What Stella Wants. Nancy Bartholomew
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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?
Chapter 3
Brookhaven Manor sat on a small knoll overlooking the bypass just outside Glenn Ford. It could’ve been any generic nursing home in any town in America with its low-slung, redbrick exterior and the long front porch lined with white rocking chairs. I stared up at the building wondering if rocking chairs were a requirement of aging. Every assisted-living and retirement home I’d ever visited had them.
Jake parked in the small visitors’ lot and studied the grounds. “Nice for old people, bad for security,” he muttered.
I surveyed the tree-filled grounds, noting the many paths and benches tucked away into what would normally be cozy nooks for chatting or reading but were now a haven for hiding out or trespassing unseen.
“A regular nightmare,” I agreed.
We hadn’t even reached the massive glass front doors before Marygrace Llewellen was outside,