Stella, Get Your Gun

by Nancy Bartholomew

  “Jeff,” she said in a soft but no-nonsense tone. “It’s all right. She’s a cop. Let me handle it. You and Brice cuff those two.”

  Her voice and manner sharpened when she turned her attention back to me. “That’s why I wanted you to put the gun down, Valocchi. These guys don’t know you. It’s easy to make mistakes. We had it covered.”

  I lowered my weapon as Jeff and another officer approached the two men lying on the floor.

  “These guys aren’t amateurs, Detective. I wasn’t about to take a chance on them pulling a fast one over on the boy genius,” I said, nodding toward the red-faced and glowering Jeff.

  “Check ’em good, gentlemen,” I said. “If I don’t miss my guess, they’ve got more friends in low places.”

  “What?” Poltrone looked confused.

  “It’s a country song,” I said. “‘Friends in Low Places.’ In this case I meant our friends are probably concealing a few more guns and miscellaneous items on their lower extremities.”

  I was rewarded by seeing the two uniforms begin a more thorough search of the two intruders. This search yielded four ammo clips, two additional guns each and an assortment of knives and other weapons, including one stun gun and a nasty-looking, Mace-like canister that bore no label. My guests had meant business.

  Detective Poltrone looked at me. “Who are these guys?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “No idea. I think they’re the same men who broke in this morning. They were looking for something, and whatever it is brought them back again this afternoon. You got the guy waiting in the van, I guess?”

  Poltrone gave me a blank stare.

  I shrugged. “Well, two out of three ain’t so bad, I guess. They had an accomplice driving a white van. It was parked out front.”

  “Not when we pulled up,” she said. “I’ll put it out on the radio. Did you get the tags?”

  Okay, we were even. She didn’t get the driver and I didn’t get the tags. Great.

  At Poltrone’s signal, the two officers pulled their captives up off the floor, leading them with sticky-footed caution out the back door and into police custody.

  I surveyed the damage to Aunt Lucy’s kitchen. The basement door was ruined, the furniture was riddled with bullets and there were broken dishes and glassware scattered everywhere. It would take days, maybe even weeks, to undo the damage and put everything back together again.

  Nina stepped up behind me and stood leaning against the dining-room doorway for support. “Oh, God,” she breathed. “This is just going to kill Aunt Lucy!”

  Yeah, I thought, unless somebody already had.

  Chapter 11

  After the police left, I tried to make some sort of sense out of the day’s events. Uncle Benny was dead, murdered. His house had been broken into twice in one day. Jake Carpenter had every penny of our uncle’s retirement money, and now he had vanished, leaving his business in a smoldering shambles. Another woman, possibly Uncle Benny’s mistress, was dead, blown to bits when Carpenter’s Auto Body exploded. On top of everything else, Aunt Lucy had disappeared and had to be in danger.

  “She wouldn’t leave without him,” Nina said, gesturing toward Lloyd. “I swear she really believes that dog is Uncle Benny!”

  I looked up at the kitchen clock. It was almost nine-thirty. Aunt Lucy had been gone since a little after one. Where was she? Was her disappearance connected to Jake’s? Maybe Aunt Lucy’s memory and ability to function were even worse than we’d thought. Maybe she’d wandered off and couldn’t remember where she lived or how to call us. Elderly people did that all the time, didn’t they? By my calculations, Aunt Lucy was almost 80.

  “If she isn’t back by morning, we’ll have to file a formal missing-person report,” I said.

  Nina’s eyes widened. “But you told the cops, didn’t you?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but because she hasn’t been gone longer than twenty-four hours, they’re not making it an official missing-person case. They’re doing everything by the book and that’s getting us nowhere. We’re going to have to find her ourselves.”

  Nina’s eyes widened. “But we tried! We can’t find her by ourselves!”

  I shook my head. “Oh, they’ll get around to looking for her, but they’ll do it by the book. We don’t have that constraint.”

  This didn’t seem to reassure Nina at all so I said, “Don’t get me wrong, I’ll go down tomorrow and give them a current picture and file the formal report. We have to do everything we can, but I’m not counting on them to find her. I’ll go through the motions with them. Besides, I want to find out what they learn about the bug guys.”

