I couldn’t imagine sitting a bottle of Wild Turkey in the middle of that shiny table, then pouring shots. Somehow the brown of the bourbon clashed with the sanitation factor. I figured I might spill a drop of liquor on the table only to have it vaporize instantly in a loud, offended sizzle of steam. No, there would be no Wild Turkey here, just cold, hard reality dispensed clinically in unimaginably large doses.
We were sitting on either side of the lab table with Aunt Lucy taking the lead spot on one end. I saw Nina’s arm move slightly toward Spike and knew they were holding hands.
“You’re probably wondering about this place,” Aunt Lucy said, gesturing to the lab and its contents. We all nodded and she continued. “Well, it’s a little bit complicated, but to make a long story short, it was a gift.”
“Whoa,” Nina sighed. “You must’ve really squirreled some money away to give Uncle Benny a present like this!”
Aunt Lucy shook her head. “No, I didn’t give it to your uncle, honey. It was a gift to both of us, from the government.”
“Shut up!” Nina cried. “I heard accountants at the IRS only get watches when they retire! I knew this guy, he was there like forty-five years and all he—”
Spike patted Nina’s knee. “Honey,” she whispered, “let your aunt tell her story, okay?”
Aunt Lucy ignored the two of them.
“When you came to live with us, Stella, you know I retired from my job, but I guess I never could really stop being a chemist.”
I thought about the bottles in Aunt Lucy’s bathroom and smiled. Of course she’d continued her work.
“What kinds of things did you make?” Spike asked.
Aunt Lucy shrugged. “Cleaners. A formula for hair growth that worked pretty well, but it had a couple of side effects that made it impractical.”
“Side effects?” I asked. “Like what?”
Aunt Lucy’s face turned bright red, and she stared down at her reflection in the stainless-steel table. A tiny grin popped out and I watched her bite her lip for control.
“Let’s just say it killed two birds with one stone,” she said. “Think Viagra for bald men.”
“Oh. My. God!” Nina gasped. “Uncle Benny?”
Aunt Lucy frowned. “Is there a problem, young lady?”
“Nothing,” Nina said. “Not a thing. I’m not saying another word!”
I interrupted. “I don’t see what that has to do with all the chaos around here or Uncle Benny’s death. Why was Jake’s mechanic here? What was he trying to get you to give him?”
“Like I said,” Aunt Lucy continued, “I kept inventing little things, nothing very earth-shattering or important, until three years ago. That’s when I stumbled on something I knew would be very dangerous in the wrong hands.”
“What was it?” Nina asked.
“Well, it was supposed to be fish stink.”
“What?” the three of us exclaimed in the same breath.
“Yep,” she nodded. “Fish stink. You know how your uncle loved to fish. Well, I was trying to help him develop a scent that would fool fish into thinking his artificial bait was the real thing, and irresistible to boot!”
The three of us stared at her. Fish stink? Not a cure for cancer? Not a nuclear missile? Not a device to detect alien life-forms in other galaxies? Fish stink, pure and simple.
Aunt Lucy seemed embarrassed. “At the time I didn’t realize what I’d done. You see, it turns out that the byproduct of my fish-stink spray is that it caused rapid, short-term loss of memory and removed all but the most basic brainstem functioning in humans.”
“Aunt Lucy, how did—?”
She cut me off with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Really, dear, looking back on the process, it was quite simple, I mean, for a chemist. I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand. Besides, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
She chuckled at her own joke, but the rest of us weren’t at all sure she was kidding, not this new and improved version of our Aunt Lucy.
“It scared your uncle half to death,” she said. “He came in to the kitchen and found me babbling like a baby. The first three times it happened he took me to the emergency room. They thought I’d had a stroke, but of course they never found a thing. It was just the spray,” she said. “Eight hours later, I was back to my old self. I just couldn’t remember how it happened, that’s all!”
“So how did—?”
“Stella, you are so impatient! Just let me tell you!” Aunt Lucy paused long enough to take a sip of water from the glass sitting beside her, then went back to her story.
