“Stella, I need to tell you something.”

The serious tone in Jake’s voice scared me. I took a deep breath and waited, assuming he was going to blame himself for Bitsy’s death.

“After you and I broke up, Bitsy and I had a…short relationship.” He looked at me. “A few years later, a couple of feds paid me a visit, doing a background check on Bitsy. They didn’t tell me why, of course, but I figured it out. Bitsy was joining the spy club. She may have been on a job when she called you. She probably knew we were working together and didn’t want to risk calling me directly.”

Oh, great. So, Bitsy hadn’t wanted to hire me, she wanted Jake. Didn’t they all?

“You all right with this?” Jake asked.

I gave him my best smile. “Glad you told me. We’d better get to it.”

I turned away and stared out my window as Jake drove. The real reason I was upset was not because Jake had information I didn’t have. I was upset because Jake had lots of secrets, and they just seemed to keep popping up. How could I trust a man who had so many secrets?

Dear Reader,

Have you ever wished you could roll back the hands of time, even for a brief moment, and revise your own history? You know, “If I’d only known then what I know now!”

Well, Stella is my opportunity to revisit history. She’s come home to the small town where I grew up (although I’ve made a few changes to protect the innocent as well as the guilty!), and she gets to do a lot of the things I could never quite accomplish. For one thing, she gets the guy! Jake is so much yummier than the boy I pined after in high school and Stella’s got him right where she wants him. In real life, those guys grow up, they lose their hair, gain a spare tire and get sooo boring, but not Stella’s Jake! He’s grown up and he’s gotten better with age and experience.

Stella takes on a case that involves an elderly woman in a nursing home. For the past two years, in my “real life,” I’ve been consulting two days a week in some local nursing homes, doing psychotherapy with the residents. It has been an eye-opening, heartbreaking time for me. Very often I find myself trying to provide the hugs and love that my abandoned parents and grandparents crave. They are so alone, so forgotten, so…well, downright neglected. Stella finds herself caring as much for Baby as I do for my residents. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to once again point out that our elderly or our “mentally ill” are not disposable items—they are wise, giving and loving human beings, and we are lucky to have them among us.

But more than anything, this book is about love and its place in life’s journey.

Have fun, dear reader!

Nancy

What Stella Wants
Nancy Bartholomew

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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NANCY BARTHOLOMEW

didn’t seem like the Bombshell type at first. She grew up in Philadelphia as 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, Dad was there, sitting in the front row, watching over his little girl!

Nancy 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. Her patients were bikers and strippers and they taught her well…lock picking, exotic dancing, gun play for beginners and hot-wiring cars.

When the criminal life became less of a challenge, Nancy turned to the final frontier: parenthood. This drove her to writing. While her boys were toddlers, Nancy spent their naptimes creating alternate realities. She lives in North Carolina where she 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 thanks you from the bottom of her heart for reading this book!

For my dad—my mentor and role model in life’s journey. I could only wish to one day be so loving and wise! I love you, Dad!

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 1

It was about time my luck changed.

In the past month I’d been beaten up, shot at, lied to and seduced. In my opinion, other than the seduction, I’d been on the short end of the karma scale. At least this stake-out and surveillance, while in the middle of winter, was indoors. Okay, so there wasn’t any heat in the garage, but I wasn’t standing outside in a blizzard, either. And our “target” was slow-moving and not very dangerous. She was an old lady. The bad news was she was my Aunt Lucy.

My partner, Jake Carpenter, also known as the man voted most likely to get under my skin and into my bed, was crouched down next to me, peering out the grimy garage window and into Aunt Lucy’s kitchen.

“She let him in,” he said. “Why hasn’t she brought him back to the kitchen? She brings everybody to the kitchen.”

I looked at Jake. Tall, dark, handsome and sometimes completely clueless. Still, a lot had changed about the man since high school, since he’d left me waiting at the altar in a failed elopement that was now just a distant memory. He’d grown up, but then so had I.

“Oh, I don’t know, Jake. What do you think? Do you think they just went straight down the hall to her bedroom, or what?”

I guess the sarcastic tone gave me away. Jake actually managed to look hurt. “Damn, Stella, I was just asking.”

I arched an eyebrow and tried not to notice the way his eyes were traveling the length of my body, stopping at all the good parts—the parts that had so readily responded to his touch just hours before.

“Jake, it’s my aunt, for God’s sake! She’s been widowed what, six months, and some mysterious guy from her past surfaces and she doesn’t say word one about who it is or what he wants, and you think I shouldn’t be so sensitive? He could be a con man. He could be a killer. He could be…”

I stopped, trying to come up with more possibilities, which gave Jake the window he was looking for. “He could be looking to get laid. Aunt Lucy’s old, but she’s not dead!”

I punched him, and his responding grunt was loud enough to let me know I hadn’t lost my touch. Police training and conditioning is no joke, and I wasn’t about to let it go by the wayside just because I was no longer a cop. Private investigators need muscles and endurance, too, maybe even more. They don’t have an entire police force ready to back them up—they just have a partner or two if they’re lucky. Jake was solid muscle and ex-Special Forces, but he was only one guy. I was the other half of the team. I needed to retain my edge…even if I was only tailing my elderly aunt at the moment.

As we watched, the back door suddenly flew open and my aunt Lucy came rushing down the steps, a white plastic trash bag in hand and a grim look on her face. She headed straight for the garage.

“Hide!” I yelped and dove behind a bunch of boxes.

Jake wasted no time joining me and together we crouched, waiting for my aunt to pull open the old wooden door and head for the trash cans that lined the far wall.

“Nothing good comes of spying on relatives,” I muttered.

“It was your idea,” Jake reminded me.

I wanted to smack him but didn’t dare with Aunt Lucy mere seconds from entering the ancient garage.

“It’s for a good cause,” I reminded him. “I’m only saying that, even if our intent is good, God might not look too kindly on the effort, that’s all.”

“And God doesn’t take intent into account?”

I pinched his earlobe, the only readily available, exposed flesh I could reach.

“Ouch!”

“Shhh!”

The garage door creaked open and Aunt Lucy could be heard walking briskly across the concrete floor to the battered metal trash cans. She pulled a lid off, dumped her bag inside, replaced the lid and started to stomp off. Without warning she stopped, parallel to our hiding place and as we listened, she sniffed, loudly, cautiously, and I was certain she’d discovered us.

“Humph!” She snorted. “Nothing worse than the smell of dead fish!”

Then, without further comment, she left, slamming the garage door securely behind her and continuing on her way across the rectangular back yard. A moment later we heard the back porch door slam and knew we were in the clear.

“I thought she was going to nail us,” Jake said. “The woman’s psychic, I swear she is.”

My cell phone began to vibrate, humming softly in the still garage.

I fished it out of my parka pocket, flipped it open and said, “Valocchi Investigations.”

Jake gave me his usual and customary hard look as I said the name. For some reason the man thought that because we were partners, his name should be on the door. I wasn’t sure I was ready for the partnership to become permanent, so why change things before I had a feel for the potential duration? Look what happened the last time we tried to form a partnership…I’d wound up hurt and alone, trying to explain running away to marry Jake to my disappointed aunt Lucy and uncle Benny. No, I needed to wait this relationship out before I made another foolish commitment.

“Stella, is that you?” The voice, female and anxious, sounded distinctly familiar.

“Yes?”

“Stella, it’s Bitsy Blankenship—well it’s Margolies now, but it was Blankenship. Marygrace Llewellen said you’d moved back home and opened a private investigation office. I need to see you. Right now!”

I closed my eyes. Elizabeth “Bitsy” Blankenship. Blond, cheerleader, airhead and high maintenance in high school. Sounded like nothing had changed, at least not in the maintenance department. I remembered hearing she’d married a junior diplomat and was now leading the high life of embassy parties and overseas assignments. Figured she’d land on her designer heels. But the demanding, “everything’s urgent and about me” tone to her voice brought out the rebellious adolescent in me.

“Uh, sorry,” I said. “My first available appointment won’t be for another…” I opened my eyes and stared up at the old garage rafters, aware of Jake’s confused expression because he knew we were next to unemployed in terms of busy. “I guess I could squeeze you in tomorrow, late morning.”

“No! I mean, please, Stella, this is an emergency. I need to see you now!”

I sighed, pushed the sleeve up on my parka and looked at my watch. It was almost noon. “Okay, I suppose I could see you at two, but I might be a few minutes late. We’re in the middle of an important surveillance.”

“Two?” Bitsy’s anguished wail was almost satisfying, especially when I remembered that Jake had briefly dated Bitsy, shortly after he’d failed to show for our elopement to Maryland. “Really, Stella, you can’t see me any sooner?”

Damn, what did the woman want, blood? “I’m sorry. Two is my absolute earliest time and I’ll be pushing it at that.”

