Aunt Lucy slowly, visibly, worked to pull herself together. She straightened in her chair, took long, deep breaths and slowly exhaled. After a few moments she nodded and gave Arnold an understanding smile that seemed completely genuine. She stretched out her hand, cupped his face and gently caressed Arnold’s pale cheek.
“And so, you think perhaps I have no need to give to you in return? Years ago I didn’t wait for you. Now there is a second chance for us. Let me be here, with you, when it is good and when it is dark or lonely. Let me be the one. Now. Today. Don’t push me aside because you wish to spare me. Give me the real gift. You.”
I had to walk outside then. I slipped out the back door, onto the porch and stood in the frigid winter air, tears running down my cheeks. I heard Jake’s quiet footsteps as he joined me, and when he slipped his arms around my waist, I went to him without hesitation, burying my face in his warm chest.
We stayed like that for what seemed a small eternity but was only perhaps a few minutes, then once again the ringing of a cell phone interrupted us.
“Stella, I need you to come over to my house,” Marygrace said. “I’ve kinda got a situation here.”
“Marygrace, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. Between Baby Blankenship and…”
“Stel, I really need you to come over here. Please?”
Marygrace was talking in a slow, deliberate manner and not at all like her usual rapid-fire self. That was what clued me in.
“Are you in trouble?”
“May…be,” she said.
“Okay, honey, I’ll be right there.”
“Good. Do you know where I live? I’m on Mary Street, you know, across from St. Joseph’s? It’s number 361.”
“Right. Gotcha.”
“Thanks, Stel,” she said. Marygrace sounded entirely too relieved and very much unlike her normal, brazen self. It sent chills of apprehension through me.
“Oh, and Stel?”
“Yeah?”
There was a brief, perhaps reluctant, pause then “Bring Jake with you, all right?”
“Sure, honey.”
I hung up, aware that Jake had been listening intently to my side of the conversation.
“Something’s wrong at Marygrace’s,” I said. “She wants me to get there fast and she specifically asked me to bring you. I think it’s a setup. When I asked her if she was in trouble she said ‘maybe.’”
We made the trip in less than five minutes and that included taking the precaution of strapping on extra guns, ammunition and assorted other odds and ends that might come in handy should Marygrace’s “trouble” include gun-toting bad guys.
Jake stopped the car about a block away from Marygrace’s house. “You want the front or the back?”
“I’ll take the back door,” I answered. “After all, she specifically asked for you, so you should be the one to ring the doorbell.”
Jake put the Viper in gear and began slowly driving down the alleyway that led to the back of the Mary Street houses. Marygrace lived in a more transitional neighborhood, filled with small bungalows that had once been home to the mill workers who once worked in the abandoned paper factory downtown. The homes, as well as the neighborhood, had gone through several life phases, from well kept to rundown to renovated and made over.
Marygrace’s house was somewhere in between the gutted-shell and turn-key finished stage of renovation, but I recognized it instantly without having to count house numbers or study the street long enough to become an obvious newcomer. Marygrace’s tiny cottage was painted a pale pink, with teal-blue shutters and a Margaritaville flag flying from her back deck. To further cement the matter, a gaily painted sign hung on the gate leading into what was probably a cottage garden in the summer. Marygrace’s Place, it read.
“That, Sherlock,” I muttered to myself, “would be a clue.”
My cell phone began to vibrate in my coat pocket just as I began edging my way up the neighbor’s yard.
“What?” I whispered.
“I can see her moving around inside,” Jake said in a low voice. “It doesn’t look like there’s anyone else in there with her so she’s not being held at gunpoint. You got anything back your way?”
“Nope. It’s clean and green here.” I looked over my shoulder, shivering in the cold.
“Come on around and we’ll go in.”
I slipped the gun I’d been fingering back into my pocket, closed the phone and slowly made my way up the narrow strip of frozen ground that ran between Marygrace’s funky cottage and the one next door. When I reached the sidewalk, Jake practically pounced on me.
