Читать книгу What Stella Wants - Nancy Bartholomew - Страница 9

It was about time my luck changed.

In the past month I’d been beaten up, shot at, lied to and seduced. In my opinion, other than the seduction, I’d been on the short end of the karma scale. At least this stake-out and surveillance, while in the middle of winter, was indoors. Okay, so there wasn’t any heat in the garage, but I wasn’t standing outside in a blizzard, either. And our “target” was slow-moving and not very dangerous. She was an old lady. The bad news was she was my Aunt Lucy.

My partner, Jake Carpenter, also known as the man voted most likely to get under my skin and into my bed, was crouched down next to me, peering out the grimy garage window and into Aunt Lucy’s kitchen.

“She let him in,” he said. “Why hasn’t she brought him back to the kitchen? She brings everybody to the kitchen.”

I looked at Jake. Tall, dark, handsome and sometimes completely clueless. Still, a lot had changed about the man since high school, since he’d left me waiting at the altar in a failed elopement that was now just a distant memory. He’d grown up, but then so had I.

“Oh, I don’t know, Jake. What do you think? Do you think they just went straight down the hall to her bedroom, or what?”

I guess the sarcastic tone gave me away. Jake actually managed to look hurt. “Damn, Stella, I was just asking.”

I arched an eyebrow and tried not to notice the way his eyes were traveling the length of my body, stopping at all the good parts—the parts that had so readily responded to his touch just hours before.

“Jake, it’s my aunt, for God’s sake! She’s been widowed what, six months, and some mysterious guy from her past surfaces and she doesn’t say word one about who it is or what he wants, and you think I shouldn’t be so sensitive? He could be a con man. He could be a killer. He could be…”

I stopped, trying to come up with more possibilities, which gave Jake the window he was looking for. “He could be looking to get laid. Aunt Lucy’s old, but she’s not dead!”

I punched him, and his responding grunt was loud enough to let me know I hadn’t lost my touch. Police training and conditioning is no joke, and I wasn’t about to let it go by the wayside just because I was no longer a cop. Private investigators need muscles and endurance, too, maybe even more. They don’t have an entire police force ready to back them up—they just have a partner or two if they’re lucky. Jake was solid muscle and ex-Special Forces, but he was only one guy. I was the other half of the team. I needed to retain my edge…even if I was only tailing my elderly aunt at the moment.

As we watched, the back door suddenly flew open and my aunt Lucy came rushing down the steps, a white plastic trash bag in hand and a grim look on her face. She headed straight for the garage.

“Hide!” I yelped and dove behind a bunch of boxes.

Jake wasted no time joining me and together we crouched, waiting for my aunt to pull open the old wooden door and head for the trash cans that lined the far wall.

“Nothing good comes of spying on relatives,” I muttered.

“It was your idea,” Jake reminded me.

I wanted to smack him but didn’t dare with Aunt Lucy mere seconds from entering the ancient garage.

“It’s for a good cause,” I reminded him. “I’m only saying that, even if our intent is good, God might not look too kindly on the effort, that’s all.”

“And God doesn’t take intent into account?”

I pinched his earlobe, the only readily available, exposed flesh I could reach.

“Ouch!”

“Shhh!”

The garage door creaked open and Aunt Lucy could be heard walking briskly across the concrete floor to the battered metal trash cans. She pulled a lid off, dumped her bag inside, replaced the lid and started to stomp off. Without warning she stopped, parallel to our hiding place and as we listened, she sniffed, loudly, cautiously, and I was certain she’d discovered us.

“Humph!” She snorted. “Nothing worse than the smell of dead fish!”

Then, without further comment, she left, slamming the garage door securely behind her and continuing on her way across the rectangular back yard. A moment later we heard the back porch door slam and knew we were in the clear.

“I thought she was going to nail us,” Jake said. “The woman’s psychic, I swear she is.”

My cell phone began to vibrate, humming softly in the still garage.

I fished it out of my parka pocket, flipped it open and said, “Valocchi Investigations.”

Jake gave me his usual and customary hard look as I said the name. For some reason the man thought that because we were partners, his name should be on the door. I wasn’t sure I was ready for the partnership to become permanent, so why change things before I had a feel for the potential duration? Look what happened the last time we tried to form a partnership…I’d wound up hurt and alone, trying to explain running away to marry Jake to my disappointed aunt Lucy and uncle Benny. No, I needed to wait this relationship out before I made another foolish commitment.

