Stella, Get Your Gun

by Nancy Bartholomew

  The blonde leaned against the door, taking it all in as if she could sense or read our feelings. It pleased her to see us squirm. She grinned like a cat lapping up a bowl of cream, glanced at my aunt’s back and then at me.

  “I told her to give me what I came for, but she wouldn’t,” she said. “Perhaps I hit her a little too hard. What do you think?”

  “No!”

  I fought the instinct to kill at all cost and went to my aunt instead. Gripping her shoulder, I tried to turn her over, but she fought me, pulling closer to Lloyd and whimpering like a dazed child.

  “Aunt Lucy? Honey? It’s me, Stella.”

  A moan, but no other response.

  “Aunt Lucy, I need to turn you over. I need to make sure you and Lloyd are all right.”

  She moved then, whipping her head around to glare at me. “All right? How could we be all right?” she cried.

  I gasped involuntarily and bit down hard on my lower lip. Aunt Lucy’s left eye was blackened and swollen. A trickle of blood had dried in the corner of her mouth.

  “Oh, my God!” I cried.

  I lunged toward the blonde and felt Pete’s arms close around me. “Not yet,” he whispered. “Not now. Later.”

  “I’ll kill you!” I swore. “I will kill you, trust that, remember that and look forward to a slow, agonizing death.”

  The blonde’s smile broadened into a grin of delight. “Whenever you’re ready,” she said. “Bring on the best you’ve got.”

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  I sheltered my aunt’s body with my own and faced her tormentor. I was going to rip the blonde’s arms off, but only after I’d broken each stubby little finger on both her bony hands.

  “Benny trusted you,” my aunt moaned. “We both trusted you.”

  I stared at the woman in front of us. Who the hell was she?

  The blonde shrugged. “He would not have died if he’d given me what I wanted. None of you would have to die if you’d cooperate with me.”

  “I told you, it wasn’t ready,” Aunt Lucy said.

  I looked over my aunt’s shoulder, trying to figure out if Lloyd was dead or alive. I thought I saw the merest flicker of movement from his tail, but couldn’t be certain.

  “It was ready—the others knew it was ready.”

  “What others?”

  Valerie glared at me. “Your old boyfriend’s wife, for one,” she said. “She and her father were planning to steal it. You think I’m too stupid to know when amateurs are plotting something?”

  My aunt shook her head slightly. “Benny said the agency was pressuring you to make us hurry. He never thought you…”

  “He said he had something for me,” she said. “But when I got to him, he changed his mind. The old fool saw me talking to Tony Manello and decided we were up to something. Then he tried to pretend you weren’t finished. I knew he was lying!”

  Aunt Lucy turned and struggled into a sitting position beside Lloyd.

  “You’re wrong,” she insisted wearily. “It wasn’t ready. Please, let them go and I’ll give it to you. But if you hurt any of them I’ll die before I give it up.”

  I looked at my aunt. She seemed frail and old, as if a puff of air might blow her to bits. My heart broke to see the loss and grief in her eyes.

  “This is stupid,” I said. “You could’ve had the formula if you’d just waited. They would’ve handed it to you and never dreamed you had betrayed them.”

  Valerie frowned. “Even if I believed that, I couldn’t risk it being stolen by that stupid woman and her father.” She turned to my aunt. “Enough talking. Let’s go.”

  When my aunt moved, I felt her left hand touch mine.

  “Wait a moment,” she said weakly. “I feel sick. Let my head stop spinning.”

  I felt a small plastic cylinder slide from her trembling hand into mine and was careful to keep my attention focused on the woman in front of us.

  “Take me with you,” I said. “My aunt can’t walk without help. Besides, then you’ll have a guarantee, a built-in victim in case my aunt changes her mind.”

  I slid the canister into the palm of my hand, my gaze never wavering from the woman in front of me. Good old Aunt Lucy. Now how did this stuff work?

  Aunt Lucy began to gasp and clutch at her chest. Pete and I moved toward her, but Valerie brought the gun up higher.

  “Freeze,” she barked.

  Pete stopped dead, but Aunt Lucy reached up and clutched my shoulder. She pulled my sweatshirt, yanking me down into the crook of her neck and crying out in pain.

