What Stella Wants

by Bartholomew, Nancy

  I waited, knowing Nina would reveal all in her own space and time.

  “Okay, so like, you asked me to get online and see what else I could find out about David and Bitsy in Slovenia, right?” she said, looking to me for confirmation.

  When I nodded, she continued. “Okay, so look at this. Here’s an article about a scientist named Gregor Ryzhov who died in an automobile accident about three months ago in Slovenia. The article says Dr. Ryzhov is from the Ukraine, not Slovenia, and it also said he was big into something called nonlinear dynamics and Chaos Theory. It doesn’t say a thing about him being a chemist.”

  Nina passed the copy of the article across the table to me and returned to her stack of information.

  “Here’s a picture of David and Bitsy at the opening reception for the conference on Nonlinear Dynamics that Dr. Ryzhov was attending at the University of Maribor. Okay, so like this isn’t the world’s greatest picture, but that dude standing next to that older dude in front is Gregor Ryzhov. That’s what the caption says.”

  I took the grainy copy she handed me and stared hard at the tall man in the photograph. He was young and had a friendly smile on his face. Bitsy was smiling up at him, but he was staring out at the camera and apparently didn’t see her.

  Aunt Lucy had the first article and was shaking her head as she read. “I can’t see why a biochemist developing such sophisticated weaponry would attend a nonlinear dynamics conference,” she muttered. “It’s such an esoteric area and not really practical for what he was working on.”

  I put down the photograph. “All right, I give! What is nonlinear dynamics?”

  Nina fielded the question instead of Aunt Lucy. “I wanted to know the same thing. Apparently it’s a way of studying systems. Chaos Theory is the biggest part of it. Basically, it starts with the Butterfly Theory and shoots off from there. The thinking is that sometimes little random events can cause other, seemingly nonrelated, larger events to occur. So, like, if a butterfly flaps its wings in China, this might eventually cause little fluctuations that lead to shifts and changes in the atmosphere and bam! On the other side of the world, there’s a hurricane!”

  I was lost. “Honey,” I said. “What in the hell does that have to do with Bitsy and Jake?”

  Nina nodded, pulling yet another sheaf of papers out of her stack. “I don’t know, but I did find this out. Slovenian scientists don’t need to run away from their country. Slovenia is friendly to other democratic countries including the United States, but the Ukraine and Belarus are still longing for the old days of communism and authoritarian leadership.”

  She shoved more papers across the table in my direction.

  “The United States doesn’t like the leadership in those countries and a couple of months ago there was a big stink in the U.N. Belarus and the Ukraine accused the United States of spying on them and financing plots to overthrow the government. If that Gregor dude had developed a bio-chemical weapon for those people, they’d be really pissed if he tried to leave or if his formula disappeared.”

  I nodded, beginning to understand what Nina was trying to tell us. Bitsy and David both had lied to us. They’d left out some information that shifted Bitsy’s dilemma into a whole new level of danger. Now I understood why she was in such danger. If Ukrainian agents were chasing her, she was in deep shit. They played hardball, whereas little Slovenia wasn’t even in their league. No wonder the CIA was looking for Bitsy.

  Arnold was sitting next to Aunt Lucy, writing notes on a legal pad and listening to everything that was being said. I had the feeling he was quietly formulating his own opinions and would in time voice them, but not before he felt confident he had something to offer.

  “All right,” I said. “We have a job to do. This is a small town. Bitsy shouldn’t be that hard to find, but she’s also a professional and apparently damned good at her job. If we could find her then I feel certain we’d find Jake, too. I don’t think she’ll kill him until she absolutely has to.” I looked around the table at my friends and family. “But don’t get me wrong,” I said. “When he becomes a liability, Bitsy will kill Jake. He’s a risk she can’t afford to take. He knows too much and he’s good. I don’t know how she managed to overpower him, but I can assure you, if Jake gets free he won’t give her a second chance. That’s why she’ll kill him…before, during or after the exchange.”

