Twisted Twenty-Six (Stephanie Plum 26)

by Janet Evanovich

  I entered the lobby, sighed at the OUT OF ORDER sign taped to the elevator door, and trudged up the stairs. I let myself into my apartment and called out a Hello.

  Morelli answered from the living room. “I’ve got pizza, and there’s beer in the fridge. Hockey is on. Pre-season.”

  I grabbed a beer and joined Morelli and his dog, Bob, on the couch.

  Morelli is a Trenton PD cop working plainclothes in crimes against persons. Mostly he pulls homicides and gang-related shootings and stabbings. He’s a good cop and an equally excellent boyfriend . . . most of the time. His hair is black and wavy. His eyes are brown and sexy. His body is perfectly put together.

  Bob is big and shaggy and sort of orange.

  “I thought you could use a diversion after the viewing,” Morelli said. “How bad was it?”

  “I don’t know where to begin. I suppose the highlight was when the lid to the casket let go and smashed Angie Rosolli’s fingers.”

  “It just fell down on its own?”

  “Grandma said it was an act of God. I wouldn’t mind having a police escort for the funeral. It’s on Saturday.”

  “I’ve already got it on my calendar. I figure if I’m there, I’ll have a head start at solving whatever homicides go down.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about Angie. I’m pretty sure she’s got a broken trigger finger.”

  “Angie is the least of it. There are rumblings that something was lost besides Jimmy’s life, and there’s a lot of panic and finger-pointing going on by the La-Z-Boys. Jimmy was known as the Keeper of the Keys. And the keys seem to be missing.”

  “This is a big deal?”

  “Apparently,” Morelli said.

  “How hard would it be to find keys? Did they look in his house?”

  “My source tells me they looked everywhere. Jimmy’s house, his office, his car, and the box he was flown home in.”

  “Jeez.”

  “I’m thinking sooner or later the search committee is going to get to your grandmother.” Morelli looked over at the pizza box on the coffee table. “Do you want that last piece?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would it take for you to give it up?”

  “Make a suggestion.”

  Morelli smiled.

  “I know what that smile means,” I said. “And it’s not going to get you that last piece of pizza. That smile is a promise of something I’ll get no matter who eats the pizza.”

  “Okay,” Morelli said. “You make a suggestion.”

  I had nothing. My mother was already doing my laundry. Morelli couldn’t afford to buy me a new car. And at some time in the very near future Morelli was going to get me naked and make me happy. I suppose I had one or two requests I might make regarding the road to my happiness, but it felt awkward to say them out loud in front of the pizza.

  Bob jumped off the couch, stuck his head in the pizza box, and ate the last piece.

  “Problem solved,” Morelli said, sliding his arm around me, cuddling me close to him. “Now let’s discuss dessert.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  MORELLI AND BOB left my apartment at sunup. I dragged myself out of bed a couple hours later. Unlike Morelli, I’m not required to attend early morning briefings. Plus, Morelli looks forward to a day of fighting crime. Me not so much.

  I took a fast shower, got dressed in my usual uniform of sneakers, jeans, and a girly T-shirt, and ambled into the kitchen. Morelli has a big dog for a roommate and I have Rex. I love Bob, but I think I made the better pet selection. I don’t have to walk Rex, and he has very small poop. I filled Rex’s water bottle, gave him some hamster food, dropped a couple Froot Loops into his dish, and he was good for the day.

  I grabbed a handful of Froot Loops for myself, and shrugged into a black sweatshirt. It was the end of September, and the morning was cool. I hung my messenger bag on my shoulder, locked my apartment door behind me, and trudged off to my car. Fifteen minutes later I was at the bail bonds office.

  Connie is the office manager, and she’s also a niece to the late Jimmy Rosolli. She’s a little older than me, a little shorter, a little more voluptuous, and 50 percent more Italian.

