“I’m sorry,” I mouthed silently to Nina, who was looking at me with an expression of complete shock at my betrayal.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Nina said. Her voice broke as tears welled up in her eyes and she struggled not to lose her composure completely. “Don’t worry, Aunt Lucy…”
Aunt Lucy held up her hand. “Stop!” She looked around the table, focusing on Nina, Spike and me. To my surprise she smiled and her eyes were warm with affection.
“It is time we talked. You girls have been very good to me since my Benito died. You watch over me, I know that. Lloyd watches over me.”
I realized with a start that my aunt was no longer referring to Lloyd as “Benito” and wondered when she’d stopped, and if this meant she suddenly realized Lloyd was not Uncle Benny reincarnated.
“But life goes on and I must learn to live without my Benny.” She smiled at Arnold who smiled back. “You know how it is,” she said, and he nodded reassuringly. “I will always have the love of my Benito in my heart and in my memories. No one can take that from us, eh?”
Nina’s tears spilled down her cheeks and I felt my own eyes begin to burn and sting. I was thinking not just of Uncle Benny, but of my parents.
“No one lives forever,” Aunt Lucy continued. “We do not honor their memory by grieving our lives away. We honor them by continuing on, strengthened by the love they leave in our hearts. Nina,” she said focusing on my cousin. “Stop with the tears! What are you crying for?”
“Because it’s soooo sad!” she wailed.
Aunt Lucy reached out, smacked the top of her head lightning fast and clucked her disapproval. “It is not sad! It is life! Do you love Spike?”
“What?” Nina frowned, not following Aunt Lucy’s train of thought.
“Do you love that woman?”
“Of course!” Nina looked almost indignant.
“Then stop dilly-dallying around. Is time to make a life and a family. What’s wrong with you? You think you have all the time in the world? Life moves fast. It could all be over tomorrow! You can’t stand around waiting!”
Nina swallowed, hard. “Well, I didn’t want to leave you and…”
Aunt Lucy rolled her eyes in a flawless imitation of Nina. “That is so much crap! You will still live in this town. I am right here. I will have—” she paused and winked at Arnold “—a life. You cannot use an old woman for an excuse. Are you worried about your mother? You think she will not like it if you live with a woman?”
Nina shook her head vehemently. “No! She doesn’t worry about those sorts of—”
“You are right!” Aunt Lucy interrupted. “She has her own life. She is too busy shopping in Europe to worry about such technicalities! So what is your problem?”
Spike had been watching the interplay between her girlfriend and Aunt Lucy with the same detached air she usually seemed to regard everything and everyone, but now her eyes darkened as she cocked her head and seemed to hold her breath.
Thoughts seemed to be percolating in Nina’s blond head because she started to speak several times, stopped, frowned and squirmed in her chair, becoming increasingly uncomfortable. We all waited in silence for her to explode.
“All right! All right! You want to know what it is? Huh? Okay, well, I’ll tell you!” She favored us all with a defiant scowl. “I’m scared, all right? You know, like, what if it doesn’t work out and like, we have kids or something, or I’m at home with them and she runs off with someone smart or something!”
“Baby!” Spike didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or cry at Nina’s answer.
I saw Arnold Koslovski nod out of the corner of my eye, as if he’d expected this exact answer.
“Well? How do you know when you’ve found the right person? How can you be like, totally certain? I mean, I’m only twenty-three!”
“I married Benito when I was nineteen years old,” Aunt Lucy said. “And I was terrified. I didn’t know. All I knew was I didn’t want to be apart from him. He widened my life and my heart until it seemed only natural that we should be together. Still, I was terrified. I married him because I couldn’t think of anything else to do but marry him.”
Arnold had been watching Aunt Lucy talk about the love of her life, the man she chose over him, with a wistful, sad expression on his face.
