no doubt slack-jawed at the new and improved version of my former self. Blond hair, spiky stiletto heels and Nina’s miniskirt definitely wasn’t the old mousy me. No, I was a good ten pounds lighter and four inches taller in heels. Between the makeup and the attitude, I was surprised he recognized me at all.

I stared right back at him. He hadn’t changed in all the time I’d been gone. He had the same dark eyes, same killer good looks and probably the same smart-assed attitude. I watched as his gaze shifted to Aunt Lucy. When he smiled gently at her and then winked, I could’ve thrown up. He was wearing faded tight jeans, cowboy boots and a black leather Harley-Davidson jacket. Where was his respect for the dead? And for that matter, if Jake Carpenter had somehow found Jesus, which I seriously doubted, where were his robe and collar?

I leaned over and touched my aunt’s arm. “Aunt Lucy, the last time I checked, Jake was a bartender, not a priest.”

She smiled. “Well now, honey, except for those little two-day Christmas trips of yours, you’ve been gone almost eleven years. A lot happens, especially around here. Jake’s got his own auto body shop. He’s really changed, Stella. He settled down after he got out of the service. He’s found himself.

“He sent off for one of them mail-order certificates. He’s a minister in some nondenominational church, you know, the kind that doesn’t meet and doesn’t have a building.” She held up her hand to cut off my protest. “I know, it sounds funny but, well, he’s here and Father Mark isn’t.”

Aunt Lucy lifted her head defiantly, nodded toward Jake and the service began again.

“Brothers and sisters,” Jake said, his voice rising above the crowd’s murmuring, “let us pray!”

I didn’t even bother to bow my head. Jake Carpenter might be fooling my aunt, but I wasn’t going to fall for his tricks again. Nope. One trip to the altar with Jake Carpenter had been more than enough for me.

Chapter 4

In one short hour, Jake Carpenter managed to take every feeling I’d been harboring about him for eleven years and twist it into a molten mass of confusion and regret. In some ways, he was the same as he’d always been, but with a twist, a difference that was both charismatic and unfathomable.

We were assembled at the graveside when Jake decided it was time to speak. Up until then, he had functioned mainly as an emcee, letting Uncle Benny’s friends tell the stories of his many kindnesses and good deeds. But as we stood around the AstroTurfed grave site, contemplating this final rest stop for my uncle, Jake seemed to take charge. It was time to say goodbye, and Jake was there to ease the transition.

“A priest, in this case me,” he began, “a Lutheran pastor, who shall go nameless for the sake of protecting his sterling reputation, and our Benny were all out fishing in Benny’s boat over on Kerr Park Lake one day. It was hot and we had consumed a fair quantity of Benny’s favorite brew when the pastor felt the call of nature.”

Everyone was smiling at Jake. Even my jaded cousin Nina beamed up at him benevolently.

“So the pastor gets out of the boat, walks across the water, steps ashore and visits the Porta-John.” Jake’s eyes twinkled. “Then he walks back across the top of the water and steps into the boat, not a drop of moisture on him. A little time goes by, and then it’s my turn. I hop out of Benny’s skiff, walk across the water and return the same way.”

I scanned the group of mourners and found they were all smiling, wrapped up in Jake’s tale and seeing their old friend through familiar eyes.

“Well now, Benny, he can’t stand it. He says, ‘Youse guys ain’t the only ones with faith. I can do that, too!’ So he hops out of the boat…and sinks like a rock! He comes up sputtering, mad as hell. ‘All right,’ he says, ‘how’s come youse guys can walk on water and I can’t?’” Jake chuckled. “I looked at the Lutheran pastor. He looked at me and says, ‘Reckon we shoulda shown him where the stepping stones were, huh, Jake?’ he says.”

The congregation laughed. Jake laughed, too, but his eyes were warm as he looked over at Aunt Lucy and the rest of us who stood by her. “Yeah, we all loved Benny. He was a good man, but he was only serious about a few things—his family, his friends and fishing.”

Jake moved to stand beside the open grave site, resting a hand on the closed casket. “Benny’s hooked the big one now. He’s moved up to fish with the pros, and us amateurs, well, we’re gonna miss the hell out of him.” Jake smiled at Aunt Lucy. “But we can all take comfort in this certainty,” he said. “Benny’s with the big guy himself, fishing that vast and comforting expanse they call eternal life. And one day, we’ll all be together again, because that’s how it works. No one is ever lost to us, not really. They’ve just gone on ahead to scout the territory.”

