What Stella Wants

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?

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, hurrying toward us with a grim expression on her face.

“Don’t go in yet,” she said. “I want to tell you something.” She looked over her shoulder, as if checking for pursuers, then turned back. “I’ve talked to some of the staff and apparently there was an as-needed PRN attendant on duty last night. She was sent by the staffing service we regularly use but it was her first time with us.”

“Was she assigned to Baby?” I asked.

“No, but one of the nurses saw her in that hall and directed her back to her assigned post. At the time she figured the girl was just lost, but in light of what happened later…”

Marygrace looked back over her shoulder again, obviously nervous. “She’s back again today, that’s what I wanted to tell you. I haven’t spoken with her and the police haven’t made it out here yet to take their report, either, so I thought I’d leave her to you guys.”

I smiled. “Good thinking, Marygrace. Where is she?”

“Follow me. They have her working on the North Hall today. I asked the charge nurse to have her wait for me in the conference room.” Marygrace turned and set off rapidly through the entrance doors, across the wide linoleum foyer and down a hallway that ran to the left of the entry.

When we reached the North Hall nurses’ station, Marygrace stopped and motioned to a large, heavy-set black woman in white scrubs.

“Is she in the conference room?”

The woman nodded. “Should be. That’s where I told her to go, but her English isn’t too good.” The nurse shook her head. “I wish they’d send us some help that we can actually communicate with. Half the time they babble off something and I don’t know what they’re saying.”

Marygrace pointed to a room at the end of the hallway as Jake’s pager went off, startling both of us and causing a little man in a wheelchair to stop and stare at Jake.

“It’s a call-out, ain’t it?” he said. He looked irritated. “Damned things! Tell ’em I’m off and ain’t no way I’m coming in!” With this, he rolled off down the hallway.

Marygrace smiled. “He’s a retired firefighter. He thinks he’s still on duty.”

Jake’s expression changed imperceptibly but I saw his eyes darken and knew something was up.

“Go on ahead and get started with her,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I’d better check in with Spike.” He withdrew his cell phone from his pocket and turned to walk away from us. Whatever it was, it was serious and it was not something he wanted Marygrace to overhear.

I covered for him by starting off toward the conference room with Marygrace. “Now, I don’t want to scare her, so why don’t you introduce me as a friend of Baby’s instead of a P.I.?”

Marygrace bobbed her head up and down in agreement as she reached for the door handle and led me into the large room. Windows overlooking a pond and the woods beyond them lined the far wall and gave the room a feeling of unending space. A massive conference table flanked by leather chairs took up most of the room. I looked around, noting the sparse countertops that lined the other walls and the impersonal art that had been hung in an attempt to add warmth to the stiff furniture. It was the standard conference room. It was also empty.

Marygrace took one look and stuck her head out the door. “Sandra, she’s not in here. Page her, would you?”

Someone else walked by the room and I heard Marygrace asking her if she’d seen the CNA.

“I saw her go into the ladies’ room about five minutes ago,” the female voice answered.

I intervened. “Where’s the ladies’ room?” I asked Marygrace. “I think I’ll go check. Give me her name and a brief description.” My internal alarm system was beginning to sound the red alert. I scanned the hallway for Jake and didn’t see him anywhere. This wasn’t going so well and we’d only just arrived.

“The ladies’ room is back off the lobby next to the dining room. The girl’s name is Aida. She’s tall, with long, dirty-blond hair that’s got a perm, you know, so it sort of falls in ringlets. She’s thin and she’ll be wearing scrubs, probably green. The agency we use gives their temps complementary uniforms and most of them wear those.”

I started off down the hallway with Marygrace on my heels.

“You’d better stay back there, in case Aida comes back. We wouldn’t want to miss her.”

Surprisingly, Marygrace didn’t question me and returned to the room.

I kept looking for Jake as I walked up the hallway but he was nowhere to be found. As I passed the lobby, I looked down the opposite hallway, but he wasn’t there, either. Now where had he disappeared to?

The ladies’ room was clearly labeled in big white letters. I paused in front of the door, pulled my Lady Smith out of its holster and dropped it into my jacket pocket just in case, then slowly entered the restroom.

It was a small, three-stall room with two sinks and a window above the heating unit at the far end of the room. As I watched, a green ass and a pair of legs vanished through the open window.

“Hey!” I cried and went into autopilot. I ran, scaled the metal heater and scrambled up the side of the wall and through the open window.

There was a six-foot drop to the ground below. I looked up and saw a figure in green scrubs running across the back parking lot, headed for the woods and thought, why me? Where’s Jake? Damn!