“And sometimes,” he said, in a way that made me uncertain if he were speaking to us or more to himself, “sometimes you marry because you believe a great love is not possible but a good life is. And if you are very lucky, your love grows to fit your life. I have found love is like a garden, carefully tended it flourishes.”
Aunt Lucy reached over and took his hand, her eyes shining with unshed tears. For a few long moments there was silence around the dinner table before Aunt Lucy trusted herself to speak again.
“Don’t waste your life on guarantees, cara mia,” said Aunt Lucy. “What is life without surprises? Make something of your love with Spike. Make something of today, don’t wait around for imaginary tomorrows. Grow your garden. It will not be easy. Your heart will ache many times over, but it will also learn to sing.”
I felt a catch in my throat and didn’t dare look in Jake’s direction. When the phone rang, demanding attention from its position on the kitchen wall, I almost knocked my chair over in my hurry to answer it.
Chapter 8
Old Mrs. Talluchi didn’t want to waste time talking to me. When I answered the phone, she merely sniffed and said, “Put Lucia on the line. We got business. Tell her the fox is in the henhouse.”
“Excuse me?”
“Stracciamanici! Put your aunt on the phone!”
I held the phone away from my body and summoned Aunt Lucy. As she took the receiver, I cautioned her. “She’s in one of her paranoid moods. She says the fox is after the chickens or something and I’m a stracciamanici. What is that, anyway?”
Aunt Lucy lifted an eyebrow. “So, she thinks you’re a nymphomaniac, eh?” She nodded. “What else was she to think, seeing you and Jake stumble out into the street half-naked in front of my house?”
Nothing good ever came of old Sylvia Talluchi’s phone calls. Now it seemed she didn’t even have to speak to Aunt Lucy to turn my day bad.
I returned to my seat at the table, trying to think up a diversion that would keep Aunt Lucy from bringing up my misguided stakeout with Jake when she returned. I didn’t have to work on it for long. Mrs. Talluchi seemed to have provided enough of a distraction.
“When was that?” I heard her ask. “How many?” She nodded, listening. “You say you’ve seen them twice now? Uh-huh.” She paused briefly, listening, then drew our collective attention. “What? Now?”
Aunt Lucy leaned into the counter, picked up a remote control and aimed it at a small television screen mounted on top of one of her cabinets. I inhaled sharply and nudged Jake. Apparently Aunt Lucy saw no need to keep her part-time work as a government chemist with a top-secret security clearance a secret from Arnold. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have touched the surveillance camera controls. Sophisticated security equipment like that used to secure Aunt Lucy’s house and basement is just too difficult to explain as a routine alarm system.
The screen winked on and the street in front of the house took up half the monitor while the alleyway behind the house showed on the other half. I squinted, trying to see whatever Mrs. Talluchi was so excited about. A small white panel van parked two houses down seemed to be the item of interest. Aunt Lucy walked over and stood just beneath the screen, staring hard at the vehicle.
“Gratzi,” she said, and hung up.
She looked over at Jake and me, gestured toward the monitor and said, “Who are they?”
We all studied the white van on the screen carefully. Jake shrugged. “Could be anybody. Why’s Mrs. Talluchi so worried?”
“Because she said it’s been parked there for over an hour and no one ever got out of it. She said it’s the second time she’s seen it do that today. She said it only shows up when
you are here.” Aunt Lucy was directing her answers to me with a look that seemed accusatory, like maybe I’d done something and not told her about it.
“When was the first time Sylvia saw the van?” I asked.
Aunt Lucy walked back over to the table and sat back down at her place. “The first time was this morning, after you and Nina came back from the nursing home.”
I looked at Jake. “Friends of yours?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Good, because I propose rocking their world, and I wouldn’t want to do that and have Shelia Martin come tumbling out.”
The muscle in Jake’s jaw twitched, signaling that I’d hit a nerve. “How do you want to start the van rocking?”
I studied the vehicle’s position on the street. It was in front of Mrs. Talluchi’s house, two doors down and across the street from Aunt Lucy’s, occupying a space right in front of a fire hydrant.
