Before she could answer, I jumped in. “I doubt Lloyd can read, and anyway, Uncle Benny’s got enough stress just getting used to his new life. The least we can do is sort out the details.”
Aunt Lucy smiled softly. “It’s all right if you don’t believe me, Stella,” she said. “You’re a good girl. You remind me of your uncle the way you take care of me.” Her eyes softened and filled with unshed tears. “I would appreciate it if you would look things over, just so you and your uncle’s executor can be on the same page about everything. Benny’s papers are in the desk in the study.” She glanced at Lloyd, then back at me. “Oh, and Stella?”
“Yeah, Aunt Lucy?”
“Even a moron knows dogs can’t read! There are limitations, you know. Reincarnation doesn’t mean a dog suddenly has superpowers. What do you think I am, nuts?”
With this, Aunt Lucy stood up and walked back to her place by the stove. “Sit down and quit making them faces, Nina,” she said, reaching over to smack her with a wooden spoon. “You think I couldn’t see your reflection in the toaster?”
Nina scurried out of Aunt Lucy’s reach, slid into a chair at the table and buried her face in the morning paper.
“I’m making eggs and turkey bacon,” Aunt Lucy said. “Any objections?” Neither of us said a word. “Good,” she said. “Then later, Nina, you can do the dishes while Stella looks over your uncle’s papers. I’m taking Benny fishing.”
Lloyd looked at me and grinned, clearly pleased with his new life.
“You’d better watch it,” I warned him in a whisper. “What goes around comes around. Don’t get all cocky—this is temporary.”
Nina raised her head and looked at the two of us. “What? She’s got you talking to the dog now?”
I made a face at Nina and turned back to my coffee. I was making a mental to-do list: sort out Uncle Benny’s legal affairs so Aunt Lucy could understand them and run her life. Take Aunt Lucy to a psychiatrist so she could tell real from imaginary, and find out what kind of maniac would murder a kindly old man like my uncle. The other, less pressing questions could get sorted out later—like why I always picked the wrong men and what I should do with the rest of my life.
Dorothy had it all mixed up when she told Toto “There’s no place like home.” What she meant to say was, “Home is no place to go crawling back to,” or in the words of that old-guy poet, “Your ass can’t go home again, ’cause even home doesn’t stay the same.”
Chapter 6
I stood in the ancient bathtub upstairs for what seemed like hours, drowning myself in an endless stream of hot water, waiting for the others to leave. I couldn’t face the piles of legal mumbo jumbo and manage the continuing circus of Aunt Lucy’s delusions and Nina’s attitude at the same time, so I hid out like a coward and waited for them to leave.
I heard Nina stomp up the narrow staircase, stop outside the bathroom door and call my name softly. I ignored her. A moment later Aunt Lucy yelled out. “I found the car keys, honey. Let’s go! The fish don’t bite after noon, you know!”
Nina groaned and stomped back down the steps, her platform heels tapping out a rough, staccato warning that she was not at all pleased with her new duties as Aunt Lucy’s keeper and chauffeur. A moment later the door slammed and the house was left in abrupt, welcome silence. I shut off the water, pulled back the shower curtain and stepped out onto the bath mat, wrapping a thick pink towel around my body and enjoying my sudden freedom.
I was toweling off my hair in front of the bedroom mirror when I heard them return. The back door opened, footsteps crossed the kitchen floor and below me I could hear someone moving through the downstairs.
“Probably forgot her stud collar,” I muttered to myself. “Or sunscreen for her tattoos.” I smiled at the mental image of ultrahip Nina trapped in a Jon boat with Aunt Lucy and the newly reincarnated Uncle Benny.
I walked to the top of the stairs and was about to call out when I heard the heavy crash of metal upon glass. A male voice swore, words I couldn’t hear clearly, and my heart leaped to my throat. I spun around, stepped back into the bedroom and grabbed my Glock up from its resting place on the bedside table. I scanned the room, double-checking. There was one phone in the house and it was downstairs in the kitchen. My cell phone was out in the car.
I sighed and slowly started down the steps. No call to 911. No backup.
