Читать книгу What Stella Wants - Nancy Bartholomew - Страница 9
Chapter 2
ОглавлениеBack in the day when we attended Glenn Ford High School, Marygrace Llewellen was the “go-to” girl for any and all information pertaining to the comings and goings of our other classmates. She was also an expert at forging parental signatures. This added to her repository of information, as she knew who was skipping and with whom. It also gave her the capacity to blackmail any and all of us at any time, should she desire additional tidbits of gossip that had somehow eluded her.
While Marygrace never exactly extorted information from anyone, the threat was always there when she came to you for information. She was sweet about it. She never used her powers for evil, preferring mostly to matchmake her fellow classmates or gently sway them into various activities that she felt strongly about, like Save the Planet Day or Senior Skip Day. I admired Marygrace’s easy way with others. Everyone liked her while simultaneously fearing her. It was a pretty cool talent she had there and she knew it.
So when she appeared in the doorway of Valocchi Investigations the day after my Aunt Lucy fiasco and Bitsy’s probable death, I was glad to see her and also a bit apprehensive.
“Hi, guys!” She greeted me as if it hadn’t been twelve years since we’d last seen each other and as if it were the most normal and casual thing in the world for her to be stopping by. My internal alarm bell didn’t even ring.
“Marygrace!” Jake rushed over to pick her up in an affectionate bear hug. She squealed, a short butterball of exuberance and enthusiasm, her little feet dangling in the air as Jake whirled her around. “I haven’t seen you since…” He broke off, trying to remember.
“Since you married that bimbo you call your ex-wife. I gave you guys a toaster. You know, I knew you were headed down the wrong road with that one. She never even wrote me a thank-you note. I think she was threatened by me. Poor breeding will do that to you every time, won’t it?”
Jake was momentarily thrown by Marygrace’s summation, but I saw Nina grinning in agreement.
“So,” she said, turning her radar my way, “I hear you two are finally an item. Good, right?” Her hazel eyes bore into mine like lie detectors, and I felt my face flame.
“It’s all good, Marygrace,” I said. “How’ve you been?”
Marygrace still wore her strawberry-blond hair the way she had in high school. It fell just below her chin in a pageboy bob that somehow suited her. When she shook her head as if putting off my question, her hair swung back and forth like a shampoo commercial. I found myself staring at it, unconcerned that she had no intention of answering me and was now asking a new question.
“How come you two are partners but it only says Valocchi Investigations on the door?”
That got my attention. Unfortunately, it got everyone else’s attention, too, including Nina’s. For some reason, she decided to save me.
“Hey, Marygrace, who was in the car at the mall?”
Marygrace almost seemed to quiver, the way a dog does when it catches scent of something really, really good.
“The police haven’t released her name to the media yet, but I already know on account of them telling her mother and calling me. It was Bitsy Blankenship,” she said, turning to me. “That’s why I’m here. See, her grandmother is a patient of mine.” Marygrace caught my puzzled expression and rushed on. “I’m a social worker now, Stella, out at Brookhaven Manor Nursing Home. I know, I know.” She held up her hand. “Why is a good social worker working in a nursing home? You think only loser social workers work in rest homes but that’s just a myth. There are some really good social workers taking care of the elderly, but that’s not why I’m here.”
Marygrace barely seemed to stop for breath between thoughts. I had to work hard to follow her.
“Bitsy’s grandmother is one of my patients.” Marygrace looked at us with an anxious furrow between her brows. “This is confidential, what I say in here, isn’t it?”
“Well, technically, Marygrace, only if you’re a client, and then only within certain parameters,” Spike said, being cautious. “Is that why you’re here? Do you want to hire us?”
Marygrace cocked her head to one side and seemed to consider the matter for a second before answering.
“Well, yeah, I guess. I mean, Bitsy’s grandmother is a lost ball in high weeds. Some days she thinks we’re working at the paper mill and some days she seems just fine, but obviously she can’t hire you!”
“Huh?” Even Nina was getting lost now.
