What Stella Wants

by Bartholomew, Nancy

  I slipped behind the curtain and sat down in the chair next to Baby’s hospital bed. Her eyes were closed and she snored softly as she slept. I watched her carefully, noting the faint traces of pink in her cheeks, a distinct improvement from the pale pallor she’d had when she’d arrived at Aunt Lucy’s.

  I glanced around the small cubicle, noting the meticulous handwriting on lined paper clipped to an old-fashioned clipboard that had to belong to Sylvia Talluchi. I picked up the makeshift chart and read the careful notations of blood pressure, temperature and pulse rates.

  “Is he gone?” Baby’s whisper startled me.

  I looked back at the woman lying against the crisp white sheets and thought for a moment I’d imagined the sound. Baby’s eyes remained closed and her breathing even, including the soft snoring sound I’d heard only moments before.

  Then Baby’s nose twitched and a slight smile played over the corners of her mouth.

  “He thinks he’s my son,” she whispered, popping one eye open to watch me. “Can you believe it?”

  I stepped to the bedside and took Baby’s soft, bony hand in mine. Her skin was tissue-paper thin, and dull purple bruises colored her hands and arms, the result of blood thinners and too many hands hurriedly rushing to turn and move her when she’d been taken to the emergency room. At least, that’s what I hoped, knowing full well that demented elderly patients were prime targets for abuse and that in Baby’s case, there was the added threat of outsiders searching her room.

  “I call him Paint Bucket,” I said, giggling. “When he was little, his dad was a painter and Bucket wanted to be just like him.”

  Baby’s eyebrows shot up and she opened both eyes. “Oh, dear! I don’t remember that at all! I did marry him, didn’t I?”

  “Who?”

  “The painter,” Baby said. “It would’ve been the right thing to do!”

  I was trying to follow along but Baby was losing patience and it seemed better to switch to a new topic, something hopefully familiar, and something that might just help me figure out what was going on with Bitsy.

  “Guess what? I saw your granddaughter, Bitsy, today.” I stopped, waiting for the words to sink in and become attached to meaning.

  “Bitsy?” Baby was frowning.

  “You were worried about her, remember? She came to see you and she gave you something.”

  Baby nodded slowly. “Yes, I was very worried.”

  “Well, she was fine when I saw her, but then I lost her.”

  Baby smiled. “She used to love hide and seek as a little girl. Was she playing with you?”

  Who knew the answer to that one? I nodded. “I think she was,” I answered. “I wonder where she could’ve gone this time.”

  Baby slowly shook her head. “She’s a wily one, that girl is. One time she ran all the way to the old library. They didn’t find her because she knew about the secret room. The library was a stop on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, you know. Of course, they tore it all down. Now it’s a bank.”

  Baby lay back against her pillow and seemed to be worrying about something. She frowned, shook her head slowly and sighed.

  “What’s the matter, Baby?”

  “I just can’t understand something about Bitsy,” she said slowly. “How could a girl that pretty have someone like that man for a father?”

  “That man?” I echoed.

  Baby raised her head and glared at me. “Honestly, honey, sometimes you can be so short-minded! That son of mine! The one with the beard! They just don’t look a thing alike!”

  When I left she was sleeping. Paint Bucket was sitting beside her, reading a book on advanced cardio-pulmonary diagnostic procedures. Weasel was once again relegated to the kitchen, and Sylvia Talluchi was in my uncle Benny’s former basement workshop, napping on his worn-out sofa.

  I tiptoed past her, up the stairs and back into the kitchen where Jake sat watching Aunt Lucy ladle bowls of savory chicken soup into ancient crockery bowls. Lloyd the Dog sat at her feet, torn between his desire for a handout and his devotion to his new love, Fang. The wolf-dog lay on the pallet Aunt Lucy had made for her beside the warm stove, snarling softly whenever Lloyd appeared to edge closer to her resting place.

  “It’s what they do,” Aunt Lucy was explaining to Jake. “They nest right before it is time to give birth. Until then, she is resting. Imagine how crabby you’d be with a belly full of puppies!”