“One in the chamber, twelve in the magazine and intruders in the house. No problem,” I reassured myself.
I crept down the stairs, around the corner and stopped at the end of the long hallway. They were in my uncle’s study, working quickly, pulling out drawers and rifling through papers.
Fucking predators, I thought. Must’ve read the obituary, must’ve watched the house waiting for her to leave. Jesus!
I eased down the hallway, stopped at the doorway to my aunt’s bedroom and gently turned the knob. I pushed and the door gave. I scanned the empty room, gun held at arm’s length in front of my chest, saw nothing and moved on. Uncle Benny’s study was on the left side of the hallway. By rights, I should’ve moved along that wall, making myself less vulnerable to being seen, but then I would’ve had less of an angle on the intruders. I took the right wall.
I checked the bathroom, holding my breath, ready. I moved within range of the study and took a quick glance inside. There were two of them and they were oblivious to my presence. Drawers hit the floor; papers flew. They worked with their backs to me, apparently unconcerned with anything but the task at hand.
I felt the anger surge into an adrenaline rush. “Fucking assholes,” I murmured, and started to make my move.
I heard a slight snick of sound behind me, the kind of sound that registers as “Oh, shit!” but comes too late to prevent catastrophe. I felt my body fly forward and into the wall across from where I stood, the impact registering with a resounding shock of pain as my forehead and body slammed full force into the rigid plaster. The gun careened out of my hand and skittered down the hallway.
I ricocheted off the wall, using my free hand to push off and spin toward my attacker. He stood an arm’s length away, a black mask covering his face and an ugly gun pointed directly at my chest.
“Hurry up!” he yelled to the men in Uncle Benny’s office. “We got company.”
I watched his eyes and saw his attention return to me, saw him register the Glock lying on the floor and then take a mental inventory. Was I a potential threat to him, or merely a frightened woman?
I watched him stereotype me, saw the glint in his eyes and decided to use the oldest trick in the book. I began to tremble, feigning fear. I let my bath towel slip, pretending to try to catch it, but missing as it quickly slid to the floor.
“Oh, my God!” I gasped. My eyes widened. I took a step backward and was rewarded with a lecherous sneer. “Oh, no!” I wailed softly. “My towel!”
I made a move to bend over and reach for it, giving both audiences a view of cleavage they would not soon forget, and stretched out my arm to reach for the towel. As I expected, the gunman took a step forward, gun arm extended, legs spread in a ready stance, trying to ensure that I didn’t go for the weapon that lay on the floor between us.
I brought my arms together, outstretched and rigid, as if going for the bath towel. I clasped my fingers together to form a tight hammerhead and brought my fist up in a rocket aimed directly for my attacker’s crotch.
The blow connected and my new friend doubled over with a gasp of pain. I used the heel of my right hand to drive a second blow hard into the narrow band of flesh below his nose. He crumpled, sagging to the floor in a pool of bloody agony. He was making gagging sounds and heaving as I grabbed the gun from his useless hand.
I whirled, prepared to take on the other two intruders, but instead saw the last one struggling to escape through the window in my uncle’s study. I brought the gun in my hand up, aimed and sent a round crashing into the windowsill beside the rapidly retreating burglar.
I missed the target, but ma
ybe my unconscious had been working on new, incoming information, maybe I didn’t want to hit my target just yet. The man diving out of Uncle Benny’s study window wore cowboy boots, black snake-skin boots, the same kind of boots I’d seen Jake Carpenter wearing as he piously conducted my uncle’s funeral.
“Son of a bitch!” I yelled after the escaping intruder. “Your ass is mine, Jake Carpenter!”
I brought the gun up, aimed and pulled the trigger. Nothing! I pulled again. Again, nothing.
“What the fuck?” I looked down at the weapon. It was a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver. I spun the cylinder, not believing what I was seeing. “What kind of idiot robs a house with one bullet in his gun?”
I didn’t have to wait on the answer; the silence in the hallway was answer enough. I turned slowly, still holding his useless revolver, and found the man in the mask holding my Glock.