“Your uncle and Jake were the ones who figured it out.” She looked at me apologetically. “I know you don’t like him, honey, but Jake and your uncle were very close. You know, he was the one who found out Jake was going to el—” She stopped, midword, and flushed. “Anyway…”
“Aunt Lucy, you and Uncle Benny knew we were going to elope?” I felt my heart leap to my throat. No one knew. I couldn’t stand that they knew I’d planned to betray them.
She looked at me, read the feelings on my face and smiled gently. “Oh, honey,” she said. “Young people do foolish things—it’s part and parcel of growing up. Jake’s grandmother found a note you’d written in Jake’s book bag so she called your uncle. When he couldn’t find you, he talked to Jake and…”
“But nobody ever talked to me!” I cried.
Aunt Lucy’s face clouded over for a second. “I didn’t see the point in embarrassing you,” she murmured. “When your uncle talked to him, Jake said you called it off. He said you’d broken up with him the day before. He said it was all his fault and you wouldn’t have it.” She sighed. “I figured you’d talk about it if you wanted to and we should leave you alone until then.”
“Shut up!” Nina breathed behind me.
I swallowed, hard. Why hadn’t Jake told me this? Had he been embarrassed, or covering for my uncle? As much as I wanted to, this wasn’t the time to deal with Jake. “What happened with your invention?”
Aunt Lucy nodded slightly, as if we had a silent agreement to continue the other discussion later.
“I’m still working on it. We’re working on a uniform method of delivery now. Every so often, Benny gives—I mean, gave—a report of my progress to his liaison, and they’d either ask for a modification or tell me to keep on going.”
Nina’s eyes were saucers. “You’re a spy?” she gasped.
Aunt Lucy frowned. “Oh, hell no, Nina! I’m just a scientist.”
“Then what…”
Aunt Lucy gave Nina a rock steady stare that discouraged any further questions.
“Like I said, it was and still is, highly classified.” We all got the look, and one by one, we each nodded our acknowledgment. When she was satisfied, Aunt Lucy continued.
“I didn’t think anyone would ever find out. We were so careful. Your uncle even pretended to go into business with Jake so no one would question our extra cash flow.” Her face fell. “Of course, Jake trusted Donna. He never thought she’d try and steal the formula.” Aunt Lucy sighed. “She was just so hungry to please that awful man!”
“Who, Jake?” I asked.
She shook her head impatiently. “No, honey, her father. Donna’s spent most of her life trying to be the son he never had, and look where it got her! It’s obvious to me she told Ron and her father about the formula. A spray like mine is very valuable, especially if sold to the wrong people.”
Aunt Lucy looked down at her hands, twisting the ring on her left hand in anxious circles. A look of unbearable sadness crossed her face. “I wish I’d never discovered that formula,” she murmured.
“You can’t blame yourself, Aunt Lucy,” I said. “You didn’t mean to have this happen. It was an accident.”
“Honey,” she said, “accident or not, don’t you realize what a spray like that can do? What use our military or undercover operatives could make of such a spray?”
None of us answered her.
“If that stu
ff is developed for large-scale administration, you could spray an advancing army,” she said. “In a single moment they would forget their mission, their names—they would be reduced to intellectual infancy. There would be chaos without a single shot ever being fired. Or suppose an undercover mission went wrong and an agent was discovered by a civilian, or worse, an enemy. You have the capability to remove all traces of your existence from their mind.”
“Like Men in Black?” Nina cried. “They look at your pen, and bada-bing, you’re a vegetable?”
Aunt Lucy frowned. “Not exactly. It’s a spray, an odorless, colorless mist. It can be delivered in a way that prevents anyone from knowing it’s been used.”
“Damn!” Spike cried. “That is so dangerous!”
“Exactly,” my aunt answered. “That’s why it was so important that the formula not be discovered by other countries or found by criminals or terrorists.”
I jumped ahead. “But Donna Manello found out about the formula and decided to steal it, didn’t she? Why did Jake ever trust her?”
Aunt Lucy shook her head. “None of us thought she knew,” she said softly. “We didn’t tell anyone, not even you, Stella. Jake said we shouldn’t. He said it would put us all in further danger.”