  Jake looked at me and grinned. “I can’t even imagine,” he said, but it seemed to me he was imagining plenty and none of it had to do with puppies.

  Before the conversation could continue any further, his cell phone sounded. He answered, listened a few moments, stood and walked out of the room, away from the two of us. Aunt Lucy gave me a questioning look and I shrugged.

  “How’s Arnold?” I asked.

  She turned back to the stove before she answered. “He is comfortable. They have medicine for him when the pain gets too bad. Now I will feed him soup and he will feel much better.”

  I watched my aunt prepare a tray and carefully place a bowl of soup on it. I hoped she didn’t think Arnold’s cancer could be cured with something as simple as a bowl of chicken soup. I doubted she thought this, but Aunt Lucy had fallen into such deep denial of my uncle’s death. It worried me to see her facing another loss so soon.

  Jake came back into the kitchen, pulled his jacket off the back of the chair across from me and gave me an apologetic look.

  “I’ve got to go take care of something,” he said, glancing at Aunt Lucy’s back and shaking his head quickly. “I shouldn’t be long. Will you still be up if I stop back by?”

  Right. Like I could sleep not knowing where he was or what was going on.

  “Want me to come with you?”

  Jake shook his head again. “No, I’d better do this by myself. I’ll be back.”

  I sighed. “Okey-doke, then,” I said. “I guess I’ll see you when I see you.”

  I got up and left the kitchen before he could walk out the back door. At least I could be the first one to leave, I thought, and knew I was being childish. How come “we” had trust issues but I was the only one who had to ante up by trusting? Why didn’t I ever do anything that pushed his trust envelope?

  I trudged slowly up to my room, feeling my body grow heavier with each step. The sound of female voices arguing stopped me. Spike and Nina, the couple voted most likely to resemble lovebirds, were fighting.

  “Guess I’m not the only one feeling the stress,” I muttered to myself.

  “I know we’ll have to paint it, but it’s wood. I hate brick!” Nina was saying.

  “It’ll be too expensive and who’s going to keep up with all the maintenance? You don’t know anything about renovating houses,” Spike countered.

  “I can learn,” Nina said. “I want to be original. You’re selling out.”

  “Selling out?” Spike sounded wounded.

  I tried to slip past their room without listening but it was impossible.

  “Who’s thinking of taking a job in the D.A.’s office again?” Nina said.

  I stopped. Was Spike thinking of going back to the D.A.? Didn’t she have any faith in Valocchi and Carpenter Investigations? What about her private practice? She certainly couldn’t work for us or have a private practice if she returned to the D.A.’s office.

  “Nina,” Spike argued, “we need a steady, reliable income. We need health care and security, especially if we’re thinking about starting a family.”

  I froze, blatantly eavesdropping. Spike and Nina with children? Why hadn’t they said something?

  “Why can’t you just go with your gut,” Nina cried. “Why can’t you have faith that things will work out for the best?”

  “Because I’m just not like that,” Spike answered. “I need to have a plan. I need to be logical and sensible. I can’t live with my head in the clouds.”

  “Oh, so now I’m not sensible? You think I’m an air-head!” Nina’s voice cracked
as she began to cry.

  I dashed down the hallway past their room, knowing the argument was rapidly moving from bad to worse and not wanting to hear the hurtful things that would probably follow. I slipped into my room, closed the door and sank down onto my bed. So, just because the two members of a couple were female, it didn’t mean they were any better at resolving their issues than Jake and I seemed to be. Damn. I’d just assumed heterosexual couples argued because men were unreasonable. Oh, well, another theory shot to hell!

  I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes, intending to rest for only a few minutes. Instead I fell into a deep sleep, awakening only when Jake arrived. I felt his hand on my shoulder, heard him softly calling my name and opened my eyes reluctantly.

  “What are you doing back? I thought you said it might be an hour or two?” I asked, feeling groggy and somewhat cranky. All I wanted was a nap.

  Jake smiled. “Stel, it’s almost midnight. I’ve been gone a little over two hours.”

  I sat up and peered at my bedside clock—11:48 p.m. How had that happened?