Jake looked out at the congregation. “All right,” he said. “You guys on the left of the casket are group one. You people over there are group two. And you people in the back, you’re group three. Now, when I point to you, start singing. I think you all know the words…. ‘Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.’”

With that, Jake smiled gently, raised his arms in the air like a band conductor and motioned. Like sheep we began to sing, right on cue. And as the casket was slowly lowered into the ground, we filed past the grave, tossing pink carnations in on top of Uncle Benny and singing the simple, sweet song we’d known as children. But that was not why I felt such an urge to escape from everyone and everything. What sent me over the edge was the fact that Jake Carpenter had taken me in once again.

He had managed, with his goofy joke and his stupid song, to lull me into an unguarded moment in which every happy memory I’d ever shared with Uncle Benny came flooding back with a suddenness that took my breath away. Jake had forced me to feel the vast emptiness of losing the one man who’d ever truly understood me.

This new pain melted into all the feelings I’d so carefully sealed away, leaving me stranded in my old hometown and feeling like a shipwreck survivor. I was home, but I was a stranger. I’d expected to find things just as they’d always been, only better, softened by the pink glow of my very selective memory. But now, when I needed to come home and feel safe, I found myself trapped in a nightmare.

I stared out of the funeral home limo as we drove home, watching the familiar neighborhood pass by the rain-streaked window. Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny lived in a blue-collar Italian neighborhood that even on the best of days smelled like the nearby paper mill. The brick row homes and postage-stamp backyards were coated in a thin layer of grimy ash that descended like smog over everything and everybody, until gray became the standard color and a hacking cough our constant companion in the wintertime.

But once you set foot in the house, the black-and-white TV screen of our lives changed into a vibrant Technicolor. The kitchen was yellow, the air warm and fragrant with baking bread and everywhere you turned there was some picture or reminder of all the important events or occasions in Benny’s and Lucy’s full-to-overflowing lives. It was a home with love to spare, a home that had taken me in when my parents died and tried, with some success, to raise me into a healed and whole person.

People were packed into every corner of the downstairs by the time I arrived. They sat on the steps leading up to the second-floor bedrooms and peeked through the banisters at the others sitting in the living room below them. They laughed and shouted, hugged and drank, and some cried, not for long, but with earnest emotion that was no longer concealed by convention or etiquette. It was as much home to me as it was foreign. It was too much to return to, and still, it had not been enough to keep me rooted.

When I heard Jake’s voice in the living room, I knew he’d look for me, and I also knew that whatever he had to say, whatever explanation he chose to offer, it wouldn’t be enough to make up for what I spent so long trying to forget. Jake Carpenter was a bastard’s bastard, and my opinion of him wouldn’t change just because he’d been kind to my aunt and uncle.

I looked around the crowded kitchen and realized I was trapped, saw the basement door behind me, and lit out for the space below like a homing pigeon. Uncle Benny’s workshop was down there, a safe haven to him for years and now for me.

I closed the wooden door behind me, fumbled for the light switch and began my descent down the worn, smooth steps to the basement. It still smelled like the old coal furnace, even with years having passed since Uncle Benny had made the switch to oil.

I stepped down into the bright white space and found it just as I’d left it—concrete floor, workbench and cabinets back behind the steps; old worn, terry-cloth couch against the far wall; shabby, braided rug; ancient TV sitting on top of a rusting metal TV tray. It was exactly the same as the day I left home to strike out for Florida, and Benny’s secret bottle of Wild Turkey was in exactly the same place as it always was, way in the back of the last cabinet on the left.

I reached in, pulled out the bottle and was reaching for a shot glass when I found the envelope. It was a sealed, white, standard legal-size rectangle and it felt thick with papers.

I slowly pulled it toward me, placed it on the workbench and knew I was going to open it. I decided I needed fortification first. I poured a shot, lifted it to my lips and tossed it back, feeling the burn as the liquor found its way down my esophagus and into my empty stomach.

“Damn!” I whispered, half choking on the bourbon. I poured another shot and carried it and the envelope to the couch, where I sat down and prepared to read whatever Uncle Benny had hidden away from Aunt Lucy.

I started to fumble with the seal, realized I still felt unprepared and drank the second shot. Then, with slightly trembling fingers, I undid the flap and pulled out the thick sheaf of papers.

It was meant to be a legal document—that much seemed clear, but it was a generic, computer-generated form, not one from a lawyer’s office. There were no embossed seals, no witnesses’ signatures and no “whereas” and “to wit’s.” It was a simple agreement, a partnership arrangement, in which Uncle Benny had invested $260,000 in Jake Carpenter’s auto body shop.