“Ready?” he asked. “I’m freezing!”
“All right, let’s do it.”
Jake and I walked up the steps to Marygrace’s front door and didn’t even have to ring the doorbell before the little woman appeared.
“Took you long enough,” she groused. “I could’ve been dead and buried.”
The slow, elaborately careful tone was gone and while she still wasn’t running wide-open as usual, I actually felt relieved to hear the spunk return to her voice. But when she reached out and grabbed my arm to pull us inside, she cut her eyes to the left and wiggled a telling eyebrow. Subtle she was not.
If Jake caught the gesture, he didn’t let on. Instead he stepped into Marygrace’s small living room, cased the room for the exits and then seemed to relax just a little bit.
“So, what’s the big emergency?” I asked.
“Well, I…It’s um…” Marygrace stumbled to a halt, this time looking openly at the hallway leading toward what I assumed to be the bedrooms. “How about some herbal tea?” she asked, rather loudly.
“All right,” I answered slowly, elbowing Jake as I did so and nodding toward the hall. “That would be fine. Jake, wouldn’t you like some tea? Let’s all go in the kitchen and have some.”
I gave him a tiny shove in Marygrace’s direction, nodding toward the kitchen, and pulled my Glock 9 mm out of my pocket.
“Sure,” Jake said. “I’d love something hot!” As he said hot, he smirked and licked his lips in a mock display of hunger. The man was incorrigible. He was also a phony. I knew he worried whenever I took the front of a search, especially when we both knew there could be trouble at the other end.
“Marygrace, you don’t have to send them into the kitchen,” a female voice said. “And you don’t have to sneak up on me either, Stella. I asked her to call you.”
A slim blonde stepped out into the hallway and stood there watching the three of us. Her hair was lighter than I remembered from high school but the brilliant blue eyes and cheerful expression were exactly as I remembered. Bitsy Blankenship wore tight faded jeans, a thick black turtleneck sweater and a jeans jacket. The telltale bulge in her jacket pocket told me she was armed.
“Hi, guys!” she said. “Remember me?”
Chapter 11
“You look good for a dead woman,” I said.
“Hey, Bits.”
Sometimes being a woman and having that female intuition we’re all so proud of comes back to bite you in the ass. Jake said two words to Bitsy Blankenship, but they were all I needed to tell me a wealth of information. For one thing, Jake thought Bitsy looked every bit as good as she had the last time he’d seen her. I had to agree with him there, she looked fabulous. The second thing Jake’s greeting told me was that the spark of chemistry or attraction or just plain lust he’d once felt for Bitsy had not diminished over time.
“Hey, yourself, Jake,” Bitsy answered. She slipped up beside Marygrace’s living room window, turned the blinds closed, then peeked out through a carefully lifted slat to peer out at the street.
While she scanned the street, apparently looking to see if we’d been followed, I found myself taking a detailed reading of Bitsy’s still-hot feelings for my boyfriend. She was more than a little glad to see him. In fact, given time, I was pretty sure old Bitsy would do everything in her power to try and renew their former level of acquaintance.
Marygrace, being the good social worker type she was, jumped right into the fray by closing all the blinds in the small living room before turning to make another offer of herbal tea. The look she got from the three of us must have registered because she quickly revamped the drink menu.
“Well, I do have something stronger if you want it,” she said. “I just thought…”
“Tea is fine,” I answered. My jaw felt as if someone had wired it shut without my knowledge.
“Okay, then, well, I’ll just go boil water!” Marygrace made a quick getaway into the kitchen, leaving the three of us alone. Bitsy was slowly making her way down the hallway, her eyes on Jake.
“How long’s it been?” she murmured. “Four years? Five?”
I wanted to puke. If I’d been able to, I would’ve, and the two of them wouldn’t have even noticed, that’s how strong the current was. Did Jake have this effect on every woman he’d slept with? Shelia and Bitsy both looked at Jake the same way, like they’d just crawled out of bed after having the best sex of their lives. Come to think of it, I probably looked at him the same way, only I was still sleeping with him, and they allegedly weren’t!