I could hear the sound of a car’s engine in the background as Bitsy considered whether to take the appointment or not. She was driving, and I wondered if she were in town yet or on her way in from D.C.

“Oh, all right! I’ll do two. I suppose I can waste a couple of hours visiting my grandmother in the nursing home or something.”

Visiting her grandmother was a waste of her time? Oh, I was so glad I was putting Mrs. High-and-Mighty on the back burner!

“Okay, you know where the office is? It’s across from the old newsstand, off Main.”

“I’ll find it. And, Stella, listen, it’s really important that you don’t tell anybody about this, okay? I don’t want anyone to know I’m in town or that we’re meeting. It could be a matter of life and death.”

I rolled my eyes at Jake. What had he ever seen in this dingbat? Jake frowned and mouthed the words, “What? Who is it?” But I just smiled and shook my head.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul. See you at two!”

I snapped the phone shut and smiled even bigger at Jake. “Guess what, buddy? Your old girlfriend, Bitsy, is coming to town and she wants to hire me.”

“Us,” Jake corrected, still stuck on the pride of ownership. “She wants to hire us.”

“She didn’t mention you,” I taunted. “If she’d wanted you, I suppose she would’ve called you.”

“What’s wrong with Bitsy?” Jake was all concerned now.

I shrugged and returned my attention to my aunt’s kitchen window. “Don’t know, don’t care. I just hope she has deep pockets. Why don’t you slip back around front and see if you can get the guy’s license plate number when his driver comes back? I’m going to see if I can get a little closer to the house.”

Jake started to protest, caught himself, and shrugged. “It’s your party,” he said. I could tell he thought sneaking around in broad daylight was a bad idea, but what else could I do? Aunt Lucy hadn’t entertained the guy at night. So far, all she’d done was disappear during the daytime, only to return a few hours later with this stupid smile on her face and vague answers when we asked where she’d been and with whom.

Even Lloyd the Dog was left out of the loop. Considering the fact that, until very recently, Aunt Lucy had considered my Australian shepherd to be her deceased husband, Benny, reincarnated, I found her reluctance to confide in him troubling. True, Lloyd the Dog had found love himself in the form of an overwhelmingly large part-wolf named Fang, but that was no reason for Aunt Lucy’s sudden secrecy.

I watched as Jake eased out the back door of the garage and into the alley before I considered my stealth opportunities. Aunt Lucy had been anxious to get us out of the house for the day. She’d found a very necessary and quite convoluted errand for my scattered cousin, Nina, and her girlfriend, Spike, to run in downtown Philadelphia. She’d asked me and Jake to run out to Lancaster to take a set of architectural plans to her Amish carpenter friend, Max. She’d been so insistent we leave that I’d known for certain this was the big day; the day Aunt Lucy had invited the mysterious man to her home.

So we called Max and blew him off. We made a big show of driving away from Aunt Lucy’s ancient, brick row house and returned in a borrowed conversion van with tinted windows to park and hide. A mere twenty minutes later our efforts were rewarded by the arrival of a long, black, chauffer-driven sedan.

I was expecting someone as huge as the limousine, someone large, ostentatious, maybe a Donald Trump type. What we got was a short, elderly, white-haired man in a charcoal-gray overcoat carrying a small bouquet of purple violets.

“What the hell?” Jake murmured. As we watched, the little man ascended the steps to the brownstone and rang the doorbell.

Aunt Lucy answered the door moments later, looked down the street in both directions and hastily pulled her visitor inside. This forced us out of the van and around the back of the house to the garage where we hoped to watch my aunt entertaining her visitor in the kitchen. Aunt Lucy always brought company back to her kitchen. Except for this visitor. What was up? I had to get closer to the house. I had to know what was happening inside.

I slipped out the back door of the garage, edged around the far side of the wooden building and began creeping past the thick lilac bushes that lined the edge of my aunt’s yard. I glanced up nervously at the kitchen window and saw no movement inside.

I began working my way up the side of the house, passing the back porch and stopping beneath my aunt’s bedroom window. I am not proud of what I did next, but you need to understand, I thought Aunt Lucy was in danger…maybe. I slipped the miniature sound amplifier out of my pocket, fitted the tiny earpiece into my right ear and reached up stealthily to attach the little bug to the glass windowpane.

My aunt’s voice reverberated inside my head. “Oh, right there!” she cried. “You’ve almost got it! Come on, you can get it! Please!” There was a pause and then a soft, excited cry. “Oh, yes! That’s it! Oh, you got it!”

Oh. My. God! I ripped the earpiece out, snatched the listening device off the window and ran, full tilt, the length of the house and out onto the front sidewalk. Where was Jake? Oh. My. God! They were…they were…having…sex! My aunt, my uncle Benny’s widow, was having S.E.X.! I didn’t know people that old even had sex!

I sprinted for the street, darted through parked cars and banged on the passenger-side door of the van.

Jake greeted me with a knowing smile. “Well, well…just when I was wondering how to pass the time.”

“Shut up!”

“Hey, a little edgy, aren’t we?”

I glared at him. “They are in her bedroom. They are…she’s…he was…”

Comprehension dawned slowly in Jake’s eyes. “No, they weren’t!”

I nodded.

“You sure about that?”

I just looked at him.

“No way. Damn! Well, who knew? I guess getting old won’t be so bad after all.”

“Jake, shut up!”

I peered out into the street, looking for the limousine. With the exception of Aunt Lucy’s neighbor Mrs. Talluchi’s ancient black Plymouth, there were no black sedans in sight.

“He must have told the driver to leave,” Jake said, anticipating my next question. “We wait him out.”

The way he said it, the way he moved up behind me left no doubt as to how Jake Carpenter thought we’d pass the time. His breath, hot on my neck, tingled, sending shivers of anticipation surging to every raw, hungry nerve ending in my body. When his hands slid around my waist and pulled me back against his body, I fought the urge to give in and turned on him.

“Jake, not now! Honestly! Is that all you think about?”

Jake’s grin was infectious, and any other time I might have given in, but I’d just heard Aunt Lucy in the throes of passion and it didn’t exactly do a whole lot for my libido.

“Come on, Stel, lighten up!”

Lighten up. Wasn’t that just like a man. I pushed the sleeve up on my parka and stared at my watch. It was only 11:30. I tugged the plaid curtains apart on the back side window and looked out through the darkly tinted glass at my aunt’s tiny row house. It looked so normal, so peaceful, so…Jake’s thumb stroked the spot he knew all too well behind my ear, breaking my concentration and sending shivers down the side of my neck. A tiny flame caught and held deep inside my body. I was in trouble.

When his tongue followed his thumb, knowingly tracing the fire line along my neck, I couldn’t help myself. A sigh escaped my lips and I turned, letting my body mold into his as we kissed. When would I ever learn? I am putty in Jake’s hands, willing, soft, mushy putty. Oh, well, if you can’t beat ’em, you might as well join ’em.

“I love conversion vans, don’t you, Jake?” I breathed the words in a whisper as he slowly moved me to the thickly padded day bed that hugged the back of the cavernous vehicle.

“Mmm-hmm,” he said, and unzipped my parka.

A moment later, before I could feel the cold, I discovered the pile of quilts and blankets conveniently placed at one end of the well-stocked van.

“Hey, who’d you borrow this from, anyway?”

Jake opened up a thick, multi-colored quilt and smiled. “Buddy of mine.”

“You knew this would happen, didn’t you?” Suspicion dawned in my gullible brain. He was not nearly as interested in tracking down Aunt Lucy’s mysterious visitor as I was.

“Now, Stella, you know that wasn’t it. I just like to be prepared, that’s all.”

I felt my spine stiffen. “Prepared, my ass!” Wasn’t that just like a man? I’d left Florida and a promising career in law enforcement to get away from a no-good, cheating scoundrel only to wind up back in my old home town with the very first con artist to break my heart. What was it with me, anyway? When was I going to learn?

Jake leaned down and kissed me so thoroughly I began to appreciate the beauty of thoughtful preparation. So what if he was prepared? So what if he didn’t care about Aunt Lucy’s boyfriend as much as—Oh, please keep touching me there!

I reached for Jake, grabbing the waistband of his jeans and pulling him closer. My fingers found the top button and I knew there was about to be no turning back.

“What if the limo comes?” I murmured, my lips never leaving his.

“We’ll hear it,” he assured me. “I’ll listen out for it. I have unbelievable ears.”

Jake’s fingers slipped under my bra and began softly stroking and tugging at my nipples.

“You have unbelievable fingers,” I whispered, and sighed as my body gave itself over to his slow seduction.

“You’re no slouch yourself,” he answered.

I smiled and pushed his jeans down over his hips. Another moment and we were naked beneath a pile of warm afghans and quilts. Outside, the street was silent. With the exception of the old people, like Aunt Lucy and her best friend, crazy Sylvia Talluchi, all the other inhabitants on the block were at work.