I poured a third shot, tossed it back and felt the burn all the way to the pit of my stomach. I turned back to the beginning of the document and read, this time making careful note of the terms and conditions. It seemed that Uncle Benny had given Jake the money in return for a share of the business, a guaranteed income for himself and Aunt Lucy. But where had my uncle come up with so much money? He was a retired government chemist, not some hot-shot executive. My aunt had been a chemist, too. When my parents died and I’d come to live with them, she’d retired early to take care of me. She became a homemaker, pinching pennies to make ends meet, making her own soaps and cleaning supplies, clipping coupons. They lived in a row house. Where had Uncle Benny gotten so much money to give Jake?

I folded the papers back up, shoved them into the envelope and carefully returned them to their hiding place. I turned, intent on heading back to the couch, and felt the room spin slightly. Not a good sign, I thought. I tried to remember when I’d last eaten anything and figured it might’ve been yesterday as I’d pulled out of Garden Beach and started toward home.

“Shit, Uncle Benny!” I said to the empty room. “This is so not like you!” Even with a fur brain, I knew there was more to this than the agreement said, but what? Obviously that jerk Jake had conned my poor retired uncle out of his retirement money and every dime of his savings. Jake probably promised my uncle pie in the sky and a pot of gold at the end of the auto body rainbow. Now Uncle Benny was dead and Aunt Lucy was crying foul play. Did she know about Uncle Benny’s agreement? I figured not.

The more I thought about Jake taking advantage of my aunt and uncle, the angrier I got. Jake had been trying to rip off my uncle. He had to be in financial trouble; I’d just bet on it. I looked at the steps leading to the kitchen and listened to the dull rumble of people drinking and laughing overhead. I leaned back against the sofa cushions, kicked off my high heels and pulled my feet up where I could massage my throbbing ankle.

“I should’ve worn my flip-flops,” I muttered. I tugged with no effect at the hem of the miniskirt, trying to cover my thighs and get comfortable at the same time. It was pointless. I was not a sexy showgirl, merely a poor imitation who would’ve given anything for her own jeans and a T-shirt.

I needed to eat, but I was so tired and Uncle Benny’s old couch was so comfortable. I pulled one of Aunt Lucy’s afghans down from the sofa back and snuggled into it. It smelled like Uncle Benny’s Old Spice aftershave. I felt sadness threaten to overwhelm me and closed my eyes, hoping to wish it away. I leaned back against the soft, overstuffed cushions and tried to remember all the good times, hoping the grief would somehow vanish or at least become manageable.

“I’m gonna close my eyes, just for a minute,” I murmured. “Then I’ll eat, and then I’ll kick some Jake Carpenter ass!” The prospect seemed somehow satisfying. I could finally exact my revenge on Jake Carpenter and be doing it for a worthy cause. What could be better? I envisioned Jake, pleading with me, his dark, sexy eyes widening with fear as he realized what he’d lost and what he was about to lose. I fell asleep imagining him on his knees, begging for mercy.

I woke up with the sudden awareness that I was no longer alone.

“You know, you drool when you sleep,” Jake said, his voice right up against my ear, the musky scent of him suddenly overwhelming my dream world. “And you still make that little piglike sound, too, you know, the one you make when you snore so loud you half wake yourself up? I hadn’t thought of that in years!”

I opened my eyes. Jake Carpenter was sitting beside me on the edge of the sofa, leaning over to balance himself above me and smiling as if he were in complete control of the universe. For a moment I felt disoriented, and wondered if I was still dreaming. I stared at Jake, willing my eyes to focus. He bent closer, his face inches from my own, inspecting me intently.

“Breath mint?” he asked.

“No,” I whispered. “Gun.”

Jake’s brows furrowed. “Gun?”

“Yeah, in case my breath don’t kill you, my gun will.”

Jake straightened, one eyebrow pushing up into a question mark. “You’re still mad?” He shook his head. “That was years ago. We were just kids. I’d think after all this time you’d be relieved, not mad.”

I pushed back, struggling to get away from him and sit up at the same time.

“Relieved? That’s what you’d call it, relieved?”

Jake nodded solemnly. “We were just kids. What did we know about making a lifetime commitment? You should be grateful I stopped us.”

I stuck out my hand, pushing the center of his chest with two fingers, knocking him back a few inches.

“Grateful?” I swung my legs off the couch and sat up. “Let’s get something straight—you weren’t the one who backed out. If you’d listened to what I was trying to tell you, you’d have known—”

The cellar door swung open and a shadow crossed the top steps.

“Stella,” Nina hissed. “Are you down there?”