  Nina pulled a beer out of Aunt Lucy’s overflowing refrigerator and twisted off the top.

  “I don’t want to know anything about them!” she said with a shudder. “I just want it all to go away!”

  Of course she did, I thought. She wanted the nightmare to be nothing more than a bad dream. Who didn’t want that? Everybody always wanted the bad things to be erased like chalk on a blackboard. They wanted to turn it over to the police and feel that Big Brother was taking care of them, but I knew it rarely happened that way.

  Our nightmare wasn’t going to stop until we knew why the bad things were happening and caught the person or persons behind it. I couldn’t wait for the local police investigation to take its normal, impersonal course. My intervention might make the difference between finding Aunt Lucy alive or finding her dead.

  “Nina, think about it! Those guys breaking in here twice in one day and Aunt Lucy’s disappearance, they’ve got to be connected. We find out about them and maybe it leads us to her.”

  Nina frowned. “Oh, I didn’t think of that,” she said.

  I bent down to sweep broken glass into the dustpan so Nina wouldn’t see me roll my eyes. Finding Aunt Lucy was up to me, and right now, I didn’t have a plan. I inched my way around the kitchen, sweeping up glass and wood shards and trying to figure out our next step.

  When I finished, I found Nina sitting on the back-porch steps, smoking. I joined her, too tired to lecture about the hazards and evils of cigarettes. Instead I sat beside her, shivering and staring up at the one or two stars bright enough to shine through the streetlights. Suddenly Nina stiffened and turned to peer out into the darkened backyard.

  “Listen!” she commanded. “Hear that?”

  I listened hard and heard someone walking across gravel, then the sound of men’s voices murmuring. The steps seemed to stop in the alley behind the garage. A moment later the gate into the backyard creaked in loud protest as it was pushed open. Nina clutched my arm.

  “Shh!” someone hissed.

  I pried Nina’s death grip loose, stood up and held my index finger to my lips. Nina’s eyes widened as she ground her cigarette out against the brick wall and prepared to meet our next threat.

  Two forms were making their way quietly past the garage, slinking in the shadowy darkness toward the house.

  I flattened myself against the wall and tried to size up our new visitors. I reached back behind my shirt for my gun and realized with a start that I’d left it lying on the counter in the kitchen. If I moved to go get it, I’d give myself away.

  “The lights are still on,” someone whispered. “I bet they’re up.”

  “Weasel, will you shut up? Of course they’re awake! Wouldn’t you be with robbers breaking in and people getting whacked left and right? I’d be up. I’d be thinking, who’s next, me?”

  I stepped away from the side of the house and into the pool of light that spilled from the kitchen window.

  I saw the thinner shadow grab his friend by the arm and then watched as both figures froze.

  “Paint Bucket!”

  “Who’s that?” Weasel demanded.

  Paint Bucket moved away from Weasel and stepped forward, shielding his cowering companion.

  “Stella? Is that you?”

  Nina rose up from the steps and walked into the light to join me. “Aren’t those the EMT guys?” she whi
spered. “What are they, stalking us?”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “Nina, they’re harmless.”

  We stood and waited for them to reach us.

  “Isn’t it a little late for a social call?” I asked.

  “Keep your voice down,” Paint Bucket whispered. “We don’t want anybody seeing us here.”

  He reached the shelter of the back-porch wall and stepped back into the darkness. The dim yellow glow from Aunt Lucy’s kitchen window shed enough light to make it clear to me that Paint Bucket was frightened.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” Weasel echoed. “What’s wrong? Your uncle’s dead. People break into his house, shoot the place to hell and you gotta ask what’s wrong?”

  “Weasel, shut up!” Bucket commanded. He turned to the two of us and nodded toward the kitchen. “Listen, go inside. Turn that light out! We can’t be taking no chances on being seen.”

  I gave Nina a tiny shove and was rewarded with a pouty why-me? frown before she turned and flounced inside to flip off the offending lights. Weasel and Paint Bucket watched her go with appreciative leers, their eyes firmly focused on her rear end. I figured whatever news they had to impart couldn’t be too frightening if they still took the time to scope my cousin’s ass.

