Twisted Twenty-Six (Stephanie Plum 26)

by Janet Evanovich

  Morelli looked over to the dumpster. Two legs were sticking out from behind it. Attached to the legs were two feet stuffed into red Air Jordans.

  “If I was going to kidnap someone, I wouldn’t be wearing red Air Jordans,” Morelli said. “But that’s just me.”

  “What else did you get from Velez?” I asked. “Did he know who wanted Grandma snatched?”

  Morelli shook his head. “No. At least he didn’t say. It was hard to communicate since your mother broke his jaw and it’s wired shut.”

  “Yep, she buys a quality iron. Heavy duty. She likes the one with the burst of steam.”

  “I’m going to go do my cop thing,” he said. “Are you coming back to my house tonight?”

  “Do you think I should?”

  “Absolutely. You might need your dressing changed.”

  “And you’re good at that?”

  “Cupcake, I’ve got skills you haven’t even experienced yet.”

  “We’re talking about my bandage, right?”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  Oh boy.

  I moved over to where Connie and Lula were standing, and we watched Morelli walk away.

  “That man is fine,” Lula said. “He’s got a good butt. There’s only one other butt in Trenton, maybe the world, better than Morelli’s butt.”

  “Ranger’s?” I asked.

  “Mine,” Lula said. “I have a magnificent butt.”

  Connie and I looked at Lula’s butt.

  “Impressive,” Connie said.

  “Exactly,” Lula said. “I need it to balance out my generously proportioned bosoms.”

  Connie and I knew this was an understatement. Lula’s bosoms were way beyond generous.

  “Did you find anything helpful in the files I gave you?” Connie asked me.

  “Yes. I’m going to start with Julius Roman. I’m joining him for lunch today.”

  “While you have lunch with the mobster, I’m going to hunt down the shoplifter,” Lula said.

  New Town Deli was squashed between an office building and a pawnshop in a part of Trenton that got a lot of foot traffic at lunchtime. I sat across the street from the deli and watched for Roman. At 11:55 I saw him walking toward me. He was the exact opposite of Benny the Skootch. Roman was thin and spry. If he had a posse with him, I couldn’t spot them. He was neatly dressed in a button-down shirt, gray slacks with a razor-sharp crease, and a blue blazer. I’d be disappointed if he wasn’t carrying under the blazer. I gave him time to get settled at his table before I left the Buick. I wanted to make sure no one else was dining with him. At 12:15, I crossed the street and entered the deli. The room was long and narrow. Generic booths ran along one wall. Wood tables that seated four filled the rest of the space. All of the booths and half of the tables were filled. At the very back, next to the swinging door to the kitchen, was a small table with a white tablecloth. This was Roman’s table. He was sitting quietly with a glass of red wine in front of him. He was smiling, thinking his own thoughts. That ended when he saw me. He looked around and relaxed when he realized I was alone. Not that he had to worry. I’m sure the waiter was adept with a garrote, and at a moment’s notice the chef would be at the table with his carving knife.

  “Mr. Roman,” I said, “would you mind if I join you?” Going with polite and respectful.

  “Not at all,” he said.

  A waiter immediately appeared at my side.

  “Miss Plum will be dining with me,” Roman said.

  I waved the waiter away and turned back to Roman. “Thank you, but I just want a moment of your time. We have a problem. Apparently, the La-Z-Boys aren’t the only ones interested in finding the keys.”

  Roman nodded. He knew this.

  “And I’m sure you know that I was shot during an attempt to kidnap Grandma yesterday.”

  Another nod.

  “One of the men is in the hospital, and the second man was just found dead behind the bonds office.”

  Roman’s face showed nothing.

  “Did you know?” I asked. And what I was really asking was, did the La-Z-Boys commission the hit?

  “I didn’t know about the second man,” Roman said. “I’m not surprised. The stakes are high.”

  “Do you know this other party?”

  “I have suspicions.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “And they’re just suspicions.”

  “You must be worried that someone will get to Grandma before you.”

