Takedown Twenty: A Stephanie Plum Novel

by Evanovich, Janet

  We retreated to the car, and sat there for a moment.

  “Any ideas?” I asked Ranger.

  “Babe.”

  “Any ideas about finding Sunny?”

  “If he’s as frustrated as I am, he’ll be at Rita’s,” Ranger said.

  Twenty minutes later we were parked across from Rita’s house. Lights were on. Shades were drawn. No car in the driveway.

  “Let’s talk to her,” Ranger said, getting out of the SUV.

  I scrambled to catch up to him. “Just like that? No snooping first?”

  “If I’m going to sneak around in the bushes with you, I’m not wasting time looking in Rita Raguzzi’s windows.”

  “Okay then. Good to know. Snooping first is tedious anyway. Let’s just knock on her door.”

  Ranger rapped a couple times and Rita answered. She looked at me, and she looked at Ranger. She did a slow whole-body scan of Ranger, head to toe, and she smiled.

  “At least you came with a present this time,” she said to me.

  “We’re looking for Sunny.”

  “He’s not here, but tall, dark, and handsome is welcome to come in for a drink.”

  “Tall, dark, and handsome is going to pass on that offer,” I told her, “but keep me in mind if Sunny drops dead in your bed and you want to get rid of him.”

  We left Rita and headed out of her neighborhood.

  “Is it likely Sunny will drop dead in Rita’s bed?” Ranger asked.

  “He has a bad heart.”

  I was out of ideas for finding Sunny, so I had Ranger take me home. He walked me to my door, and waited while I unlocked it.

  “Would you like to come in?” I asked him.

  “Is this invitation out of passion or pity?”

  “Do you care?”

  Ranger smiled. “No.”

  The truth is, I felt inviting him in was the least I could do after declining Rita’s invitation on his behalf. I mean I’d be a really terrible person if I didn’t compensate him for that, right? At least give him a glass of wine. Tell him how appreciative I was for all he did for me.

  I hung my bag on the hook in the foyer and went into the kitchen.

  “Would you like a glass of wine?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  “Pretzels? I went food shopping. I have crackers and cheese.”

  He shook his head, closed in on me, and I felt the first stab of panic.

  “Um,” I said.

  Ranger pulled back and looked at me. “Really?”

  I sucked in some air. “I can’t do this. I’m almost engaged.”

  And the hideous part was that I really wanted to do it. I wanted to do it bad.

  He brushed a kiss across my lips. “You know where to find me. In the meantime you can drive my car.”

  “The 911 Turbo?”

  “My fleet car. I’ll have one dropped off.”

  EIGHTEEN

  I WENT TO nine o’clock mass. The last time I’d gone to mass was Easter, and my mother had made me go. I heard people gasp when I walked into the church. I’m sure they were wondering what horrible thing I’d done that had driven me to attend mass. Fortunately or unfortunately, however you were looking at it, the horrible thing was all in my mind. I’d thrashed around all night in a sweat over Ranger. On the one hand I felt good that I’d done right by Morelli and sent Ranger home. It was the other hand that was giving me problems. The other hand wanted to wrap itself around Ranger’s most perfect body part and not let go.

  I stopped in at my parents’ house after mass. My grandmother was at the kitchen table doing a Jumble, and my mother was ironing.

  “Now what?” I asked my mother. “Why are you ironing?”

  “Since when can’t a person iron?” my mother said.

  “You iron on Thursdays after you do the laundry. Ironing on Sunday is mental health ironing. You probably ironed this same shirt ten times.”

  “It’s breast cancer, isn’t it? You found a lump. It’s from those sports bras you wear.”

  “I don’t have breast cancer.”

  “Then why did you go to church? Harriet Chumsky called and said she saw you at mass.”

  “I just felt like going to mass.”

  “Omigosh,” my mother said. “You’re pregnant.”

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  “There’s something,” my mother said. “You don’t just go to mass. Are you sure it’s not cancer?”

  “It’s not cancer!” I helped myself to a cup of coffee and added cream. “How did the date go last night?” I asked Grandma.