Jake’s knowing hand moved slowly down across my stomach, teasing me with its leisurely approach. I heard someone moan and knew it was me. Here we were, naked in a van, about to make wild crazy love while also trying not to make enough noise to rouse the curiosity of any inadvertent passersby. It was illicit, steamy and a complete turn-on. Jake, I realized, was a brilliant man. He knew what this unexpected opportunity would do to me, and he was totally prepared to take full advantage of it. You just had to love a man like that.

Or did you?

In the past few months our relationship had kindled into far more than the adolescent fumbling that had been our high school romance. We’d gotten past, kind of, Jake jilting me at the altar in a failed, underage elopement. We’d survived my uncle Benny’s murder investigation in which Jake had been one of the prime suspects. We’d even gone into business as private investigators and resumed our personal relationship with the wisdom that only age and experience can bring. But in the past few months, the chemistry between us had exploded into an all-consuming fire that frankly scared the hell out of me.

I’d tried to play it cool. I’d forced myself to spend time away from him. He’d let me down before, and while we’re on the subject, so had every other man I’d every had a personal relationship with, even my father. He and Mom had had the nerve to take a second honeymoon to Ireland, without me, and had managed to die in a fiery plane crash. I just had to be sure about Jake before I got so hopelessly entangled in the relationship that I couldn’t survive the loss of it.

“Oh, Jake!” His tongue was following his fingers. I felt my body explode into a bonfire of need and without thinking I reached for him, pulling and positioning my body beneath him. What was wrong with me? How could I not trust someone who made me feel like this? This was so incredibly good! This was better than anything I’d ever felt in my entire…

Outside, the van walls began violently shaking as someone beat the door with their fists. Maybe more than one someone was beating on the van. The loud noise seemed to come from everywhere, surrounding us.

“What the—” Jake jumped to his feet, completely naked except for his unbuttoned, plaid flannel shirt. I had a full frontal flash of what I was about to miss before I, too, jumped up and joined him in the frantic dash to reclothe ourselves.

“Who in the—” I gasped, struggling into my jeans.

“They’re in there. I saw them!”

“No, no, no!” I moaned softly. Sylvia Talluchi, the world’s most active busybody and self-appointed watchdog for the entire neighborhood, had seen us and pulled the alarm.

“Stella, are you in there?”

Oh, we were dead. Aunt Lucy was banging on the other side of the van. There was going to be total hell to pay.

Jake looked at me, wide-eyed, as the same realization hit him.

“Let me handle this.” I pushed my way past him, pulling on and zipping my parka as I went. I didn’t even wait for Jake to answer me. It was my aunt and my execution.

I flung open the door and was momentarily blinded by the brilliant winter sunlight.

“Stella! Marone! What are you doing in there?”

“Lucia, you don’t know?” Mrs. Talluchi’s querulous tone grated like fingernails on a chalkboard. “They were doing the nasty if you ask me!”

My eyes adjusted in time to see my aunt shoot her best friend a dark look before she leveled the same gaze at me.

“Well?”

I forced a broad smile and stepped down the two metal stairs onto the sidewalk where Sylvia Talluchi and Aunt Lucy stood waiting. Jake stood framed in the doorway behind me and I prayed he had the sense to smile as well.

“No, of course we weren’t ‘doing the nasty’ as you so succinctly put it, Mrs. Talluchi. Jake and I were about to stop back by the house before we went out on surveillance. You see, we were on our way to Lancaster to see Max when we got this call and…”

I stopped in midsentence. At the far end of the street, a limousine slowly crept past on Johnston Avenue.

“Who is that?” I demanded, pointing so there’d be no doubt about the vehicle in question.

Aunt Lucy and Sylvia Talluchi spun on their heels just as the long black sedan’s tail lights vanished from view.

“Who was what?” my aunt asked, turning back to face me. “Never mind that! What were you doing out here? Have you no sense of common decency? In the van, for all the world to witness? Have you no shame?”

Jake stepped down out of the van to join me on the sidewalk. “Mrs. Valocchi, we noticed you had company and I said we shouldn’t disturb you, so we were just waiting.”

I wanted to slap him. How could he think my aunt, a former CIA chemist, could possibly be so stupid? But it was too late. Jake had wandered into the minefield.

“You noticed I had company? How did you notice that, Jake?”

“Well, we saw the limousine pull up and…”

“Saw the limousine, did you?” she echoed dangerously.

Jake nodded. A slight smile tugged at the corners of Sylvia Talluchi’s lips as my aunt let Jake swallow the bait.

“So you’ve been waiting outside my house for almost an hour, have you?”

Jake, former Special Forces operative, suddenly realized now how badly he’d underestimated my aunt.

“Yes, ma’am.” It was a weak tone for such a big man.

“Right out here in the van, were you?”

He nodded.

“Both of you?” she murmured, her eyes boring into my soul.

“Aunt Lucy, you’ve been disappearing for hours at a time without any explanation ever since we got back from the beach. We were worried. There were those flowers that kept arriving mysteriously and then the notes. You gotta admit, you were worried, too. We were only trying to protect you!”

Damn. Too late for Stella Valocchi the Brilliant Former Cop, too.

“So, I suppose it didn’t occur to you that if I was no longer worried and if I chose not to say where I’d been that I might no longer feel concerned about my secret admirer? Furthermore,” she said, her voice rising just enough to let me know the depth of emotion that lay behind the words, “did it ever occur to you that perhaps my private life is none of your business?”

“And what if this man was conning you? What if he…”

My aunt cut me off with a look. “So, now I’m not capable of discerning danger for myself? Now I’m suddenly feeble-minded and incompetent? What next, we have a hearing and I get placed in one of those homes?”

“Sweet mother in heaven!” Sylvia Talluchi cried. “Betrayed, by your own family!” She crossed herself and looked up at the sky above our heads. “Father, forgive them,” she whispered.

“No, nothing like that!”

“Humph! I think it’s exactly like that.”

Okay, not withstanding the fact that Aunt Lucy thought Lloyd was Uncle Benny reincarnated, she was one of the sanest women I knew. And I had hurt her beyond all comprehension. I saw it in her eyes.

“Aunt Lucy, I was just worried. I’m sorry. I should’ve know better.”

Aunt Lucy slowly shook her head, looking at me with a mournful gaze that completely broke my heart.

“Yes, cara mia, you should have known better, but you didn’t.”

She let her gaze shift to Jake, the man I knew she loved almost more than she loved me, the man more like a son to her than a family friend. Slowly her eyes traveled the length of his body, down to his feet and back up again.

“And you,” she said. “Stunade! You have broken my heart.”

“Aunt Lucy, I…”

“You lied to me! Both of you lied to me!” Her eyes glittered with anger and pain.

“We only wanted what was best for you. We didn’t want to see you get hurt!” I cried.

Aunt Lucy sniffed imperiously.

“I don’t need that kind of help,” she said softly. “I need love and I need family, but I don’t need to be treated like a child. If I want privacy, you should respect my wishes.”

Now my back was up. I had acted out of love. I wanted to protect my aunt.

“Well, I was only trying to look out for you,” I said, stung. “I didn’t realize you needed so much privacy. I thought we were closer than that. Maybe you need more privacy than I thought.” Jake dug his elbow into my ribs in a warning but I was too far gone to stop. “Maybe I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

“Maybe you have,” Aunt Lucy said quietly. Without another word, she turned and walked back across the empty street, up the steps to her row house and inside, closing the door firmly. In the echoing silence that followed I heard the solid click of the dead bolt as it shot home.

Mrs. Talluchi, not to be outdone, glared at me. “Put-tan!” she spat. Turning to Jake, she narrowed her eyes and stared hard at his chest. “Ha! I was right!”

She stomped off down the street and up the spotless marble steps to her row house. I turned to Jake, puzzled until I caught sight of his chest. He’d buttoned his shirt wrong, making his shirttails uneven and leaving no doubt as to what we’d been doing in the van. To further seal the verdict, his fly was undone and he was only wearing one sock.

“Great!” I said. “Look at you.”

Jake looked down and shrugged. “Well, it’s not like you gave me an option,” he grumbled. “You threw open the door and I did the best I could.”

I looked across the street at my aunt’s front door. “What are we going to do now?”

It was a rhetorical question. I moved past Jake and climbed back into the van, this time settling myself in the passenger seat where I waited for him to slide behind the wheel.

“Where to, boss?” he asked as we pulled away from the curb.

I shrugged. I was already going to hell, what did it matter where we went in the interim? And then I remembered Bitsy Blankenship.

“The office. If I’m going to need to rent an apartment, I’d better start making enough money to pay for it. Let’s do a little background work before Bitsy comes at two.”

Jake nodded. Neither one of us was as enthusiastic as we would’ve usually been about the prospect of new business, not with Aunt Lucy feeling as she did. How had our good intentions suddenly turned to shit?