  Roman shrugged. “We’ll get her one way or another. We would prefer that she gives the keys up without violence. At least I would prefer that. I can’t speak for Lou.”

  “She doesn’t have the keys.”

  Another shrug from Roman.

  “I’m good at finding things,” I told him.

  “People.”

  “Yes. But I might be able to hunt down the keys if I had a little help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t know how many keys we’re talking about. I don’t know what they look like. I don’t know their purpose.”

  “You don’t need to know any of those things. If you’re lucky enough to run across them, you’ll know they’re the keys.”

  The waiter approached. “So sorry to disturb you, Mr. Roman. Would you like your soup now, or would you prefer to wait a little?”

  “I’ll have it now,” Roman said. “My guest is leaving.”

  I stood and settled my bag on my shoulder. “Can you give me a starting point? You knew Jimmy. What would he do with the keys?”

  “If I knew the answer to that question, I’d be in possession of the keys,” Roman said.

  I left the deli and returned to the Buick. I was about to drive out of the lot when I got a call from Lula.

  “I got him!” Lula yelled into the phone. “I got the little weasel. He was coming out of Macy’s with a bag, just like last time. I chased him down, and I yanked him out of his Escalade. I was awesome.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m still in the Macy’s lot. I thought I’d drive him straight to the pokey.”

  “You can’t do that. You aren’t officially hired to do that job. You haven’t got any of the necessary papers to make a capture. Stay in the Macy’s parking area, and I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LULA WAS PACING BESIDE her Firebird when I pulled in next to her.

  “Where is he?” I asked. “I don’t see him in your car.”

  “He’s in the trunk. I couldn’t get him to calm down. He was thrashing around and yelling, so I had to stun him and cuff him, and then I put him in the trunk. It’s nice and quiet and dark in there. I figured he’d be comfy. I keep my trunk real clean. It’s got one of those all-weather liners.”

  “We can’t keep him in the trunk. Get him out and we can put him in my Buick.”

  Lula opened the trunk and I looked in.

  “That’s not him,” I said.

  “Of course it’s him,” Lula said. “It looks just like him.”

  “Help! Police! Help!” the guy yelled.

  I closed the lid on him. He was still yelling, but it was muffled.

  I pulled Lula aside. “Did you check for an ID? Did you look in the bags to see if he had receipts for his purchases?”

  “Hell, no, I didn’t do any of that. I was too busy wrestling him under arrest. He was totally uncooperative.”

  “Maybe because you’ve got the wrong man.”

  “Well, I didn’t have the file with me. I had to go on memory. And what about the Escalade? He was getting into a Escalade.”

  “Lots of people have Escalades. This one doesn’t have the right license plate.”

  “Oops,” Lula said.

  I opened the trunk again, apologized, and helped him out. His face was red, and he was sweating.

  “She stun-gunned me,” he said. “I thought I was going to die.”

  Lula attempted to unlo
ck his cuffs, and he kicked out at her.

  “Get her away from me,” he said. “She’s nuts. She’s a psycho.”

  I took the key from Lula and got the cuffs off him. I apologized again and told him Lula was on medication and had escaped from her handler. I carried his bags to the Escalade and promised him I would take Lula back to the rehab center. He wanted my name and I told him I was Joyce Barnhardt.

  We watched him drive away.

  “That was embarrassing,” Lula said.

  “We should leave before he comes back with the police.”

  “Are you going to the office?”

  “No. I’m going to my parents’ house to talk to Grandma about the keys.”

  “I’ll follow you so I can make sure you don’t get shot again.”

  Twenty minutes later we parked behind the Rangeman SUV and walked into my parents’ house. Grandma was at the dining room table, working on her bucket list.

  “Let’s see what you’ve got here,” Lula said, sitting next to her. “Whoa, a trip to Antarctica. That’s a good one. Although I heard the penguins are real stinky.”

  I didn’t see my mother in the kitchen.

  “Where’s Mom?” I asked.

