Tricky Twenty-Two: A Stephanie Plum Novel

by Janet Evanovich

  I blew out a sigh.

  “What?” my mother said.

  “I’m not ready to marry Morelli.”

  “Why not? He has a good job. He has a house. He has a nice car.”

  “He’s hot,” Grandma said. “Don’t forget about him being hot.”

  I wondered if there was dessert. There was a white Tasty Pastry bakery box sitting on the counter.

  Grandma saw me look over at it. “Italian cookies,” she said. “Pinwheels and almond horns and pistachio shortbread.” She got up and brought the box to the table.

  “You’re not getting any younger,” my mother said to me. “What are you waiting for? You should bring him to dinner on Friday. I’ll make pot roast.”

  I took a pinwheel. “We broke up.”

  My mother’s eyes got wide. “Broke up? Why?”

  I shrugged. “He dumped me.”

  “What did you do?” my mother asked. “You must have done something.”

  I made a show of looking at my watch. “Oh gosh, look at the time. I have to go. I was wondering if I could borrow Uncle Sandor’s car.”

  “What happened to your car?” my mother asked.

  “It’s having some problems.”

  “Like what? Do you need new tires? A battery?”

  “It got filled with geese,” I said. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  No point trying to hide it. It was probably going to be on the evening news. At the very least I was sure it would make YouTube. Everyone in the parking lot had had their cellphones out, recording the fiasco.

  My mother looked dazed. As if someone had just smacked her in the face with a frying pan. “Geese,” she murmured.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Lula let them out, and the geese were fine.”

  “Dang it. I miss all the good stuff,” Grandma said.

  I grabbed a couple more cookies, stood, and lifted my messenger bag onto my shoulder. “Gotta get back to work.”

  Grandma got the Buick’s key out of the junk drawer and handed it to me. “I got bullets and an extra gun if you need it,” she whispered. “Don’t tell your mother.”

  •••

  I always felt like a failure when I drove Big Blue, because I only drove it when I had no other option. Big Blue represented rock bottom in the automotive department. Jay Leno would have thought it was ultra cool, but I just thought it was ultra hard to drive. And a ’53 Buick wasn’t in keeping with my self-image. Truth is, the Mercedes SUV wasn’t compatible with my self-image, either. I was more a bright yellow Jeep Wrangler, or maybe a zippy red Hyundai.

  I eased the blue behemoth out of the garage and onto the road. I put it in gear, fed it gas, and the car oozed forward. It picked up speed and rolled along like a tank. I turned out of the Burg onto Hamilton Avenue and noticed a red light flashing in my rearview mirror. It was Morelli in his green SUV with a Kojak light stuck onto his roof. I pulled into the small Tasty Pastry parking lot, and he pulled in after me. I got out of the Buick and held my hands up.

  “Funny,” he said. “Put your hands down before someone calls your mother and tells her you’ve been busted.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I saw you drive by, and I thought you would be interested in a ballistics report I just got back. The bullets extracted from Doug Linken and his partner, Harry Getz, are a match. They were fired from the same gun.”

  “So we’ve got one shooter. Do you have the gun?”

  “No.”

  “Have you locked on to a motive?”

  “The obvious is a disgruntled investor, but I’m having a hard time buying it.”

  “There are the wives.”

  “Do you think they’re capable of murder?” Morelli asked.

  “I wouldn’t discount them, given the right circumstances.”

  “I agree, but I’m not sold on them, either.”

  “What are you sold on?”

  “Nothing right now. The autopsy didn’t tell me anything interesting. I’m waiting on some crime scene lab reports. I’m telling you this because it’s my understanding that Ranger has been retained to provide security for the widow Linken. I’m assuming you’ll be part of that party.”

  “You assume correct.”

  “I wouldn’t mind if you snitched for me. I’ll be attending both events, but I won’t have the access you’ll have.”

  “I thought you were handing over your gun and your badge.”

  “It’s a process. There are things I have to set in place first.”

  “Another job?”

