“Jake!” I warned. “This really isn’t the time for games. Can you call Nina and see if she can come relieve me later? That should free us up to pursue the Bitsy angle.”
Jake chuckled softly before switching gears and returning to the business at hand. “I’ll call her. You want her to come as an aide?”
Before I could answer, the door began to open behind me. I slipped the tiny cell phone back into my pocket and turned just as the two alleged state “investigators” entered the room, accompanied by Marygrace and her boss.
“I’m sorry, Sister,” Marygrace said, not looking the least bit sorry. “These gentlemen are with the state adult services division and need to talk with Mrs. Blankenship about an episode that occurred earlier today. Would it be too much trouble…”
I interrupted her before she could finish. “Gentlemen, this lady is exhausted, not to mention, heavily sedated. I doubt you’ll be able to rouse her before tomorrow. I was here when the ambulance attendants gave their report. Her doctor gave her the medication right before she left the hospital.” I looked at Baby and smiled. “The poor dear fought the sedative as long as she could and only agreed to close her eyes if I stayed with her.” I looked back up at the two men, letting the smile fade as I gave them my best-remembered impression of the meanest nun in my parochial school. “I’ll be sitting right here by her side when she awakens in the morning. I suggest you come back in the afternoon if you want to talk to her. It would be cruel to awaken the dear.”
I lingered over the word cruel until I was certain I had their attention before going in for the close.
“If need be, I’ll be glad to speak to your supervisor about the need for Mrs. Blankenship to have her rest…”
I let the threat linger while the two men reluctantly considered their options. It would look very odd if they insisted on waking a sleeping patient. I had no doubt they wouldn’t have hesitated to override the nursing home staff because of the state’s clout with nursing home operations, but now they were going up against one of God’s employees. Even phony state investigators had to pretend to honor their higher power.
“Certainly, Sister,” the man with the half-moon scar said. “We’ll just come back in the morning.”
I stiffened and frowned at him, enjoying my role immensely. “Not before lunch, young man.”
“S’ter,” he said, accepting defeat.
“I’ll be right here by her bedside all night,” I cautioned. “So don’t you worry. I’ll watch over her.”
Marygrace ushered everyone out of the room but held her hand behind her back long enough to give me a thumbs-up sign. The door closed behind them and I pulled the room’s lone armchair over beside the bed, settling back into its cold vinyl cushions. It was going to be a long night.
When Nina shook my shoulder a few hours later, I sat up startled and had to take a few moments to remember where I was. Nina stood beside me, her spiky blond hair tamed down with hair gel, wearing dull-green scrubs and no makeup. It was obvious, from her swollen, red-rimmed eyes, that she’d been crying again.
“Did you talk to Aunt Lucy?”
Nina shook her head. “No. Jake said I’m supposed to tell everyone I’m Mrs. Blankenship’s private sitter. And he said to tell you those two men are in a blue sedan in the back parking lot.”
I nodded. “Are you sure you’re all right to stay?” Nina looked awful, pale and as if she might fall to pieces at any moment.
Nina looked at the sleeping woman in the bed and smiled. “I like old folks. It’ll take my mind off things at home.” But the smile crumpled as Nina’s lower lip quivered.
“Nina, what’s going on?”
“Spike wants to move. She says we should have our own place, and I was all for it in the beginning, but now Aunt Lucy’s hanging out with a walking-dead guy and she’s all mad at you and Jake and I just can’t go!”
A fat tear escaped to run down my cousin’s cheek.
“Oh, honey,” I said, pulling her down to sit on the arm of my chair. “Aunt Lucy’s fine. We’ll get everything worked out. Besides, we don’t know for sure that her boyfriend’s dying. Maybe he just gave the real estate company that address so they’d leave him alone.”
Nina brightened at this. “You think? Maybe you’re right. I thought you had to be…you know…like almost dead to be in a hospice.”
I shrugged. “That’s what I think too. So, you see, maybe it’s not as dark as it seems.”