  “It was pretty good. We went to the diner for rice pudding, only thing is he had car troubles when we came out, and he had to call his nephew to come get the engine started. He said he’s thinking about buying a new car. I wouldn’t mind that on account of his car right now is gray. If I’m going out with a guy who’s shorter than me and has asthma, I think he should at least have a red car.”

  “I don’t trust him,” my mother said. “He’s too happy. And he’s not from the Burg. What do we know about him? Where does he live?”

  “He’s got an apartment in one of those buildings by the DMV,” Grandma said. “I haven’t been there yet. It turns out he isn’t as hot as people said.”

  “Melvina Gillian was talking about a new boyfriend just before she was killed,” I said to Grandma. “Do you know if any of the other women had boyfriends?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “How about your friends now? Is there anyone talking about having a new boyfriend?”

  “You mean besides me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I haven’t heard anything,” Grandma said. “It’s hard to get a boyfriend when you’re a certain age. All the good ones are dead. Do you think there’s some Don Juan going around sweettalking the ladies and then throwing them into a Dumpster?”

  I took a cookie out of the cookie jar and dunked it in my coffee. “It’s possible.”

  And if you wanted to stretch your imagination the Don Juan could be Gordon, I thought. Or maybe Gordon and an accomplice.

  “Wouldn’t that be something,” Grandma said. “Sometimes life is like a television show. I wouldn’t mind seeing this Don Juan. I bet he’s got a red car. Or maybe it’s not some Don Juan. Maybe it’s some mob guy. It came to me last night that these women could have owed the wrong people money. What if they were gambling, and they couldn’t pay up?”

  “What kind of gambling?” I asked her. “Off-track betting? Late-night poker?”

  “Online Bingo,” Grandma said.

  “What makes you think they were gambling online?” I asked Grandma.

  “I tried playing a couple times. It’s real cutthroat Bingo. You got to pay to play, and you could sink a lot of money into it if you keep playing and don’t win anything.”

  “Did all the murdered women play?”

  “I don’t know about all of them, but I know Bitsy Muddle was on all the time. And I was playing once when Lois was playing. I knew it was them because I knew their handles. Bitsy was ‘Little Bit,’ and Lois was ‘Hotsy Totsie.’ ”

  “When did they play?”

  “Just about every night, but usually not until after nine o’clock,” Grandma said. “There’s other things to do up to nine o’clock. Television shows and real-life Bingo.”

  My mother had stopped ironing. “This is the first I heard about this.”

  “That’s because you don’t play Bingo, and you sleep at night,” Grandma said. “When you get older you nod off all day long, and then you don’t need to go to bed so early.”

  “I find it hard to believe those women were running up gambling debts,” my mother said.

  “That’s just one of my theories,” Grandma said. “It could also have been aliens from some other galaxy that got them. And the aliens needed money but they didn’t need any old ladies.”

  “If I wanted to drop in and watch the Bingo games, how would I do it?” I asked Grandma.

  “I can gi
ve you the website. There’s lots of online gambling sites, but mostly I only hear talk about this one that comes off an island in the Caribbean.”

  I got the information from Grandma, finished my coffee, and stood to leave.

  “You can stop ironing,” I said to my mother. “I don’t have cancer. I’m not pregnant. And Grandma isn’t gambling her Social Security checks away playing online Bingo.”

  “There’s always tomorrow,” my mother said.

  I left my parents’ house and drove past Joe’s mother’s house. It was only a few blocks away so it wasn’t a huge effort. I idled for a moment and moved on. There was no indication that Sunny had returned, and I wasn’t about to knock on the door without good reason.

  My real destination was Victory Hardware. I was going to buy a vacuum cleaner. I had no idea if Victor carried them, but it seemed like a good place to start.

  Snoot ambled up to me when I walked in. Snoot wasn’t nearly as old as Victor, but he had the same deeply lined dead-skin look of a lifelong heavy smoker. If I had to guess I would say he was in his forties. He was about six feet tall, and lanky, walking slouched and loose-jointed. His thinning brown hair was pulled back into a low ponytail.