“Stella, is that you?” The voice, female and anxious, sounded distinctly familiar.

“Yes?”

“Stella, it’s Bitsy Blankenship—well it’s Margolies now, but it was Blankenship. Marygrace Llewellen said you’d moved back home and opened a private investigation office. I need to see you. Right now!”

I closed my eyes. Elizabeth “Bitsy” Blankenship. Blond, cheerleader, airhead and high maintenance in high school. Sounded like nothing had changed, at least not in the maintenance department. I remembered hearing she’d married a junior diplomat and was now leading the high life of embassy parties and overseas assignments. Figured she’d land on her designer heels. But the demanding, “everything’s urgent and about me” tone to her voice brought out the rebellious adolescent in me.

“Uh, sorry,” I said. “My first available appointment won’t be for another…” I opened my eyes and stared up at the old garage rafters, aware of Jake’s confused expression because he knew we were next to unemployed in terms of busy. “I guess I could squeeze you in tomorrow, late morning.”

“No! I mean, please, Stella, this is an emergency. I need to see you now!”

I sighed, pushed the sleeve up on my parka and looked at my watch. It was almost noon. “Okay, I suppose I could see you at two, but I might be a few minutes late. We’re in the middle of an important surveillance.”

“Two?” Bitsy’s anguished wail was almost satisfying, especially when I remembered that Jake had briefly dated Bitsy, shortly after he’d failed to show for our elopement to Maryland. “Really, Stella, you can’t see me any sooner?”

Damn, what did the woman want, blood? “I’m sorry. Two is my absolute earliest time and I’ll be pushing it at that.”

I could hear the sound of a car’s engine in the background as Bitsy considered whether to take the appointment or not. She was driving, and I wondered if she were in town yet or on her way in from D.C.

“Oh, all right! I’ll do two. I suppose I can waste a couple of hours visiting my grandmother in the nursing home or something.”

Visiting her grandmother was a waste of her time? Oh, I was so glad I was putting Mrs. High-and-Mighty on the back burner!

“Okay, you know where the office is? It’s across from the old newsstand, off Main.”

“I’ll find it. And, Stella, listen, it’s really important that you don’t tell anybody about this, okay? I don’t want anyone to know I’m in town or that we’re meeting. It could be a matter of life and death.”

I rolled my eyes at Jake. What had he ever seen in this dingbat? Jake frowned and mouthed the words, “What? Who is it?” But I just smiled and shook my head.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul. See you at two!”

I snapped the phone shut and smiled even bigger at Jake. “Guess what, buddy? Your old girlfriend, Bitsy, is coming to town and she wants to hire me.”

“Us,” Jake corrected, still stuck on the pride of ownership. “She wants to hire us.”

“She didn’t mention you,” I taunted. “If she’d wanted you, I suppose she would’ve called you.”

“What’s wrong with Bitsy?” Jake was all concerned now.

I shrugged and returned my attention to my aunt’s kitchen window. “Don’t know, don’t care. I just hope she has deep pockets. Why don’t you slip back around front and see if you can get the guy’s license plate number when his driver comes back? I’m going to see if I can get a little closer to the house.”

Jake started to protest, caught himself, and shrugged. “It’s your party,” he said. I could tell he thought sneaking around in broad daylight was a bad idea, but what else could I do? Aunt Lucy hadn’t entertained the guy at night. So far, all she’d done was disappear during the daytime, only to return a few hours later with this stupid smile on her face and vague answers when we asked where she’d been and with whom.

Even Lloyd the Dog was left out of the loop. Considering the fact that, until very recently, Aunt Lucy had considered my Australian shepherd to be her deceased husband, Benny, reincarnated, I found her reluctance to confide in him troubling. True, Lloyd the Dog had found love himself in the form of an overwhelmingly large part-wolf named Fang, but that was no reason for Aunt Lucy’s sudden secrecy.