  Arnold broke the tip of his pencil on the crisp white paper in front of him. Suddenly I remembered the Internet article we’d found when we were investigating him. His only daughter had died as a result of a kidnapping.

  “I have experience with kidnappers,” Arnold said softly. “You are right, she will kill him. If you need cash or surveillance equipment or manpower, I can get it for you, quickly and discreetly, remember I own an electronics kingdom. I’ve got the inventory of over sixty Computer Digitech stores at my disposal. You just say the word, Stella.”

  Aunt Lucy reached over, laid her hand on top of his arm and squeezed gently, silently reassuring him.

  “What do you need us to do?” she asked me.

  I pushed back the tears that threatened to make speaking impossible and met Arnold’s earnest gaze.

  “Thank you for your kindness, Arnie,” I said. “I don’t deserve it after the way I’ve treated you.”

  Arnold chuckled. “Don’t be ridiculous! You did what any good niece would do, you investigated me. You were making sure your aunt was safe. And then you gave in to your feelings. You loved your uncle and I was stepping into his territory. Who could blame you for thinking it is too soon for your aunt to love someone new? Who could fault your loyalty, eh?”

  Arnold’s smile became rueful and his eyes looked sad.

  “If my circumstances were different, I would have waited, moved more slowly. But as you all know, time is not on my side. I only have right now, today, to make up for years without my Lucia.” He shrugged, picking up my aunt’s Italian mannerism without seeming to be aware of it. “But, I have no regrets. We have had wonderful lives without each other and now we have the gift of this brief time together.”

  He paused to smile at my aunt before continuing. “So,” he said, placing his hands, palms down on the table and slowly extending his arms toward us. “I do not want to replace your uncle. I just want to be here…for Lucia and for all of you, for as long as we have together.”

  Nina burst into tears and buried her face in Spike’s shoulder. I inhaled deeply and struggled to keep myself together. Between the stress of losing Jake, and Arnold’s sweet openness, I was coming damned close to losing it.

  “Thank you, Arnold. Maybe if we could develop a list of possible places where Bitsy could be hiding we could fan out and drive past those locations,” I said. “Then we might have an idea of what kind of resources we’ll need.”

  It wasn’t much of an idea, but the others threw themselves into the task. Spike played secretary and the rest of us tried to list places in and around Glenn Ford where Bitsy might be hiding. We’d been at it for five minutes when Sylvia Talluchi cried, “Bogies at high noon!”

  All of us, with the exception of Arnold, scrambled like the on-deck crew of an aircraft carrier. Aunt Lucy grabbed the remote for the front surveillance monitor. Nina scampered down the steps to the basement to make sure the door into Aunt Lucy’s underground laboratory was closed and secured. Spike quietly folded her notepad over and put it in a drawer.

  “How did you know someone was at the front door?” I asked Sylvia, wondering what high-tech intruder-alert mechanism she and my aunt had come up with now.

  She rolled her eyes. “The front door bell is broken,” she rasped. “Instead of ringing it makes a click, click, click sound. You were all talking. I was listening.”

  Duh. It’s always the simple explanations.

  The monitor flashed on, the picture came into clear view and there she stood, Shelia Martin, without her sidekick. As we watched, she took a slight step back, looked up at the spot above the door where the tiny surveillance
camera was hidden, and stood staring up at it as if she were watching us watch her.

  “Damn!” I swore under my breath. “Now what?”

  I walked slowly through the house to the front door, mentally preparing myself to do battle. When I opened the door, Shelia didn’t mince words.

  “We need to talk,” she said, sweeping past me into the hallway.

  I closed the door behind her, praying Bitsy didn’t somehow have the row house under surveillance, and stood with my arms folded tight across my chest.

  “Shelia, didn’t we cover everything back at the PD?” I asked.

  She looked at me with frosty blue-eyed intensity and sighed. Her shoulders slumped just a little bit as she shook her head in frustration.