Nina still seemed a little uncertain. “Well, yeah, but what about you and…”
“Nina, Aunt Lucy and I can work things out without you living in the house. I can always call you guys if we need you. I mean, you’re not thinking of moving far away are you?”
Nina shook her head but frowned harder. “Spike wants a new house in Exton and I don’t like new houses! I want something with character. We’ve been out looking some, but we just haven’t seen anything we love.”
I sighed. “That’s not a big deal,” I said, reassuring her. “You two will work it out.”
Nina looked down at me. “I don’t know. I don’t want to get married.” She held up her hand before I could remind her that same-sex marriages weren’t legal in Pennsylvania so it wasn’t really an issue anyway. “She wants to have a commitment ceremony, but I’m not so sure I want to be that…well, you know…conventional.”
I stood up and stretched. This was certainly nothing that couldn’t be talked out and dealt with later.
“Honey, relationships take time and energy and compromise. Don’t try and sort out the entire deal tonight. When and if the time comes and you two decide to get your own place, don’t worry, I’ll help you with Aunt Lucy.” I looked over at Baby, who lay so still in her bed I had to watch to make sure she was still breathing.
“Call me if she tells you anything about the break-in or what’s been taken.”
I was about to open the door when I heard Baby Blankenship’s distinctive voice.
“Bitsy,” she called. “Bitsy, wait a minute!”
I turned around and saw Baby staring at me, her eyes wide with what appeared to be apprehension.
“Yes, Grandma?” I answered.
“You will be careful, won’t you? I never did like him, you know. I want you safe…”
Before I could answer her, she’d fallen back to sleep, leaving me to wonder who she’d been talking about and how she’d sensed her granddaughter was in danger.
Chapter 5
Jake’s apartment was in the center of town over the top of what had once been his auto repair business. I turned onto his street and slowly approached the building, checking to see if he’d waited up for me. A light was on in his back bedroom and so I turned into the narrow driveway that led to the small parking lot behind the building and parked.
The streetlight that usually illuminated the alleyway was out, making my progress toward Jake’s fire escape entrance difficult, particularly in a nun’s habit. I tripped over a rock, stumbled and swore under my breath. Why hadn’t I just settled for calling him and filling him in on the details? Surely we couldn’t do any more on the investigation tonight.
Oh, who was I kidding. I stopped by because I couldn’t stay away.
I reached the bottom of the fire escape, stretched out my hand to grasp the railing and felt a strong arm reach out to clap a hand over my mouth. With his other hand, my attacker grabbed me around the waist and pulled me back against his rock-solid body.
I fought as best I could but was hampered by the element of surprise and the bulky nun’s habit. The man whirled me around and propelled me up against the brick wall of Jake’s building. His breath was hot in my ear as he spoke in a muffled whisper.
“Don’t move, Sister,” he said.
I spun around, trying to make him out in the darkness. “Jake, you scared the shit out of me!”
He leaned down, scooped me up in his arms and slung me over his shoulder, walking with an unwavering stride through the back door to the empty lower floor of
the room that had once been his office. When he put me down, I squirmed away.
“I said, freeze.”
I stopped moving, my heart pounding as the familiar fire caught low in my body and began to ignite every nerve ending in its path. My eyes began to adjust to the darkened room. He was against the wall, watching me.
“Your gown, Sister…take it off.”
“No,” I breathed, but my fingers flew to do his bidding. The headpiece dropped to the floor. I fumbled with the buttons to the robe and practically tore it off in my hurry to feel his fingers on my skin.
When the robe fell to the floor beside the wimple, I reached for my silk camisole.
“Stop!” he commanded. “Now. Take it off, slowly. I want you to undress for me.”
Suddenly I was self-conscious. I tried to move slowly but felt awkward, as if this were the first time, ever, with anyone…
The camisole slid slowly over my head and dropped to the ground. I hooked a thumb into the thin straps of my black lace thong and slowly began to work them over my hips.
“Nice,” Jake whispered in the darkness, “very nice.”