I reached into my jacket pocket, retrieved my cell phone and punched in my younger cousin, Nina’s, number. I needed to share the misery.

She answered on the first ring. “Peace, baby!” she cried. She sounded so happy I almost hated to burst her bubble with my worries, but the hesitation was overridden by the need to find a soft shoulder to cry on.

“Oh, no, you didn’t.” Nina sounded horrified.

So much for sympathy.

This was followed by more questions, muffled relays of information to her girlfriend, Spike, the former assistant D.A. turned performance artist, and more cries of disbelief. Apparently, Nina “resonated” with my aunt’s “cosmic energy” and was as appalled as Aunt Lucy had been.

“I don’t know, Stel,” she said finally. “I’ve gotta look up your chart again. I think your sun is in some serious retrograde.”

“Let me talk to Spike,” I said, disgusted.

“Where are you?” Spike said without preamble.

“Heading into the office. We’ve got a new client in about an hour and a half.”

“We’ll meet you there,” she said and severed the connection.

That was Spike for you. Sensible. Level-headed. The polar opposite of my cousin, Nina. How the two ever fell in love was a complete mystery to me, but love it was. They’d been seeing each other for almost two years and they never seemed to hit a bump in the road. Their love just grew with every passing day. Why couldn’t I be certain that a man could love me like Spike loved Nina?

“They’re going to meet us at the office,” I told Jake.

He nodded, lost in his own thoughts. He looked as miserable as I felt.

Neither of us spoke on the short drive across town. Glenn Ford, Pennsylvania, is idyllic in many ways. It sits an hour outside of Philadelphia, close to Amish country, and is lush with verdant farmland and historic fieldstone houses. It was a wonderful small-town environment to grow up in and a great place to return to when my life fell apart in Florida, but today it was just a bit too small for my liking. There was nowhere to hide from the reminders of the importance of Aunt Lucy in my life.

She was everywhere; in the park behind the elementary school where she’d spent hours with me after my parents’ deaths, consoling, talking and, more often than not, just sitting silently, a witness to the tears of loss and longing. I remembered countless shopping expeditions to Guinta’s Grocery Store or Reeder’s Newsstand, or any number of small shops that lined Lancaster Avenue. By the time we’d reached the offices of Valocchi Investigations, it was all I could do to hold back the tears.

Jake avoided looking at me as he unlocked the front door to the entryway that led to our office and climbed the flight of steps to the second floor. I knew he felt my misery and was giving me time to pull myself together.

Once inside, I went immediately to the computer, determined to throw myself into busywork until Bitsy Blankenship arrived for her two-o’clock appointment.

I Googled Bitsy’s name, her maiden as well as her married name, Margolies, and began searching for anything that would tell me about her life since high school. It was just better to know a bit about potential clients before they came strolling in to give you a story that usually had gaps or outright fabrications included. Knowing Bitsy from high school precluded the matter of aliases, so catching up, I figured, would be easy.

Not so. Bitsy, deceptively brilliant for a blond, cheerleader, girly-girl type, had attended Virginia Tech after high school, majoring in electrical engineering of all things. The next fifty or so articles detailed Bitsy’s engagement and subsequent marriage to David Margolies, whom she apparently met sometime during her college career. Margolies was a junior diplomat, an attaché with the U.S. mission in Slovenia. He was also apparently a shining star because he and Bitsy had been moved around frequently as David gained more authority and climbed the diplomatic ladder.

I was reading a detailed account of a party Bitsy and David had attended at the British Embassy when Nina and Spike arrived. Nina’s face was flushed and she was out of breath from her run up the flight of steps to the office. Her blond hair, streaked this week with metallic purple, stood out at wild angles all over her head. Spike followed her at a more leisurely pace. Cool, calm and collected as usual, she strolled into the room with not one long brunette hair out of place.

Nina, as usual, did the talking for the two of them, her words accented by wild arm movements.

“Oh. My. God!” she cried. “I’m sorry we’re late, but ohmigod! We were at the mall, you know, and like, there was just total chaos!”

I looked past Nina to Spike for verification. She nodded, as if Nina was absolutely right and the mall was a complete mob scene.

“Really? Big sale, huh?”

Nina’s eyes widened. “No! Do you two not listen to the radio or what?”

Jake came into my office, drawn by Nina’s increasingly excited tone.

“What’s all the excitement?”

I rolled my eyes. “Nina was at the mall and it was a zoo.”

Nina stomped her foot impatiently. “No, really! We thought we’d never get out, I think every fire truck and police car in town was there. They cordoned off the entire west side of the mall parking and they were hustling people out of the area and telling them the mall was closing!”

“Bomb scare?” Jake prompted.

Nina shook her head. “No, a bomb. A real bomb!”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Turn on the news if you don’t believe me. Some lady’s car blew up with her inside it! It was like, just so totally gruesome!”

She had our complete attention now.

Spike walked over to the tiny television set that sat on my bookcase, picked up the remote and hit the power button. Sure enough, a reporter stood in front of the mall, the yellow crime-scene tape running the length of the screen behind her, fire trucks and police cruisers everywhere. She looked grim as she leaned forward to speak to her audience.

“The sedan, a late model Lexus, had diplomatic plates, but the victim, a woman in her late twenties, has not been formally identified pending a positive identification and notification of her family.”

I looked up at the clock on the wall and realized it was 2:10. Somehow time had slipped away from me. I looked back at the burnt-out shell of a car in the mall parking lot with growing apprehension. Bitsy Blankenship was ten minutes late.

Chapter 2

Back in the day when we attended Glenn Ford High School, Marygrace Llewellen was the “go-to” girl for any and all information pertaining to the comings and goings of our other classmates. She was also an expert at forging parental signatures. This added to her repository of information, as she knew who was skipping and with whom. It also gave her the capacity to blackmail any and all of us at any time, should she desire additional tidbits of gossip that had somehow eluded her.

While Marygrace never exactly extorted information from anyone, the threat was always there when she came to you for information. She was sweet about it. She never used her powers for evil, preferring mostly to matchmake her fellow classmates or gently sway them into various activities that she felt strongly about, like Save the Planet Day or Senior Skip Day. I admired Marygrace’s easy way with others. Everyone liked her while simultaneously fearing her. It was a pretty cool talent she had there and she knew it.

So when she appeared in the doorway of Valocchi Investigations the day after my Aunt Lucy fiasco and Bitsy’s probable death, I was glad to see her and also a bit apprehensive.

“Hi, guys!” She greeted me as if it hadn’t been twelve years since we’d last seen each other and as if it were the most normal and casual thing in the world for her to be stopping by. My internal alarm bell didn’t even ring.

“Marygrace!” Jake rushed over to pick her up in an affectionate bear hug. She squealed, a short butterball of exuberance and enthusiasm, her little feet dangling in the air as Jake whirled her around. “I haven’t seen you since…” He broke off, trying to remember.

“Since you married that bimbo you call your ex-wife. I gave you guys a toaster. You know, I knew you were headed down the wrong road with that one. She never even wrote me a thank-you note. I think she was threatened by me. Poor breeding will do that to you every time, won’t it?”

Jake was momentarily thrown by Marygrace’s summation, but I saw Nina grinning in agreement.

“So,” she said, turning her radar my way, “I hear you two are finally an item. Good, right?” Her hazel eyes bore into mine like lie detectors, and I felt my face flame.

“It’s all good, Marygrace,” I said. “How’ve you been?”

Marygrace still wore her strawberry-blond hair the way she had in high school. It fell just below her chin in a pageboy bob that somehow suited her. When she shook her head as if putting off my question, her hair swung back and forth like a shampoo commercial. I found myself staring at it, unconcerned that she had no intention of answering me and was now asking a new question.

“How come you two are partners but it only says Valocchi Investigations on the door?”

That got my attention. Unfortunately, it got everyone else’s attention, too, including Nina’s. For some reason, she decided to save me.

“Hey, Marygrace, who was in the car at the mall?”

Marygrace almost seemed to quiver, the way a dog does when it catches scent of something really, really good.

“The police haven’t released her name to the media yet, but I already know on account of them telling her mother and calling me. It was Bitsy Blankenship,” she said, turning to me. “That’s why I’m here. See, her grandmother is a patient of mine.” Marygrace caught my puzzled expression and rushed on. “I’m a social worker now, Stella, out at Brookhaven Manor Nursing Home. I know, I know.” She held up her hand. “Why is a good social worker working in a nursing home? You think only loser social workers work in rest homes but that’s just a myth. There are some really good social workers taking care of the elderly, but that’s not why I’m here.”

Marygrace barely seemed to stop for breath between thoughts. I had to work hard to follow her.

“Bitsy’s grandmother is one of my patients.” Marygrace looked at us with an anxious furrow between her brows. “This is confidential, what I say in here, isn’t it?”

