was as obvious he didn’t mean a bit of what he was saying. He let the words slip out slowly, as if he was feeling uncertain and weak. When Aunt Lucy patted his arm, Jake, man of stone, actually faked a wince. I could’ve thrown up. What a con!
“Yeah, Aunt Lucy,” I said. “Jake’s gonna be fine. Besides, where would you put him anyhow? All the bedrooms are taken with me and Nina and Spike there. I’ll look in on him at his apartment. It’s just a flesh wound. He’ll be fine.”
Wrong. I would’ve been better off taking a two-by-four and hitting myself in the head. Now I had incurred the wrath of Aunt Lucy.
“Stella Luna Valocchi!” she cried. Then she lapsed into Italian, which was unusual considering she was born and raised in the United States and learned Italian in college while also completing her Ph.D. in chemistry. But whatever the source of her rich vocabulary of Italian curses, the results were going to be the same. Jake was coming home with us, whether Jake liked it or not.
To add insult to further injury, the police, in the form of one very pissed-off and familiar female detective, materialized just as Aunt Lucy had Jake leaning on her arm and hobbling toward the exit.
Detective Poltrone, a bleached blonde with a brain deficiency, stood blocking our exit, notepad in hand and smug satisfaction written all over her face.
“Not so fast, kids,” she said. “I’ve got a report of a gunshot wound here and I’m thinking that somehow it has something to do with a burned-out sedan smoldering out off Route 322. How’s about we talk awhile?”
Aunt Lucy was incensed. “Can’t you see this man’s in pain?” she sputtered. “He can’t talk to you now. They gave him medicine. He won’t know what he’s saying!”
Jake’s eyes were a bit glassy, I thought, looking at him, and he had a goofy smirk on his face. Was it the pain medicine, or was he just enjoying himself too much?
Aunt Lucy didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she offered me up like a sacrificial lamb.
“Stella was there. She’ll be glad to answer all your questions, won’t you?” Before I could open my mouth, Aunt Lucy went on. “I’m taking Mr. Carpenter home to my house. You can call tomorrow and I’ll let you know if he’s up to speaking. In the meantime, good night!”
The two of them left me at the mercy of the dragon lady, without so much as a backward glance.
I turned back to her with a resigned sigh. “Let’s get this over with.”
Detective Poltrone smiled. “This could take quite some time,” she said.
“Dead bodies usually do,” I muttered.
“Dead bodies?” Poltrone blurted. “What dead bodies?”
I stared at her. Surely the two men in the car had died, hadn’t they?
“Nothing. I thought you were talking about a burned-out car. I just figured…”
Poltrone was waiting for me to stick my foot all the way down my throat, and I had been about to oblige her.
“Nothing. Now about this shooting. You see, it was a simple repossession gone wrong…”
I started talking and Detective Poltrone began writing in her slow, laborious scrawl. I knew without a doubt we’d be stuck like this for another hour, and then what did I have to look forward to? Jake Carpenter would be asleep, most certainly given my bed in the guest room, and I’d be the one sleeping on Uncle Benny’s old couch in the basement.
In reality, it was worse. Not only did I return home at dawn to catch a few hours of shut-eye in the dank basement, but I was also the one who got elected to carry trays up to the wounded warrior all day and wait on him hand and foot while my aunt glowered at me for being “unappreciative.”
“There’s plenty of room, Stella,” Jake whispered, patting the vacant side of the bed. “You don’t have to sleep in that cold, drafty basement. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.” He patted his bandaged side gently and smiled up at me. “After all, you heard what the doc said, no strenuous physical activity.”
“Oh, yeah, like you would listen to someone else’s instructions,” I said. “I know you, Jake Carpenter. I wouldn’t be in this bed two seconds before you made a move.”
Jake smiled and gave me that look that made my stomach dive into a free fall. “Well,” he said, “it wouldn’t be strenuous physical activity if you were the one on top.”
I didn’t dignify that with an answer. I spun on my heel and tromped back down the stairs to the kitchen, planning my revenge on Jake Carpenter and then revising it to include more forms of slow torture.
My cousin, Nina, was waiting for me. She was sitting at the kitchen table, a deep frown furrowing lines across her forehead as she stared at a blank piece of white paper. When I slammed Jake’s tray down onto the countertop she jumped, her pen skidded and a long, jagged black line snaked its way across the clean, unblemished surface of the paper.
“See?” she cried. “That’s just what I was trying to tell you! If you don’t have a goal, your life lacks direction. You become just like the line on this paper.”
I looked around, thinking maybe she was talking to Spike and I hadn’t seen her.
“You talking to me?” I asked.
Nina looked around the empty kitchen. “You see anybody else standing here? Of course I’m talking to you! Who else would I be talking to?” She sighed, took up her pen again and frowned at me. “Jake got shot because you didn’t have a plan.”
Oh, right, another country heard from.
“Nina, Jake got shot because Joey Smack’s people had guns.”
Nina shook her head and smiled like I was stupid.
“No, he didn’t. He got shot because you thought we should pool our talents into an agency that helps people in trouble, only you wound up taking a repo job on account of you didn’t have a mission statement.”
“No, Jake got shot on account of they had guns and Jake wasn’t expecting them.”
Nina smiled as if I’d made her point for her. “Bingo!” she cried. “If we’d all planned what this agency was about and what kinds of jobs we wanted to take on, then we would’ve been prepared. You wouldn’t go fix a faucet without a wrench or something, would you?”
As she spoke, I saw Spike appear in the doorway, her head cocked to one side as she listened. I turned to appeal to her.
“So do you think it’s my fault Jake got shot, too?” I asked.
Spike shrugged and walked over to the table.
“I think Nina has a point.” She spoke slowly, as if weighing her words. “I mean, granted, we’ve all got skills in the same area. I’m a lawyer and you used to be a cop. Jake’s former Special Ops and Nina’s… Well, Nina’s…” She paused and smiled at her girlfriend. “Nina’s just Nina. Now, while it was a good idea to decide to go to work together, we haven’t really talked about it since then. All we did was rent office space. You