“Jesus, Aunt Lucy!”
I couldn’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth. If I’d known earlier, perhaps I could’ve averted some of the recent dangers. I didn’t know what Jake’s role had been, but it was obvious he’d dropped the ball.
“Jake knew and we didn’t?” I blurted.
Aunt Lucy nodded.
“Why did you turn to him and not me?” Then I had another thought. “Oh, don’t tell me. He works for the CIA, too?”
Nina, Spike and I all held our collective breath, waiting to hear the explanation for Aunt Lucy and Uncle Benny confiding in an outsider before trusting family.
“No,” Aunt Lucy said. “We came up with Jake on our own.” She sighed. “You know, girls, it’s not like you think. Your uncle Benny worked in a CIA lab for years. He knew the way things worked, and believe me, it wasn’t as glamorous or exciting as you think.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought he worked for the Agriculture Department.”
Aunt Lucy smiled. “Honey, do you actually think your uncle would go around saying he worked for the CIA? It may not have been a glamour job, but it was still highly classified.”
“Did you work for them, too?” I asked.
Aunt Lucy laughed. “No, honey. I really did work for the Agriculture Department. I’m the reason cows don’t get athlete’s foot,” she chuckled and corrected herself. “Well, whatever the cow equivalent is for athlete’s foot. I developed a fungicide to treat their hooves.”
Spike brought us back to the subject at hand. “Why were you still working on the formula?” she asked. “Why didn’t they take over?”
Aunt Lucy’s serious expression returned. “I told them the formula wasn’t finished. I needed to develop it into a more uniform and reliable agent and refine the method of administration. Since I was the original chemist, and since Uncle Benny already worked with the agency, they agreed to let both of us finish the initial study.
“They thought it would be in everyone’s best interest if I worked here. It was easier to keep the discovery a secret that way. I mean, who would think to look for a top secret weapon here?”
She smiled at us and seemed to realize how overwhelmed we were with this new reality. Our aunt was not a dingbat; she was a brilliant chemist who’d discovered something absolutely terrifying.
“What about Jake?” I asked again. “What do you mean, he was your idea?”
Aunt Lucy nodded, clearly relieved to be able to tell us what she could. “Well, we knew Jake was having a tough time of it at the shop. We didn’t know why. I mean, we all knew he and Donna weren’t getting along. We didn’t know she was skimming money from the business, but we knew something was very wrong. I guess it made sense.”
“What made sense?”
“Well, that your uncle, knowing Jake had been in special operations in the service and needed the extra money, offered him the job.”
“What job?” I felt as if I would lose my mind if it took much longer to get to the bottom of Jake’s relationship with my uncle.
“Why, your uncle asked him to be our security. I mean, he asked Jake first, then got the agency to hire him on. He was strictly freelance. Benny figured it would attract less attention than having agents involved. I know they try to be surreptitious, but a government agent is a government agent.”
I thought about Weasel’s description of the two men who’d come to rescue the bug guys from jail, then thought about the phony exterminators. Of course, the shiny shoes, the flattops, the dark suit, it was the stereotypical government spy uniform. Aunt Lucy was right; Jake looked nothing like that kind of agent.
“But wouldn’t you and Uncle Benny have been safer with someone who had real training?”
Aunt Lucy’s face registered surprise. “Honey, Jake is as trained as they come! He was Delta Force, you know. He can kill a man fifteen ways and him not know he’s dead!”
Spike smiled behind her hand.
Aunt Lucy looked sad again. “We thought we were being so careful. We just didn’t think Jake’s wife would turn on him like that. We didn’t think she could find out. Now your uncle’s dead.” She stared up at us. “This is all my fault.”
“No, Aunt Lucy,” I murmured. “You couldn’t have seen this coming. How did Jake’s wife find out anyway?”
Aunt Lucy shrugged. “We think she overheard Jake and Benny talking, or maybe Valerie aroused her curiosity. We just don’t know. Jake didn’t want to think Donna was involved at first, but after what happened tonight, I guess…Well, I doubt that man knew about the formula without Donna telling him.”