  “Omigod,” Connie said when I walked through the door. “I can’t believe I missed the viewing last night. I knew it would be a mob scene, so I stayed home. Big mistake. Everyone’s talking about it. Did Grandma really break Angie’s fingers? Angie has her hands so bandaged up they look like basketballs. Louise Felati sent me a picture.”

  “Angie had a grip on the casket, and the lid let go and fell down on her fingers,” I said. “It was an act of God.”

  Lula was sitting on one of the two uncomfortable plastic chairs that had been placed in front of Connie’s desk. Lula is a plus-sized woman whose bounty runneth over in a size 8 minidress. The bounty would still be running over in a size 12 minidress, but Lula managed to pour it all into an 8. She’s a former ’ho who kept her wardrobe but changed her profession. She works for Vinnie now and mostly does whatever she feels like doing. Usually she hangs with me. I suspected she was sitting in the uncomfortable chair, rather than the faux leather couch against the wall, because the chair was closer to the box of donuts on Connie’s desk.

  “No doubt it was an act of God,” Lula said. “God works in mysterious ways. You never know when bad juju is gonna catch up to you. Lucky I only got good juju. That’s on account of I live a righteous life.”

  “You were a hooker,” Connie said.

  “Yeah, but I was a damn good hooker,” Lula said. “I gave people their money’s worth. I never scrimped on anything. Everybody knew you come to Lula, and she gets the job done.”

  I took a donut from the box and went to the coffee machine at the back of the office. “Did anything new come in for me this morning? I’m running low on scumbags I have to find.”

  “I have two guys who didn’t show for court yesterday,” Connie said. “Tyrone Brown and Travis Wisneski.”

  “Hold on,” Lula said. “We got a guy named Travis living in Trenton? That’s just not right. You got to live in Tennessee or Kentucky with a name like Travis. What did he do?”

  “Robbed a liquor store.”

  “What did he take?” Lula asked. “Liquor or money?”

  “Money. At gunpoint.”

  “That’s too bad,” Lula said. “If it was liquor you could understand he just needed a drink.”

  I returned with my coffee. “What about Tyrone Brown?”

  “Mrs. Schmidt said she caught Tyrone having relations with her dog.”

  I choked on my coffee. “That’s horrible.”

  “What kind of dog?” Lula asked.

  Connie paged through the police report. “It was a black Lab.”

  “That’s a good-size dog,” Lula said. “I’d need more information before I pass judgment on that. Like was it consensual. There’s dogs out there that might say okay to that sort of thing for a doggie treat. I knew a few of them when I was working my former profession.”

  “When Tyrone was done with the dog, he had relations with Mrs. Schmidt,” Connie said, “and it definitely was not consensual.”

  “I don’t like that,” Lula said. “Rape isn’t something I take lightly. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he had some drugs in him on account of not many men could perform like that. Most men would need a nap or a bowl of chili in between. Maybe some ribs or chicken wings.”

  I gagged down the donut, took the two new file folders from Connie, and shoved them into my messenger bag.

  “Looks like you’re getting ready to saddle up,” Lula said. “Guess I’ll tag along. Not every day we got a dog fornicator to bring in.”

  Tyrone Brown lived in a two-bedroom bungalow in North Trenton. A Brown’s Plumbing van was parked in the driveway. A man left the house and approached the van just as we pulled up.

  “This guy looks like the file picture,” Lula said. “Skinny fifty-two-year-old guy with a scraggly brown ponytail.”

  I parked and
walked up to the van. “Tyrone Brown?” I asked.

  “Yeah, so?” he said.

  “I represent your bail bondsman. You missed your trial date, and I need to help you reschedule.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Reschedule me.”

  “We’ll have to go to the courthouse,” I said. “It will only take a couple minutes.”

  “I haven’t got a couple minutes. Do it without me. I got a job.”

  I moved between him and the open door on the van. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Look, lady, I’m not going with you. Get out of my way. The whole thing is bogus anyway.”

  “We heard you did the deed with the dog,” Lula said.

  “The dog and the old lady came on to me. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want to be rude.”

  “It says in the police report that it was nonconsensual,” Lula said.

