Stella, Get Your Man

by Nancy Bartholomew

I looked at the tiny woman, engrossed in her favorite reality show, and shook my head. Somehow I didn’t think time was going to help Mrs. May. Time was collapsing in on her, blending the past with the present and slowly fading her memories like black-and-white photos left too long in the sunlight. Soon it would all be erased, every treasured moment and every painful nightmare. Life would end as it began, with a vast, blank screen.

  I followed Nina out of the room, softly closing the door behind us and trailing my cousin from the building. We stepped out into the brilliant sunlight and I inhaled deeply for what seemed to be the first time in hours.

  “I hope that never happens to me,” I said.

  Nina frowned. “I think you should stay focused on the present,” she said. “We only have today. There’s no guarantee you’ll even be around tomorrow.”

  I pulled my keys out of my coat pocket and started off toward the car. “I know, I know, I could get hit by a truck and die.”

  Nina grabbed my arm, stopping me.

  “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t worry about getting hit by a truck.” She inclined her head toward the parking lot, raising her eyebrows and contorting her face into a spastic pointer aimed in the direction of Jake’s red truck.

  Cauliflower Ear and his short, fat accomplice leaned against the tailgate of Jake’s truck with Spike sandwiched in between them.

  “I see what you mean,” I murmured. “Today is all that matters.”

  Chapter 9

  Nina and I walked slowly toward the truck. Spike seemed to be standing between her two captors patiently, but the little man had a gun to her side, taking choice out of the equation.

  “Your Krav Maga on the blink again?” I asked.

  Spike sighed. “Yeah, it broke down when these two goons made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  I raised my eyebrow and smiled, hoping it irritated Spike’s keepers as much as they were irritating me.

  “And what might that be?” I asked Cauliflower Ear.

  He deferred to the little guy with a grunt. The short man glared at me and raised his gun arm slightly, making sure I knew there was a weapon trained on Spike’s side. I also noted the fresh white gauze bandage, courtesy of our earlier encounter.

  “Look at this,” he said, and handed me a Polaroid picture.

  Lloyd was tied to a wooden table leg. At his feet lay a newspaper, the front page faceup to show that it was today’s paper.

  “Mr. Spagnazi would like to make a deal,” the short man said.

  I felt my body go numb. My mind began to fill with murderous impulses and images. It was all I could do to keep my face carefully neutral.

  “What sort of deal?”

  “The sort that winds up with him getting his property back.”

  “I told you, I don’t have the damn sleigh!”

  The man shook his head impatiently. “Mr. Spagnazi already has the sleigh, you know that. He wants what was inside the sleigh, stupid.”

  “Joey Smack wants Santa Claus?”

  The short guy jabbed Spike hard with the gun muzzle making tears spring to her eyes. Nina lunged toward him and I caught her as Spike yelled, “Don’t!”

  “Joey Smack don’t give a rat’s ass about no freakin’ Santa Claus!” he said. “Joey wants a white Christmas. He wants his snow back.”

  “His cocaine,” Spike explained, like I wouldn’t know.

  “I don’t have Joey’s cocaine,” I said.

  Cauliflower Ear smiled. “And you don’t got your dog, either,” he said.

  I cocked my head and looked at him. “He speaks,” I said. “Tell me something. Was it an effort stringing all those syllables together?”

  Cauliflower didn’t seem to understand the question, so I turned my attention to his keeper.

  “I can’t describe in enough detail or with enough passion how badly I’m going to fuck you up,” I said. I kept my tone cool and even, but inside my heart was banging against my chest.

  “I’m seeing a dog-fur rug,” the man said, “spread out in front of the fireplace. Maybe I’ll lay you out naked there. Do a little roadwork on ya. Let you find out what a real man’s all about.”

  I let my gaze fall to his crotch and laughed. “Let me know when you find one, Shorty.” The man’s face colored nicely. “Where does Spagnazi want to do the exchange?” I asked.

  “Joey’s busy,” the little guy said. “He’s got employee problems and other shit to attend to. I’ll handle the trade-off.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll need twenty-four hours and a guarantee Lloyd won’t get hurt. In fact, I’ll need to know he’s fed, warm and happy before we do any kind of deal.”