Marygrace looked around the room at the four of us. “Do I need to sign papers first or give you a check or what?” Before anyone could answer, she sped on. “Well, I’ll just tell you. It’s not like Baby Blankenship’s gonna sue me or anything. Like I said, she can’t even remember who I am half the time, so she sure won’t sue me for telling you about her! Besides, everybody knows social workers aren’t in it for the money, and Baby wouldn’t be in a nursing home if she had the money for private care, so there you are!”
“Is this about Bitsy’s death?” I asked, wishing Marygrace had a shortcut button.
Marygrace’s eyes widened. “Well, that’s why I’m here. Somebody breaks into the woman’s room and takes her stuff, then Bitsy turns up dead. Call me paranoid, but I gotta wonder.”
“Wouldn’t that be a police matter?” Jake asked.
Marygrace looked at him, hands on hips, with a frustrated frown. “Oh, yeah, right, like they’ll give a rat’s ass. Baby’s just an old lady to them. There wasn’t anything of any real value in her room. I told you, she’s poor. Don’t you know anything about nursing homes? Stuff gets stolen out of people’s rooms all the time. If it isn’t nailed down—and sometimes even if it is—it gets stolen.”
“Okay, so, you want us to find out if there’s a connection between Bitsy and whoever’s stealing worthless stuff from Baby Blankenship’s room even though she doesn’t probably even remember what it is and probably doesn’t care?” I tried not to look as if I thought Marygrace was nuts, but I was beginning to wonder.
“Who said she doesn’t know what’s going on or what’s missing? I told you, some days she doesn’t remember who she is, but the rest of the time, Baby’s a sharp old cookie. She told me someone came into her room and believe me, when I went in after the head nurse called, Baby’s room was trashed. She said someone came in and was looking everywhere and they took something.”
“So, what did they steal?” I asked.
Marygrace shrugged and for the first time seemed a little bit disconcerted. “She doesn’t know. She can’t remember. That’s what you guys are supposed to find out. You’re detectives aren’t you?”
“Whoa!” Nina said softly. “Now that’s totally a case to sink your teeth into!”
“You think?” I said reflexively.
“Aw, come on, man!” Marygrace said impatiently. “She’s an old woman. Her granddaughter’s just been killed, maybe by terrorists, and someone came into her room and took something. I’m asking you guys to do something, as a public service. It’ll be good publicity. Don’t you need to get the word out about your agency?”
I shook my head, hoping to clear the confusion of facts and questions in Marygrace’s rapid-fire statement.
“Hold up here, girlfriend,” I said, hoping to apply the brakes to Marygrace’s mouth before I became eternally lost in her next rush of words. “Let me just get a few things straight.”
“What makes you think it was a terrorist?” Jake interrupted me and set Marygrace off again.
“Hey, I watch TV. I can read between the lines. Her husband’s a diplomat. Bitsy’s car was just sitting there. It’s not like she threw a match in the gas tank or anything. It had to be terrorists. Who else? I hear Bitsy’s mama is just all to pieces.” Marygrace turned bright red and clapped a hand over her wayward mouth. “Oh, Lord, I mean she’s upset, not all to…pieces!”
Jake looked at me over the top of Marygrace’s head. She would have no way of knowing about Bitsy’s urgent phone call. It had been almost the only thing Jake and I had thought about since hearing of the mysterious explosion at the mall. Now here was Marygrace saying Bitsy had definitely been the one in the car and her grandmother was the victim of petty larceny. Maybe that’s why Bitsy had called for an appointment. Maybe she’d wanted us to look into her grandmother’s problem. If there was a connection, we’d need to make sure the authorities took it seriously.
A wave of relief washed over me. The load of guilt that had been sitting on my shoulders since I’d heard about the explosion lifted a tiny bit. Maybe Bitsy hadn’t been calling me about a matter of life and death. She probably wanted her grandmother to feel as if something was being done. Bitsy wasn’t dead because I spitefully put her appointment off when I could’ve met her earlier.