I watched as Jake eased out the back door of the garage and into the alley before I considered my stealth opportunities. Aunt Lucy had been anxious to get us out of the house for the day. She’d found a very necessary and quite convoluted errand for my scattered cousin, Nina, and her girlfriend, Spike, to run in downtown Philadelphia. She’d asked me and Jake to run out to Lancaster to take a set of architectural plans to her Amish carpenter friend, Max. She’d been so insistent we leave that I’d known for certain this was the big day; the day Aunt Lucy had invited the mysterious man to her home.

So we called Max and blew him off. We made a big show of driving away from Aunt Lucy’s ancient, brick row house and returned in a borrowed conversion van with tinted windows to park and hide. A mere twenty minutes later our efforts were rewarded by the arrival of a long, black, chauffer-driven sedan.

I was expecting someone as huge as the limousine, someone large, ostentatious, maybe a Donald Trump type. What we got was a short, elderly, white-haired man in a charcoal-gray overcoat carrying a small bouquet of purple violets.

“What the hell?” Jake murmured. As we watched, the little man ascended the steps to the brownstone and rang the doorbell.

Aunt Lucy answered the door moments later, looked down the street in both directions and hastily pulled her visitor inside. This forced us out of the van and around the back of the house to the garage where we hoped to watch my aunt entertaining her visitor in the kitchen. Aunt Lucy always brought company back to her kitchen. Except for this visitor. What was up? I had to get closer to the house. I had to know what was happening inside.

I slipped out the back door of the garage, edged around the far side of the wooden building and began creeping past the thick lilac bushes that lined the edge of my aunt’s yard. I glanced up nervously at the kitchen window and saw no movement inside.

I began working my way up the side of the house, passing the back porch and stopping beneath my aunt’s bedroom window. I am not proud of what I did next, but you need to understand, I thought Aunt Lucy was in danger…maybe. I slipped the miniature sound amplifier out of my pocket, fitted the tiny earpiece into my right ear and reached up stealthily to attach the little bug to the glass windowpane.

My aunt’s voice reverberated inside my head. “Oh, right there!” she cried. “You’ve almost got it! Come on, you can get it! Please!” There was a pause and then a soft, excited cry. “Oh, yes! That’s it! Oh, you got it!”

Oh. My. God! I ripped the earpiece out, snatched the listening device off the window and ran, full tilt, the length of the house and out onto the front sidewalk. Where was Jake? Oh. My. God! They were…they were…having…sex! My aunt, my uncle Benny’s widow, was having S.E.X.! I didn’t know people that old even had sex!

I sprinted for the street, darted through parked cars and banged on the passenger-side door of the van.

Jake greeted me with a knowing smile. “Well, well…just when I was wondering how to pass the time.”

“Shut up!”

“Hey, a little edgy, aren’t we?”

I glared at him. “They are in her bedroom. They are…she’s…he was…”

Comprehension dawned slowly in Jake’s eyes. “No, they weren’t!”

I nodded.

“You sure about that?”

I just looked at him.

“No way. Damn! Well, who knew? I guess getting old won’t be so bad after all.”

“Jake, shut up!”

I peered out into the street, looking for the limousine. With the exception of Aunt Lucy’s neighbor Mrs. Talluchi’s ancient black Plymouth, there were no black sedans in sight.

“He must have told the driver to leave,” Jake said, anticipating my next question. “We wait him out.”

The way he said it, the way he moved up behind me left no doubt as to how Jake Carpenter thought we’d pass the time. His breath, hot on my neck, tingled, sending shivers of anticipation surging to every raw, hungry nerve ending in my body. When his hands slid around my waist and pulled me back against his body, I fought the urge to give in and turned on him.

“Jake, not now! Honestly! Is that all you think about?”

Jake’s grin was infectious, and any other time I might have given in, but I’d just heard Aunt Lucy in the throes of passion and it didn’t exactly do a whole lot for my libido.

“Come on, Stel, lighten up!”

Lighten up. Wasn’t that just like a man. I pushed the sleeve up on my parka and stared at my watch. It was only 11:30. I tugged the plaid curtains apart on the back side window and looked out through the darkly tinted glass at my aunt’s tiny row house. It looked so normal, so peaceful, so…Jake’s thumb stroked the spot he knew all too well behind my ear, breaking my concentration and sending shivers down the side of my neck. A tiny flame caught and held deep inside my body. I was in trouble.