  “Jesus Christ,” the short guy said. “It’s a fucking dog!”

  “And you’re a fucking moron,” I said.

  “We’ll be in touch,” the short man said.

  He shoved Spike toward us and backed away. Cauliflower jumped behind the wheel of a white Lincoln Town Car, started the engine and pulled up beside his boss. The short man waved his gun toward the three of us and hopped into the passenger seat.

  “Keep your phone where you can hear it,” he called from the open window. “Otherwise, the dog’s a rug!”

  With a loud squeal of burning rubber, the Lincoln bounced the curb and shot off toward town. Nina sobbed and pulled Spike into a hard embrace while I tried to make out the license plate on the car. When that proved fruitless, I studied the photograph of Lloyd. He appeared to be sitting in the kitchen of an abandoned house. There was no other furniture in the room, just the table, and while substantial, it had certainly seen better days.

  The floor was a checkerboard of tile squares and reminded me of my elementary-school cafeteria. Faded, dingy café-style curtains hung over an ancient porcelain sink. Holes in the room indicated the spots where the stove and refrigerator had once stood. It could’ve been any older home left to fall into disrepair, in any town, perhaps not even in Surfside Isle. The only thing vibrant and alive about the photo was Lloyd, and he didn’t seem at all happy.

  “You all right?” I asked Spike. “I thought for sure they were going to keep you as their hostage.”

  She nodded. “I think my being an assistant district attorney scared them. I was on my way to the beach when they came at me from a side street. They wouldn’t have had a shot if they hadn’t started yelling about Lloyd. When I saw the picture, I knew I had to bring them to you.”

  “Hey, don’t beat yourself up about that,” I said. “You did the right thing. I just can’t figure out how they ever got close enough to Lloyd to catch him, that’s all.”

  “Food?” Nina said.

  I thought of Lloyd, sitting at Aunt Lucy’s table, gobbling down bacon and eggs each morning or slurping spaghetti for dinner. Lloyd lived for food and if the food had been drugged, or even if it hadn’t, Lloyd would be an easy mark.

  My cell phone rang as I pulled out of the nursing-home parking lot.

  “Hello, beautiful,” Pete said.

  I was not in the mood for Pete’s simpleminded flirtatiousness.

  “Find anything yet?”

  Pete sighed. “Stella, there’s more than one Mia Lange out there, and a few of them have criminal records, but I can’t tell for sure until I have a social or a birth date.”

  I was driving through town now, keeping an eye out for a white Lincoln, on the off chance Joey Smack’s henchmen had been dumb enough to park it in front of an older home in need of renovations.

  “How about a ballpark guesstimate of her age?”

  Pete exhaled loudly on the other end so I’d know he was going to a lot of trouble for me, and said, “Better than nothing, I guess.”

  “All right—somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five.”

  “That’s the best you can do? You don’t know anything else about this woman?”

  Spike and Nina were silent, listening with undisguised interest.

  “Hold on,” I said, pulling into the parking lot of a beach-wear store. “I’ve got
a cell-phone number, will that help?”

  I fumbled through my purse and came up with Mia’s contact numbers and gave him the cell-phone number.

  “No home number?” I could tell Pete thought I’d only done a half-assed job and it bothered me.

  “Well, actually…”

  I started to explain that Jake had been the one doing the initial paperwork and we’d been interrupted by Joey Smack’s revenge team, but remembered that I didn’t owe Pete an explanation. It didn’t matter what he thought of me.

  “Yeah, Pete, that’s all I got. I mean, I have her sister’s home phone, but that won’t help you.”

  Pete sighed. “Give it to me anyway,” he muttered. “You never know.”

  I read off the numbers and waited patiently for him to finish writing.

  “What’s Jake’s birth date?” he asked.

  “You wish!” I answered and broke the connection.

  “I knew there was something fishy about her!” Nina said. “What did Pete say? He’s not coming up here, is he? I mean, I think that would be disaster, not that he’s not a nice guy maybe, but you know, with Jake and you being…”

  Her voice trailed off in a squeak as Spike pinched her.