“Who is this Valerie you keep mentioning?” Spike asked, recapturing my attention.
“She was the liaison agent between us and the CIA,” Aunt Lucy answered.
I thought of the woman in Jake’s shop, the one I’d imagined as my uncle’s paramour, and felt like an idiot. I should’ve known Uncle Benny wouldn’t have an affair! I pictured Ron and Donna, running off together with their big plan to steal the formula and sell it to the highest bidder. Ron was dead now, but where was Donna?
I leaned forward, waiting to capture my aunt’s attention, but got distracted when a bell began loudly ringing.
We all froze, listening. My aunt, finger to her lips, got up and moved silently to a small TV discreetly positioned on a corner wall mount. She picked up a remote, pushed a series of buttons and in a few moments we were presented with the image of Detectives Slovineck and Poltrone at the front door.
“What should we do?” Nina whispered. “Should we mist them or something?”
Aunt Lucy frowned and shook her head. She hit another button on the remote, and the room was filled with the two detectives’ voices.
“The car’s still warm,” Detective Poltrone was saying. “You know she’s in there.”
Detective Slovineck sighed. “Well, I guess one of us goes to get the warrant while the other one stays here at the house.”
As we watched, the two detectives suddenly held out their hands. “Rock, paper, scissors,” Slovineck intoned somberly.
Poltrone lost and headed for the unmarked Crown Vic. “I’ll be back as soon as I wake up the judge,” she called over her shoulder.
“Better you than me,” Slovineck answered. He turned and started down the stairs, then stopped and lowered himself down onto the top step of Aunt Lucy’s stoop. “Rock, paper, scissors, my ass,” we heard him mutter under his breath. “You always stick out two fingers, Poltrone. You’re like the sun, predictable.”
“Aunt Lucy,” I said, “When is Jake due back?”
The last thing Jake needed was to run into the cops. The last thing any of us needed at this moment was the police.
Aunt Lucy smiled grimly. “Don’t wo
rry,” she said. “He’ll know about them long before he reaches the house. Even then he wouldn’t have any trouble working his way inside.”
I was going to ask her how, but another bell sounded, a high shrill tone that seemed to emanate from a bread box on the counter. Aunt Lucy turned slightly, her attention still on the screen showing the front steps, and hit a button on the remote. The voice that filled the lab was unmistakable.
“Lucia?” Mrs. Cozzone’s voice filled every crevice of the cavernous room.
“Si,” Aunt Lucy answered.
I looked at my watch. It was now really late. What was that old witch doing calling my aunt at this hour?
“I am sorry for your loss,” she said, her voice softening into an almost tolerable grind. “I will light two candles for you, one at noon and one at 7:00 p.m.”
Aunt Lucy nodded, fingering the buttons on the remote. “Si, bene.”
“I should tell you,” Mrs. Cozzone continued. “Tony Manello is going around town spending money like he has it. I will pray for him, too. He was never a good man, but now he is too happy. He told me he’s betting on a long shot to win and asked me to pray for him. I will pray, all right, but not for him!”
“Grazie,” Aunt Lucy murmured.
Above our heads, the TV screen split into two scenes, the front stoop and the back porch. I thought I saw shadows move just beyond the back-porch light and squinted in an attempt to see better.
“Anything else I can do for you?” Mrs. Cozzone murmured. “Another casserole perhaps?”
My aunt refused her in an overly polite speech and hung up. Without hesitation she crossed the room to a stainless-steel freezer, pulled open the door and withdrew a tin foil square, Mrs. Cozzone’s casserole. She pulled back the foil, reached into the dish and withdrew a long black gun and two clips of ammunition. She looked at me.
“You know how to use this?” she asked.
“Holy shit!” Nina exclaimed.
“Jesus!” Spike breathed.
“I have my own gun.” I reached into my waistband and withdrew the Glock. Aunt Lucy watched with approval.
“Good,” she said, turning to the others. “Can either of you shoot a gun?” she asked.
Stella, Get Your Gun Page 19