  “Yuh?” he asked me.

  “Is Victor here?”

  “He stepped out to get us eats.”

  “I’m looking for a vacuum cleaner.”

  “We don’t have none of those. We had a couple of ’em years ago, but they took up too much space, so Victor never got any more in. If you want a vacuum cleaner you should go to the Hoover store two blocks down. You can’t go wrong with a Hoover.”

  “There’s a Hoover store?”

  “It’s part of the tattoo parlor. They sell Hoovers and sewing machines, and you can get a tattoo. I’ve seen some fine tattoos come out of there.”

  “Did you know any of the women who were murdered and left in Dumpsters?”

  “You mean like Mrs. Fratelli? She came in here all the time.”

  “Did you know any of the others?”

  “Nope. Don’t think so.”

  “You didn’t kill them, did you?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  I drove two blocks and parked in front of Fancy Dan’s Tattoo Parlor. The front of the store had a vacuum cleaner display, and the back was given over to the tattoo business.

  A heavily tattooed guy approached me and introduced himself as Fancy Dan. “I bet you’d like a rose tattooed on your shoulder,” he said to me. “I’m pretty good at knowing these things.”

  “Not today,” I told him. “I want a vacuum cleaner.”

  “Usually my wife sells the vacuum cleaners,” he said, “but she had to take the dog to the vet for his annual. Do you have carpet or wood floors?”

  “Carpet.” I looked at the lineup of display vacuum cleaners and found one that was exactly like my mother’s. “I’ll take that one,” I said.

  Ten minutes later I was on the road with my new vacuum. I took it home, plugged it in, and cleaned my apartment, wishing I could have the same success at cleaning up my life. My life was a mess. I had a crappy job, no car of my own, and too many men in my bed… at least mentally.

  “I’m going to fix it,” I said to Rex. “I’m going to start with Morelli. I’m going over to his house and talk to him about our relationship. And then I’m going to apprehend the gang guy Connie just gave me, so I have money to buy a car.” I dropped a peanut into Rex’s cage. “I don’t know what the heck I’m going to do about getting a better job. It’s not like I have a bunch of amazing qualifications.”

  By the time I got to Morelli’s house I had my speech all worked out. I had a slow cooker and a vacuum cleaner, and I had plans to get some throw pillows for the couch. I was ready to make a commitment. I didn’t want to be almost engaged. I wanted to be really engaged. I might even want to set a date. After all, I wasn’t getting any younger. If we were going to have a family we should get started. Probably Morelli would be relieved to have me force the issue. Probably he was sitting in his house all alone, nursing his gunshot wound. Poor guy. Just Bob and him.

  I parked on the street, behind his green SUV. I rang the bell and let myself in. The television was blaring, and Kenny and Leo, two of Morelli’s cop buddies, were on the couch. There were beer bottles and chips on the coffee table.

  “He’s in the kitchen,” Leo said. “He’s making up his famous wings.”

  Bob was in the kitchen with Morelli, watching him carefully, hoping for a wing to drop on the floor.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him.

  “Ball game. The Mets are playing.”

  I looked at the platter of wings he was holding. “Leo said you were making up your famous wings. I didn’t know you made wings.”

  “I buy them at Costco. When I want to get fancy, I put them on a plate.”

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Go ahead,” Morelli said. “We can talk while I make my famous blue cheese dressing for the wings.”

  He took a bottle of blue cheese salad dressing out of the fridge and dumped it into a bowl. I heard the front door crash open and lots of screaming and little feet pounding their way to the kitchen.

  “That’s Anthony,” Morelli said. “He’s got the kids today.”

  Little Anthony, Angelina, and Bobby ran in and jumped up and down, yelling.

  “Uncle Joe! Uncle Joe! Uncle Joe!”

  Morelli took a big bag of M&M’s off the counter and threw it into the living room. “Fetch.”

  The kids ran out, and Morelli handed me the platter of wings. “Take this out to the guys.”

  “I didn’t mean to barge in.”

  “You’re not barging.”

  I set the platter on the coffee table, and Morelli’s sister and two more kids arrived.

