She closed her eye and appeared to be sleeping. Nina stood up and reached down to pull the sleepy Spike to her feet.
“We’re going to bed,” she announced. “Whatever needs doing can be done in the morning.” She yawned. “Right?”
I looked at Aunt Lucy and realized that exhaustion had drained all the color from her face.
“I think you should go to bed, too,” I told her. “I’ll wait up for Jake.”
Aunt Lucy nodded. “I was going to suggest that you stay down here anyway,” she said. “Those police officers could come back any time and decide they want to search the house again. Someone has to warn Jake.”
None of the others seemed to have any energy left at all. We moved like robots. I took the quilts my aunt offered, pulled the chairs from around the table and made myself an uncomfortable pallet. I had to wait up for Jake. I didn’t look forward to telling him about Donna, or the police wanting to talk to him. And even though the timing could’ve been better, I needed his help to retrieve my prisoner of war from behind the park rest rooms. I closed my burning eyes and told myself I was only resting long enough to think of a plan.
Hours later I jerked upright, stiff, cramped and cold, startled awake by a persistent buzzing that stopped as soon as I opened my eyes. The clock on the wall wanted me to believe that it was 6:00 a.m. This was impossible. I’d only closed my eyes for a second, so how could—? The buzzing noise started again, but this time I recognized Aunt Lucy’s security system and reached for the remote.
Aunt Lucy joined me, her eyes bleary, her flannel housecoat wrapped haphazardly across her torso.
“What is it now?” she asked. Her voice was thick with fatigue, and she moved in slow motion to take the remote from my hand. She punched a button. As we watched, a familiar figure waited on the front stoop, staring at a piece of paper in his hand and looking back up at the front door as if to confirm the address.
Pete, minus his new girlfriend, Lou Ann, took a deep breath and jabbed at the doorbell with his right index finger. We watched him stab the bell over and over again, look at the paper in his hand and repeat the process all over again. He wasn’t going to leave. I knew Pete, and I knew how stubborn he could be.
“What the hell does he want?” Spike asked, entering the lab and echoing the very question I’d been asking myself. Nina stood behind her dressed in baby doll flannel pajamas and looking very sleepy.
“Maybe he’s sorry,” Nina said, yawning. “Maybe he wants to visit Lloyd. After all, he has paternal rights, doesn’t he?”
“Lloyd belonged to Pete’s ex-wife. She abandoned him. So that makes him a free agent,” I said.
“He’s my husband!” Aunt Lucy insisted.
We all stared at her, wondering if this was somehow part of her dingbat act, and were surprised to see the tears welling up in her eyes. She was rooting around in a drawer, digging through papers and searching frantically.
“Ah-ha!” she cried.
When she turned back to us, she had a long-barreled revolver in her hand. “See, I told you I had a gun!” she crowed. “Now let’s go get rid of the son of a bitch!”
I stepped in between her and the door. “No, Aunt Lucy, we can’t shoot an innocent man!”
Aunt Lucy and the others spoke like a Greek chorus. “Innocent!”
“Okay, innocent isn’t the right word. But still, unless he tries to shoot us first, you cannot shoot him. Besides,” I added, grabbing the gun from my aunt’s hand and opening the chamber, “this isn’t even loaded! When was the last time you fired this weapon?”
Aunt Lucy looked horrified. “Fired it? I never fired that thing! It’s your uncle Benny’s!”
“Oh, shit,” Spike muttered.
Pete continued to lean on the front doorbell. After another minute of incessant ringing he yelled, “I know you’re in there, Stella. I just want to talk to you!” Jab, jab, jab. His finger punched the button like a junkie punching a morphine drip. “Stella! Please!”
“Oh, shit!” I moaned. “Why fucking now?”
I stared up at the former, not quite love of my life, and sighed. What did he want? I handed the gun back to my aunt.
“Cover me,” I said wearily. “I’m going in.”
“But it’s not loaded!” Nina cried.
“Yeah, I know,” I answered. “I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh,” she said. “I get it!”