“Drop the gun,” he said.
I let the weapon fall to the ground in front of me.
“Kick it over here.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why? We both know it’s empty.”
He didn’t like this. “Shut up and do as I said.”
I reached out and punted the offending gun in his direction. Without taking his eyes off of me, he retrieved it and stuck it in the pocket of his sport coat.
“I’m leaving,” he said, backing up. “I can leave with you breathing, or not breathing. You have a preference?”
Great, a smart-aleck burglar. “Sure.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Then here’s what you have to do to stay alive. Don’t try and follow us.” I saw his eyes rake my naked body and he smiled slightly. “Although that would be a vision, wouldn’t it, you running through Glenn Ford in the altogether?”
A wise-ass with an educated vocabulary—now, there couldn’t be too many of those around town. Might make finding him easier, because I was going to find him. It was my new mission in life.
“Count to a thousand before you start getting all hysterical and calling for help. Anything less than that, I’ll come back and shoot you with your own gun.”
I sighed inwardly and made a mental note to humiliate him publicly as soon as possible.
“The one-bullet thing?” he said. “I do that for a reason. There’s entirely too much violence in the world today. Bullets work on the same principle as money—if you have it, you tend to spend it. I’d rather rely on my wits.”
He’d been backing up as he lectured. A moment later I heard the kitchen door slam. Two moments later I heard a car squeal its tires as it tore out of the alley onto the street that ran in front of the row house.
“Great!” I said to the empty house. “I get my ass kicked naked and lose my gun in the process.”
I shook my head, plucked the towel up off the hallway floor and headed for the phone. Every bone and muscle in my body ached, but nothing hurt as much as my pride. I’d let a group of punks, Jake Carpenter almost certainly one of them, break into the house and run, making a clean getaway. Damn!
I limped into the kitchen, picked up the phone and dialed.
“911 operator,” the voice answered. “Do you have an emergency?”
A few smart-assed responses came to mind before I finally managed to say, “There’s been a break-in at 361 Mary Street.”
“Is anyone injured?” the voice asked in a perfectly unconcerned monotone.
“It’s nothing I won’t live through,” I said, and hung up.
By the time the uniforms arrived, I was dressed and disturbing the crime scene. I was trying to find out what, if anything other than my weapon, was missing. I wanted to know why Jake had taken the risk of breaking into Aunt Lucy’s house in broad daylight, but I thought I already knew. I figured he was looking for the papers I’d found in Uncle Benny’s workroom.
When I’d accused him of owing Uncle Benny money, he must’ve known I’d found the agreement. He was probably trying to remove any sign that Uncle Benny had lent him money. Maybe he planned to deny he owed the family a dime.
“Stupid asshole,” I swore. “I never thought you were a genius, but this move was pathetic!”
The cops took over, looking irritated when they saw me touching their evidence, and sealed the room. The next hour was spent wasting their time and mine until Detectives Slovineck and Poltrone could arrive and further complicate my life.
“I don’t understand,” Detective Poltrone said. “You saw a pair of cowboy boots and assumed from that quick glance that it was Jake Carpenter come to rob your uncle’s estate? Why would he do that?” She had an exasperating habit of flipping her notepad shut whenever she asked me a question, as if she was trying to let me know she wasn’t going to believe my answer or find it worthy of noting in her all-important log of clues.
I rolled my eyes and made a silent appeal to Detective Slovineck.
“You think he wanted to steal back a copy of a financial agreement he made with your uncle?” Slovineck asked, knowing full well that was exactly what I thought but saving his partner’s face.
“Okay,” I said. “Do we not have motive, means and opportunity here? Jake must be in some kind of financial trouble. He cons my uncle out of $260,000. He never intends to make good on the partnership—he just wants the money. That’s why he killed my uncle. When he learns I’ve seen the papers, he tries to steal them back so there’s no proof. He wants it to be my word against his. That’s why he’s desperate enough to make a daytime raid on Uncle Benny’s study.”