  “Okay, so where were you and what’s going on?”

  Jake chuckled. He was wearing his bomber jacket, and when I touched it, the leather was still cold from the outside.

  “Marygrace was the one who called earlier, wanting me to meet her out by McConnell’s farm, only she wouldn’t say that. All she’d say was she wanted to see me where we had our keg parties. Almost everything she said was in this convoluted code of clues made up from things we’d done in high school.” He grinned. “She thinks she’s the next superspy or something.”

  “Well, hell, Jake! Why didn’t you just tell me she was the one who called?”

  He shook his head. “She made me swear I wouldn’t tell you, and she wouldn’t even let me call her by her name over the phone! She thinks my phone and the house are bugged.”

  I shrugged. It could well be true, I reasoned. “So why are you talking to me now, then?”

  Jake raised an eyebrow. “What, you think Marygrace is right? You think your bedroom’s bugged?” Before I could answer, he pulled a small device from his pocket and fiddled with it. A second later the box began to hum. “Audio jammer,” he explained. “Blocks any outgoing audio signals.”

  “Okay, so what did Marygrace want?” I asked, returning to the matter at hand.

  Jake took off his jacket, tossed it on the chintz-covered slipper chair in the corner and stood up. “Bitsy called her,” he said, and began unbuttoning his shirt. “She wanted Marygrace to get a message to me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Jake had removed his flannel shirt and was now sitting on the bed again, pulling off his lizard-skin boots.

  “Well, I’m just realizing how security conscious you are,” he said, grinning. “And I know you’d want me to take every possible precaution against high-tech surveillance techniques compromising our transfer of sensitive material, so I’m being careful. It would be too risky to simply sit beside you and tell you about my conversation with Marygrace, even with the audio debugging device. So I propose to narrow the space between us by slipping under the covers and whispering in your ear.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And the reason you’re taking off your clothes to do this is?”

  “Well, Stel, bugs come in all shapes and sizes. What if someone slipped a tiny device into one of my pockets? Worse, what if an even smaller bug, say shaped like a seed or a briar, was clinging to my shirt or my pants? What if it fell off between your sheets? Why, then every sound you made in this bed would be monitored.”

  Jake turned to me and slowly ran one finger along my chin, tracing the line of my jaw and sending a shiver of anticipation through my body. “We wouldn’t want that, now, would we?” he whispered.

  “No,” I murmured, and reached past him to unbutton his jeans. “We certainly can’t have that!”

  Less than a minute later we were naked and under my warm blankets. Jake pulled me to him, spooning me into his body and nuzzling my neck with the scratchy, late-day stubble that covered the lower half of his face. His hands began to move, exploring every curve and plane of my skin, teasing and arousing me with well-proven moves.

  Jake was avoiding something. I realized with a start that Jake had no intention of continuing the report of his conversation with Marygrace and had hoped to distract me by making love to me! Damn, that man!

  I pushed away from him, turning as I did to face him. “Talk, Jake,” I demanded.

  “Bitsy’s fine. She got nervous and pulled a rabbit, that’s all,” he said. “Now come back here.”

  I stiff-armed him. “Details, Jake.”

  He sighed, apparently resigned. “All right. I went to the field by McConnell’s farm and met Marygrace. She said Bitsy wanted me to know she was all right and that she’d call again tomorrow to arrange a meet.”

  What wasn’t he telling me? I knew there was something, felt it and trusted my instincts. When Jake reached for me again, I looked at him and frowned.

  “What else?”

  “What do you mean what else?” he asked, looking puzzled.

  “Come on, Jake. You were gone two hours. What aren’t you telling me?”

  Jake seemed irritated. “I told you, it’s not important, certainly nothing I couldn’t have told you in the morning. Bitsy’s just paranoid, that’s all. She left the pump house because she felt it wasn’t secure and she wouldn’t tell Marygrace where she was. She said she’d call the pay phone outside Reeder’s Newsstand tomorrow morning at 7:30. Then she’ll arrange a meet.”

  “And?” I said, as he showed signs of clamming up.

  “She doesn’t trust anyone in the Agency now. She doesn’t want us talking to any of them.”