  “Help! My heart pills!” she cried.

  Heart pills? What heart pills?

  Aunt Lucy whispered. “Pump bottle. Hit her face.”

  Valerie sprang forward and gripped the collar of my sweatshirt. “Get back, I said!”

  “My pleasure,” I answered, letting my body work with Valerie’s own momentum. I fell back, almost knocking us both over, clutching at Valerie’s arm. She moved to avoid me. I faked a stagger and came up with the tiny bottle in my hand, pointed dead center at Valerie’s smug smile.

  I depressed the button. If this had been a made-for-TV movie the spray would’ve shot out, perfectly targeted at Valerie’s face, but instead it discharged into the palm of my hand.

  “Shit!”

  I flipped the bottle, hit the top again and this time scored a direct hit, dead center into Valerie’s eyes and mouth. She screamed, but only for a second. She stopped, her arms falling limp to her sides as she stood staring at me, confused and disoriented.

  The world slid into slow motion. I could almost see Valerie’s brain impulses saying “What’s happening to me?” and then, as I watched, all thought died from her features. Her expression went completely blank.

  “Pete, grab her gun!” I directed.

  He reached for the weapon. Valerie suddenly moved, bringing the gun up and firing, an evil leer replacing the vacant stare.

  “No!” she screamed.

  Pete fell backward, hitting the floor with a sickening thud, his right arm spurting pulsing arcs of blood.

  Valerie swung her pistol out, aiming at each one of us as she twirled. “Who’s next?” she cried.

  Aunt Lucy looked stricken, her eyes wide with panic and fear.

  “What happened?” I mouthed.

  I saw her right hand finger the pocket of her dress, close around another cylindrical object, and knew. Aunt Lucy had handed me the wrong canister.

  “The dog!” Valerie shrieked. “Let’s kill the dog!”

  She raised the gun, her finger tightening on the trigger as Aunt Lucy screamed and moved to shelter Lloyd with her own body. I launched myself into the space between my aunt and Valerie, knowing she would shoot me and anticipating the bullet’s impact as it tore through my chest.

  The door behind Valerie blew open, hitting her square in the back. The gun exploded, its bullet ricocheting off the wall and burrowing deep into the wood trim surrounding the ceiling.

  I reached out, grabbed Valerie’s gun hand and wrenched it hard until I felt it bend backward into her body. The weapon fell as the bones in her wrist snapped with a sickening crunch. She screamed as I grabbed the hair on either side of her head and yanked her down hard. Her nose connected with my kneecap. My fist slammed into the side of her face and she slumped sideways. I kicked her hard, my foot connecting with ribs and sending her mercifully to lala land.

  Jake Carpenter, better late than never, burst past me into the room, gun in hand. An ugly bruise darkened the left side of his face. His clothes were dirty and ripped. Blood had dried into a crusty patch on the side of his head, but at that moment I couldn’t recall ever being so happy to see him.

  “Mmmmm!”

  Nina, eyes wide, was demanding release from her duct-tape bondage.

  “What a fucking mess,” Jake muttered, surveying the chaos before him. “I thought I’d never get out of the trunk of her car! Damn!”

  Valerie lay sprawled on the floor, knocke
d cold, blood oozing from a cut in her scalp. Pete, also unconscious, would have been slowly bleeding to death next to her if Spike’s foot hadn’t been firmly pressed down on his wounded arm. She’d inched her chair forward and applied pressure to save his life.

  “Who’s this?” Jake asked, bending over Pete.

  “I never saw the man before in my life,” I lied.

  Jake’s left eyebrow shot up as he studied Pete, then looked at me.

  “You seemed mighty familiar with him back at the Red Top Inn.”

  “You were there?”

  “Mmmm!” Nina groaned.

  I pulled out my cell phone and handed it to Jake. “Call an ambulance, then see what Valerie did with the vet. I’ll try and stop the bleeding.”

  Jake nodded and left as I turned my attention to Pete’s wound. When I knew I had his bleeding under control, I bound Valerie’s wrists and ankles with adhesive tape. She moaned once and stirred as if coming around. Without thinking, I leaned over, hit her with the butt of her own weapon and breathed a sign of relief as she slumped back into a stupor.