“Well, technically, Marygrace, only if you’re a client, and then only within certain parameters,” Spike said, being cautious. “Is that why you’re here? Do you want to hire us?”

Marygrace cocked her head to one side and seemed to consider the matter for a second before answering.

“Well, yeah, I guess. I mean, Bitsy’s grandmother is a lost ball in high weeds. Some days she thinks we’re working at the paper mill and some days she seems just fine, but obviously she can’t hire you!”

“Huh?” Even Nina was getting lost now.

Marygrace looked around the room at the four of us. “Do I need to sign papers first or give you a check or what?” Before anyone could answer, she sped on. “Well, I’ll just tell you. It’s not like Baby Blankenship’s gonna sue me or anything. Like I said, she can’t even remember who I am half the time, so she sure won’t sue me for telling you about her! Besides, everybody knows social workers aren’t in it for the money, and Baby wouldn’t be in a nursing home if she had the money for private care, so there you are!”

“Is this about Bitsy’s death?” I asked, wishing Marygrace had a shortcut button.

Marygrace’s eyes widened. “Well, that’s why I’m here. Somebody breaks into the woman’s room and takes her stuff, then Bitsy turns up dead. Call me paranoid, but I gotta wonder.”

“Wouldn’t that be a police matter?” Jake asked.

Marygrace looked at him, hands on hips, with a frustrated frown. “Oh, yeah, right, like they’ll give a rat’s ass. Baby’s just an old lady to them. There wasn’t anything of any real value in her room. I told you, she’s poor. Don’t you know anything about nursing homes? Stuff gets stolen out of people’s rooms all the time. If it isn’t nailed down—and sometimes even if it is—it gets stolen.”

“Okay, so, you want us to find out if there’s a connection between Bitsy and whoever’s stealing worthless stuff from Baby Blankenship’s room even though she doesn’t probably even remember what it is and probably doesn’t care?” I tried not to look as if I thought Marygrace was nuts, but I was beginning to wonder.

“Who said she doesn’t know what’s going on or what’s missing? I told you, some days she doesn’t remember who she is, but the rest of the time, Baby’s a sharp old cookie. She told me someone came into her room and believe me, when I went in after the head nurse called, Baby’s room was trashed. She said someone came in and was looking everywhere and they took something.”

“So, what did they steal?” I asked.

Marygrace shrugged and for the first time seemed a little bit disconcerted. “She doesn’t know. She can’t remember. That’s what you guys are supposed to find out. You’re detectives aren’t you?”

“Whoa!” Nina said softly. “Now that’s totally a case to sink your teeth into!”

“You think?” I said reflexively.

“Aw, come on, man!” Marygrace said impatiently. “She’s an old woman. Her granddaughter’s just been killed, maybe by terrorists, and someone came into her room and took something. I’m asking you guys to do something, as a public service. It’ll be good publicity. Don’t you need to get the word out about your agency?”

I shook my head, hoping to clear the confusion of facts and questions in Marygrace’s rapid-fire statement.

“Hold up here, girlfriend,” I said, hoping to apply the brakes to Marygrace’s mouth before I became eternally lost in her next rush of words. “Let me just get a few things straight.”

“What makes you think it was a terrorist?” Jake interrupted me and set Marygrace off again.

“Hey, I watch TV. I can read between the lines. Her husband’s a diplomat. Bitsy’s car was just sitting there. It’s not like she threw a match in the gas tank or anything. It had to be terrorists. Who else? I hear Bitsy’s mama is just all to pieces.” Marygrace turned bright red and clapped a hand over her wayward mouth. “Oh, Lord, I mean she’s upset, not all to…pieces!”

Jake looked at me over the top of Marygrace’s head. She would have no way of knowing about Bitsy’s urgent phone call. It had been almost the only thing Jake and I had thought about since hearing of the mysterious explosion at the mall. Now here was Marygrace saying Bitsy had definitely been the one in the car and her grandmother was the victim of petty larceny. Maybe that’s why Bitsy had called for an appointment. Maybe she’d wanted us to look into her grandmother’s problem. If there was a connection, we’d need to make sure the authorities took it seriously.

A wave of relief washed over me. The load of guilt that had been sitting on my shoulders since I’d heard about the explosion lifted a tiny bit. Maybe Bitsy hadn’t been calling me about a matter of life and death. She probably wanted her grandmother to feel as if something was being done. Bitsy wasn’t dead because I spitefully put her appointment off when I could’ve met her earlier.

Except—Bitsy had called me before going to the nursing home. How could she have known about the theft?

“Sure, Marygrace,” I said. At that point, with my roller coaster of emotions, I would’ve promised Marygrace anything. “I would be more than happy to investigate Baby Blankenship’s missing belongings, whatever they are.” I sobered up, thinking of Bitsy and how much her death would affect her family. “She must be devastated by Bitsy’s death. How’s she doing with that?”

Marygrace sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I hate to say it, but I doubt Baby even remembers Bitsy. She hadn’t seen her in years before yesterday. If Baby remembered Bitsy at all, it was as a little girl.”

Well, at least Baby got to see Bitsy grown-up one time. Poor Bitsy. Wonder what made her decide to stop by and see her grandmother after so many years? I glanced over at my cousin, the believer in all things New Age. She’d probably tell me Bitsy had unconsciously sensed her impending demise and wanted to tie up loose ends.

“So, why did Bitsy stop by to see her grandmother yesterday, I mean, after so many years?” I voiced my question.

Marygrace just shook her head. “Who knows? She came racing in, barely said ‘Hi’ to me, asked what room her granny was in and took off down the hallway. You’d have thought it was a race to the finish line. And then, she only stayed for like, five minutes before she took off! I just never could figure that Bitsy out. For someone so smart, she sure was stupid.”

Spike had been listening to Marygrace’s tale with growing interest. “How was she stupid?” she asked.

“Well, she had book sense but the girl didn’t have a bit of common sense. Look at that geek she married.” Marygrace’s eyes twinkled as she looked around the room, drawing us in to her story. “She eloped, you know.”

“But I read about her…”

Marygrace nodded. “Oh, they had a wedding, all right. Brenda, her mama, threatened to disown her if they didn’t come back and put on a show. Otherwise, people would’ve thought the worst.”

“What?” Nina asked. “What’s worse than getting married?”

Jake sputtered, choking on the coffee he’d been trying to drink, and turned red. I figured it was only his karma paying him back. After all, the man had abandoned me at the altar when we were in high school and scheduled to elope ourselves.

“Yeah, Marygrace,” I echoed. “What’s worse than getting married?”

“Aw, come on, man. You know. Her mama said people would think she was knocked up!”

“Damn!” Nina breathed. “I just like, totally don’t get some people.”

“When did Bitsy stop by the nursing home?” Jake asked, pulling us back to the matter at hand.

“It had to be after she called me,” I muttered to Jake.

Marygrace cocked her head to one side and appeared to be giving Jake’s question serious consideration. “Let’s see. It was after ten o’clock bingo and a little before lunch. Yeah, that’s right. I remember because old Mrs. Maxwell expired around four and I was trying to take care of the arrangements when all hell broke loose in Baby’s room.”

Marygrace twitched, clutched her side and reached inside her brightly colored jacket. A moment later she pulled a tiny cell phone out and flipped it open.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m on call. I have to take this.”

As we watched, Marygrace listened, the frown on her face deepening with each passing moment.

“Don’t give me that!” she cried. “How can it happen again without anybody seeing anything? Where were you people?”

Marygrace looked up from her conversation and mouthed the word, “Baby” before returning to the conversation.

“Where’s Darren? Well, tell him I’m coming back right now, and this time we’re calling the police. If one of those CNAs laid a hand on Baby, I’ll have their job and their ass. Call Stephanie and get her in to see Baby right now. If she can’t come, call a fucking ambulance and have her transported to the E.R.”

There was a brief hesitation as the person on the other end apparently questioned Marygrace’s orders. I watched her eyes darken and her scowl deepen, thinking only a fool would ignore a dynamo like Marygrace when she was riled up.

“I don’t give a flying rat’s ass what Medicaid’ll pay for. Get her there and get her there now!”

Marygrace slammed the lid shut on her tiny phone.

“Let’s go!” Marygrace was already halfway out the door. When nobody moved to follow her, she spun back around. “Well? Come on! Baby’s room got hit again and this time she got hurt. Are you guys gonna sit around with your thumbs up your butts or are you coming?”

“We’ll be right behind you, Marygrace,” I answered. “I’ve got to get a couple of things started before we head out, that’s all. We’re coming.”

Marygrace’s eyes glittered with unshed tears and her face and neck flushed. She clenched and unclenched her fists. In that one moment I understood her feelings completely and saw the woman she’d become. Marygrace had simply taken all the skills she’d used for fun and diversion in high school and channeled them into her career as a social worker.