Except—Bitsy had called me before going to the nursing home. How could she have known about the theft?
“Sure, Marygrace,” I said. At that point, with my roller coaster of emotions, I would’ve promised Marygrace anything. “I would be more than happy to investigate Baby Blankenship’s missing belongings, whatever they are.” I sobered up, thinking of Bitsy and how much her death would affect her family. “She must be devastated by Bitsy’s death. How’s she doing with that?”
Marygrace sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I hate to say it, but I doubt Baby even remembers Bitsy. She hadn’t seen her in years before yesterday. If Baby remembered Bitsy at all, it was as a little girl.”
Well, at least Baby got to see Bitsy grown-up one time. Poor Bitsy. Wonder what made her decide to stop by and see her grandmother after so many years? I glanced over at my cousin, the believer in all things New Age. She’d probably tell me Bitsy had unconsciously sensed her impending demise and wanted to tie up loose ends.
“So, why did Bitsy stop by to see her grandmother yesterday, I mean, after so many years?” I voiced my question.
Marygrace just shook her head. “Who knows? She came racing in, barely said ‘Hi’ to me, asked what room her granny was in and took off down the hallway. You’d have thought it was a race to the finish line. And then, she only stayed for like, five minutes before she took off! I just never could figure that Bitsy out. For someone so smart, she sure was stupid.”
Spike had been listening to Marygrace’s tale with growing interest. “How was she stupid?” she asked.
“Well, she had book sense but the girl didn’t have a bit of common sense. Look at that geek she married.” Marygrace’s eyes twinkled as she looked around the room, drawing us in to her story. “She eloped, you know.”
“But I read about her…”
Marygrace nodded. “Oh, they had a wedding, all right. Brenda, her mama, threatened to disown her if they didn’t come back and put on a show. Otherwise, people would’ve thought the worst.”
“What?” Nina asked. “What’s worse than getting married?”
Jake sputtered, choking on the coffee he’d been trying to drink, and turned red. I figured it was only his karma paying him back. After all, the man had abandoned me at the altar when we were in high school and scheduled to elope ourselves.
“Yeah, Marygrace,” I echoed. “What’s worse than getting married?”
“Aw, come on, man. You know. Her mama said people would think she was knocked up!”
“Damn!” Nina breathed. “I just like, totally don’t get some people.”
“When did Bitsy stop by the nursing home?” Jake asked, pulling us back to the matter at hand.
“It had to be after she called me,” I muttered to Jake.
Marygrace cocked her head to one side and appeared to be giving Jake’s question serious consideration. “Let’s see. It was after ten o’clock bingo and a little before lunch. Yeah, that’s right. I remember because old Mrs. Maxwell expired around four and I was trying to take care of the arrangements when all hell broke loose in Baby’s room.”
Marygrace twitched, clutched her side and reached inside her brightly colored jacket. A moment later she pulled a tiny cell phone out and flipped it open.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m on call. I have to take this.”
As we watched, Marygrace listened, the frown on her face deepening with each passing moment.
“Don’t give me that!” she cried. “How can it happen again without anybody seeing anything? Where were you people?”
Marygrace looked up from her conversation and mouthed the word, “Baby” before returning to the conversation.
“Where’s Darren? Well, tell him I’m coming back right now, and this time we’re calling the police. If one of those CNAs laid a hand on Baby, I’ll have their job and their ass. Call Stephanie and get her in to see Baby right now. If she can’t come, call a fucking ambulance and have her transported to the E.R.”
There was a brief hesitation as the person on the other end apparently questioned Marygrace’s orders. I watched her eyes darken and her scowl deepen, thinking only a fool would ignore a dynamo like Marygrace when she was riled up.
“I don’t give a flying rat’s ass what Medicaid’ll pay for. Get her there and get her there now!”
Marygrace slammed the lid shut on her tiny phone.
“Let’s go!” Marygrace was already halfway out the door. When nobody moved to follow her, she spun back around. “Well? Come on! Baby’s room got hit again and this time she got hurt. Are you guys gonna sit around with your thumbs up your butts or are you coming?”