I jumped, dropping hard to my knees before straightening and pursuing my quarry into the woods. She had a good head start on me but I was in shape, and with effort, I began to slowly close the gap between us. And then she disappeared. She simply vanished into the thick stand of pine trees in front of me.

I stopped, stuck my hand into my jacket pocket and brought out the gun.

“Aida,” I called. “I just want to talk to you.”

I stood still, listening. The air was thick with the humidity that signaled an oncoming snowstorm and all the small ordinary sounds. Where was she? I tried to remember the area around the nursing home, searching for a mental map in my mind that would let me guess how she might try to escape so I could anticipate her next move.

Where the hell was Jake when I needed backup?

I crept slowly forward, still listening, barely breathing as I scanned the fir trees ahead of me. I slipped the safety off the Lady Smith and slid my forefinger along the smooth barrel of the gun.

I never saw her coming.

She landed the first blow to the side of my head, a swift, strong punch that I’m certain left knuckle indentations in my skull and sent my gun flying out of my hand. She had a good jump on me, but I landed the next punch. I whirled around, caught sight of cold, green eyes and faked right before upper-cutting her with a solid left.

Neither of us said a word. We fought in silence, each too intent on landing the finishing blow. I felt the air sail out of her lungs as I landed a kick to her solar plexus. Her answering move threw me off my feet and onto the hard ground. I saw my gun lying a short distance away and rolled to grab it. My fingers had just closed around the firm metal grip when lights exploded somewhere behind my left ear and the world around me swirled into an inky darkness.

When I came to, Aida had vanished. I thought I heard footsteps running away in the distance, but it could easily have been the anguished pounding of my head. I struggled to my feet, leaned against a nearby pine tree and waited for the world to stop spinning around me. What had that girl hit me with?

“Stella!”

Great. Now he shows up. I could hear Jake getting closer but when I tried to answer the only sound that escaped was a thin, high-pitched squeak. When he finally caught sight of me, he stopped and stared.

“What did you do, hit a tree?”

I just looked at him. Well, actually, I looked at two of him for a moment before my vision cleared. Jake was attempting to play, but his concern was evident in his eyes. I’d scared him.

“I opened a can of whoop ass on this tree here and then I used what I had left over on that little nurse’s aide Marygrace wanted us to interview.”

Jake looked around the clearing. “What’d you do then, bury her?”

I let go of the tree and took a few uncertain steps toward him. “No, idiot, I let her crawl off into the woods to die. It was the only honorable thing to do.”

He nodded. “She cold-cocked you and got away, huh?”

I looked past him and started walking back toward the nursing home. “Yeah, something like that.”

Jake stopped me, studying my face before gently tracing the area around my left eye with his thumb.

“Ouch! Stop that!”

He smiled softly. “You’re gonna have a hell of a shiner.”

“Yeah, well you should see her!”

Jake sighed as I shrugged off his attempt to support me while I walked.

“Where were you, anyway? Here I am, attempting to whoop some scrawny girl’s ass and you’re chatting with Spike on the phone. Where’s your sense of duty? You’re supposed to back up your partner.”

Jake’s expression darkened. “I hope you’re kidding. If somebody hadn’t seen you running and told Marygrace, I’d still be looking for you. I had no idea you’d get into something so fast.”

“Yes, I was kidding. What did Spike want?”

“Among other things, she called to tell me the coroner was about to send Bitsy’s body to the state forensic lab for identification when the feds stepped in and claimed it.”

“How’d they explain that?”

“They told the coroner she was married to a member of the diplomatic corps and that he’d requested it.”

“Which was bullshit, right?”

Jake nodded. “Yep. Guess there’s no doubt about it. She was still on the payroll.”

We’d reached the front entrance to the building, and Marygrace was waiting for us. When she caught sight of me, her expression ran the gamut from surprised to horrified to professionally neutral. I figured I had to look pretty scary to make her pull out her job face.

“Looks like you need a little doctoring,” she said. “Our physician’s assistant, Stephanie, can take a look at you.”

“I’m fine. I just got a little scraped up, that’s all.”

Marygrace raised an eyebrow. “Well, I just thought you might not want to scare the residents. Come on. Let her patch you up. Besides, I figured you’d want to talk to her anyway. She’s the one who usually looks after the residents in place of the doctor.”

I nodded, wishing my head didn’t hurt so much. “You don’t have a doctor on staff?”

Marygrace was scuttling down the hallway but the mention of expense and doctors made her pause momentarily. “With Medicaid paying? Hell, places like this don’t get real doctors. We get their P.A. and if it’s really bad, we might see them at the end of the day, when they’re already too tired and could care less about whether one old person lives or dies.” She apparently thought better of this because she quickly tacked on a disclaimer. “Not all of them are sharks. I’m just saying most of them are.”