  Brown gave a derisive snort of laughter. “That’s what they all say.”

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “I don’t like that answer. You got a nasty attitude.”

  Brown gave Lula the finger. “Nasty this, bitch.”

  “Okay,” Lula said to me. “Do you want to give him a couple thousand volts with your stun gun or do you want me to shoot him?”

  I clapped a cuff on his right wrist and reached to secure the second wrist.

  “Whoa,” he said, jumping away. “What’s this about? I don’t go for the kinky handcuff S& M stuff.”

  “This isn’t kinky,” Lula said. “This is police protocol.”

  “Are you police?” he asked.

  “Sort of,” Lula said. “We’re like faux police.”

  I got the other cuff on him, wrestled him into the back seat of my car, and drove him to the police station. We turned him in, and I got my body receipt.

  “That’s a job well done,” Lula said when we were back in my car. “I bet there’s a lot of dogs resting easier knowing that guy is off the streets.”

  I squelched a grimace and pulled out of the lot into traffic. “There has to be more to life than this.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I want something else. Something different. Something better.”

  “You need a cat,” Lula said.

  “A cat?”

  “Yeah. I read an article online about how people are getting therapy cats on account of cats are good companions. We could go to the shelter and pick one out for you.”

  “That’s a big responsibility. I don’t think I’m ready for a cat.”

  “Well, your life can’t be all that bad if you don’t want a cat.”

  “A cat isn’t going to fix my job.”

  “What’s wrong with your job? You got a lot of personal freedom on this job. And some weeks we even make a living wage.”

  “We work in a cesspool. We hunt down creepy people. I’m tired of creepy people. I want a job with normal people. I want to work with people who use deodorant and don’t eat out of dumpsters.”

  “I hope you’re not referring to me,” Lula said. “I’d be real insulted if I thought you were referring to me.”

  “I’m talking about the people we drag back to jail.”

  “Okay, I get that. They aren’t always attractive.”

  “And I’m stuck in a rut. I’m fifty-six years old and I’m still doing the same stupid stuff.”

  “Say what? You’re how old? How can you be fifty-six?”

  I looked over at Lula. “Did I say I was fifty-six?”

  “Yeah, and we know that’s wrong because that would mean I’m a middle-age lady, and I’m not ready for that shit. Your mama is fifty-six. Not that fifty-six is so bad since fifty-six is now the new thirty-six.”

  “Well I feel like I’m seventy.”

  “That’s the new fifty,” Lula said.

  “My life isn’t going anywhere. It’s same old, same old. It’s stagnant.”

  “I see where you might feel like that sometimes. There’s not much upward mobility in bounty-huntering, unless you’re Ranger. But that’s just your day job. You got any other stagnation problems?”

  “My relationships are stagnant.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Lula said. “We’re back to the cat issue. You got a problem with commitment. You’ve always had that problem. Only thing you can commit to is a three-ounce hamster. You got two hot men in your life that have been on hold forever.”

  Lula was right, but I was only half of the problem. Both the men in my life were committed to me at some level, but they’d made it clear that marriage wasn’t on the table. Okay with me. I’d tried marriage, and it was a disaster. Still, it felt like my life was standing still when it should be moving forward. I mean, where do you go in a relationship after you’ve got the fantastic sex mastered and you’re comfortable sharing a bathroom?

  “You gotta shake it up,” Lula said. “Get a new hairdo and some funner clothes. And we got Travis Wisneski in our future. He could turn out to be scary instead of just creepy, being that he’s up for armed robbery.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  Lula pulled his file out of my messenger bag. “It says here he lives in one of those little row houses on the edge of the Burg. He’s thirty-four years old. Unemployed. And I hate to tell you this, but I’m guessing from his picture he doesn’t use deodorant. I’m not sure where he dines. Guess it could be a dumpster.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

  “My feeling is that you have a job and you do it as best you can,” Lula said. “Doesn’t matter if you like your job. You do it as best you can.”