She was no longer the champion of her fellow fun-loving teenagers. She had evolved into a champion of lost causes and underdogs. Marygrace fought for her patients with the same fervor and intensity I’d had on the police force. I hated to think what would happen if she were the one to encounter Baby Blankenship’s abuser.

“Just hurry up, okay?” she said finally. “This scares me.”

She was gone before I could answer her. I swallowed hard, ignoring the tight feeling in my throat and the naked emotion in Nina’s eyes. “All right, you two, Jake and I will take the nursing home. While we’re there, I want you to get me some background information.”

Spike nodded, her chin resting on Nina’s head. “What do you need?”

“I know you still have contacts in the police department,” I said. “I want to know what they know about Bitsy’s death. I want to know everything you can find out.”

Spike looked momentarily puzzled. “Okay. As soon as they ID’d the car, the feds wouldn’ve taken over.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m covering all the bases. Bitsy was coming to see us and she’d said it was urgent. She never made it, and I want to know why. I’ll take any bit of information I can get.”

“What do you want me to do?” Nina asked, her voice muffled by Spike’s shoulder.

“As soon as I can get a list of employees on duty today and at the time of the first incident, I’ll call you. I want you and Spike to do the background checks.”

Jake was strapping on his shoulder holster while I talked. So, he was expecting trouble, too. I didn’t know why our subconscious alarm systems had suddenly kicked in, but they had, and it was always best to trust your instincts in this business. There was no doubt in my mind that Bitsy Blankenship’s death and the attack on her grandmother were somehow related. Now it was up to us to figure out how and to prevent anything else from happening.

“You ready?” Jake was already halfway out the back exit.

“Be right there!”

I crossed the room to my gun safe, punched in the combination and, when the door swung open, considered the cache inside carefully. Not the Glock; no safety. I discarded the Sig; too bulky. I reached past the Beretta and pulled out my Lady Smith 9 mm. Perfect. Small, easily concealed. “Tasteful, elegant but not ostentatious,” I murmured as I pulled out a pancake holster and stuck the gun inside it. “Just the right little accessory for a visit to a nursing home.”

I reached for my blazer, grabbed my purse and ran down the back steps and out into the cold winter air. The sky was clouding up ominously, and a gust of wind blew in from the northeast. Not a good sign. I sniffed. The air smelled like snow.

Jake punched the accelerator of his newly purchased ’98 black Viper. It was his way of saying, “Hurry the hell up!” When I hopped into the passenger seat he spun out of the parking lot, barely waiting for me to close the door.

“Calm down!” I yelled. “There’s no sense in getting us killed, too.”

He didn’t answer me and he didn’t slow down.

“Jake, I mean it! What’s wrong with you?”

He took the road toward the outskirts of town well over the speed limit. We headed into a sharp turn, careening around a massive granite boulder outcropping, and swerved right into the path of an oncoming concrete truck.

There wasn’t even time to scream. I grabbed the edges of my seat and stopped breathing. Jake fishtailed through the narrow gap between the truck’s bumper and the guardrail, accelerated and cleared the truck with a two-inch margin. A second later he pulled over onto the side of the road and cut the engine.

We sat for a long moment without speaking. Finally Jake broke the silence.

“Stella, I need to tell you something about Bitsy,” he said. He was staring at a spot on the dashboard instead of looking at me. “I need to tell you something about me and Bitsy. Now. Before this goes any further.”

The serious tone in his voice scared me. What could Jake possibly have to tell me that was this desperate? And what did he mean, “Before this goes any further?” Was he talking about the investigation or did he mean our relationship? I took a deep breath, forced my body to relax back into the leather bucket seat and waited.

“After you and I broke up, well, Bitsy and I had a…short relationship.” He looked at me, scanning my face for a reaction, and when I didn’t show one, went on. “It didn’t mean much. I mean, it didn’t last long. It was just one of those summer things and I guess I pretty much forgot about it. Then a few years later, when I was in Special Forces, a couple of suits paid me a visit.”

“Suits?”

“Feds, spooks, you know, CIA types. They were doing a routine background investigation on Bitsy. They didn’t tell me why, of course, but I got curious and eventually I figured it out. Bitsy was joining the club.”

“Shut up! Bitsy? She’s not spy material. She’s a dingbat.”

Jake smiled. “She’s a genius playing a dingbat, Stella. The girl was brilliant. She was the third brightest in our graduating class, and I know she could’ve walked off with the best G.P.A., only it wouldn’t have fit with her party-girl image.”

“So she dummied down?”

Jake nodded. “Just enough to still get into a good school but not be called a geek.”

“And this is what you wanted to tell me?”

Jake looked uncomfortable. “Not exactly. A few years later, right before she got married, we ran into each other again. It was a strange set of circumstances. Both of us were far away from home, doing things other people would hopefully never know, and well, it was fairly high risk, so…”

Great. Jake and Bitsy.

“Weren’t you still married then?” Okay, so I was sticking the knife in and twisting it a little bit.

“Yeah.” Jake looked so miserable I started to feel bad.

“So, then what happened?”

Jake looked out his window for a long moment. “Nothing. We finished doing what we had to do and that was that. I never saw her again. She got married about a month later and I kept on…”

“Wait a minute. Bitsy got married a month later? After she had an affair with you?”

Jake nodded. “She didn’t love him, Stella. In fact, she never even mentioned him. I doubt Bitsy even knew the man at the time.”

This wasn’t making sense to me. It didn’t sound like the Bitsy I remembered, but then, she’d eloped and that wasn’t her, either.

“I’m confused, Jake.”

This made him smile. “Me, too, baby. What I’m trying to say is that Bitsy may have been on the job when she called. She probably knew we were working together but didn’t want to risk calling me directly.”

Oh. I was starting to feel stupid. “So you think Bitsy wanted you, not me. You think she was in some kind of trouble and remembered you?”

Jake nodded. “She knew I had a certain…skill set. She probably knew I was out of the service and so I wouldn’t be on anybody’s radar if she needed something and had to stay under the wire. Marygrace probably told her how to reach me.”

Oh, great. So Bitsy hadn’t wanted my help at all! She wanted Jake. Well, didn’t they all?

“I’m just saying, if you were for any reason blaming yourself for Bitsy not making it in, don’t. This has nothing to do with you. It’s my fault. I should’ve put it together and had you call her back. I guess I just thought she’d be out of it by now. People like Bitsy get promoted into administration. They don’t stay out in the field.”

So that explained the squirrelly driving. Jake was blaming himself for Bitsy’s death.

“I’m telling you this after the fact because I think we should be extra cautious on this one. There probably is a connection between what’s going on at the nursing home and Bitsy.”

I nodded. There was no way I could’ve seen this coming. I knew there was no reason to beat myself up for somehow not being able to divine this bit of information, but I felt suddenly out of the loop.

Jake reached over to start the engine then turned to study my expression, once again trying to read me.

“You all right about this?” he asked.

I gave him my best smile and nodded. “Glad you told me. I’ll be on the lookout.” I motioned toward the road. “We’d better get to it. I don’t want Marygrace Llewellen on my back.”

I turned away and stared out my window as Jake drove. As we made our way toward Brookhaven Manor, a realization suddenly hit me. The real reason I was upset was not because Jake had information I didn’t have. I was upset because Jake had a secret. In fact, Jake had lots of secrets and they just seemed to keep popping up. What else was he holding back? And how could I trust and love a man who had so many secrets?

Chapter 3

Brookhaven Manor sat on a small knoll overlooking the bypass just outside Glenn Ford. It could’ve been any generic nursing home in any town in America with its low-slung, redbrick exterior and the long front porch lined with white rocking chairs. I stared up at the building wondering if rocking chairs were a requirement of aging. Every assisted-living and retirement home I’d ever visited had them.

Jake parked in the small visitors’ lot and studied the grounds. “Nice for old people, bad for security,” he muttered.

I surveyed the tree-filled grounds, noting the many paths and benches tucked away into what would normally be cozy nooks for chatting or reading but were now a haven for hiding out or trespassing unseen.

“A regular nightmare,” I agreed.

We hadn’t even reached the massive glass front doors before Marygrace Llewellen was outside, hurrying toward us with a grim expression on her face.

“Don’t go in yet,” she said. “I want to tell you something.” She looked over her shoulder, as if checking for pursuers, then turned back. “I’ve talked to some of the staff and apparently there was an as-needed PRN attendant on duty last night. She was sent by the staffing service we regularly use but it was her first time with us.”

“Was she assigned to Baby?” I asked.

“No, but one of the nurses saw her in that hall and directed her back to her assigned post. At the time she figured the girl was just lost, but in light of what happened later…”

Marygrace looked back over her shoulder again, obviously nervous. “She’s back again today, that’s what I wanted to tell you. I haven’t spoken with her and the police haven’t made it out here yet to take their report, either, so I thought I’d leave her to you guys.”

I smiled. “Good thinking, Marygrace. Where is she?”