  “Stella, could we just sit down and talk for a minute? Why do you have to treat me like I’m the enemy? You know Jake and I are close. I’m not here to do anything other than help.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at this statement, but brushed past her to lead the way into Aunt Lucy’s front parlor. I gestured to the sofa, took the wingback chair across from her and decided to go on the offensive.

  “So, you want to help,” I said softly. “Why should you think I need help? And what sort of help are you thinking I need?”

  Shelia smoothed an invisible wrinkle in her immaculate black wool slacks before answering me.

  “Jake came to me asking questions about Bitsy Blankenship’s death. I did some poking around and found out that she and her husband could’ve been in possession of a formula for a biochemical weapon. At first we thought Bitsy had been killed in retaliation for the loss of the scientist who was developing the formula.”

  Shelia looked directly into my eyes. “That was before we found out she wasn’t dead and before we learned that she visited her grandmother shortly before her disappearance. It was also before two men purporting to work for the CIA were killed in the nursing home parking lot and Bitsy’s grandmother’s room was ransacked not once, but three times by apparently different individuals.”

  Throughout Shelia’s monologue, I made sure I kept my expression flat and didn’t give her any nonverbal cues.

  “Then, last night, there’s a disturbance at your office. Armed men break in. You and Bitsy break out. The police arrive and find one man almost blinded by chemicals and a weird tale of a break-in to the print shop. Then you return and attempt to single-handedly take down one of the suspects as he’s driving away. He pulls a gun and you almost kill him.”

  I nodded when she paused, but when I didn’t say anything, she continued.

  “We find Bitsy’s fingerprint at the scene and all you have to offer is some piecemeal story of Bitsy coming to you for help and intruders interrupting you before you can find out what’s going on.”

  Shelia turned her hands over on her lap, palms up and shook her head. “Now Jake, who’s usually glued to your side, seems to have vanished. Where is he, Stella, and why aren’t you worried?”

  I smiled, but I was far from enjoying our little cat-and-mouse game. “Jake’s a big boy,” I answered. “Why should I be worried about him?”

  Shelia’s frost-blue eyes darkened into a brilliant aquamarine as the intensity of her emotions began to show. Telltale pink spots blossomed on her cheeks, letting me know she was working to contain her irritation with me.

  “Why should you worry?” Shelia asked. “Because you’re a smart woman and you’ve managed to ferret out Jake’s past relationship with Bitsy. And you know how Jake is when he thinks one of his women, past or present, is in danger.” Shelia leaned toward me. “He’s a knight in shining armor, and right now he’s with Bitsy Blankenship, a damsel in very big distress.”

  Shelia waited for her words to sink in and have an effect while I sat across from her, trying as hard as I could to outplay her by staying cool. All I really wanted to do was jump the short distance between us and kick her ass. Of course, that would be all the evidence she needed.

  I was thinking hard and fast, wishing I could tap into her expertise while knowing I couldn’t confide in her. Jake had doubts about Shelia. He questioned why she was suddenly so available and willing to help him find out about Bitsy. For the first time since I’d known him, Jake was unsure about Shelia and I had to honor that. “Don’t trust, don’t talk, don’t feel,” became my silent mantra.

  Shelia was watching me like a cat watches a field mouse, waiting for me to move so she could pounce.

  “Jake doesn’t know what he’s up against,” Shelia said softly. “He doesn’t know what kind of danger Bitsy’s in, not really. Jake thinks he’s invincible, but Stella, he hasn’t come up against people like the ones chasing Bitsy. They’ll stop at nothing to get what they want. Jake won’t be any match for them. It’s one man against an army.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I know you think I still have feelings for Jake. I know you don’t trust me, but Stella, I’m begging you, if you know anything about their whereabouts, tell me. Let me help them get to safety!”

  She was damned believable and I wanted to let down my guard, but I just couldn’t. Not yet.

  I sighed. “Shelia, I know you mean well, but Jake’s fine. Tell you what, when I hear from Jake, I’ll tell him to call you.”

  Shelia’s face hardened into a look of stony displeasure. She was pissed.

  “Both of you are making a very big mistake,” she said. “I don’t understand why you won’t let me help.”