“I have an idea,” I said.
Twenty minutes later our plan went into action. Nina, driving Aunt Lucy’s aging Buick, slowly crept past the van and came to a stop in the middle of the street blocking the space where the van was parked. This effectively prevented the van from driving away when phase two of the operation began.
Jake and I backed down the street in his red Ford F-450 tow truck, slid into place in front of the van and backed up until we were only a foot or so off the van’s bumper. Then Jake, wearing his auto-body shop coveralls, jumped down out of the cab and began the process of hooking the van up to the pickup. He did one thing he usually never did first. He ran a strong Kevlar strap around the outside of the van, cinched it tight and folded the clasp into place.
“No one’s leaving that vehicle until I say so,” he muttered grimly.
When Jake flipped the switch and the winch slowly began to crank the van’s front end up, a startled male face popped up above the dashboard. I didn’t have to see an ID badge to recognize a federal agent when I saw one. This guy was the genuine article, unlike the two dead men in Brookhaven Manor’s parking lot.
“Hey! Hold up! What’re you doing?” The guy’s face registered alarm as he looked out the window and saw that his van was headed to the top of the tow truck winch.
Sylvia Talluchi had come up behind us, and when the man in the van began protesting, she shoved me aside to get as close as possible to the vehicle’s window.
“So!” she cried. “You think you skulk around my neighborhood, eh? Stunade!” Before I could haul her back, she spit on the window, turned around and stalked back up her stoop.
Another bristle-top appeared in the window. This one was older, his hair gray, lines etched deeply around his eyes, an impassive expression on his face. He merely held up a badge and flashed the shiny silver contents in an arc that was apparently supposed to impress us into submission. I guess he didn’t realize who he was dealing with. The citizens of Glenn Ford, and in particular the residents of the Italian section of Glenn Ford, have never been overly impressed by dictatorial displays of authority. You have to earn our respect.
Jake, playing the role of tow-truck driver to the hilt, walked up to the window and smiled. “Can I see your badge again?” he asked.
When the gray-haired man produced the badge, Jake studied it with a serious air and mouthed the words as he read, “U.S. Department of Defense.”
He looked over at me and grinned. “Hey, what do you know, these guys are protecting our homeland from terrorists.” Turning back to the two men in the van, he grinned. “Ain’t that right, fellas? Youse are here looking for terrorists, aren’t you?”
He made no move to unhook the van.
“You’re interfering with a government investigation,” the younger agent said.
“Hmm,” Jake said, frowning. “How could that be? We don’t have no terrorists on this block. Do you need to tell us something? If there’s terrorists here, you should tell us. We take care of our own in this part of town.”
You could look at the younger agent’s face and practically read everything he was thinking. None of it was flattering to the residents of Glenn Ford.
Jake peered inside the van. “You folks say you’re with the Department of Defense, but anyone can have a badge. Can we see some personal ID? You know, technically, you’re parked too close to a fire hydrant. That’s why I got the call to come out and tow you. See, if there were to be a fire and we couldn’t get the trucks in…”
“Jesus!” I heard the older guy swear. He pulled out an identification card, showed it to Jake and said, “There! Will that do?”
“Well, let’s see.” Jake slowly inspected the laminated card then nodded to the younger man. “Let’s see yours.”
When the man looked uncertain, the older man sighed. “Just do it and get this over with,” he said.
Jake looked at the second card, and I knew he had every detail memorized from both cards.
“Well, it don’t much matter anyway,” he said. “You still can’t park here.”
Without another word, Jake turned and climbed up into the cab of the truck with me. As Aunt Lucy’s neighbors watched, we slowly pulled away from the curb, the white van in tow.
“Jake, you think they’ll shoot us?”
“Nah! How would that look? They won’t shoot us, but from the expressions on their faces, I bet they’d sure like to!”