  “Well, aren’t you?” Nina finished.

  I pulled out onto the road again and stared straight ahead. Maybe if I ignored her…

  “Stella, aren’t you and Jake, you know, starting something?”

  “Nina,” Spike cautioned.

  “Well, they are. Pete would just mess it all up. He’s got negative energy. But…”

  She paused and I was grateful for the momentary silence, even if it only lasted a few seconds.

  “Well, technically, I suppose you should call him back and tell him about Lloyd. I mean, he is Lloyd’s father.”

  “What? Nina, Lloyd’s a dog. Pete just acts like one. He’s not Lloyd’s anything.”

  “Well, Lloyd belonged to Pete before you took him, didn’t he?”

  I turned onto Forty-eighth Street and prayed I didn’t kill Nina before I could park the truck.

  “Technically,” I said, “Lloyd belonged to Pete’s ex, Tracy. She left him behind when she left Pete, so Lloyd was only staying with Pete. Since Tracy abandoned him and Pete didn’t really own him, Lloyd was really his own dog. I offered him the chance to leave Pete and he was grateful. So I guess I don’t owe Pete shit!”

  “Oh,” Nina said, nodding. “So Lloyd’s like an emancipated minor, only he’s a dog.”

  “Exactly.”

  I turned into the driveway, threw the truck into Park and escaped. Jake opened the front door and practically pounced on us as we started up the stairs, zeroing in on Spike.

  “What happened to you? I thought you were looking for Lloyd,” he said. “When you didn’t come back I ran down to the beach and you were gone. I was about to call the police.”

  Spike looked over Jake’s shoulder into the house.

  “Is she still sleeping?”

  When Jake nodded, Spike began filling him in, keeping the story short and emotionless. She didn’t go into how scared she’d been, even though the fear lingered in her eyes and her hands shook just slightly as she described the way the two men had forced her into their car.

  “You told them we had the cocaine?” he asked when Spike finished.

  “What choice did I have? They’ve got Lloyd. It buys us some time to try and find him.”

  Jake nodded. “I would’ve done the same thing.”

  The four of us were standing at the foot of the steps leading into the house, shivering as the day slowly pulled the sun down across the horizon. Our shadows leaned across the dead grass like black ghosts and the only color came from the sun’s scarlet descent into the ocean.

  “Can we go in now?” Nina’s teeth chattered as she spoke and she wrapped her arms across her slender body in an attempt to keep warm.

  We started up the stairs. Nina froze, her hand on the door-knob, and turned back to look at me.

  “What are we going to tell Aunt Lucy about Lloyd?” she asked. “I mean, do we, like, say he was here but he left again? We don’t tell her about those guys taking him, do we?”

  Spike frowned. “I don’t think we should upset her any more than we absolutely have to,” she said.

  “Well, dogs do run off sometimes,” I said. “It’s not that unusual. Let’s just play it down, like it’s no big deal.”

  Behind me Jake whispered, “You’re dreaming.” And I knew he was right. Aunt Lucy was a lot of things—elderly, frail and overwhelmed—but she was certainly not stupid.

  I left the others downstairs and climbed the steps to my room. I needed a shower and clean clothes. I needed to think while hot water ran across my shoulders. I needed a plan, some way to feel back in control.

  I was looking for bath towels when Nina found me. She held two plastic shopping bags in her outstretched arms and she was grinning.

  “Spike said she thought you were up here and I figured you might want to take a shower.”

  I looked down at the wrinkled clothes I’d worn for two days, sniffed at my shirt sleeve and nodded.

  “I bet I smell as bad as I look,” I said.

  “Well, here you go! This should help.”

  I took the bags and must have looked puzzled because Nina added, “Remember? I picked up some stuff for you at Handy Mart this morning.” She gestured to the bags. “I tried to buy the stuff you use and all, but it was Handy Mart and they don’t have the best selection.”

  “Oh, Nina, that’s sweet.”