  “Yeah. In the meantime I’m doing the one I have as best as I can.”

  “Gee, that’s freakin’ noble of you.”

  “Yep. That’s me. Mr. Noble.”

  “I don’t get it. So you have heartburn. Big deal. Everyone has heartburn. That’s not a good enough reason to stop being a cop. What are you going to do? Sell insurance? Manage a minimart?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You never talked about this with me. We were practically living together, and you never said anything about this.”

  “It’s something I have to figure out on my own.”

  I did an eye roll. “Men.”

  He leaned closer and I thought he was going to kiss me, but it turned out he was looking at my pimple.

  “Is this it?” he asked.

  “It’s better than it was yesterday.”

  “And it’s all my fault?”

  “Yes!”

  He rocked back on his heels and grinned. “Sorry about that.”

  “You don’t look sorry.”

  “I am. I swear. Would you like a donut? Coffee?”

  “No, but thanks. I need to go. Things to do.”

  I slid behind the wheel, and he looked in at me. “Nice seeing you,” he said.

  I did another eye roll. I couldn’t help myself. I watched Morelli drive out of the lot, and then I backtracked a block from the bakery to the office and parked behind Lula’s Firebird.

  Connie looked up when I walked in. “Where’s Lula?”

  “She’s with Hal. I think they’re going to check out some onion rings.”

  “Rangeman Hal?”

  “Yep. It’s been one of those days. Zeta is trying to discourage us from looking for Gobbles. They bombed Lula with a beer balloon, and then they filled the Mercedes with geese.”

  “Real geese?” Connie asked.

  “Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. Anyway, long story short, Ranger dropped me off at my parents’ house so I could get Big Blue, and Lula went with Hal.”

  “I ran all the fraternity brothers through the system and didn’t get any hits around M and Hawthorne,” Connie said.

  The front door to the office burst open and Lula swung in.

  “Holy bejeezus,” Connie said, staring at Lula. “What happened to you?”

  “Geese,” Lula said. “Ungrateful sons-a-bitches.”

  “You have some goose feathers stuck in your hair,” I told her.

  “I know. I’m gonna have to go to the beauty salon and have Ayesha work her magic. I was thinking I needed a color change anyways. Lavender is pretty with my brown skin but it’s limiting, you see what I’m saying? I might need to be a blonde on account of then I can move into the red section of my closet. I’m feeling in a red mood.”

  “Did you get Hal to take you for onion rings?” I asked.

  “He didn’t have time. We waited until the car got loaded onto the flatbed, and then he had to do a patrol run after he dropped me here. It’s just as well since I’m thinking I’m going straight to Ayesha. And then after I’m all beautified I might go out for the onion rings. You all could go with me. It could be a girls’ night out, and we could even look for Gobbles. I’ve been thinking about it, and I bet he comes out of his hidey-hole at night.”

  “I’m in,” Connie said. “I don’t have anything going on tonight.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Me too.”

  “Almost forgot,” Connie said to me. “You got another package. Lo
oks like it’s from Daniel Craig again. No return address. Handwriting looks the same.”

  Oh boy.

  I opened the envelope and pulled out a photograph of a totally ripped naked guy with a huge boner and Daniel Craig’s head. Clearly the head had been photoshopped on.

  “Daniel Craig got a good one,” Lula said.

  “It’s not Daniel Craig,” I said. “Someone put his head on someone else’s body. The skin tones don’t match.”

  “Too bad for Daniel Craig,” Lula said. “He’d like to own that bad boy.”

  Connie looked over my shoulder. “Is that a real penis? It’s massive.”

  “I’ve seen them come that big,” Lula said. “Mostly when they get that big they’re kind of dumb. They haven’t got a lot of talent, if you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, and I didn’t want to ask.

  “There’s something written on the back,” Connie said.

  I turned the picture over and read the inscription. “It says This is the real me.”

  “I think the real me got delusions of grandeur,” Lula said.

  “Do you want the picture?” I asked Lula. “There’s no bath caddy.”

