What Stella Wants. Nancy Bartholomew
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Jersey and from that first moment, they’d been inseparable. When Fang’s owner decided to move to the Caribbean, it seemed only natural that my generous aunt would bring the monstrous beast into the family.
“What about Aunt Lucy’s boyfriend?” I asked, ignoring the dog issues. “You said it was a matter of life and death.”
Nina’s momentary calm dissolved. Her chin quivered and tears filled her eyes. “It’s sooo sad,” she wailed.
“Nina! Just tell me what’s going on!”
“Well, I told you I got the license plate number and well, you know I have that friend, Micky, at the D.M.V.?”
I nodded, encouraging her.
“Well, she got his name.” This produced a fresh spillover of tears. “It’s Arnold Koslovski. He graduated from Glenn Ford High School in 1951, went into the army, then to Villa Nova on a VA loan and then, for some unknown reason, moved to Michigan. I guess that’s where he met his wife, Elizabeth. Anyway, he stayed there and eventually opened his own company. He was some big entrepreneur, owned one of the first chains of electronics stores and then he discovered computers. Everything he touched turned to money. He’s like a gazillionaire or something. There were all these articles about him and his wife doing good deeds and giving away millions.”
Nina blew her nose as the tears continued to fall. Jake squatted down to pet Fang but drew his hand back when Fang snarled.
“Man, she is testy today! Think she could be sick?”
Leave it to a man to change the subject whenever feelings get involved!
“She doesn’t look sick to me. She looks fat and lazy. Maybe living the good life is starting to get on her nerves.”
Lloyd whined and gave his beloved Fang a concerned look. Nina blew her nose again and continued on with her convoluted report.
“Arnold and Aunt Lucy were in the same class,” Nina said. “I found Aunt Lucy’s old yearbook lying out on the coffee table. She must’ve been looking through it.” Nina reached down into her lap and drew an ancient volume up from beneath the table. A napkin marked the page where Arnold Koslovski’s teenage face smiled out at us.
“Nina, this is all well and good, but if there’s a life-threatening situation here, could you just cut to the chase and tell me about it?”
Mistake. Big mistake. Never rush Nina, it only makes the situation and the story last that much longer. My cousin sniffed and scowled at me.
“I am like, totally telling you about this!” she snapped. “You have to know the history and background to understand the gravity of Aunt Lucy’s situation.”
“All right, all right! Do it your way!”
“I will. As I was saying…Aunt Lucy’s been receiving anonymous flowers and cards ever since Uncle Benny died. Then when we were at the beach, you know, on our last case, the flowers started coming there, and there were groceries, too. Well, Arnold must’ve hired people to watch Aunt Lucy. How else could he have found out where we’d gone? And, like, I thought it was totally creepy until I found this!”
Nina shoved a piece of paper at me. It was a copy of an old newspaper article dated 1971. “Kidnapped Koslovski Heiress Found Dead,” was the headline. I read the piece with Jake leaning over my shoulder.
“So the guy’s only kid was killed in a bungled kidnapping?” Jake clearly didn’t get the connection to my aunt.
“Isn’t that awful?” Nina looked at the two of us and seemed to be waiting for us to “get” it. “So, like, the guy doesn’t want anything bad to ever happen to people he loves,” she said with a tone of exaggerated patience. “So, he’s been watching over Aunt Lucy for, like, ever. That’s how he knew Uncle Benny died.”
“Nina, that doesn’t make sense. Why would some guy Aunt Lucy went to high school with have private investigators watch her when she’s married to another guy? That is creepy.”
“No, look!” Nina snatched up the yearbook and flipped to another page she’d marked with a napkin. “See!”
Jake and I stared down at the picture of my aunt as a young girl. “She looks like you,” Jake murmured. “Look at those huge, dark eyes and that hair!” Jake looked at me with a speculative eye. “You had black hair just like hers in high school. What’s with the blond?”
In truth, the blond was a stakeout cover on my first and only big case with the Garden Beach, Florida, Police Department but I liked it and so, as part of starting over, I’d kept it. I ignored Jake and turned my attention back to the yearbook. Spidery blue script covered the margin next to my aunt’s picture.
“Can you read that?” I asked Nina.
“It says, ‘Lucille, wait for me. Our love is eternal. A.’ You see? That proves it!”
“Proves what?”
“That he loved her, even though she didn’t wait and married Uncle Benny. ‘Our love is eternal.’ Isn’t that just too romantic?”
“Not when the guy stalks her for the rest of her life,” I said, concern growing with every new fact Nina trotted out. She didn’t seem at all concerned about this part of Aunt Lucy’s relationship with Arnold Koslovski, so what was bothering her?
“Didn’t you say the guy’s married?” Jake was obviously trying to hone in on the “life or death” issue, too.
“His wife died two years ago,” Nina said. “She had leukemia.” The tears were back in Nina’s eyes. We were getting closer to what was bothering her. “And now…now he’s back in town, looking for his beloved Lucille before…before…”
“Before?”
“Before he dies! Arnold’s dying!”
Okay. Now we had an issue. Aunt Lucy had gone half-crazy after Uncle Benny died. If this Arnold person was dying, how would she take a second loss of a love?
“How do you know the guy’s dying? Are you sure?”
Nina nodded miserably. “Yeah. He was going to buy the old Proctor place, signed the contract and everything, but then he reneged.”
“Nina, how do you know all this? We were only gone, what, half an hour and you found out all this?”
Nina looked even more miserable. “Yeah, told you I’m good.”
“Honey, just because Arnold didn’t buy the Proctor place, it doesn’t mean he’s dying.”
Nina nodded. “I know. I found out about the Proctor deal from Cindy Evans, she works at Burgess Realty and I knew she’d know if somebody like Arnold Koslovski moved back to town. She’s the one who gave me his new address and that’s how come I know he’s dying!”
Jake couldn’t stand another second of this. “What in the hell does that have to do with the man’s health?”
“Because,” Nina said as she looked up at him, “it’s the hospice unit in Honeybrook. Arnold Koslovski couldn’t live there if he wasn’t dying!”
Nina started sobbing and my cell phone began vibrating. I ignored it. A minute later Jake’s cell also went off. Marygrace Llewellen was an impatient woman.
“Guess she wants to know why we haven’t made it to the hospital yet.”
Jake gave me a look that said “And we took this case on as a public service because…why?”
I ignored him and reached for my cell phone. “Go ahead. I’ll take care of her and this situation too.” Nina was still snuffling into a wad of tissues, too lost in her own conclusions about Arnold Koslovski and his relationship with my aunt to pay any attention to us.
“Good luck!” Jake was gone in an instant, probably relieved to have a valid excuse to take off. For