“We’ll be right behind you, Marygrace,” I answered. “I’ve got to get a couple of things started before we head out, that’s all. We’re coming.”
Marygrace’s eyes glittered with unshed tears and her face and neck flushed. She clenched and unclenched her fists. In that one moment I understood her feelings completely and saw the woman she’d become. Marygrace had simply taken all the skills she’d used for fun and diversion in high school and channeled them into her career as a social worker.
She was no longer the champion of her fellow fun-loving teenagers. She had evolved into a champion of lost causes and underdogs. Marygrace fought for her patients with the same fervor and intensity I’d had on the police force. I hated to think what would happen if she were the one to encounter Baby Blankenship’s abuser.
“Just hurry up, okay?” she said finally. “This scares me.”
She was gone before I could answer her. I swallowed hard, ignoring the tight feeling in my throat and the naked emotion in Nina’s eyes. “All right, you two, Jake and I will take the nursing home. While we’re there, I want you to get me some background information.”
Spike nodded, her chin resting on Nina’s head. “What do you need?”
“I know you still have contacts in the police department,” I said. “I want to know what they know about Bitsy’s death. I want to know everything you can find out.”
Spike looked momentarily puzzled. “Okay. As soon as they ID’d the car, the feds wouldn’ve taken over.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m covering all the bases. Bitsy was coming to see us and she’d said it was urgent. She never made it, and I want to know why. I’ll take any bit of information I can get.”
“What do you want me to do?” Nina asked, her voice muffled by Spike’s shoulder.
“As soon as I can get a list of employees on duty today and at the time of the first incident, I’ll call you. I want you and Spike to do the background checks.”
Jake was strapping on his shoulder holster while I talked. So, he was expecting trouble, too. I didn’t know why our subconscious alarm systems had suddenly kicked in, but they had, and it was always best to trust your instincts in this business. There was no doubt in my mind that Bitsy Blankenship’s death and the attack on her grandmother were somehow related. Now it was up to us to figure out how and to prevent anything else from happening.
“You ready?” Jake was already halfway out the back exit.
“Be right there!”
I crossed the room to my gun safe, punched in the combination and, when the door swung open, considered the cache inside carefully. Not the Glock; no safety. I discarded the Sig; too bulky. I reached past the Beretta and pulled out my Lady Smith 9 mm. Perfect. Small, easily concealed. “Tasteful, elegant but not ostentatious,” I murmured as I pulled out a pancake holster and stuck the gun inside it. “Just the right little accessory for a visit to a nursing home.”
I reached for my blazer, grabbed my purse and ran down the back steps and out into the cold winter air. The sky was clouding up ominously, and a gust of wind blew in from the northeast. Not a good sign. I sniffed. The air smelled like snow.
Jake punched the accelerator of his newly purchased ’98 black Viper. It was his way of saying, “Hurry the hell up!” When I hopped into the passenger seat he spun out of the parking lot, barely waiting for me to close the door.
“Calm down!” I yelled. “There’s no sense in getting us killed, too.”
He didn’t answer me and he didn’t slow down.
“Jake, I mean it! What’s wrong with you?”
He took the road toward the outskirts of town well over the speed limit. We headed into a sharp turn, careening around a massive granite boulder outcropping, and swerved right into the path of an oncoming concrete truck.
There wasn’t even time to scream. I grabbed the edges of my seat and stopped breathing. Jake fishtailed through the narrow gap between the truck’s bumper and the guardrail, accelerated and cleared the truck with a two-inch margin. A second later he pulled over onto the side of the road and cut the engine.
We sat for a long moment without speaking. Finally Jake broke the silence.
“Stella, I need to tell you something about Bitsy,” he said. He was staring at a spot on the dashboard instead of looking at me. “I need to tell you something about me and Bitsy. Now. Before this goes any further.”
The serious tone in his voice scared me. What could Jake possibly have to tell me that was this desperate? And what did he mean, “Before this goes any further?” Was he talking about the investigation or did he mean our relationship? I took a deep breath, forced my body to relax back into the leather bucket seat and waited.