Of course she did not, but I couldn’t be bothered with explaining it to her, either. Not now. Instead I walked through the basement and up the stairs, through the kitchen, down the hallway to the front door. When I pulled it open, I think Pete was actually shocked to see me standing there.
“Get in here,” I said, grabbing him by the shirt lapels and dragging him across the threshold.
Pete apparently thought I was overjoyed to see him and perhaps feeling amorous, because he threw his arms around my neck and attempted to maul me with his lips.
“Ick! Get off of me!” I cried, pushing him away. “What is wrong with you? Do you know what time it is?”
Pete looked like a big, overly frisky hound dog who’d lost his favorite bone.
“I just thought—”
“Now, see,” I interrupted, “that’s the problem. You had a brain fart and thought you were actually thinking. No, Pete, you didn’t think. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be in the mess you were in when I left and you for damn sure wouldn’t be playing who’s-your-daddy? with Lou Ann!”
“Damn, Stella, you just can’t let anything go, can you?”
I glared at him, the fury lashing through me like a hurricane.
“I don’t know, Pete. I’m thinking if the situation was reversed and you’d found me playing bury-the-hot-dog with your partner, you might be a little irritated, especially if I then went on and dragged him up here and arrested you!”
Pete put his hands out again and I backed away. “Stop it, Pete, I’m warning you! If you so much as breathe on me, I will bury you under this house! What in the hell are you doing here?”
“Baby,” Pete said, his voice pitched to a soft, wheedling plea, “I came to tell you I was wrong, dead wrong, and I am profoundly, deeply sorry for putting you through so much pain.”
He looked down at his hands, then back up at me.
“I would do anything, anything, to erase the past week of trauma in your life, but I know I can’t.” Again he stared down at his hand, squinting as he held it at an angle. “I can only ask you to forgive me and let bygones be bygones. Baby, I want you to come home. Lou Ann don’t mean nothing to me. It’s you I really love.”
With a shriek I jumped forward, grabbing his meaty paw and pulling it up and away from his body. When he realized what I was doing, he attempted to snatch his hand back, but he was too late. I took the offending arm, pulled it up against my side and turned, pinning him against me as I flipped his hand over and stared at his ink-smeared palm.
The salient points were detailed in order.
1. Tell her you’re wrong. 2. Tell her the warrant wasn’t real. 3. Beg for forgiveness. 4. Ask her to come back. 5. Get her to promise she won’t tell Lou Ann’s husband.
I shoved him aside and turned to glower at his reddened face. “You forgot to mention number two. The warrant wasn’t real?”
Pete had the decency to look shamefaced. “I thought if I got you back to Garden Beach, you’d see that you belong with me.”
I stared at him, incredulous. How could he have been such an idiot?
“Lou Ann went along with this?”
Pete looked down at the floor. “Well, I told her that maybe if we agreed to drop the charges, you’d agree not to tell her husband about us. You know, kill two birds with one stone.”
My ears were ringing. I was a hairsbreadth away from snatching Pete and kicking his ass all the way back to Garden Beach, Florida.
“So, Pete,” I said, “you were going to publicly humiliate me in the sad hope I’d come back to you? You thought this up al
l by yourself? I’m amazed. I bet Lou Ann was the one who wrote the directions on your hand, huh?”
Pete’s face was scarlet. “No, I just wanted to make sure I didn’t forget anything,” he said. “Lou Ann didn’t have a thing to do with it. In fact, I sent her back home.”
“Without you?”
Pete nodded miserably. “Stella, she was just a pain in the ass. Don’t you see I love you?”
I dropped my face into my hands. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I so didn’t need this, not now.
“Pete, I’m not coming back.”
“I understand,” he said. His change of attitude surprised me.
“You do?”
Pete nodded. “Sure do. You need time. I understand. How about two weeks?”
“What?”
Pete smiled, started to reach for me, but pulled back when he saw the homicidal glint in my eyes.