  “Your sister is here,” I said to Morelli.

  “Yeah, she’s a big Mets fan.”

  “Does this happen a lot?”

  “What?”

  “The party.”

  “It’s not a party. It’s game day.” He pulled two more bags of chips out of a cupboard.

  “Why wasn’t I invited?”

  “No one was invited. People just show up. I can’t get them to stop. Anyway, you don’t want to be here.”

  “Of course I do. You’re my boyfriend. In fact, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Sure,” Morelli said, putting a bottle of beer in my hand. “Go ahead. Talk.”

  “I’ve been thinking about our relationship and how it’s sort of in a holding pattern.”

  A pack of kids ran in, grabbed the bags of chips, and ran out. Bob ran after them. A moment later there was a lot of shrieking and screaming.

  “Omigod,” I said. “What happened?”

  “Bob got the chips,” Morelli said. “It happens all the time. Go ahead. What were you saying?”

  “Maybe this isn’t a good time.”

  Bob galloped through the kitchen with the bag of chips in his mouth and crashed through the screen door. The kids followed him into the backyard and chased him around in circles.

  “I’m listening,” Morelli said. “You wanted to talk about our relationship.”

  “Yes. The thing is… I bought a vacuum cleaner today.”

  Morelli was hands on hips. “A vacuum cleaner.”

  “Yep. And I already used it. And you know I have that slow cooker I won at Bingo.”

  Angelina was at the back door. “Uncle Joe, Bobby rolled in dog poop.”

  “Again? Don’t let him in the house,” Morelli said. “Anthony,” he yelled. “Your kid rolled in dog poop.”

  “Again?” Anthony said. “Why don’t you clean up your damn yard?”

  Anthony walked into the kitchen, and Joe handed him a plastic garbage bag, a roll of paper towels, and dish detergent.

  “What’s he going to do?” I asked Morelli.

  “Turn the hose on him.” He grabbed a six-pack from the fridge and handed it to me. “Take this to
Leo and you’ll miss most of the screaming.”

  I took the six-pack into the living room, handed it to Leo, and the front door opened and Bella walked in. She was carrying a casserole and wearing a Mets ball cap. I turned on my heel and hustled back to the kitchen.

  “Bella’s here!” I said to Morelli.

  “Did she bring the casserole? Is she wearing her lucky hat?”

  “Yes! What is she doing here?”

  “She’s a big Mets fan. I know she’s crazy, but she’s our lucky granny. If she isn’t here with her casserole, she could jinx the Mets.”

  Bobby ran in from the backyard and streaked naked through the kitchen, heading for the living room.

  “Where is she?” Bella screeched. “I saw demon woman.”

  “She’s coming to get me!” I said to Morelli.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Morelli said.

  “No way. I’m out of here.”

  “The conversation …”

  I gave him a fast kiss. “Later.”

  He grabbed me and kissed me, and his kiss had a lot more passion than mine. “Promise?”

  “Yes. Probably. Maybe.”

  I bolted out the door, jumped the hedge to his neighbor’s yard, and sneaked through the narrow alley back to my car. I drove around the block, where I would be out of Bella’s voodoo range, and took a moment to pull myself together.

  Okay, I thought, so that didn’t go exactly as expected. No problem. I’d just back-burner the commitment speech until Morelli’s house emptied out. In fact, now that I’d had time to think about it, I might have been rushing things. Maybe my self-improvement project should start with the new car and new job, and then I could ease into the family scene. And if I was going to be brutally honest I’d have to admit I liked kids but might not be ready for the toddler-rolling-in-dog-poop experience. And an even more painful truth was that I couldn’t wash away my Ranger lust and expect my hormones to be suddenly regulated by an engagement ring. I was going to have to get a grip on the hormones all by myself. And I would have to do it before I made the big commitment speech.

  Without any effort at all on my part, my car somehow drove itself to Rangeman. I idled across the street from the neat seven-story brownstone and stared into the reflective impact-proof windows. I sat there comparing the men in my life, weighing my options, and not having a lot of luck at seeing my future. My future was murky. The crystal ball was hazy.