We froze, willing her away so the battle could continue, but Nina had some sort of sixth sense.

“Stella, damn it! The cops are here. You’d better get upstairs, quick!”

Jake was already moving, rising from the couch and turning to extend his hand to help me up. I ignored the hand and started to push past him.

“You might want to tame that bird’s nest,” he said. “It makes you look like you just crawled out of bed.” His eyes met mine and I saw the flash of hot intimacy lingering there, remembering every moment I now wanted to forget.

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!

I eased down the hallway, stopped at the doorway to my aunt’s bedroom and gently turned the knob. I pushed and the door gave. I scanned the empty room, gun held at arm’s length in front of my chest, saw nothing and moved on. Uncle Benny’s study was on the left side of the hallway. By rights, I should’ve moved along that wall, making myself less vulnerable to being seen, but then I would’ve had less of an angle on the intruders. I took the right wall.

I checked the bathroom, holding my breath, ready. I moved within range of the study and took a quick glance inside. There were two of them and they were oblivious to my presence. Drawers hit the floor; papers flew. They worked with their backs to me, apparently unconcerned with anything but the task at hand.

I felt the anger surge into an adrenaline rush. “Fucking assholes,” I murmured, and started to make my move.

I heard a slight snick of sound behind me, the kind of sound that registers as “Oh, shit!” but comes too late to prevent catastrophe. I felt my body fly forward and into the wall across from where I stood, the impact registering with a resounding shock of pain as my forehead and body slammed full force into the rigid plaster. The gun careened out of my hand and skittered down the hallway.

I ricocheted off the wall, using my free hand to push off and spin toward my attacker. He stood an arm’s length away, a black mask covering his face and an ugly gun pointed directly at my chest.

“Hurry up!” he yelled to the men in Uncle Benny’s office. “We got company.”

I watched his eyes and saw his attention return to me, saw him register the Glock lying on the floor and then take a mental inventory. Was I a potential threat to him, or merely a frightened woman?

I watched him stereotype me, saw the glint in his eyes and decided to use the oldest trick in the book. I began to tremble, feigning fear. I let my bath towel slip, pretending to try to catch it, but missing as it quickly slid to the floor.

“Oh, my God!” I gasped. My eyes widened. I took a step backward and was rewarded with a lecherous sneer. “Oh, no!” I wailed softly. “My towel!”

I made a move to bend over and reach for it, giving both audiences a view of cleavage they would not soon forget, and stretched out my arm to reach for the towel. As I expected, the gunman took a step forward, gun arm extended, legs spread in a ready stance, trying to ensure that I didn’t go for the weapon that lay on the floor between us.

I brought my arms together, outstretched and rigid, as if going for the bath towel. I clasped my fingers together to form a tight hammerhead and brought my fist up in a rocket aimed directly for my attacker’s crotch.

The blow connected and my new friend doubled over with a gasp of pain. I used the heel of my right hand to drive a second blow hard into the narrow band of flesh below his nose. He crumpled, sagging to the floor in a pool of bloody agony. He was making gagging sounds and heaving as I grabbed the gun from his useless hand.

I whirled, prepared to take on the other two intruders, but instead saw the last one struggling to escape through the window in my uncle’s study. I brought the gun in my hand up, aimed and sent a round crashing into the windowsill beside the rapidly retreating burglar.

I missed the target, but maybe my unconscious had been working on new, incoming information, maybe I didn’t want to hit my target just yet. The man diving out of Uncle Benny’s study window wore cowboy boots, black snake-skin boots, the same kind of boots I’d seen Jake Carpenter wearing as he piously conducted my uncle’s funeral.

“Son of a bitch!” I yelled after the escaping intruder. “Your ass is mine, Jake Carpenter!”

I brought the gun up, aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing! I pulled again. Again, nothing.

“What the fuck?” I looked down at the weapon. It was a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver. I spun the cylinder, not believing what I was seeing. “What kind of idiot robs a house with one bullet in his gun?”

I didn’t have to wait on the answer; the silence in the hallway was answer enough. I turned slowly, still holding his useless revolver, and found the man in the mask holding my Glock.

“Drop the gun,” he said.

I let the weapon fall to the ground in front of me.

“Kick it over here.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why? We both know it’s empty.”

He didn’t like this. “Shut up and do as I said.”

I reached out and punted the offending gun in his direction. Without taking his eyes off of me, he retrieved it and stuck it in the pocket of his sport coat.

“I’m leaving,” he said, backing up. “I can leave with you breathing, or not breathing. You have a preference?”