“Okay, so several questions are running through our minds here, Bitsy,” I said, hoping to pull Jake back down to earth. “One being, if you’re not dead, what happened? Another being, if it wasn’t you in the car, then who was it? And last, but certainly not least, what in the hell is going on here?”
I felt my voice rising in an attempt to cut through the flying pheromones that threatened to suck the brain functions from both Bitsy and Jake. I finished my questions at a half scream and was surprised when the two of them both looked at me like I was the one losing her mind.
Jake was the first to recover. He looked at me, seemed to note the obvious frustration I was feeling, then glanced back at Bitsy and took action.
“You’ll have to admit it’s been a confusing few days around here. Why don’t we all sit down and hash things out,” he said.
Bitsy nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “I think I’d like to keep the circle of insiders as small as possible,” she said quietly. “I don’t want any more innocent by-standers to get hurt.” Her attention shifted to the street outside Marygrace’s living room window. “And I also don’t want to get myself killed, so we need to leave here after it gets dark. I can’t afford to spend too much time in one place. Besides, I’d rather not talk around Marygrace. What she doesn’t know won’t get tortured out of her if anyone connects her to me.”
I looked at my watch. It was almost four-thirty. The northern winter sky would be completely dark in another forty-five minutes making it safe to leave Marygrace’s little bungalow, but where could we take Bitsy that wouldn’t attract attention? I thought for a moment and finally decided our office would be a suitable, short-term hideout, at least for the amount of time it would take to hear Bitsy’s story.
“All right,” I said, addressing the two of them. “We’ll leave when it gets dark and go to the office to talk. We’ll see what needs to happen after that.”
Jake looked as if he was thinking of protesting my choice, but he looked at me and appeared to think better of it. Bitsy nodded and seemed relieved to have a temporary plan. As I studied her, I began to realize that Bitsy’s past few days had been spent with little sleep and without benefit of soap and water. I wondered where she’d been hiding. She knew Glenn Ford as well as I did. She knew what areas to avoid if she didn’t want to be spotted, but it was cold, and that narrowed down her choices. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. Her fingernails were dirty and broken. The clothes she wore were dirty and smelled faintly of wood smoke.
I was still puzzling over the possibilities when Marygrace walked back into the living room carrying a large black tray filled with teacups, snacks and various other items. For the next hour we all played generic high school catchup, never mentioning Bitsy’s recent past. Instead we focused on old classmates and past misadventures. We never mentioned the brief time Jake spent with Bitsy after our tragic breakup.
Marygrace, playing the role of group facilitator, edged the conversation around dangerous emotional sinkholes and on to happier times. She told us enticing tidbits about former classmates and seemed to recognize that she would not be among the privileged few to know the details of Bitsy’s most recent adventure. When darkness finally fell and I signaled Jake that it was time to leave, Marygrace seemed frankly relieved.
“I’ll bring the car around,” Jake instructed. “Wait until I’m right out front before you leave.”
I frowned at his apparent need to appear to be the man in charge of two damsels in distress. Did he really think a former cop, his partner, and a CIA agent would need those kind of precautionary warnings? I bit back a sarcastic retort and said nothing. After all, Jake was now my partner. Hadn’t we just been through the big summit on trust and confidence? Bitsy’s reappearance was testing the waters of my new commitment to trust Jake implicitly, but I was going to stick to my guns…until, that is, I had proof to the contrary.
Bitsy had played the part of perfect tea party guest for the past hour. She’d laughed and told stories right along with Marygrace, but now as we stood waiting for Jake, she seemed tense and wary. I saw her slip her hand into her jacket pocket and knew she was fingering her gun, the same way I did when I expected trouble and didn’t want to be unpleasantly surprised.
Fortunately, neither of us had to pull our weapons. Jake stopped the Viper in front of Marygrace’s cottage as planned. Bitsy and I said goodbye to Marygrace, walked unhurriedly down the steps to the car, got in and made an uneventful trip to my office. No one followed us, despite Bitsy’s repeated glances out the rear window, and no one was waiting to ambush us when we pulled into the parking lot. It was simple, easy and almost…well, disappointing.