  “In other words, she doesn’t want you talking to anyone. I don’t have CIA connections.”

  “Right.”

  “Does Bitsy know you talk to Shelia Martin?” I asked.

  Jake seemed uncertain. “She seems to know I talk to someone.”

  I propped myself up on an elbow, feeling even more uncertain about Bitsy and her predicament. “Do you think Bitsy’s holding something back or do you think she might be right in not trusting Shelia? Are you having doubts about her? Is that why you lied to her earlier?”

  The lines on Jake’s forehead deepened. “I don’t understand why she’s here if she’s not involved in this. Shelia says she’s not, but why else would she keep popping up whenever something happens that involves Bitsy or her grandmother?”

  “Good question. What do you want to do?”

  “I think I’ll wait and hear what Bitsy has to say tomorrow,” he said. “Then we can take it from there.” Jake hesitated for a moment then added, “I think I’ll back off Shelia for a while, too—you know, not necessarily report everything I hear of or know about Bitsy.”

  This was a huge step for Jake to take, I realized. He had to have significant doubts about Shelia to take that sort of action. Jake started to reach for me again but I still had questions.

  “Why did Bitsy ask for you and not me?”

  Jake shrugged. “I don’t think it was anything personal,” he answered. “Marygrace said she seemed very paranoid and suspicious about everything. She’s scared and fighting for her life,” he said. “That tends to make you hypersensitive. Besides, Bitsy and I do have a deeper connection than she has with you.”

  You certainly didn’t need to remind me of that, I thought. I looked hard at Jake, watching his every reaction as I followed up with another question.

  “So, you’re telling me Bitsy didn’t say anything to Marygrace about not wanting me there tonight or tomorrow?”

  Jake broke eye contact with me for the briefest possible second. It was all I needed to know what he’d been avoiding.

  “What did she say?”

  Jake sighed. “Baby, you know you can’t take…”

  “What did she say, Jake?”

  “All right. Marygrace asked Bitsy if she wanted her to call you if she
couldn’t reach me, and Bitsy said no. According to Marygrace, Bitsy just feels safer because she knows I’ve had agency training.”

  “And?” I prodded.

  Jake looked uncomfortable. “Marygrace said Bitsy thinks you might have some old resentments about her that would keep you from being as effective at safeguarding her.”

  “Bullshit! I do my job and I don’t let my personal feelings ever get in the way!”

  Jake reached out and grabbed my arm in a firm grip. “Stel, I know that. Even Bitsy probably knows that when she’s thinking straight, but like I said, she’s freaked out right now. Don’t take it personally. I’ll handle it with her when I see her.”

  I was steaming. I’d risked my life to protect her and done a damned fine job of it, too. How dare she question my abilities?

  “Come here,” Jake coaxed, this time pulling me up on top of him. “Come on. Let it go, Stel. She doesn’t know you like I do and she’s scared to death. Let it go.”

  If he said, “Trust me,” I was going to have to kill him.

  But he didn’t. Instead he began talking with his hands. He rolled me across his body, back onto the bed and onto my stomach.

  “You’ve had a long day,” he whispered, slowly kneading my shoulders with magical fingers. “Just relax.”

  I felt my body respond, against my will, to his skillful touch. I felt the tension slowly leaving the tight muscles, felt my body melting into the mattress as Jake rubbed and stroked my back. I heard him reach for something on my bedside table and moments later heard him unscrewing the lid to my jar of body cream. I closed my eyes and sighed as Jake began his massage in earnest.

  “Tell me where it hurts,” he asked, leaning close. His breath tickled my ear and I giggled softly.

  “It hurts all over,” I answered.

  “Mmmm…” he sighed. “Poor baby, I’ll take care of it if it takes all night.”

  I smiled into the soft cotton sheets. It was going to be a very long night indeed!

  Chapter 13

  I woke up in an empty bed. My last conscious memory was of relaxing into the comfortable mattress as Jake slowly massaged me into a stupor. That was it. No passionate night of lovemaking, just a Jake-induced coma that kept me unconscious and unaware all through the night and into the morning.