When his tongue followed his thumb, knowingly tracing the fire line along my neck, I couldn’t help myself. A sigh escaped my lips and I turned, letting my body mold into his as we kissed. When would I ever learn? I am putty in Jake’s hands, willing, soft, mushy putty. Oh, well, if you can’t beat ’em, you might as well join ’em.

“I love conversion vans, don’t you, Jake?” I breathed the words in a whisper as he slowly moved me to the thickly padded day bed that hugged the back of the cavernous vehicle.

“Mmm-hmm,” he said, and unzipped my parka.

A moment later, before I could feel the cold, I discovered the pile of quilts and blankets conveniently placed at one end of the well-stocked van.

“Hey, who’d you borrow this from, anyway?”

Jake opened up a thick, multi-colored quilt and smiled. “Buddy of mine.”

“You knew this would happen, didn’t you?” Suspicion dawned in my gullible brain. He was not nearly as interested in tracking down Aunt Lucy’s mysterious visitor as I was.

“Now, Stella, you know that wasn’t it. I just like to be prepared, that’s all.”

I felt my spine stiffen. “Prepared, my ass!” Wasn’t that just like a man? I’d left Florida and a promising career in law enforcement to get away from a no-good, cheating scoundrel only to wind up back in my old home town with the very first con artist to break my heart. What was it with me, anyway? When was I going to learn?

Jake leaned down and kissed me so thoroughly I began to appreciate the beauty of thoughtful preparation. So what if he was prepared? So what if he didn’t care about Aunt Lucy’s boyfriend as much as—Oh, please keep touching me there!

I reached for Jake, grabbing the waistband of his jeans and pulling him closer. My fingers found the top button and I knew there was about to be no turning back.

“What if the limo comes?” I murmured, my lips never leaving his.

“We’ll hear it,” he assured me. “I’ll listen out for it. I have unbelievable ears.”

Jake’s fingers slipped under my bra and began softly stroking and tugging at my nipples.

“You have unbelievable fingers,” I whispered, and sighed as my body gave itself over to his slow seduction.

“You’re no slouch yourself,” he answered.

I smiled and pushed his jeans down over his hips. Another moment and we were naked beneath a pile of warm afghans and quilts. Outside, the street was silent. With the exception of the old people, like Aunt Lucy and her best friend, crazy Sylvia Talluchi, all the other inhabitants on the block were at work.

Jake’s knowing hand moved slowly down across my stomach, teasing me with its leisurely approach. I heard someone moan and knew it was me. Here we were, naked in a van, about to make wild crazy love while also trying not to make enough noise to rouse the curiosity of any inadvertent passersby. It was illicit, steamy and a complete turn-on. Jake, I realized, was a brilliant man. He knew what this unexpected opportunity would do to me, and he was totally prepared to take full advantage of it. You just had to love a man like that.

Or did you?

In the past few months our relationship had kindled into far more than the adolescent fumbling that had been our high school romance. We’d gotten past, kind of, Jake jilting me at the altar in a failed, underage elopement. We’d survived my uncle Benny’s murder investigation in which Jake had been one of the prime suspects. We’d even gone into business as private investigators and resumed our personal relationship with the wisdom that only age and experience can bring. But in the past few months, the chemistry between us had exploded into an all-consuming fire that frankly scared the hell out of me.

I’d tried to play it cool. I’d forced myself to spend time away from him. He’d let me down before, and while we’re on the subject, so had every other man I’d every had a personal relationship with, even my father. He and Mom had had the nerve to take a second honeymoon to Ireland, without me, and had managed to die in a fiery plane crash. I just had to be sure about Jake before I got so hopelessly entangled in the relationship that I couldn’t survive the loss of it.

“Oh, Jake!” His tongue was following his fingers. I felt my body explode into a bonfire of need and without thinking I reached for him, pulling and positioning my body beneath him. What was wrong with me? How could I not trust someone who made me feel like this? This was so incredibly good! This was better than anything I’d ever felt in my entire…

Outside, the van walls began violently shaking as someone beat the door with their fists. Maybe more than one someone was beating on the van. The loud noise seemed to come from everywhere, surrounding us.