  Paint Bucket turned his attention back to me as soon as Nina disappeared from view.

  “I thought you should know about this, on account of it don’t seem right, what they’re doing and all.”

  “Bucket, what are you talking about? What’s not right?”

  Paint Bucket turned his head, looked from side to side, then over his shoulder, as if afraid he was going to be overheard.

  “You know them two guys they arrested here tonight?” he whispered.

  “What about them?”

  Weasel popped up over Bucket’s shoulder. “They’re gone!” he said, his voice shrill with excitement. “Two guys came in one of them black sedans with the tinted windows. Five minutes later, they was gone!”

  I looked to Paint Bucket for a translation.

  “It was more like thirty minutes,” he said. “Two guys in black government suits, with flattop heads. They went into the P.D. Ten minutes later, Slovineck pulls up in his wife’s minivan and goes inside, walking like he’s pissed and in a hurry.”

  “Oh,” Weasel interrupted. “You thought he was pissed? I thought it was his hemorrhoids. You know he’s got ’em, don’t you, Bucket? Remember him asking you what to do for…”

  “Weasel!” Paint Bucket’s patience was shot. “Anyway, Slovineck goes in and ten minutes later them two come out with the other two guys, the ones the cops brought in earlier. And wasn’t no handcuffs on nobody!”

  “How do you know about the break-in here?” I asked. “And how do you know it was the same two guys?”

  Weasel smiled knowingly. “The fire department is right behind the police station,” he said. “We got scanners. Besides, we know all them guys. It’s a freakin’ brotherhood, Stella. We know everything they know, and they know everything we know.”

  Frightening, I thought, and looked to Paint Bucket for confirmation. He nodded.

  “This shit is the biggest crime wave Glenn Ford has ever seen! I don’t even remember the last time somebody got murdered around here.”

  “So who were the guys in the black sedan?” I asked.

  Weasel rolled his eyes. “Don’t you watch TV?”

  I ignored him and focused on Paint Bucket. “So, who were they?”

  Paint Bucket stroked his goatee and nodded, reminding me for a moment of a wizard. “Weasel’s on to something,” he said. “I think the men in black took ’em off because they’re probably…”

  He paused, looked both ways and over his shoulder before leaning in to finish his statement.

  “They’re probably government agents! Something big must be going on in town.”

  “Shut up!” Nina breathed.

  “No shit!” Paint Bucket confirmed. “What else could it be?”

  “Whoa!” Nina said. “Wait till Spike hears this!”

  I looked at the three of them and shook my head. “Call Spike,” I said. “Get him here. Now!”

  There had to be someone who could help me get some answers. I figured Spike Montgomery, former assistant district attorney turned performance artist, was just the man for the job. I was desperate.

  Nina began to stutter again. “I—I gotta tell you something about Spike first,” she said. “It’s not like you think. There’s complications. I mean, Spike and me are in love and people might not…”

  “Nina, just do it! Just do one thing I say without busting my balls about it!”

  Weasel tugged on Paint Bucket’s arm, whispering something into his ear, probably speculating on whether I actually had balls or was just being metaphorical. I stared at the three of them, wondering what it would take to get Nina moving and the other two out of my hair.

  “Nina, whatever it is, I don’t want to hear about it now. This is a family crisis! We can deal with love and personal problems later. Get him here!”

  Without another word, my cousin spun on her heel and stalked off to make the call. I looked at my watch. It was 3:00 a.m. on the East Coast, and midnight in California. With any luck, Spike Montgomery would be on the job by late afternoon.

  The acrid, sweet smell of pot smoke filled the air behind me. I turned around just in time to see Weasel inhale deeply, choke and pass the joint to Paint Bucket.

  “Bucket! What are you doing? Put that out!”

  He had the good sense to look sheepish. “It’s better for you than alcohol,” he argued.

  “Guys, go home. It’s late and we’re all tired.”

  “We ain’t tired, are we, Bucket?” Weasel squeaked. “We just got off work. It’s time to party! You should try it, Stella. It’ll relax you. You’re so wound up!”