Once inside, I wasted no time getting down to business with Bitsy. The lack of information was making me nervous. I couldn’t protect myself, let alone the other people involved, if I didn’t know the details.
“What’s going on, Bitsy?” I asked.
Bitsy sat on the edge of the chair across the desk from me in my office. Jake had chosen a neutral spot, halfway between the two of us, and was standing, arms crossed as he leaned against the wall. When she looked to him before answering, he gave her an encouraging nod, which only pissed me off further. Jake had a blind spot when it came to women who professed to need him. I’d seen it before and it continued to bother me now.
“Why did you call and want to see me?” I asked, redirecting her back to me.
Bitsy was too smart to play stupid with me. Her attention swiveled back to focus on me and she began talking in a clear, unemotional voice. She could turn the damsel-in-distress act on and off without even trying, it seemed, and I made a note of that as I jotted down the other details of her story.
“To make a long story short,” she began, “I was recruited out of college by the CIA. My degree in biochemical engineering is the sort of thing the Company was looking for at the time and, well, I guess the mystique and allure of working for the Agency appealed to me.” She gave me a knowing look. “You know, Stel, we grew up in Glenn Ford and both of us left as soon as possible. I heard you became a cop, so I suppose you were looking for excitement just like I was. Anyway, joining the Agency gave me all I could handle.”
She slipped Jake a tiny smile, unaware I’m sure, that I knew all about their fling a few years ago.
“Anyway, I wound up in Slovenia, married to a fellow agent and working on an important assignment. David was in the process of helping a brilliant scientist defect to the U.S when all hell broke loose and the scientist we were escorting was killed.”
“What went wrong?” Jake asked quietly.
Bitsy looked down at her lap and was quiet for a few long moments, apparently deciding how detailed to be with two outsiders.
“The man we were bringing in was working on the final stages of a biochemical weapon that targeted its victims by the
ir genetic code, their DNA,” she explained. “That sort of thing is worth a lot of money if it falls into the wrong hands. There was an attempt to stop us. We managed to escape but lost Gregor in the process.”
Bitsy’s eyes were bright with unshed tears when she looked up again.
“The Company launched an investigation. They questioned both of us but they zeroed in on David. For a few weeks it seemed as if they suspected David of having something to do with Gregor’s death. Then, they suddenly stopped asking questions. I don’t know what happened or why. It just seemed as if they’d decided to let the entire thing drop.”
Bitsy sighed and picked at an invisible thread on her pants before she continued.
“We were given new assignments. Granted it was busy work, but still it was something. It was a vote of confidence and I couldn’t understand why they just seemed to let the entire investigation go away. I had to know what had gone wrong with our mission and why. When I wasn’t satisfied with the answers David and my superiors gave, I began to quietly investigate on my own.”
Bitsy was looking at Jake, speaking to him as if he would know what she meant when she talked about investigating and left out the details.
“It took a few months, but eventually I realized that I was sitting in the middle of a hornet’s nest.” Bitsy’s face flushed as tears slowly streaked down her cheeks. “Jake, David was a double agent. He was working with people on the inside. Higher ups. He killed Gregor. I know he did and I can prove it!”
“How?” I asked.
Bitsy turned back as if remembering that I was in the room too.
“I found the microchip with Gregor’s work on it. I think David killed Gregor, took his work and was planning to sell it.”
“How could he get away with that?” I asked. “Wouldn’t your bosses know he’d done that? Wouldn’t they wonder when the scientist died and the formula was missing?”
Bitsy shook her head. “Not if no one knew the truth. David told me that Slovenian agents ambushed them as he was driving Gregor out of the country. He said he managed to escape but that Gregor was shot and killed. We were left to infer that no one had the formula, that Gregor alone knew it and hadn’t written it down.”
What Stella Wants Page 17