Great, a smart-aleck burglar. “Sure.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Then here’s what you have to do to stay alive. Don’t try and follow us.” I saw his eyes rake my naked body and he smiled slightly. “Although that would be a vision, wouldn’t it, you running through Glenn Ford in the altogether?”

A wise-ass with an educated vocabulary—now, there couldn’t be too many of those around town. Might make finding him easier, because I was going to find him. It was my new mission in life.

“Count to a thousand before you start getting all hysterical and calling for help. Anything less than that, I’ll come back and shoot you with your own gun.”

I sighed inwardly and made a mental note to humiliate him publicly as soon as possible.

“The one-bullet thing?” he said. “I do that for a reason. There’s entirely too much violence in the world today. Bullets work on the same principle as money—if you have it, you tend to spend it. I’d rather rely on my wits.”

He’d been backing up as he lectured. A moment later I heard the kitchen door slam. Two moments later I heard a car squeal its tires as it tore out of the alley onto the street that ran in front of the row house.

“Great!” I said to the empty house. “I get my ass kicked naked and lose my gun in the process.”

I shook my head, plucked the towel up off the hallway floor and headed for the phone. Every bone and muscle in my body ached, but nothing hurt as much as my pride. I’d let a group of punks, Jake Carpenter almost certainly one of them, break into the house and run, making a clean getaway. Damn!

I limped into the kitchen, picked up the phone and dialed.

“911 operator,” the voice answered. “Do you have an emergency?”

A few smart-assed responses came to mind before I finally managed to say, “There’s been a break-in at 361 Mary Street.”

“Is anyone injured?” the voice asked in a perfectly unconcerned monotone.

“It’s nothing I won’t live through,” I said, and hung up.

By the time the uniforms arrived, I was dressed and disturbing the crime scene. I was trying to find out what, if anything other than my weapon, was missing. I wanted to know why Jake had taken the risk of breaking into Aunt Lucy’s house in broad daylight, but I thought I already knew. I figured he was looking for the papers I’d found in Uncle Benny’s workroom.

When I’d accused him of owing Uncle Benny money, he must’ve known I’d found the agreement. He was probably trying to remove any sign that Uncle Benny had lent him money. Maybe he planned to deny he owed the family a dime.

“Stupid asshole,” I swore. “I never thought you were a genius, but this move was pathetic!”

The cops took over, looking irritated when they saw me touching their evidence, and sealed the room. The next hour was spent wasting their time and mine until Detectives Slovineck and Poltrone could arrive and further complicate my life.

“I don’t understand,” Detective Poltrone said. “You saw a pair of cowboy boots and assumed from that quick glance that it was Jake Carpenter come to rob your uncle’s estate? Why would he do that?” She had an exasperating habit of flipping her notepad shut whenever she asked me a question, as if she was trying to let me know she wasn’t going to believe my answer or find it worthy of noting in her all-important log of clues.

I rolled my eyes and made a silent appeal to Detective Slovineck.

“You think he wanted to steal back a copy of a financial agreement he made with your uncle?” Slovineck asked, knowing full well that was exactly what I thought but saving his partner’s face.

“Okay,” I said. “Do we not have motive, means and opportunity here? Jake must be in some kind of financial trouble. He cons my uncle out of $260,000. He never intends to make good on the partnership—he just wants the money. That’s why he killed my uncle. When he learns I’ve seen the papers, he tries to steal them back so there’s no proof. He wants it to be my word against his. That’s why he’s desperate enough to make a daytime raid on Uncle Benny’s study.”

I sat back, waiting for the detectives to respond, and felt sick at my stomach. Granted, Jake was a jerk and a coward, but a murderer, too? How could I have been so wrong about him? How could I have ever loved someone who would coldly plot the murder of my uncle and the destruction of my family? I didn’t want to believe it, but what else could I think?

“Stella!” Aunt Lucy appeared in the study doorway, Nina peeking over her shoulder and Lloyd at her side.

The two detectives looked up like startled rabbits and I stood, turning around to reassure my aunt. “It’s all right, Aunt Lucy,” I began. She interrupted me.

“Honey, this is such a mess! You could’ve just asked me where the will was!”

“Oh, no, Aunt Lucy, it’s not that…”

“Besides,” she continued, “Jake would’ve given you a copy.”

“Jake?” The name squeaked out of my throat like a strangled cough. Behind me I heard Detective Poltrone flip open her notepad and begin scribbling.

“Oh, yeah, honey,” Aunt Lucy said. “You know, he’s the executor. He has to have a copy. Otherwise how could he administer the trust and run the business?”

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