  I shrugged. “Shelia, let’s lay it all out here, all right? You didn’t come to see me out of some sudden sense of sisterhood. You came because all of your usual advanced technological methods for locating people aren’t working. You only want to find Jake because you suspect he’s with the person you really want to talk to, Bitsy.”

  When she started to protest, I held up my hand and stopped her. “I’m sure you care about Jake, but bottom line…you’re a cold-hearted bitch on a mission, and that comes first with you. If you could help me by finding Jake, you would have done it by now. You’re just fishing to see if you’ve left any stones unturned and, honey, believe me, you haven’t.”

  I stood up and looked down on her. “I think you’d better leave now.”

  Without waiting for her to say anything further, I started out of the room toward the front door. She followed me but stopped in the doorway, unable to leave without one final parting shot.

  “You’re too smart to be so foolish, Stella. Yeah, I’ll take Jake away from you if I get the chance. But now isn’t the time to be worrying about that. We have to think about what is best for Jake. If you really loved him, you’d be doing that and not playing games with me.”

  I stonewalled her, held the door open and waited for her to walk through it and out onto the stoop before I slammed it shut behind her. When I walked back into the kitchen, they were all waiting for me.

  “Are you sure she can’t help us?” Nina asked.

  “Yes.”

  Nina frowned. “I thought the CIA could find anybody,” she muttered.

  Aunt Lucy shook her head. “Only in the movies.”

  I looked up at the clock on the wall above Aunt Lucy’s sink and felt my stomach lurch. It was almost three. We only had twelve hours to find Jake, if that.

  Arnold and Sylvia were huddled together at the far end of the table, holding a whispered conference that ended with Arnold nodding and squeezing her arm before looking up at the rest of us.

  “We’ve been talking,” he said. “Does Jake’s cell phone have a global positioning system installed in it?”

  The first flicker of hope ignited and was quickly extinguished as I remembered. “We just upgraded our phones, but the GPS only works if you dial 911 and only the emergency operator gets that readout. I asked about that because I was thinking it might come in handy for us.” I saw Sylvia, and Arnold’s faces brighten and quickly added, “We can’t call the police or EMS. If Bitsy’s monitoring their scanners or Jake’s phone—my phone—rings, he’s dead.”

  There was a moment
of absolute silence and then Nina sat up in her seat, practically tingling with excitement.

  “Okay, okay, so like, we just hack into the phone and get the GPS coordinates!”

  I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. “Nina, none of us know how to do that!”

  The smile never left her face. “I know we don’t! But I know someone who does and he’s right in this house!”

  I frowned. “Paint Bucket?”

  Nina shook her head. “No, Weasel. Remember I was all pissed off at him ’cause I thought he ruined my computer, but instead, he made it do things I didn’t even know it could do. He, like, knows where there’s this Web site that has tutorials on how you can hack into all kinds of things, like video game consoles and computers. I’m pretty sure he could find a way for us to hack into your cell phone and get the GPS readout ourselves!”

  She hopped up out of her seat and ran to the basement steps, heading down toward Aunt Lucy’s lab. I started to stop her, but didn’t when I realized Weasel might hold the only key to finding Jake. When it came right down to it, I trusted Weasel more than I trusted Shelia Martin.

  A few moments later she returned with a leery Weasel. He followed her to the kitchen table, sat in the chair she pulled out for him and stared around at the rest of us with a mistrusting gaze.

  “This is about the dishes, isn’t it?” he said.

  Nina pushed the laptop over to him and laughed. “No, silly! I told you. We want you to do something for us, you know, like what you showed me yesterday on that site. I want you to hack into Stella’s cell phone so it can tell us where it is!”

  Weasel’s eyes widened. He looked to me for verification and when I nodded that this was indeed true, he raised an eyebrow and nodded his head slightly in Mrs. Talluchi’s direction. “Is it all right with her?” he asked.

  “Stunade!” old Mrs. Talluchi cried. “Stupido! Just do as she says, boy!”