  “Well, we may not have a corporate mission statement yet,” she said, “but we do have petty cash and a credit card. Now we have corporate shampoo and toothpaste, and you have uniforms.” She shrugged. “Well, jeans and stuff, but it is a business expense and everything I bought was on clearance. I saved the receipts.”

  I grabbed two towels from the hall closet, thanked my cousin, took the bags, closed and then locked the bathroom door behind me.

  “Stella?” Nina called through the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hand your dirty stuff out to me. Spike and I are going to run a load so we don’t run out of clean clothes.”

  I stared at the door. What was this? Nina was becoming the organized corporate administrator, on top of the details and anticipating our every need.

  “Thanks!”

  I stripped, handed the dirty clothes out to her and was pulling the shower curtain back to start the water when Nina called to me again.

  “The shampoo’s already in there,” she said. “And the toothpaste and your new toothbrush are in the medicine cabinet. Oh, and I put some fresh razors in the shower, too.”

  Damn! Who knew ditzy Nina could be so totally efficient? I hopped in the shower a grateful woman, stood under the strong stream of water and began to feel as if our bad luck was about to change. After all, we didn’t really have any huge problems here. What we had was a series of small complications.

  The missing person’s case was so easy I wondered how Mia and her past investigator had come to such a dead end. We were only hampered by the repercussions of Joey Smack’s repossession case, and surely Jake and I could clear that up. As for Aunt Lucy’s admirer, well, he was probably harmless. Weird but harmless.

  I emerged from the shower smelling like mango and vanilla; warm, relaxed and back in the game. Then I opened the Handy Mart bags.

  “Nina!”

  No answer. I opened the bathroom door, peered out into the hallway and heard the sounds of voices and a washing machine drift up from downstairs.

  “Nina!”

  It was pointless. She either couldn’t hear me or didn’t want to. I slammed the door shut again and returned to the bags. What in the hell had she been thinking?

  I pulled out the padded red satin and lace bra, the matching tiny lace thong panties, and stood staring at them. I reached back into the bag, hoping against hope that she’d thrown those two items in as a joke, and found the same thing
in black and then in purple.

  Nina had to know I didn’t wear stuff like this. I didn’t wear padded bras. I wore cotton, not satin. And I never, ever, wore thongs! If God had meant for us to floss our butts, well, it wouldn’t have come in the form of underwear.

  I pulled out the jeans. Low-rise, boot cut, button-up, dark denim. I groaned. I did not have the hips for low-rise jeans! The tops were spandex—okay, cotton with spandex added—but they were also V-neck and fitted. Nothing in the bag was me. Where were the turtlenecks, the pullover sweaters and the tailored shirts?

  I groaned. What choice did I have now? I turned away from the oversize mirror and started dressing. I held my breath as I pulled on the jeans and picked the black V-neck blouse in the vain hope that the dark color would somehow offset the padding in my satin and lace bra. When I’d finished, I turned around to face the music.

  “Oh, this is a complete disaster,” I muttered, studying the woman in the mirror.

  The woman staring back at me was definitely uncomfortable. The cop was gone. I reached for the tube of hair gel, squirted some into the palm of my hand and stood studying the new me as I ran my fingers through my hair.

  It wasn’t that the clothes didn’t fit, exactly. They did. Maybe they fit too much. The jeans hugged my hips. My breasts stood at a phony attention and the shirt did nothing to hide the fact that I now had cleavage. Detectives and cops needed to be able to blend into the scenery, not stand out.

  I reached for the hair dryer and couldn’t find one. I looked under the counter and in the linen closet before realizing there was no hair dryer. I looked back into the mirror and swore. Great. The only way to control my hair was to dry it with a big brush and pull it back into a ponytail. Without a hair dryer, my hair would curl and frizz, taking on a life of its own.

  “Get a grip!” I said to the mirror. “Lloyd is out there, scared, and you’re in a bathroom whining about your hair? Please!”

  I was bigger than my hair, I reminded myself. I watched as the first few whips of hair began to spring into curlicues that flew away from my skull like miniature bottle rockets. All right, so maybe nothing was bigger than my hair, but it was certainly not my most important worry.