  “Grocery shopping. That’s why I’m sitting in the dining room. If someone busts in the back door again, I have more time to run out the front door.”

  I poked around in the fridge and found a container of leftover chicken salad.

  “Anyone want to share this?” I asked.

  “I had lunch,” Grandma said.

  “I had a pizza at the mall before I ran into you-know-who,” Lula said.

  I got a fork and ate the chicken out of the container. “I want to talk about the keys, again,” I said to Grandma. “You married Jimmy. You had to know all kinds of things about him.”

  “I guess so. It happened pretty fast. It was like love at first sight, except it happened after sixty-three years.”

  “How did he feel about the keys? Was he worried about losing them? Did he offer to show them to you? Did he have a special place for them when he was in his apartment?”

  “He didn’t talk about the keys,” Grandma said. “Other people talked about the keys. Not actually talked about them. Just that Jimmy was the Keeper of the Keys. And everyone knew that it was a big deal. I guess I got the feeling that Jimmy usually had the keys with him. So, they must have been small. Like regular keys. And if they thought he passed the keys to me as he was dying, they would have to be small and on a key ring.”

  “But he didn’t pass them to you. And the keys weren’t on him when he died. He had a wallet with credit cards and cash. That was it,” I said.

  “How about the ambulance people?” Lula asked.

  “I was with him when they took him away,” Grandma said. “I didn’t see anybody take any keys from him.”

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s go at it from a different angle. If you were Jimmy, what would you do with the keys when you were on vacation in the Bahamas?”

  “If it was me, I’d hide them in my underwear drawer,” Grandma said.

  “Yes, but suppose you were Jimmy.”

  “Jimmy could be real crafty,” Grandma said. “He was clever. He might even put them someplace that was booby-trapped.”

  “In his hotel room? In his condo?”

  “His condo. I’m thinking he didn’t take the keys with him. We were going for just a couple days, and it was one of those last-minute decisions. He might not even have thought about the keys, what with all the other stuff going on.”

  “What other stuff?”

  “He had to get more male enhancement pills. And he wanted a haircut. And he had to get the plane tickets and the hotel room. Jimmy didn’t have a bunch of young wiseguys like some of the other La-Z-Boys. He didn’t have a personal assistant or anything. He did everything himself. Even when it came to work, I’m guessing he mostly just went out and killed people.”

  “Did that bother you?” Lula asked. “Most people don’t like people who kill people.”

  “I didn’t think about it until after he was dead,” Grandma said. “It’s not like he took me out on a date and talked about whacking people. I went out with a butcher once, and all he could talk about was sawing cows apart and chopping the heads off chickens. It was awful. Jimmy and me played gin rummy and went to the movies. It was nice. Besides, it wasn’t like he killed random people. He was a respected professional. He had a real good reputation.”

  “Have you been to his condo since he died?” I asked Grandma.

  “No. It’s not like I moved in. There wasn’t anything of mine at his place. And I knew his sisters went through it right away. I figured they took what they wanted. There wasn’t really anything I wanted. I was going to wait until the lawyer made it official and the condo was mine before I took a look at it.”

  “Do you have a key?” I asked her.

  “No, but Jimmy was always forgetting his keys and getting locked out, so he kept a key in the potted plant by the elevator.”

  “Let’s take a look at his condo.”

  The condo building was an ugly yellow brick cube on the edge of the Burg. It had originally been divided into apartments, and it was almost as old as the La-Z-Boys. The interior was dark and utilitarian. The halls were narrow. Jimmy lived on the third floor.

  “Jimmy moved here after the second divorce,” Grandma said, taking the key from the potted plant. “He liked the location. He wanted to stay in the Burg.” She opened the door to his unit and flipped the light switch.

  The shades had all been drawn, and even with the lights on, the room was dark.

  “Jimmy didn’t care much about decorating,” Grandma said. “He felt comfortable with this old stuff. He said it suited him.”

  “I guess you get used to something, and you don’t want to change,” Lula said. “Anybody know the age of this building? This wallpaper looks like it’s been on here about fifty years.”