I sat back, waiting for the detectives to respond, and felt sick at my stomach. Granted, Jake was a jerk and a coward, but a murderer, too? How could I have been so wrong about him? How could I have ever loved someone who would coldly plot the murder of my uncle and the destruction of my family? I didn’t want to believe it, but what else could I think?
“Stella!” Aunt Lucy appeared in the study doorway, Nina peeking over her shoulder and Lloyd at her side.
The two detectives looked up like startled rabbits and I stood, turning around to reassure my aunt. “It’s all right, Aunt Lucy,” I began. She interrupted me.
“Honey, this is such a mess! You could’ve just asked me where the will was!”
“Oh, no, Aunt Lucy, it’s not that…”
“Besides,” she continued, “Jake would’ve given you a copy.”
“Jake?” The name squeaked out of my throat like a strangled cough. Behind me I heard Detective Poltrone flip open her notepad and begin scribbling.
“Oh, yeah, honey,” Aunt Lucy said. “You know, he’s the executor. He has to have a copy. Otherwise how could he administer the trust and run the business?”
The room was absolutely still except for the scratching of Detective Poltrone’s pen across the smooth surface of her notepad.
Detective Slovineck spoke first, standing up respectfully, gesturing to his recently vacated seat and ushering forward.
“Mrs. Valocchi, if you don’t mind, we’d like to ask you a few questions. You see, it seems your house was broken into and your niece here thinks she saw Jake Carpenter leaving the scene.”
Aunt Lucy seemed puzzled for a second, then nodded. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll bet he was chasing after them guys.”
I was not the only person in the room trying to make sense of my aunt’s statement. Detective Poltrone frowned. “I think she meant to say that Jake was one of the intruders, Mrs. Valocchi.”
Aunt Lucy smiled benignly. “No, no, no. Stella and Jake have issues, that’s all, past life issues.”
“There’s the matter of the money your husband gave Mr. Carpenter, or loaned him…” Slovineck began.
“Money?” Aunt Lucy asked. She was clearly confused.
“Wait,” I interrupted. “I think my uncle made most of the financial arrangements by himself, so my aunt wouldn’t be burdened by those kinds of pressures.”
Aunt Lucy smiled at Lloyd, and turned back to Detective Slovineck. “Yeah, my Benny’s good like that. I don’t let him plan the meals or do t
he grocery shopping. It just blows his mind.”
I stood up and started for the door. “Wait, the agreement’s downstairs. Let me get it so you can see what I’m talking about.”
This seemed to pacify everyone. I left for the basement, signaling Nina to keep an eye on Aunt Lucy. I didn’t want the detectives double-teaming her with questions she couldn’t answer while I was out of the room. There was no sense in pushing her further over the edge.
I flew down the basement steps, crossed the room to Uncle Benny’s cabinet and opened the door. I reached behind the Wild Turkey bottle and felt…nothing. I stooped down, shoved the bottles aside and peered inside. The envelope was gone.
“This isn’t happening to me,” I whispered. “Damn!” I hit my forehead with a clenched fist. I’d hidden the envelope back where I’d found it, never imagining anyone could’ve known about it, anyone like Jake Carpenter.
I walked slowly up the stairs and returned to my uncle’s office. I knew what would happen now. Nothing. No proof. No reason to believe Jake was anything but a trustworthy friend of the family. Damn!
Detective Poltrone couldn’t hide her glee at my predicament. Detective Slovineck was more professional. He, at least, went through the motions of asking about how I’d found the agreement.
“So, you’d been drinking?” Detective Poltrone interrupted.
“A little,” I answered, “but not enough to make me hallucinate a legal document!”
“Well now, I don’t know,” Aunt Lucy said. “I’ve seen you when you’ve had a little too much and—”
“Aunt Lucy,” Nina broke in. “I was with Stella last night. She wasn’t drunk.”
I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming and stood up. “I think I need a little fresh air,” I said, motioning Nina forward and mouthing “Take care of her” as I passed by. “I’ll be right back.”
Of course, I had no intention of returning. The local cops could sit around all day long with their thumbs up their butts, asking questions and trying to “understand,” but I was going to do something.
Stella, Get Your Gun Page 6