“Follow me. They have her working on the North Hall today. I asked the charge nurse to have her wait for me in the conference room.” Marygrace turned and set off rapidly through the entrance doors, across the wide linoleum foyer and down a hallway that ran to the left of the entry.

When we reached the North Hall nurses’ station, Marygrace stopped and motioned to a large, heavy-set black woman in white scrubs.

“Is she in the conference room?”

The woman nodded. “Should be. That’s where I told her to go, but her English isn’t too good.” The nurse shook her head. “I wish they’d send us some help that we can actually communicate with. Half the time they babble off something and I don’t know what they’re saying.”

Marygrace pointed to a room at the end of the hallway as Jake’s pager went off, startling both of us and causing a little man in a wheelchair to stop and stare at Jake.

“It’s a call-out, ain’t it?” he said. He looked irritated. “Damned things! Tell ’em I’m off and ain’t no way I’m coming in!” With this, he rolled off down the hallway.

Marygrace smiled. “He’s a retired firefighter. He thinks he’s still on duty.”

Jake’s expression changed imperceptibly but I saw his eyes darken and knew something was up.

“Go on ahead and get started with her,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I’d better check in with Spike.” He withdrew his cell phone from his pocket and turned to walk away from us. Whatever it was, it was serious and it was not something he wanted Marygrace to overhear.

I covered for him by starting off toward the conference room with Marygrace. “Now, I don’t want to scare her, so why don’t you introduce me as a friend of Baby’s instead of a P.I.?”

Marygrace bobbed her head up and down in agreement as she reached for the door handle and led me into the large room. Windows overlooking a pond and the woods beyond them lined the far wall and gave the room a feeling of unending space. A massive conference table flanked by leather chairs took up most of the room. I looked around, noting the sparse countertops that lined the other walls and the impersonal art that had been hung in an attempt to add warmth to the stiff furniture. It was the standard conference room. It was also empty.

Marygrace took one look and stuck her head out the door. “Sandra, she’s not in here. Page her, would you?”

Someone else walked by the room and I heard Marygrace asking her if she’d seen the CNA.

“I saw her go into the ladies’ room about five minutes ago,” the female voice answered.

I intervened. “Where’s the ladies’ room?” I asked Marygrace. “I think I’ll go check. Give me her name and a brief description.” My internal alarm system was beginning to sound the red alert. I scanned the hallway for Jake and didn’t see him anywhere. This wasn’t going so well and we’d only just arrived.

“The ladies’ room is back off the lobby next to the dining room. The girl’s name is Aida. She’s tall, with long, dirty-blond hair that’s got a perm, you know, so it sort of falls in ringlets. She’s thin and she’ll be wearing scrubs, probably green. The agency we use gives their temps complementary uniforms and most of them wear those.”

I started off down the hallway with Marygrace on my heels.

“You’d better stay back there, in case Aida comes back. We wouldn’t want to miss her.”

Surprisingly, Marygrace didn’t question me and returned to the room.

I kept looking for Jake as I walked up the hallway but he was nowhere to be found. As I passed the lobby, I looked down the opposite hallway, but he wasn’t there, either. Now where had he disappeared to?

The ladies’ room was clearly labeled in big white letters. I paused in front of the door, pulled my Lady Smith out of its holster and dropped it into my jacket pocket just in case, then slowly entered the restroom.

It was a small, three-stall room with two sinks and a window above the heating unit at the far end of the room. As I watched, a green ass and a pair of legs vanished through the open window.

“Hey!” I cried and went into autopilot. I ran, scaled the metal heater and scrambled up the side of the wall and through the open window.

There was a six-foot drop to the ground below. I looked up and saw a figure in green scrubs running across the back parking lot, headed for the woods and thought, why me? Where’s Jake? Damn!

I jumped, dropping hard to my knees before straightening and pursuing my quarry into the woods. She had a good head start on me but I was in shape, and with effort, I began to slowly close the gap between us. And then she disappeared. She simply vanished into the thick stand of pine trees in front of me.

I stopped, stuck my hand into my jacket pocket and brought out the gun.

“Aida,” I called. “I just want to talk to you.”

I stood still, listening. The air was thick with the humidity that signaled an oncoming snowstorm and all the small ordinary sounds. Where was she? I tried to remember the area around the nursing home, searching for a mental map in my mind that would let me guess how she might try to escape so I could anticipate her next move.

Where the hell was Jake when I needed backup?

I crept slowly forward, still listening, barely breathing as I scanned the fir trees ahead of me. I slipped the safety off the Lady Smith and slid my forefinger along the smooth barrel of the gun.

I never saw her coming.

She landed the first blow to the side of my head, a swift, strong punch that I’m certain left knuckle indentations in my skull and sent my gun flying out of my hand. She had a good jump on me, but I landed the next punch. I whirled around, caught sight of cold, green eyes and faked right before upper-cutting her with a solid left.

Neither of us said a word. We fought in silence, each too intent on landing the finishing blow. I felt the air sail out of her lungs as I landed a kick to her solar plexus. Her answering move threw me off my feet and onto the hard ground. I saw my gun lying a short distance away and rolled to grab it. My fingers had just closed around the firm metal grip when lights exploded somewhere behind my left ear and the world around me swirled into an inky darkness.

When I came to, Aida had vanished. I thought I heard footsteps running away in the distance, but it could easily have been the anguished pounding of my head. I struggled to my feet, leaned against a nearby pine tree and waited for the world to stop spinning around me. What had that girl hit me with?

“Stella!”

Great. Now he shows up. I could hear Jake getting closer but when I tried to answer the only sound that escaped was a thin, high-pitched squeak. When he finally caught sight of me, he stopped and stared.

“What did you do, hit a tree?”

I just looked at him. Well, actually, I looked at two of him for a moment before my vision cleared. Jake was attempting to play, but his concern was evident in his eyes. I’d scared him.

“I opened a can of whoop ass on this tree here and then I used what I had left over on that little nurse’s aide Marygrace wanted us to interview.”

Jake looked around the clearing. “What’d you do then, bury her?”

I let go of the tree and took a few uncertain steps toward him. “No, idiot, I let her crawl off into the woods to die. It was the only honorable thing to do.”

He nodded. “She cold-cocked you and got away, huh?”

I looked past him and started walking back toward the nursing home. “Yeah, something like that.”

Jake stopped me, studying my face before gently tracing the area around my left eye with his thumb.

“Ouch! Stop that!”

He smiled softly. “You’re gonna have a hell of a shiner.”

“Yeah, well you should see her!”

Jake sighed as I shrugged off his attempt to support me while I walked.

“Where were you, anyway? Here I am, attempting to whoop some scrawny girl’s ass and you’re chatting with Spike on the phone. Where’s your sense of duty? You’re supposed to back up your partner.”

Jake’s expression darkened. “I hope you’re kidding. If somebody hadn’t seen you running and told Marygrace, I’d still be looking for you. I had no idea you’d get into something so fast.”

“Yes, I was kidding. What did Spike want?”

“Among other things, she called to tell me the coroner was about to send Bitsy’s body to the state forensic lab for identification when the feds stepped in and claimed it.”

“How’d they explain that?”

“They told the coroner she was married to a member of the diplomatic corps and that he’d requested it.”

“Which was bullshit, right?”

Jake nodded. “Yep. Guess there’s no doubt about it. She was still on the payroll.”

We’d reached the front entrance to the building, and Marygrace was waiting for us. When she caught sight of me, her expression ran the gamut from surprised to horrified to professionally neutral. I figured I had to look pretty scary to make her pull out her job face.

“Looks like you need a little doctoring,” she said. “Our physician’s assistant, Stephanie, can take a look at you.”

“I’m fine. I just got a little scraped up, that’s all.”

Marygrace raised an eyebrow. “Well, I just thought you might not want to scare the residents. Come on. Let her patch you up. Besides, I figured you’d want to talk to her anyway. She’s the one who usually looks after the residents in place of the doctor.”

I nodded, wishing my head didn’t hurt so much. “You don’t have a doctor on staff?”

Marygrace was scuttling down the hallway but the mention of expense and doctors made her pause momentarily. “With Medicaid paying? Hell, places like this don’t get real doctors. We get their P.A. and if it’s really bad, we might see them at the end of the day, when they’re already too tired and could care less about whether one old person lives or dies.” She apparently thought better of this because she quickly tacked on a disclaimer. “Not all of them are sharks. I’m just saying most of them are.”

“The doc here, is he a shark?”

“No comment,” she answered grimly. “But I like Stephanie.”

“Was she the one who initially treated Baby today?”

Marygrace shook her head. “Nope. She was seeing patients in Dr. Alonzo’s office when Baby got hurt. The charge nurse sent her on to the hospital and she’s still there. But Stephanie saw her after she reported someone had been in her room two days ago.”