“After you and I broke up, well, Bitsy and I had a…short relationship.” He looked at me, scanning my face for a reaction, and when I didn’t show one, went on. “It didn’t mean much. I mean, it didn’t last long. It was just one of those summer things and I guess I pretty much forgot about it. Then a few years later, when I was in Special Forces, a couple of suits paid me a visit.”
“Suits?”
“Feds, spooks, you know, CIA types. They were doing a routine background investigation on Bitsy. They didn’t tell me why, of course, but I got curious and eventually I figured it out. Bitsy was joining the club.”
“Shut up! Bitsy? She’s not spy material. She’s a dingbat.”
Jake smiled. “She’s a genius playing a dingbat, Stella. The girl was brilliant. She was the third brightest in our graduating class, and I know she could’ve walked off with the best G.P.A., only it wouldn’t have fit with her party-girl image.”
“So she dummied down?”
Jake nodded. “Just enough to still get into a good school but not be called a geek.”
“And this is what you wanted to tell me?”
Jake looked uncomfortable. “Not exactly. A few years later, right before she got married, we ran into each other again. It was a strange set of circumstances. Both of us were far away from home, doing things other people would hopefully never know, and well, it was fairly high risk, so…”
Great. Jake and Bitsy.
“Weren’t you still married then?” Okay, so I was sticking the knife in and twisting it a little bit.
“Yeah.” Jake looked so miserable I started to feel bad.
“So, then what happened?”
Jake looked out his window for a long moment. “Nothing. We finished doing what we had to do and that was that. I never saw her again. She got married about a month later and I kept on…”
“Wait a minute. Bitsy got married a month later? After she had an affair with you?”
Jake nodded. “She didn’t love him, Stella. In fact, she never even mentioned him. I doubt Bitsy even knew the man at the time.”
This wasn’t making sense to me. It didn’t sound like the Bitsy I remembered, but then, she’d eloped and that wasn’t her, either.
“I’m confused, Jake.”
This made him smile. “Me, too, baby. What I’m trying to say is that Bitsy may have been on the job when she called. She probably knew we were working together but didn’t want to risk calling me directly.”
Oh. I was starting to feel stupid. “So you think Bitsy wanted you, not me. You think she was in some kind of trouble and remembered you?”
Jake nodded. “She knew I had a certain…skill set. She probably knew I was out of the service and so I wouldn’t be on anybody’s radar if she needed something and had to stay under the wire. Marygrace probably told her how to reach me.”
Oh, great. So Bitsy hadn’t wanted my help at all! She wanted Jake. Well, didn’t they all?
“I’m just saying, if you were for any reason blaming yourself for Bitsy not making it in, don’t. This has nothing to do with you. It’s my fault. I should’ve put it together and had you call her back. I guess I just thought she’d be out of it by now. People like Bitsy get promoted into administration. They don’t stay out in the field.”
So that explained the squirrelly driving. Jake was blaming himself for Bitsy’s death.
“I’m telling you this after the fact because I think we should be extra cautious on this one. There probably is a connection between what’s going on at the nursing home and Bitsy.”
I nodded. There was no way I could’ve seen this coming. I knew there was no reason to beat myself up for somehow not being able to divine this bit of information, but I felt suddenly out of the loop.
Jake reached over to start the engine then turned to study my expression, once again trying to read me.
“You all right about this?” he asked.
I gave him my best smile and nodded. “Glad you told me. I’ll be on the lookout.” I motioned toward the road. “We’d better get to it. I don’t want Marygrace Llewellen on my back.”
I turned away and stared out my window as Jake drove. As we made our way toward Brookhaven Manor, a realization suddenly hit me. The real reason I was upset was not because Jake had information I didn’t have. I was upset because Jake had a secret. In fact, Jake had lots of secrets and they just seemed to keep popping up. What else was he holding back? And how could I trust and love a man who had so many secrets?