  I shot him a withering look and he shrank back behind Paint Bucket. If one more person told me I was uptight, I’d scream.

  “Weasel, I am not wound up! Anybody would be upset given these kinds of extenuating circumstances.”

  Weasel rolled his eyes and smirked at Paint Bucket. “See?” he said. “Always with the big words!”

  Paint Bucket grabbed his buddy’s arm, spun him around and shoved him gently toward the alley.

  “I just thought you should know, Stella,” Bucket said in a wounded tone.

  I reached out and touched the stocky man’s shoulder, squeezing his arm with affection that suddenly felt genuine.

  “I’m sorry, Bucket,” I said. “I really am glad you came and told me. I guess Weasel’s right. I am on edge a little, what with all that’s happened.” I tried for a smile, knowing it came off as more of a painful grimace. “Tell you what, when this is over, I’ll buy you guys a beer down at the Crossroads, like old times!”

  Paint Bucket looked even sadder. “The Crossroads closed down three years ago, Stella.” He shook his head slowly. “There just ain’t no times left like the old times. The past is dead and gone. All’s we got now is real life.”

  “Yeah,” little Weasel added. “Ain’t that a bitch!”

  He handed the joint to Paint Bucket, who inhaled deeply and choked, holding it in as long as possible before belching a gust of smoke out into the early-morning air. The two wandered off out of sight beyond Uncle Benny’s garage. I heard the squeak of the back gate, a deep, choking cough from Bucket and the sound of footsteps dying away.

  “The past is dead and gone,” I whispered to their retreating figures. “Thank God!”

  I walked up the steps, through Aunt Lucy’s screen door and back into the kitchen. Nina had vanished, either to bed or to her room to talk to Spike in private. I sank down onto a kitchen chair and lowered my head onto my arms. The last thing I remember thinking was how good it felt to close my burning eyes, if only for a moment.

  I awoke hours later to the realization that I couldn’t face the rest of the day without knowing if what Paint Bucket ha
d told me was true. I showered, dressed and slipped out of the house without waking Nina, drove my Camaro to the nearest convenience store and gulped down coffee in an attempt to organize my approach. I arrived at the police department just as morning roll call was ending and the day shift was leaving for their tour of duty.

  I sat in the lobby cooling my heels for half an hour before Detectives Slovineck and Poltrone decided to wander out and take me into their inner sanctum. The first thing I noticed was their attitude change. They were suddenly thicker than the Great Wall of China, and just as impenetrable. They escorted me past their tiny cubicles, down the hallway to an interview room, where they sat like statues across from me at a battered wooden table, their expressions blank and their answers painfully repetitious.

  “I’m sorry, we can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”

  “Since when?”

  Poltrone looked as if she wanted to say something, but bit her tongue at a glance from her partner.

  “It’s complicated,” Slovineck answered. He looked uncomfortable and kept tugging at his tie, struggling to loosen the knot that seemed to be choking him.

  “So be a pal and tell me anyway,” I said.

  Slovineck shook his head. “No can do.”

  The interview room door swung open. A young patrol officer stuck her head in and, at the nod from Detective Slovineck, entered and crossed to his side.

  “Got it?” Slovineck asked.

  The officer nodded, handing a thin sheaf of papers to the big detective. “He wants you to call him later,” she said.

  “Will do,” Slovineck said, but his attention was already turned to the papers.

  “Is that about the men who broke into our house?”

  Poltrone gave me a look, as if she’d enjoy it if I made a move to grab the papers so she could finally take out her frustrations on me in a physical manner.

  I growled at her and focused on Slovineck. “Have you found my aunt?”

  The longer he stayed silent, the more my stomach churned. I had the sudden vision of Aunt Lucy, dead and lying on cold ground somewhere. “What is it?” I demanded.

  Slovineck looked up at me and smiled. “It seems there’s papers out on you,” he said. He studied his new information with elaborate care, slowly bringing his eyes up to meet mine. “Seems a Pete O’Brian has charged you with stealing his dog, communicating terroristic threats and assault with intent to kill.”