Jake was walking along with us, the frown on his face deepening with every step. When Marygrace stopped to speak to a resident, I took him aside. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m just trying to put this all together. I mean, why go out a bathroom window and not a door?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Marygrace said, rejoining us and shamelessly eavesdropping. “All the doors are locked. You can only get out by punching in the code on the keypad that’s located next to each door.”

“And don’t all the employees have the code?”

“Sure,” Marygrace said, grinning. “Unless you change it and don’t tell them. That’s what I did as soon as I got back here. I wanted to control who was coming and going until the police got here. The front door was the only door with open access and I had the front desk clerk writing down the names of everyone who arrived or departed.”

“So, why didn’t she just walk out the front door?”

“Look at him!” Marygrace said, gesturing to Jake. “He’s got cop written all over him! He’s big. He’s got a bulge under his suit coat and he was outside talking on the cell phone right in front of the building. I’d take the window too, if I’d been in her shoes.”

I nodded, making a mental note to get the name of the staffing agency the nursing home used to hire Aida. They’d be reluctant to talk, if not downright uncooperative, fearing a lawsuit from the nursing home and citing confidentiality, but we could still try.

A tall woman with close-cropped wiry black hair stood in front of the North Hall nurses’ station, writing in a thick chart. She wore a spotless white lab coat, open to reveal a downright sexy pink knit top that crisscrossed her ample chest and highlighted the rich mocha color of her skin. As we approached, she looked up, took one look at my face and turned away from her paperwork.

“You don’t have enough to do, Marygrace, you gotta go gathering people up from the parking lot for me to see?”

Marygrace went off into one of her long, rapid-fire explanations punctuated with requests for medical attention and information. Within moments I was sitting in a chair in the conference room wincing as Stephanie dabbed Betadine on the scrape above my eye and Jake peppered her with questions about Baby Blankenship.

“Without Baby or her P.O.A. signing a release, I can’t talk to you about her condition or any treatment I may or may not have provided. As I understand it, you two have been retained by Marygrace to investigate the theft of items from Ms. Blankenship’s room. Frankly, I don’t see how I can help you.”

Great. What now? I looked to Marygrace and saw her deep in thought. She cocked her head to the side and smiled at the physician’s assistant.

“Of course you can’t talk about Baby, specifically, but you could speak generally about people like Baby, people who…I don’t know, let’s say, elderly people with maybe midstage Alzheimer’s.”

Marygrace was fairly levitating with the possibilities of obtaining information from Stephanie without breaking the laws pertaining to confidentiality.

“How about this,” Marygrace continued. “Suppose someone with a fair amount of memory loss encountered a trauma and lost something important to them. Suppose they then forgot what they’d lost. Would there be a chance that they could wake up tomorrow and perhaps remember more details, like the specific item that was missing or the description of the person who’d taken it?”

Stephanie smiled. “Perhaps. It happens. Of course, they could wake up tomorrow and have forgotten the entire incident, too.”

Jake was worse at hiding his frustration than I was. He fidgeted impatiently and finally turned to Marygrace. “Can we see her room?”

Marygrace sighed. “Sure. I told the staff to leave the room untouched, but I was too late. They were already trying to put things in order by the time I got back to the facility. They didn’t know. I guess they don’t watch those police shows like I do.” She smiled ruefully. “Come on. I’ll show you her room while Stephanie finishes doctoring Stella.”

“Wait a minute! We’re done, aren’t we?” I jumped up off the stool despite Stephanie’s attempts to continue dabbing me with swabs and ointments and took off after Jake and Marygrace. No way was I getting the short end of this investigation.

“Thanks, Stephanie,” I called over my shoulder, drowning out her protests.

I reached the door to Baby Blankenship’s room just as the other two were walking into it. It looked like any room in any hospital or nursing home in America, with the exception of a wall covered in family photographs and some other brightly colored knickknacks scattered around.

I had just begun carefully inspecting a photograph of a much younger Bitsy, surrounded by the rest of her family at what appeared to be a birthday party for Baby, when my cell phone rang.

“Stella?” Nina’s voice sounded strange, as if she had a cold or was trying not to cry.

“What’s wrong?”

“I was trying to help,” she said and sniffed loudly.

“Nina, tell me what’s going on.”

Jake and Marygrace were both studying me with concerned expressions.

“Well, after you guys left I remembered I had a hair appointment later and like, well, I have this paint chip I wanted Verna to see, you know, so she’d know what color I wanted for the highlights this time?”

“Uh-huh.”

It would do no good to rush Nina. It would only make her back up and start the tale all over again. The best thing I could do was pray she wound it up in short order.

“Well, you know how you were talking about that limo and all and Aunt Lucy being so pissed?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It was there! He was dropping her off! So I like, got the license plate number and—Oh, God, Stella! It’s awful!”

Nina began to sob. When she gulped air, I broke in.

“Nina, what’s awful?”

“Oh!” she wailed. “I didn’t know I was so good!”

“Nina, what are you talking about?”

My cousin sniffed loudly, sounding offended. “Stella! For pity’s sake, try and follow what I’m saying! I am just like, totally good at this detective crap! I found out who he is and…and…”

“And?” I wanted to jump through the phone and throttle the girl.

“And, well, I found out too much, that’s what!”

This was followed by a renewed burst of crying, punctuated by loud sniffs and snorts.

“Nina,” I said, trying to be heard over the sheer volume of her sobbing. “Where is Spike? Let me talk to her.”

“She…she…can’t come. She went to see the…D.A.” More crying followed and I silently counted to ten and prayed for patience.

“Okay, Nina, now try and get hold of yourself. I need to know what you found out.”

Nina snuffled, blew her nose loudly and said, “All right.” She drew in a deep breath and said absolutely nothing.

“Nina, who is he? What did you learn about the man? Is he a criminal? What is it?”

“I can’t tell you over the phone!”

“Nina! Why not?”

Silence from her end of the line and then the infernal tear machine cranked up and she was off and running.

“You…you…you have to come here…to Aunt Lucy’s. Right now! Oh, this is awful!”

“Has something happened to Aunt Lucy?” Fear rose in my chest, tightening my throat as visions of Aunt Lucy at the hands of an evil stranger snapped in a rapid-fire slide-show of possibilities.

“No! She’s out again somewhere…probably with…him.”

Jake was mouthing “What? Why is she crying?”

All I could do was shake my head and frown. It was impossible to explain while also trying to calm Nina down.

“All right, honey,” I said finally. “We’ll be there as soon as we can. It shouldn’t be more than a half hour at the most.”

“A half hour?” she wailed.

“Twenty minutes.”

“Oh…oh…oh!” She was hiccupping now. “What…what…ever!”

I snapped the cell shut and rolled my eyes at Jake. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it doesn’t sound good, and Spike’s out working on the D.A. I don’t think there’s a lot we can accomplish here right now. Maybe we should return when Baby gets back from the hospital and has had some time to rest.”

Marygrace’s eyes widened. “You guys can’t stay away too long. What if Baby comes back and something else happens? I want you to protect her!”

Jake looked puzzled. “I thought you wanted us to find whatever got stolen. You didn’t say anything about protection.”

Marygrace stamped her tiny foot and glared at him. “Aw, come on man! Do I have to spell out everything? Baby got hurt and that aide beat up Stella. I’d say the woman needs protection!”

A little muscle in Jake’s jaw began to twitch and I knew he was getting frustrated with Marygrace’s impatience.

“Okay, Marygrace, if you want to hire private protection…”

Marygrace held up her hand, stopping me. “Whoa, now exactly how much is that going to cost? I mean, I am a social worker. Money doesn’t just grow on trees, you know. Anyway, I guess the facility might pay, but I need to check it out. In the meantime, we have to take care of Baby. Where’s your—”

I broke her off before she could question my civic-mindedness.

“All right! All right! Jake, how about you drop me at Aunt Lucy’s and go on to the hospital so you can keep an eye on Baby. I’ll go see what’s got Nina so upset, then relieve you at six, either there or here, depending on when they release her.”

Jake nodded but before he could add anything else, his cell phone rang.

After he said hello all I could hear was the sound of Nina sobbing. I snatched the phone out of his hand and pressed the receiver to my ear.

“All right! We’re coming! You don’t have to call Jake to ride herd on me, okay?”

“It’s a matter…of…life and death,” she said shakily. “I thought I might’ve forgotten to…tell you…that.”

The cell phone went dead as Nina severed the connection. Oh, this was just too unbelievable. We finally get a case that has nothing to do with insurance fraud or cheating spouses and what happens? We develop a rash of personal problems! Somebody give me a break!

Still, a little flame of apprehension ignited inside my chest, growing stronger the closer I got to my office. Nina was a dingbat, no doubt about it, but she rarely got upset without cause. In fact, Nina never overreacted, at least not in the presence of real danger. So something was wrong, all right, and if Nina was on target, it would be a matter of life and death.

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