  “Stella,” Aunt Lucy whispered.

  I looked up to see her standing unsteadily by my side, another plastic canister in her hand.

  “Aunt Lucy, you should sit down.”

  “Spray her with this,” she said. “It’s a fresh bottle. That other bottle must’ve been too old.” She frowned. “It has such a short shelf life. I told you I was still working on it!”

  I took the little spray bottle and studied it carefully.

  “Why spray her now?” I asked.

  Aunt Lucy sighed impatiently, a shadow of her familiar self reemerging. “Always with the questions!” she huffed. “You spray her and that one lying next to her. You think I want them knowing what just happened?”

  “But Valerie will remember she was after the formula tomorrow,” I insisted.

  Aunt Lucy nodded patiently. “But she won’t remember how close she came. She won’t know what happened here so she’ll be forced to believe what she’s told. And,” my aunt added, “she won’t be able to answer the questions the police ask her.”

  Aunt Lucy looked at Pete. “I don’t think he should know, either,” she said. “Did you tell him?”

  I shook my head, reached out with the spray and pumped it vigorously. A mist settled over Pete’s face and I smiled.

  “I don’t know that it’ll really change anything,” I said. “He always was clueless about certain things. I hope it doesn’t have the opposite effect. I’d hate to see him wake up smarter.”

  “It makes you forget your recent past, Stella. It doesn’t work miracles.”

  I sprayed Valerie, careful to hold the bottle at arm’s length.

  “Aunt Lucy, that stuff stinks, even from here!”

  She smiled. “You know, that stuff worked great on bass. Your Uncle Benny caught a twenty-four-pound large mouth the first time he tried it. Of course, he didn’t remember a thing about it! I had to tell him how he almost had it in the boat when the line broke. Kind of takes the fun out of it, don’t you think? Guess it was a good thing I was with him, huh?”

  “Mmmm!” Nina said.

  With a guilty start, I turned my attention to releasing my cousin and Spike, while Aunt Lucy returned to Lloyd’s side.

  “I think he’s coming around,” she whispered.

  Outside the sirens wailed, filling the air as they tore down Sheeler Street. Moments later Paint Bucket and Weasel rushed into the room, their faces pinched with anxiety.

  “What’s wrong? You got two down?”

  Paint Bucket quickly surveyed the room, doing a mental triage, and directed Weasel to Pete’s side while he began opening up his red metal emergency kit.

  “Is your uncle all right?” I asked.

  Weasel looked up. “Sure, he’s the one who pointed us in this direction.”

  “What about Jake? Didn’t he tell you what happened? Why didn’t he show you where we were?”

  But I knew the answer. The questions only popped out of my mouth because I wasn’t ready to accept the truth. Jake Carpenter was once again missing in action.

  Chapter 19

  Nina sat at the kitchen table, a makeup mirror propped up in front of her as she leaned in close and examined the pink skin that surrounded her mouth. She looked like a clown without the white face and curly red wig.

  “Oh. My. God!” she squealed. “Look at me! Oh, my God! Who knew? Two days ago I thought I’d be scarred forever, but now I look just like Angelina Jolie!”

  Spike appeared to be seriously considering this, cocking her head from one side to the other and smiling softly.

  “Better,” she murmured. “I think you look better. For one thing, you don’t have tattoos.”

  “Oh, totally not!” Nina exclaimed. “They are like, so tacky.”

  “Well, at least you weren’t seriously hurt,” I said. “I think you were very brave, Nina. I think we all were. We caught Uncle Benny’s killer and kept her from killing Aunt Lucy. I’d say we make a pretty great team.”

  Spike frowned. “But what’s to stop others from coming after your aunt?” she asked. “I mean, could other groups know about your aunt’s work? Could the Manello family have other potential customers we don’t know about?”

  I felt Spike’s question sink deep into my heart. It was the unspoken worry I’d been avoiding ever since the big blowup with Valerie. My aunt was a valuable commodity to people who would use her work to their own benefit. And what if she invented something else?

  Aunt Lucy, her head neatly bandaged in white gauze, wandered into the room wearing a fuzzy pink bathrobe and bunny slippers. Einstein, the female version, was oblivious to almost everything but her work and her family.