  “I’ll take it anyway,” Lula said. “Things have been slow in the romance department.”

  ELEVEN

  I HAD A peanut butter and olive sandwich for dinner and by eight o’clock I was starving. I’d showered away the beer that had splashed off Lula’s head onto mine. I’d put on clean jeans, a dressy tank top with a matching sweater, and flats, and I was ready for girls’ night out.

  I met Lula and Connie at the office fifteen minutes later. Lula had hair the color of daffodils. It was all braided into cornrows, and she had a bunch of extensions that reached her shoulders. She’d squashed herself into a fire-engine-red bandage dress that was intended for a much smaller woman but seemed to work for Lula. She had matching lipstick, and she was wearing matching fancy Louboutin knockoffs.

  Connie was still wearing work clothes. Tight black pencil skirt that came to an inch above her knees, tight white scoop-necked top that showed a lot of cleavage, chunky gold necklace, earrings, and cuff bracelet, and gold wedge heels. Connie was a couple years older than me and a lot more Italian. My hair was out of control by birth. Hers was by design.

  We all piled into the Firebird and Lula drove us to M Street and Hawthorne. We rode around several blocks before parking, keeping our eyes open for Gobbles.

  “I’m going with the girlfriend,” Connie said.

  I had no opinion. I was thinking about Morelli. He was a really good cop. I couldn’t imagine him being anything else. Of course, until a couple days ago I also couldn’t have imagined him dumping me. Not that this was our first breakup. Morelli and I had a long history of breakups. None of the previous ones had been done naked. The naked thing was really irksome.

  Lula parked, and we all sashayed into the bar and scoped it out. Two booths were filled. Four men were at the bar. No Gobbles.

  We settled into a booth and ordered burgers and fries, onion rings, and a pitcher of beer.

  “Do you ever think about getting a different job?” I asked Connie.

  “Every day.”

  “Not me,” Lula said. “I like my job.”

  “That’s because you don’t have one,” Connie said. “You wander into the office when you feel like it. You drive Stephanie around. You make fried chicken and donut runs. And we pay you.”

  “That’s true,” Lula said. “It’s real sweet. Best thing ever happened to me was when the office burned down, and we went from paper files to digital. I came in as a file clerk, but now there’s hardly anything to file. Fortunately I’m of other value. I have intimate knowledge of the worst parts of town and the most disgusting people, and I annoy Vinnie.”

  We raised our beer glasses and made a toast to annoying Vinnie.

  “You really get dressed up for a girls’ night out,” Connie said to Lula.

  “You bet your ass. I take pride in my appearance.” She looked down and made a boob adjustment, hoisting the girls up a couple inches. “You never know when Mr. Good Enough is gonna come along. I like to be ready.”

  Connie looked across the table at me. “Why did you ask about changing jobs? Are you thinking about changing jobs?”

  “I know someone who’s making a big change, and it has me thinking.”

  “What would you do if you stopped working for Vinnie?” Connie asked.

  The food arrived, and I ate an onion ring and thought about life after Vincent Plum Bail Bonds.

  “I have no clue,” I said to Connie.

  “What did you want to be when you were a little girl?”

  “Wonder Woman.”

  “I get that,” Lula said. “She had that golden lasso. And her boots were excellent.”

  “I wanted to be Madonna,” Connie said.

  I finished my burger and went to talk to the bartender.

  “I remember you,” he said. “You and some guy who looked like Batman chased a guy who ran up a thirty-dollar bar tab through the kitchen and that was the last I saw of him.”

  “He’s not a regular?”

  “Not nearly.”

  “Did he say anything while he was here? Did he talk to you?”

  “No. What are you, a cop?”

  “Bond enforcement.”

  I gave him a twenty and returned to the booth.

  “How’d that go?” Lula asked.

  “Gobbles hasn’t been back.”

  “He’s in the Zeta cellar,” Lula said. “I got a feeling. It’s almost a vision except there’s fog so it’s not one of my more clear visions.”