The two of us laughed all the way back to Jake’s former auto-body shop. Once we’d backed the van into the bays and lowered its front wheels onto the ground, we got serious.
Jake walked up to the driver’s side window again while I slowly undid the Kevlar strap that held the van’s doors closed.
“All right,” he said cheerfully. “You can come out now.”
They came out, weapons drawn and obviously angry. Before either one could speak, I began.
“For some reason, you two seem to have been assigned to watch my house. I can only assume this has something to do with Bitsy Blankenship’s death, but I’d like to hear it from you. What were you doing?”
Jake and I weren’t surprised when neither man answered us. We hadn’t expected them to, nor did we believe their identification was accurate. Our sole purpose in bringing them back to the garage was to put them on notice. We knew about them and they didn’t scare us.
“You are interfering with a federal investigation,” the younger agent said, clearly angry.
Jake smiled dangerously. “No we’re not. We’re private citizens concerned about our welfare and the welfare of our neighbors. We thought you were hoods, casing the neighborhood. We merely asked a few questions in an environment that provided all of us with privacy. Run along, if you’d like.”
“Of course,” I said, “we’d be forced to answer any questions the media wanted to ask us about you. I mean, in a small town visitors are interesting. We love to write up stories in the local paper about their visits. Sometimes it even makes the local T.V. news.”
The older agent’s jaw muscle twitched just like Jake’s did when he got tense. He glared at me. “And if you did that, we might be forced to press charges against the two of you. Kidnapping and impeding a government investigation. You could do time.”
I gave it right back to him. “But of course, you wouldn’t want to do that. It would only bring more publicity to your presence in town. So why don’t you just tell us why you’re watching my house, and I’ll try and help you out. You know, we could be playing for the same team.”
The younger agent looked as if that was not even a remote possibility, but the older guy was listening.
“You know we can’t talk about our assignment,” he said. “I’ve got my orders and we have to follow them.”
Jake nodded. “Then you’ll understand that we’ll do what we have to do, too.”
It was a standoff. The two agents climbed back into their van and drove out of Jake’s garage. They didn’t go very far, only across the street where they parked and began watching us again.
I walked to the edge of the garage bay
and looked back at Jake who was busy studying his pager.
“All right, let’s think this thing through,” I said. “This has something to do with Bitsy’s death. They’re interested in us because why? Our only link is through Baby Blankenship. There’s got to be a connection. Either they think we know more than we do, or they think we’re going to lead them to something or someone. Do you think they’re watching the nursing home? Or her mother’s house? Or David Margolies?”
I gestured to the tow truck. “We need to find out, but that thing sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. Let’s go back to the house, get Nina and Spike, lose these boys and go look.”
Jake shook his head. “What does it matter if they know what we’re doing? Let’s ride around, let them follow us and then go back to your place. I’m going to call Shelia and see what she can find out about this, too.”
The mere mention of Shelia’s name set my nerves on edge, but I didn’t let Jake see it. No, I was turning over a new leaf, and jealousy wasn’t going to be a part of my relationship.
While I drove, Jake talked to Shelia. The white panel van followed us, maintaining a discreet distance as I cruised along the streets of Glenn Ford. The street leading to the Blankenship family home was lined with cars and the house was lit up as people dropped by to pay their respects to Bitsy’s family. There was no white van in evidence, nor was there any car that seemed out of place or government issued.
“It just gets more interesting,” Jake said, closing up his cell phone. “Of course the names those two gave us are as fake as their badges. She can’t get verification of any agents in this area. In fact, she got the same word Spike’s friend got—Bitsy’s death was the result of a freak accident. Case closed.”
“Well, then,” I said, turning onto the access road that ran alongside the nursing home, “someone’s lying.” I looked in the rearview mirror at the white van behind us. “Who are those guys then?”
Jake shook his head. “If I had to guess, I’d say they’re the genuine article, but they’re not DOD men. I’d say they’re CIA.”
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