I heard him moving toward me, closing the distance between the two of us. “Now,” he murmured. “I want to see you touch yourself.”
“No! I can’t! Don’t…”
I saw the outline of his body in front of me, felt the warmth of fingers trail down my skin.
“You’re mine,” he whispered and closed the gap between us. His breath tickled my ear. His tongue flicked behind my earlobe, down my neck to circle the tightening bud of my left nipple. I sighed, felt my body weakening and relaxed into his arms as he gently scooped me up to carry me across the room. He bent and deposited me on a mattress. Before I could move to touch him, he was on me again. His fingers and tongue were everywhere, taunting and teasing each responsive nerve ending in my body. He owned me and he knew it.
“Jake,” I murmured.
“Tell me what you want,” he murmured, but his fingers already knew the way.
“Jake, I want…I want you to…”
The shrill screech of his pager going off was amplified by the emptiness of the room.
“Ignore it, baby,” he growled. “Tell me what you want.”
I reached for his T-shirt, grabbing at any scrap of fabric I could reach and tearing it up and off of his body.
“I want…”
The pager went off a second time.
“Damn! Just once I want your damned pager to get left behind where it won’t bother us!”
“Ignore it,” he said, but the words were clipped and strained. Who was he kidding? We couldn’t ignore a page when we were on a job. For that matter, we couldn’t ever ignore a page, because if we weren’t working, we were looking for work!
“Get it,” I said. “See who it is. Neither one of us will relax until we know.”
“Shit!” Jake was up and off me, sitting on the side of the narrow mattress as he fumbled to pull his pager from its holster and read the message.
“Damn. I have to take this. It’s my contact at the CIA.”
That got my full attention. I knew his contact at the CIA. One of the hazards of dating a handsome man is that he leaves a string of former lovers behind him. Shelia Martin had found a way to stay involved in Jake’s life, through carefully doled-out information and “friendly” lunches every now and then to keep Jake “current” on the agency’s latest changes. But make no mistake about Shelia: there was nothing innocent about that woman. I knew it, and she knew that I knew it. She wanted Jake back.
Shelia Martin would play the game skillfully. She wouldn’t push; she’d just wait, hoping that Jake would tire of me. That’s when she’d make her move.
Jake was up and moving, gathering the scattered pieces of my nun’s habit and handing them to me as if it were just understood that he had to go.
“So, where are we meeting her?” I had to ask, even though I knew the answer.
“Stella, you know she won’t…”
I rose from the mattress and began dressing. Game over. “I know. Shelia won’t tell you anything if I’m around. It’s enough of a risk for her to tell you. Okay. So at least tell me where you two are meeting.”
“A hotel on the Main Line, near Narberth,” he answered cryptically. “But she’ll probably give me a new location once I get there, she’s cautious like that.”
Cautious, my ass. Shelia just didn’t want me showing up unexpectedly.
“Right. Well, I’ll page you if anything happens tonight. Will you call me as soon as you leave? I’d like to hear what she’s found out.”
Jake pulled me to him in what was meant to be a reassuring hug. “Of course, Stel. You know Shelia and I are…”
I finished the phrase for him. “Just old friends with a history. There’s nothing to it.”
“Well, it’s true,” Jake said. “If I wanted to be with Shelia, I would’ve acted on it long ago. I’m where I want to be.”
So why didn’t I quite believe that? Why was I feeling so insecure about him? Was it because we had a history or was it more than that?
I yawned and stretched away from him. “Nothing like leaving a woman sexually frustrated to make her sleepy,” I said. “I’m going home.”
I waited for him to tell me to stay, to wait for him in his bed. When he didn’t I felt stung, hurt by the knowledge that he was in a hurry to get to her.
His car’s taillights disappeared out of the parking lot and into the distance before I could pull out onto the main street leading back over to my side of town.