“Honest, honey, you and me can work things out. I know you didn’t really want to leave Garden Beach or quit being a cop. That’s why I had that idea to come up here and get you. I just knew you’d see reason if I had you alone for a while to think about it.”
“You were going to stick me in jail? How’d you pull that off, Pete, huh? You get the guys back at the station to cover for you? You thought this was a workable plan?”
Pete frowned. “Stella, I didn’t know what else to do. I know you want me, but your pride is standing in your way. I thought if I got you off away from here, just me and you, and I guess Lou Ann since she rode up with me…Well, I thought I could make you see how much I love you. I’m ready to take you back, Stella. Lloyd, too.”
“Pete, you’re insane! This may come as a shock to you, but I think you’re a complete asshole! If your guts were on fire, I wouldn’t spit on you to put them out! Pete, not only am I not coming home, but if you stick around just another minute, I’m going to kick your ass!”
Pete ignored everything but “kick your ass.”
“Honey, I’m six-five. I outweigh you by a good eighty pounds. You can’t kick my ass!”
I guess the stress snapped me. I lunged forward, ducked under his arms and elbowed him in the stomach, all without thinking. In the far distant reaches of the basement a faint cheer went up.
Pete grabbed me by the shoulders and held me out at arm’s length.
“Still think I can’t kick your ass?” I asked, even though I couldn’t reach him and hadn’t really done any damage.
Pete’s eyes slowly closed and he shook his head.
“Stella, Stella, Stella,” he sighed. “You are so damn feisty. That’s what I love about you. It makes you a good cop, too.”
I stopped struggling and looked him in the eye.
“You think I’m a good cop?”
Pete looked surprised by the question. “One of the best,” he said softly. “I told you that a thousand times, didn’t I?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Well, you are. Stella, don’t leave me. Please, baby, come home.”
Of course, then he had to go and start crying, not big sobbing crying, but tears welled up in his eyes, and I knew that in his way, he really did think he loved me. I started thinking about how we’d met, how he used to make me laugh, how he took me under his wing, smothering though it was, and trained me to be a pretty damn good officer. I remembered all the good times, the passionate times, and then I remembered Lou Ann.
“Pete, come on! Don’t cry. Let ‘us’ go, honey. We didn’t work out. We can still be friends. I mean, you’re a hell of a cop. Out on the street I’d be proud to have you as my partner. We just suck at romance—that’s all.”
Pete was still sniffling.
“The good ones keep getting away!” he wailed. “I don’t know what it is about me!”
Well, I thought, if you wouldn’t keep poking your night-stick where it didn’t belong, these things might not keep happening.
“I really love you, Trace…Stella!”
Too late, I heard the start of his ex-wife’s name and froze. Pete didn’t love me, not half as much as he loved the idea of being in love. I stared at my broken-hearted lover and realized he’d be fine, just as soon as another girl came along.
“It’s the dog, isn’t it?” he cried. “You both loved the dog more than me! What is it about that damn dog?”
“Pete, Lloyd has nothing to do with this! Tracy didn’t even take Lloyd with her when she left. I took him because I knew you didn’t love him, either. After all, I did find you in bed with LouAnn. That’s not the behavior of a man in love.”
Pete wiped his runny nose on the sleeve of his plaid flannel shirt.
“Stella, please!” he begged. “I’m not leaving until you forgive me! I want us to be a family again!”
I glanced at my watch. I didn’t have any more time to deal with my past. I had to find Jake. I felt the knot of tension in my stomach balloon into a watermelon of distress. I needed to get to Flattop and grill him before he escaped. I didn’t have time for Pete.
“Stella, I mean it!” Pete cried. “I’ll prove I’m a good guy. Let me show you I love you. Baby, let me make it up to you!”
“Oh, brother,” I muttered. “Pete, really, this is not a good time for me. I’ve got more trouble on my plate than you can shake a stick at and I just can’t…”
“I’ll help you!” he said. “Stella, please, after all we’ve been to each other! Just let me help you! We can work out the rest later! Come on, baby! What is it? What’s wrong?”