  She shuffled over to the counter, took a wineglass down from the cabinet above her and proceeded to uncork a bottle of Uncle Benny’s homemade Chianti. We watched as she poured the red wine into her glass, her white corkscrew curls somewhat tamed by the bandage that wrapped around her head like a schoolgirl’s headband.

  “What?” she asked. “You got nothing better to do than watch an old lady drink wine?” She sighed. “It’s not enough I got your uncle to care for—you think I should wait on you, too?”

  I saw the smile creep out momentarily from the side of her mouth and knew she was once again herself, playing with us.

  “Well, I was thinking it was getting late. I was wondering, personally, what you were making for dinner.”

  “Stella!” Nina lost interest in her makeup mirror, a shocked expression on her face. “How could you think Aunt Lucy…in her condition…?”

  Aunt Lucy turned around to glower at her niece. “My condition? And just what exactly is my condition?”

  “Well, you know,” Nina stammered. “You were pretty messed up by that woman…”

  Aunt Lucy smiled. “Yeah, but we gave as good as we got, too, eh?”

  “I was only kidding, Nina,” I said. “I’ll make dinner.”

  Aunt Lucy’s frown returned. “What, so now you cook? I didn’t think you could boil water!”

  Pete, his shoulder bandaged, chose that moment to come into the kitchen from his temporary, very temporary, resting place on the pull-out sofa in Uncle Benny’s den.

  “She can’t cook a hot dog in the microwave,” he groused. “I had to teach her to make tea, and half the time she screws that up. You don’t ever, ever, let that water come to a full boil!”

  Pete’s hair stood out in tufts all over his head. He had a two-day growth of stubble on his face, and he wore a pair of Uncle Benny’s flannel pajamas, which were too big around the waist and far too short at the ankles and wrists. He looked definitely the worse for wear, but leave it to Pete not to know.

  “Ladies,” he said, smiling broadly at Spike and Nina.

  I rolled my eyes and bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Pete, the man who prided himself on knowing everything about women, had no clue about Spike and Nina.

 
Aunt Lucy plunked the jug of wine down in the middle of the kitchen table.

  “It’s happy hour,” she said. “Knock yourselves out. I gotta go tend to your uncle before I put dinner on the table.”

  Pete caught my eye. “Your uncle?” he mouthed.

  I shook my head slightly.

  “I’ll cook dinner,” Spike said.

  My aunt smiled. “That won’t be necessary, honey. I got it covered.”

  “But Aunt Lucy,” Nina protested, “you shouldn’t be cooking in…”

  Aunt Lucy silenced her with a look. “Who said anything about cooking? I said I had it covered. At six o’clock you people better have the table set and be sitting down waiting.”

  We all stared at her, trying to figure out what she was up to. My stomach churned. Mrs. Cozzone, perhaps? I could just imagine a meal produced and delivered by that old bat. We had as good a chance of being assaulted as we did of eating anything.

  Aunt Lucy took down a small bowl, walked to the table and poured a small amount of Chianti into it.

  When she saw our raised eyebrows, she said, “It’s good for his blood. It puts the iron back in.”

  “Aunt Lucy, Lloyd is a dog. Dogs shouldn’t have alcohol.”

  Pete’s eyes widened, but by now he knew better than to open his mouth.

  Whap! Aunt Lucy’s hand flew out, connecting with the side of my head.

  “What, you think I don’t know your uncle?” She crossed herself. “It is a miracle. I thank God for the gift he has bestowed upon us all.” Whap! The hand struck again. “You should get down on your knees and thank the Blessed Virgin.”

  Had the blow from Valerie’s gun caused brain injury after all? The doctor in the emergency room had assured us it hadn’t, but who knew?

  “Aunt Lucy, I thought we covered this. Lloyd was Pete’s ex-wife’s dog. As long as I’ve known him, he’s been a dog. That’s not Uncle Benny. You don’t have to put on the crazy act anymore.”

  My aunt fell back, clutching at her chest as she staggered. “Stella Luna, I do not believe you! When the Bible said God works in mysterious ways, were you not paying attention?”