  I agreed, but the unfortunate reality was that sometimes our best was lacking.

  I cut across town and found the row houses. Travis lived in the middle of the row in a house indistinguishable from the rest. Paint peeling off the clapboard. Shades drawn on the two front windows. Bleak.

  “Are we following standard procedure for an armed suspect?” Lula asked.

  “We don’t have a standard procedure,” I said. “And we don’t know that he’s armed.”

  “Yeah, but we know he’s got a gun.”

  “Lots of people have a gun. You have a gun. I have a gun.”

  “In theory, you got a gun,” Lula said, “but I’m guessing you don’t have it with you. I’m guessing your gun is home in your cookie jar, and it don’t even have bullets in it. There’s your problem again. You can’t commit to having a gun.”

  “I don’t like guns.”

  “I like my gun. Her name is Suzy.”

  “You named your gun?”

  “Doesn’t your gun have a name?”

  “Smith and Wesson.”

  “That don’t count,” Lula said. “You got a poor nameless gun. I bet you don’t even take proper care of your gun. When was the last time you cleaned it?”

  “I put it in the dishwasher after Elliot Flug threw up on it.”

  “I never saw anything like it,” Lula said. “Projectile vomiting. All over you and your gun. It was like something from a horror movie where after someone’s head rotates they spew. Next time we go after a felon having a stomach virus we don’t get so close.”

  Something to remember. I parked and cut the engine. “Let’s see if Travis is home.”

  Lula and I walked up to the door and knocked. No answer.

  “Hey!” Lula yelled. “Open this here door. I got Girl Scout Cookies.”

  There was the sound of locks being released, the door opened, and a woman looked out at us. She was somewhere in her thirties. Brown hair that was parted in the middle and needed conditioning. Thin, with tattoos covering her arms. Nose ring. Cigarette hanging out of her mouth.

  “Where’s the cookies?” she asked.

  “It was sort of a fib,” Lula said. “We just wanted you to open the door.”

  A guy who looked like the Travis file photo came up behind the woman and draped an arm around her. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “They haven’t got any cookies,” t
he woman said.

  “Travis Wisneski?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “So, what?”

  I introduced myself and told him he needed to get rescheduled for court.

  “How about you kiss my ass,” he said. “And then how about you and your fat friend go away and leave me and my old lady alone.”

  “Excuse me?” Lula said, leaning forward, in Wisneski’s face. “Fat? Did you just refer to me as fat?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re fat.”

  Lula sucker punched him in the face, kneed him in his jollies, and he fell to the floor like a sack of sand.

  “I’m a big, beautiful lady,” Lula said. “I got class and style and all that shit. Don’t you ever forget it.”

  Wisneski was bleeding from his nose and curled into a fetal position. I cuffed him, and Lula and I dragged him out of his house.

  “He’s gonna bleed all over your car,” Lula said. “And on top of that he looks like he could be diseased, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times not to punch the FTA in the face. They always bleed like this.”

  “I know,” Lula said. “I wasn’t thinking. I got carried away.” She looked back at Travis’s insignificant other. “Could we get a towel here? We got a bleeder.”

  The woman took a drag on her cigarette, stepped inside the house, and closed and locked the door.

  “Don’t think she’s gonna be any help,” Lula said.

  We stood over Travis for a couple minutes, and the bleeding eventually slowed to a trickle. I got two pairs of disposable gloves from a box in the trunk of my car, and we pulled them on.

  “Where do you want him?” Lula asked. “My vote is to put him in the trunk, but that’s just me.”

  “We can’t put him in the trunk. We only put dead guys in the trunk.”

  Lula grabbed the back of his shirt, I went for his feet, and he kicked out at me. He narrowed his eyes and growled.

  “I hate when they growl,” Lula said. “Freaks me out. It’s like we got rabies in front of us.”

  I pulled my stun gun out of my pocket and tagged Travis on his arm. His eyes glazed over, and his entire body went flaccid. We wrestled him into the back of my car, and I took off for the police station.