I slipped into Aunt Lucy’s house through the back door and tiptoed quietly down the hallway that led to my aunt’s bedroom, up the stairs, past the room where Spike was probably sleeping, without Nina, and into the room I’d had since my parents’ deaths. I threw my rumpled nun’s habit over the back of a chair and climbed into bed. I was exhausted but too wound up to sleep. My mind raced as I mentally reviewed the events of the day and tried not to wonder how long Jake would stay with Shelia.
Sometime after two, I called his apartment. When there was no answer, I tried his cell. After one ring it went straight to voice mail. Damn that man!
At some point, I drifted off into an uneasy sleep, awakening hours later to a sunlit morning and a cell phone that showed no missed calls. It was almost seven. Where was he? For that matter, where was Nina? Had Spike relieved her?
The smell of coffee and the sound of voices drifted up from downstairs. I started to call Jake, thought better of it, stuffed the cell phone in my bathrobe pocket and hurried downstairs. I reached the kitchen just as Aunt Lucy set a plate of fried eggs and bacon down on the table in front of Lloyd. Nina was almost finished with her breakfast. She sat holding on to a coffee mug like a punch-drunk fighter. Her eyes were bloodshot and dark with fatigue but she smiled when I walked into the kitchen and sat down across from her.
Aunt Lucy placed a steaming mug full of black coffee in front of me but said nothing. We were going on day three of the silent treatment.
“Thanks,” I said to her retreating back.
“Nina,” Aunt Lucy said without acknowledging me. “Ask her what she wants for breakfast.”
Nina rolled her eyes but did as she’d been instructed.
“I’m not hungry.” This was akin to saying I intended to convert to another religion in my aunt’s book and I knew it. You did not refuse a meal in my aunt’s house. It simply wasn’t done. “But thank you anyway,” I finished.
“Fine, then,” she said, still not directing her remarks to me. “I’ll fix her usual.”
Nina shrugged and looked at me. “Spike relieved me around six.”
I cradled my coffee cup, feeling the warmth radiate through my hands. “Did Baby wake up during the night?”
Nina shook her head. “No, and no one tried to bother her, either. They checked her vital signs a couple of times but that was it.”
“Were those men still in the parking lot when you left?”
> Nina nodded. “Yep. I think they were sleeping but I couldn’t really tell. The car was parked kind of in the back of the lot, and I didn’t want to act like I was staring at them.”
I nodded. Aunt Lucy busied herself at the stove, muttering in Italian and slinging frying pans and pots around in a display of ill humor. When was she going to let it go?
“I wish she’d understand that I was only worried about her,” I said in a loud voice. “I never meant to spy exactly. Nina, I just wanted to know she was all right.”
“You tell Miss Busybody over there that I’ve done a fine job of taking care of myself all of my life. If she was so concerned, why not just ask me?”
“Nina,” I said, getting up to pour myself another cup of coffee. “It didn’t become necessary for me to check up on my beloved aunt until she refused to tell us anything about her new suitor…and this after the man stalked her and scared her half to death.”
Nina was looking increasingly more uncomfortable, but I figured it was the fatigue setting in. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
“We know who he is now, Aunt Lucy, and I think it’s sweet Mr. Koslovski watched over you all these…”
“What?” Aunt Lucy whirled around so fast it scared Lloyd into barking which brought Fang running into the room. “How do you know his name?”
“Oh, shit,” I muttered. “Here we go!”
Nina’s eyes widened and filled with tears. “My friend, Cindy, told me he almost bought the Procter place but then he didn’t. She says he lives in…in…” I could see her summoning up her courage. “He lives in the hospice in Honeybrook! Aunt Lucy, is he dying?”
The world came to a grinding halt as Aunt Lucy stared at Nina as if she had suddenly sprouted two heads.
“What…did…you…say?” she asked slowly.
Nina shrank back against her chair and seemed to become a frightened child again.
“I just wondered if Mr. Koslovski was sick or something because he…he…lives where people go to die. Did you know that?” she finished weakly. “I mean, maybe he’s a doctor or something…” But of course, Nina knew Arnold Koslovski was nothing of the sort.
What Stella Wants Page 7