“What the—” Jake jumped to his feet, completely naked except for his unbuttoned, plaid flannel shirt. I had a full frontal flash of what I was about to miss before I, too, jumped up and joined him in the frantic dash to reclothe ourselves.

“Who in the—” I gasped, struggling into my jeans.

“They’re in there. I saw them!”

“No, no, no!” I moaned softly. Sylvia Talluchi, the world’s most active busybody and self-appointed watchdog for the entire neighborhood, had seen us and pulled the alarm.

“Stella, are you in there?”

Oh, we were dead. Aunt Lucy was banging on the other side of the van. There was going to be total hell to pay.

Jake looked at me, wide-eyed, as the same realization hit him.

“Let me handle this.” I pushed my way past him, pulling on and zipping my parka as I went. I didn’t even wait for Jake to answer me. It was my aunt and my execution.

I flung open the door and was momentarily blinded by the brilliant winter sunlight.

“Stella! Marone! What are you doing in there?”

“Lucia, you don’t know?” Mrs. Talluchi’s querulous tone grated like fingernails on a chalkboard. “They were doing the nasty if you ask me!”

My eyes adjusted in time to see my aunt shoot her best friend a dark look before she leveled the same gaze at me.

“Well?”

I forced a broad smile and stepped down the two metal stairs onto the sidewalk where Sylvia Talluchi and Aunt Lucy stood waiting. Jake stood framed in the doorway behind me and I prayed he had the sense to smile as well.

“No, of course we weren’t ‘doing the nasty’ as you so succinctly put it, Mrs. Talluchi. Jake and I were about to stop back by the house before we went out on surveillance. You see, we were on our way to Lancaster to see Max when we got this call and…”

I stopped in midsentence. At the far end of the street, a limousine slowly crept past on Johnston Avenue.

“Who is that?” I demanded, pointing so there’d be no doubt about the vehicle in question.

Aunt Lucy and Sylvia Talluchi spun on their heels just as the long black sedan’s tail lights vanished from view.

“Who was what?” my aunt asked, turning back to face me. “Never mind that! What were you doing out here? Have you no sense of common decency? In the van, for all the world to witness? Have you no shame?”

Jake stepped down out of the van to join me on the sidewalk. “Mrs. Valocchi, we noticed you had company and I said we shouldn’t disturb you, so we were just waiting.”

I wanted to slap him. How could he think my aunt, a former CIA chemist, could possibly be so stupid? But it was too late. Jake had wandered into the minefield.

“You noticed I had company? How did you notice that, Jake?”

“Well, we saw the limousine pull up and…”

“Saw the limousine, did you?” she echoed dangerously.

Jake nodded. A slight smile tugged at the corners of Sylvia Talluchi’s lips as my aunt let Jake swallow the bait.

“So you’ve been waiting outside my house for almost an hour, have you?”

Jake, former Special Forces operative, suddenly realized now how badly he’d underestimated my aunt.

“Yes, ma’am.” It was a weak tone for such a big man.

“Right out here in the van, were you?”

He nodded.

“Both of you?” she murmured, her eyes boring into my soul.

“Aunt Lucy, you’ve been disappearing for hours at a time without any explanation ever since we got back from the beach. We were worried. There were those flowers that kept arriving mysteriously and then the notes. You gotta admit, you were worried, too. We were only trying to protect you!”

Damn. Too late for Stella Valocchi the Brilliant Former Cop, too.

“So, I suppose it didn’t occur to you that if I was no longer worried and if I chose not to say where I’d been that I might no longer feel concerned about my secret admirer? Furthermore,” she said, her voice rising just enough to let me know the depth of emotion that lay behind the words, “did it ever occur to you that perhaps my private life is none of your business?”

“And what if this man was conning you? What if he…”

My aunt cut me off with a look. “So, now I’m not capable of discerning danger for myself? Now I’m suddenly feeble-minded and incompetent? What next, we have a hearing and I get placed in one of those homes?”

“Sweet mother in heaven!” Sylvia Talluchi cried. “Betrayed, by your own family!” She crossed herself and looked up at the sky above our heads. “Father, forgive them,” she whispered.

“No, nothing like that!”

“Humph! I think it’s exactly like that.”