  I knew several people had thoroughly searched the condo, but nothing looked disturbed. The two rolled-arm chairs in the living room had a floral print that was faded and threadbare. The cushions in the green velvet rolled-arm couch were in need of plumping. Magazines and newspapers were stacked on a small coffee table. Table lamps had shades that were yellow with age.

  “I don’t like to be a critical person,” Lula said, “but this is a big disillusioning experience. I can’t see the mob’s number-one hit man sitting in this sad chair covered in Martha Stewart fabric. It’s not even new Martha Stewart fabric. Where’s the liquor cabinet? Where’s the gun safe?”

  “Jimmy didn’t drink,” Grandma said. “And I never saw him with a gun.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t really a killer,” Lula said. “Maybe he was a big fibber. Like, the old guys would get together and talk about things they never did.”

  I recognized the decorating style. There were a lot of houses in the Burg that were exactly like this. Houses that had aged with their owners. Houses that had passed from one generation to the next with few changes. A new refrigerator. A new hot water heater. The wallpaper was unchanged because someone’s grandma had picked it out when she was a bride, and it provided a treasured connection. Sometimes a new owner like Jimmy would come in and have no real connection, but the space just felt right. It felt familiar. It was the fits like an old shoe syndrome. I suspected if Grandma moved into the space, she’d gut it and decorate it like the Jetsons’ penthouse.

  “Jimmy sometimes forgot his condo key, so let’s assume that he absentmindedly left the La-Z-Boys keys somewhere,” I said. “Everyone else was looking for places he might hide the keys. Let’s go on the premise that the keys were lost, and he ran out of time to find them.”

  After an hour we still didn’t have the keys. We found an old lottery ticket and some loose change in the couch. We found a TV remote in the freezer, and a lot of expired food in the small pantry.

  “He’s got a can of beans in here looks like it’s as old as the wallpaper
,” Lula said.

  “Jimmy didn’t cook,” Grandma said. “He ate out all the time. He didn’t even make coffee. He got his coffee at the Starbucks down the street. All he ate at home was ice cream. He liked his ice cream.”

  “He has a stacked washer and dryer but no laundry detergent,” I said.

  “Yep. Sent it out. Linens, towels, clothes, everything. It all came back folded and ironed.”

  “Do you know what service he used?”

  “Blue Ribbon. It’s the best. We take our dry cleaning there sometimes,” Grandma said. “They came and picked it all up for Jimmy and brought it back two days later.”

  “I’m starting to like this guy,” Lula said. “He had a good lifestyle going. He didn’t do nothing for himself.”

  I called Blue Ribbon Cleaners and asked for the manager. I explained that I was calling for Jimmy’s wife and that she was inquiring about clothes that might have been left there.

  “Well?” Lula said when I hung up. “How’d that go?”

  “The manager said all clothes had been delivered to Jimmy the day before he left for the Bahamas.”

  We locked the condo, returned the key to the planter, and stepped into the elevator.

  “We’re missing something,” I said. “What about Jimmy’s car?”

  “It’s probably in the garage under the building,” Grandma said. “He had a slot for it. He was number seven.”

  I punched G on the elevator button, and the doors opened to the garage.

  “It’s the black Honda Civic,” Grandma said.

  “Say what?” Lula said. “He drove a Honda Civic? Not that it isn’t a good car, but it’s not what I would expect. The people I know who kill people drive big cars. Hummers and monster trucks. Of course, they’re all gangbangers and dealers. They gotta make a statement. It’s like look how big my car is and that’s nothing compared to my dick. I guess it’s different with mob killers. They’re more in the professional category, keeping a low profile. Or it could be that Jimmy didn’t have any money. Maybe wet work doesn’t pay anymore.” She stood in front of the car. “It’s not even new. This here’s an old Civic.”

  “It ran good,” Grandma said. “And he kept it clean inside.”

  I tried the door and found it unlocked. Probably because forty-five people had already looked through it for the keys.