  “So you think we should go look in the cellar?”

  “Not we. I think you should look in the cellar,” Lula said. “I just had my hair done, and I’m wearing my nice red dress. And we’re not sure what they did with those geese. They could be in the cellar protecting Gobbles.”

  “Your vision doesn’t tell you about the geese?”

  “I don’t see no geese, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any of them there. Like I said, there’s some fog in the vision.”

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look around the Zeta house.”

  •••

  Lula parked in a handicap space behind the student center and placed a handicap permit on her dashboard.

  “This’ll disguise my car so it doesn’t get filled with geese,” Lula said. “You’d have to be a real horrible person to put geese in a handicap car.”

  I examined the parking permit. “Where did you get this?”

  “Macy’s,” Lula said. “Jimmy the Cheat was having a trunk sale in the parking lot.”

  “You bought a handicap parking permit from a man called Jimmy the Cheat? Weren’t you afraid of getting cheated?”

  “Hell no. I’ve known Jimmy forever. Anyways I looked it over real careful, and it looked like the real deal.”

  “You’re not handicapped,” Connie said.

  “There’s all kinds of handicaps,” Lula said. “I had a disadvantaged childhood and I’m afraid of snakes. I even think I might have some dyslexia and gluten issues. I was putting this dress on, and I was thinking I might have some bloat.”

  I didn’t want to hear bloat details, so I led everyone across the dark campus to the Zeta house. We stood in deep shadow for a while and watched people coming and going. Lights were on in the house, and music was blaring.

  “Do you still think he’s in the cellar?” I asked Lula.

  “I don’t know anymore,” she said. “I was pretty sure at first, but there’s this fog sort of blurring out my video.”

  “For crying out loud,” Connie said. “Let’s get this over with and look in the cellar.”

  “They keep the door locked,” I told her.

  “So we walk in, find someone of authority, and tell him to unlock the door.”

  “It might not be that simple,” I said. “Last time we were here Lula shot up the balcony
.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t hit anybody,” Lula said. “And look at these people. They drink all day long and they’re all potheads. They probably can’t remember anything.”

  “Okay, we’ll go in, but no shooting,” I said to Lula. “None. Zero. Zip. Do not even think about taking your gun out of your purse.”

  “Sure. I got that,” Lula said. “We’ll go in nice and quiet and look around without nobody noticing us. We’ll just blend in and sneak around to the cellar door. It might even be unlocked.”

  I thought our chances of going unnoticed were slim. I was with a two-hundred-pound black woman wearing a size two knock-your-eyes-out tube of red spandex that barely covered her ass. Her hair was blond. Her cleavage was comparable to the Grand Canyon. Her nipples were practically punching holes in the spandex fabric.

  “Good plan,” I said. “Let’s go in and keep a low profile.”

  We made it through the entrance hall and living room and I stopped to look around.

  A guy came up to us with plastic cups of beer. “Are you ladies students here?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Lula said, taking a cup. “We’re studying all kinds of shit.”

  “Anyone want to go upstairs?”

  “Mostly we want to go downstairs,” Lula said.

  “We’d like to see the cellar,” Connie told him.

  “The cellar’s locked,” he said. “Nothing going on down there anyway.”

  “Then why is it locked?” I asked.

  “We keep the beer down there,” he said.

  “I want to see the beer,” Lula said. “I get turned on by beer. Most people want to drink it, but I like looking at it. You can’t imagine what I could do to you if I had enough beer to look at. You’d never be the same. You’d be ruined when I was done with you.”

  “Damn,” he said. “I haven’t got a key. Professor Pooka has a key. So what’s it going to be? One or all of you want to make me happy?”

  “You’re gonna have to get happy all by yourself,” Lula said. “We don’t make people happy until we know them better. We got standards.”

  “How much do your standards cost?” he asked Lula. “What can I get for ten bucks?”

  “You can’t get nothin’ for ten bucks,” Lula said. “If I was in that business, which I’m not, I wouldn’t even look at you for ten bucks.”