Okay, not withstanding the fact that Aunt Lucy thought Lloyd was Uncle Benny reincarnated, she was one of the sanest women I knew. And I had hurt her beyond all comprehension. I saw it in her eyes.

“Aunt Lucy, I was just worried. I’m sorry. I should’ve know better.”

Aunt Lucy slowly shook her head, looking at me with a mournful gaze that completely broke my heart.

“Yes, cara mia, you should have known better, but you didn’t.”

She let her gaze shift to Jake, the man I knew she loved almost more than she loved me, the man more like a son to her than a family friend. Slowly her eyes traveled the length of his body, down to his feet and back up again.

“And you,” she said. “Stunade! You have broken my heart.”

“Aunt Lucy, I…”

“You lied to me! Both of you lied to me!” Her eyes glittered with anger and pain.

“We only wanted what was best for you. We didn’t want to see you get hurt!” I cried.

Aunt Lucy sniffed imperiously.

“I don’t need that kind of help,” she said softly. “I need love and I need family, but I don’t need to be treated like a child. If I want privacy, you should respect my wishes.”

Now my back was up. I had acted out of love. I wanted to protect my aunt.

“Well, I was only trying to look out for you,” I said, stung. “I didn’t realize you needed so much privacy. I thought we were closer than that. Maybe you need more privacy than I thought.” Jake dug his elbow into my ribs in a warning but I was too far gone to stop. “Maybe I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

“Maybe you have,” Aunt Lucy said quietly. Without another word, she turned and walked back across the empty street, up the steps to her row house and inside, closing the door firmly. In the echoing silence that followed I heard the solid click of the dead bolt as it shot home.

Mrs. Talluchi, not to be outdone, glared at me. “Put-tan!” she spat. Turning to Jake, she narrowed her eyes and stared hard at his chest. “Ha! I was right!”

She stomped off down the street and up the spotless marble steps to her row house. I turned to Jake, puzzled until I caught sight of his chest. He’d buttoned his shirt wrong, making his shirttails uneven and leaving no doubt as to what we’d been doing in the van. To further seal the verdict, his fly was undone and he was only wearing one sock.

“Great!” I said. “Look at you.”

Jake looked down and shrugged. “Well, it’s not like you gave me an option,” he grumbled. “You threw open the door and I did the best I could.”

I looked across the street at my aunt’s front door. “What are we going to do now?”

It was a rhetorical question. I moved past Jake and climbed back into the van, this time settling myself in the passenger seat where I waited for him to slide behind the wheel.

“Where to, boss?” he asked as we pulled away from the curb.

I shrugged. I was already going to hell, what did it matter where we went in the interim? And then I remembered Bitsy Blankenship.

“The office. If I’m going to need to rent an apartment, I’d better start making enough money to pay for it. Let’s do a little background work before Bitsy comes at two.”

Jake nodded. Neither one of us was as enthusiastic as we would’ve usually been about the prospect of new business, not with Aunt Lucy feeling as she did. How had our good intentions suddenly turned to shit?

I reached into my jacket pocket, retrieved my cell phone and punched in my younger cousin, Nina’s, number. I needed to share the misery.

She answered on the first ring. “Peace, baby!” she cried. She sounded so happy I almost hated to burst her bubble with my worries, but the hesitation was overridden by the need to find a soft shoulder to cry on.

“Oh, no, you didn’t.” Nina sounded horrified.

So much for sympathy.

This was followed by more questions, muffled relays of information to her girlfriend, Spike, the former assistant D.A. turned performance artist, and more cries of disbelief. Apparently, Nina “resonated” with my aunt’s “cosmic energy” and was as appalled as Aunt Lucy had been.

“I don’t know, Stel,” she said finally. “I’ve gotta look up your chart again. I think your sun is in some serious retrograde.”

“Let me talk to Spike,” I said, disgusted.

“Where are you?” Spike said without preamble.

“Heading into the office. We’ve got a new client in about an hour and a half.”

“We’ll meet you there,” she said and severed the connection.

That was Spike for you. Sensible. Level-headed. The polar opposite of my cousin, Nina. How the two ever fell in love was a complete mystery to me, but love it was. They’d been seeing each other for almost two years and they never seemed to hit a bump in the road. Their love just grew with every passing day. Why couldn’t I be certain that a man could love me like Spike loved Nina?