I looked at the man standing before me and felt the familiar tug of my heartstrings. I swear dogs and men can play me like a violin.
“I don’t want to give you false hope, Pete. It’s over between us. I can never be your girlfriend again. That part of our lives is in the past.”
I cringed as the words left my mouth. I was starting to sound like a soap opera, but judging from Pete’s reaction, I was a hit on his station. He sprang to his feet as the phone on the hall table started to ring.
“All right, whatever you say, but let me at least help you out of whatever jam you’re in. It would make me feel better about leaving you.”
He gave me the pitiful look. I didn’t believe a word he was saying, but that pitiful thing, he does it so well I almost forget he’s not a stray dog needing a home.
“All right. Whatever,” I said.
The phone continued ringing, and it was a relief to answer it.
“Hello?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Aunt Lucy demanded.
“Buying insurance,” I answered. “I need professional coverage and he can provide it.”
Pete was gazing at me with a dopey smile on his face.
“Look at that man,” Aunt Lucy said, obviously watching from the recesses of the Bat Cave. “Does that look like a professional anything? Wake up! That man’s here to steal Lloyd!”
“Then he’s barking up the wrong tree,” I said. “That choice isn’t available here, and I wouldn’t give it up if I had to.”
There was a long sigh at the other end of the phone line.
“Fool me once, shame on you,” she muttered and hung up.
I replaced the receiver and turned back to Pete. “All right, here’s the deal. A friend of mine, well, a former acquaintance—” I hesitated “—a person of interest to me in my current investigation is missing. I need to interview a guy and get him to tell me where my friend is.”
Pete nodded. “No problem. Let’s go.”
“I should tell you, we won’t be following police procedure here. If that’s a problem for you…”
“Stella, I’m shocked!” Pete fell back in mock horror. “You?” He straightened up, still smiling, but his eyes had changed. The tough cop had replaced the sorry-assed boyfriend. “I’m proud of you, honey. Now let’s go get what you need!”
I turned and led him into the kitchen. “I’ve got to take care of a couple of things before I go. Just wait here and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
&nb
sp; Pete nodded, not about to argue with me, and took his place at the table. I left him there drinking a cup of stale coffee and reported back to my comrades in the basement.
“He’s kind of cute,” Nina said when I reached her. “I mean, when he’s not all drippy-nosed and stuff. Is he really a cop?”
Spike looked up at the monitor she and Nina had been watching, took a look at Pete and shook her head in disgust.
“You want us to come with you?” she asked me.
“No. I need you and Nina to stay here with Aunt Lucy, just in case Tony Manello or anybody else decides to come nosing around.”
I looked over at Aunt Lucy. “How many of those loaded casserole dishes do you keep in the freezer?” I asked her.
She frowned, deep in thought. “I believe I have four or five down here and two or three upstairs,” she answered after a few moments. “And this,” she said, picking up Uncle Benny’s old revolver. “I think there are a couple of bullets in the junk drawer upstairs.”
I nodded. “Oh, goodie, that should take care of things nicely,” I said.
“That’s enough attitude, young lady!” Aunt Lucy snapped. “I have been around forty more years than you’ve been alive. I have managed, somehow, without your help, to survive these many years and I can certainly take care of business when I have to, especially when I know it’s coming my way!”
There was silence for a moment as we all thought about Uncle Benny and how the situation certainly hadn’t been handled in his case.
“I know you’re worried, Stella,” she said softly. “I appreciate your concern, but I know now that we’re in danger and I have taken steps to protect myself. You go on and find Jake. He’s the one I’m worried about.”
I smiled inwardly. My elderly aunt was more worried about Jake than she was about her own safety. Go figure.
“Okey-doke,” I said. “I’ll find Jake and you guys stay here.” I looked at Spike. “Make sure one of you covers the surveillance cameras at all times.” She nodded. “Don’t answer the door for anyone.”
Stella, Get Your Gun Page 21