“They’re going to meet us at the office,” I told Jake.

He nodded, lost in his own thoughts. He looked as miserable as I felt.

Neither of us spoke on the short drive across town. Glenn Ford, Pennsylvania, is idyllic in many ways. It sits an hour outside of Philadelphia, close to Amish country, and is lush with verdant farmland and historic fieldstone houses. It was a wonderful small-town environment to grow up in and a great place to return to when my life fell apart in Florida, but today it was just a bit too small for my liking. There was nowhere to hide from the reminders of the importance of Aunt Lucy in my life.

She was everywhere; in the park behind the elementary school where she’d spent hours with me after my parents’ deaths, consoling, talking and, more often than not, just sitting silently, a witness to the tears of loss and longing. I remembered countless shopping expeditions to Guinta’s Grocery Store or Reeder’s Newsstand, or any number of small shops that lined Lancaster Avenue. By the time we’d reached the offices of Valocchi Investigations, it was all I could do to hold back the tears.

Jake avoided looking at me as he unlocked the front door to the entryway that led to our office and climbed the flight of steps to the second floor. I knew he felt my misery and was giving me time to pull myself together.

Once inside, I went immediately to the computer, determined to throw myself into busywork until Bitsy Blankenship arrived for her two-o’clock appointment.

I Googled Bitsy’s name, her maiden as well as her married name, Margolies, and began searching for anything that would tell me about her life since high school. It was just better to know a bit about potential clients before they came strolling in to give you a story that usually had gaps or outright fabrications included. Knowing Bitsy from high school precluded the matter of aliases, so catching up, I figured, would be easy.

Not so. Bitsy, deceptively brilliant for a blond, cheerleader, girly-girl type, had attended Virginia Tech after high school, majoring in electrical engineering of all things. The next fifty or so articles detailed Bitsy’s engagement and subsequent marriage to David Margolies, whom she apparently met sometime during her college career. Margolies was a junior diplomat, an attaché with the U.S. mission in Slovenia. He was also apparently a shining star because he and Bitsy had been moved around frequently as David gained more authority and climbed the diplomatic ladder.

I was reading a detailed account of a party Bitsy and David had attended at the British Embassy when Nina and Spike arrived. Nina’s face was flushed and she was out of breath from her run up the flight of steps to the office. Her blond hair, streaked this week with metallic purple, stood out at wild angles all over her head. Spike followed her at a more leisurely pace. Cool, calm and collected as usual, she strolled into the room with not one long brunette hair out of place.

Nina, as usual, did the talking for the two of them, her words accented by wild arm movements.

“Oh. My. God!” she cried. “I’m sorry we’re late, but ohmigod! We were at the mall, you know, and like, there was just total chaos!”

I looked past Nina to Spike for verification. She nodded, as if Nina was absolutely right and the mall was a complete mob scene.

“Really? Big sale, huh?”

Nina’s eyes widened. “No! Do you two not listen to the radio or what?”

Jake came into my office, drawn by Nina’s increasingly excited tone.

“What’s all the excitement?”

I rolled my eyes. “Nina was at the mall and it was a zoo.”

Nina stomped her foot impatiently. “No, really! We thought we’d never get out, I think every fire truck and police car in town was there. They cordoned off the entire west side of the mall parking and they were hustling people out of the area and telling them the mall was closing!”

“Bomb scare?” Jake prompted.

Nina shook her head. “No, a bomb. A real bomb!”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Turn on the news if you don’t believe me. Some lady’s car blew up with her inside it! It was like, just so totally gruesome!”

She had our complete attention now.

Spike walked over to the tiny television set that sat on my bookcase, picked up the remote and hit the power button. Sure enough, a reporter stood in front of the mall, the yellow crime-scene tape running the length of the screen behind her, fire trucks and police cruisers everywhere. She looked grim as she leaned forward to speak to her audience.

“The sedan, a late model Lexus, had diplomatic plates, but the victim, a woman in her late twenties, has not been formally identified pending a positive identification and notification of her family.”

I looked up at the clock on the wall and realized it was 2:10. Somehow time had slipped away from me. I looked back at the burnt-out shell of a car in the mall parking lot with growing apprehension. Bitsy Blankenship was ten minutes late.