Fortune and Glory

by Janet Evanovich

  Without a thought in my head, I acted on the distraction, spun Potts around, and shoved him toward the door. “Run!”

  “What?” he said.

  “RUN!”

  Ed yelled to the two guys in jeans to grab us, but we were already out of the room, rounding the bar. Potts stumbled into a waitress, carrying a tray full of food, and everything flew off the tray and crashed onto the floor.

  “Oh jeez,” Potts said to the waitress. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No time,” I said, grabbing him and shoving him through the room and out the door.

  I stuffed Grandma and Potts into the Buick, jumped behind the wheel, and stomped on the gas pedal. The two suits stood squinting in the sun, watching us chug down the street.

  “Did I save you?” Potts asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  “Were those real guns?”

  “Yes, again.”

  “That caught me by surprise,” Grandma said. “I know I’m in a dangerous situation being that everyone thinks I hold the key to the treasure, but I wasn’t expecting to be kidnapped by two men in suits. They looked so respectable.”

  “They looked like thugs to me,” Potts said. “Of course, they already had their guns out when I came in, so that might have something to do with my first impression. I thought they looked like mob guys in those old Al Capone movies.”

  “You could be right,” Grandma said. “I wasn’t thinking about Al Capone. I was thinking about the La-Z-Boys. They wore more comfortable clothes that had some elastic in the waistband.”

  “Elastic waistbands are excellent, especially if you have intestinal issues,” Potts said.

  “Who are you?” Grandma asked Potts.

  “I’m Potts,” Potts said.

  I brought Grandma home and suggested she not share this adventure with my mother.

  “No problem,” Grandma said. “I have enough problems getting out of the house as it is.”

  I returned to the office and left Potts outside, guarding the door.

  “I stopped in at the Mole Hole,” I told Connie. “The back room was getting a makeover. New chairs, new rug, and a poker table. New goons.”

  “Who ordered the makeover?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you knew.”

  “I haven’t heard anything.”

  I set my messenger bag on the floor and sat in one of the chairs in front of her desk. “There were two young guys moving furniture around. Looked like wiseguy wannabes. And there were two guys in suits. Ed and Chick. They were in their forties. Chunky. Looked like muscle. They said someone wanted to see me and Grandma, and the two morons pulled guns on us.”

  “Grandma was with you?”

  “I caught up with her there. Anyway, Potts came bumbling in and created enough chaos that we were able to get out.”

  “It sounds like someone is reorganizing the La-Z-Boys,” Connie said.

  “Or someone is taking over the La-Z-Boy territory.”

  “I’ll call Mom,” Connie said. “She’ll find out what’s going on. We haven’t got as much inside pull since Uncle Jimmy died, but we’re still in the network.”

  I looked toward the front of the office. I could see Potts standing at attention, super alert.

  “I can’t get rid of him,” I said. “He won’t go away.”

  “No good deed goes unpunished,” Connie said. “And while we’re on the subject of good deeds, it would be good for my end-of-the-month balance sheet if you could snag Trotter.”

  * * *

  Potts was sitting on the edge of the Buick’s backseat, looking over my shoulder.

  “Where are we going? Is it going to be dangerous? Should I have a gun? Do you have a gun?”

  “We’re going to Stiller Street. And no, no, and no.”

  There was a good chance that Trotter would be home for lunch. It didn’t go well last time I approached him, but I was better prepared this time. I knew what to expect. And with any luck at all, he’d be passed out.

  I turned onto Stiller and parked behind Trotter’s van.

  “Is this it?” Potts asked. “What should I do? Should I go in first and make sure it’s safe for you? I’m okay with taking a bullet. Just in case, I’m wearing a medical bracelet that has my blood type.”

  “Wait in the car. I won’t be long.”

  “You said that last time, but you didn’t come out right away.”

  I walked to the door and rang the bell. I had my stun gun in one pocket and cuffs in another. Potts was behind me.

  “I know you said to stay in the car,” he said, “but bodyguards in the movies are always close to the bodies they’re guarding. Besides, I could be helpful. I could tell this person about my positive experience with the bail bonds system.”

  “No. No talking. I do the talking.”

  The door opened, and Trotter’s mother squinted at me. “Do I know you?”

  “Stephanie Plum,” I said. “Is Rodney home?”

  “He’s in the kitchen, eating a late lunch. He had a big procedure this morning.”

  I stepped around her and threaded my way through the hoarded groceries and stuffed dead animals. I could hear Potts wheezing, following in my footsteps.

  “I need my inhaler,” he said. “Did I tell you I was claustrophobic? Do I smell formaldehyde? I’m pretty sure I smell formaldehyde.”

  If he crashed to the floor and his lips were blue and his eyes were rolled back in his head, I’d drag him out to the sidewalk and call 911. Otherwise I was going to ignore him.

  “I don’t like these dead animals,” he said. “They aren’t smiling. They don’t look happy. When I’m laid out, I want to be smiling. Not a big smile like the joker. Just a little smile, like I know a secret.”

  Trotter was at the table when I walked into the kitchen. There was a half-eaten sandwich and a half-empty vodka bottle in front of him.

  “Hi,” I said. “Remember me?”

  “Yes, I remember you. Go away.”

  “If you would come with me to get re-bonded, you would never have to see me again. It would take a half hour.”

  “I’m not wasting a half hour on bogus charges. I’m a renowned dermatological enhancement specialist. I have a wait-list of customers.” He reached down, took a tackle box off the floor, and opened it. “The syringes in this box are filled with my unique enhancement formula. If you go away, I’ll give you one free of charge.”

  “What would I do with it?”

  “Inject it somewhere. Blow up your lips. Puff up your cheek bones. Inject it in the pencil dick standing behind you and he’ll have a custard launcher the size of a horse.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” I said, “but we aren’t in need of a syringe, and you’re going to have to check back with the court. Because you failed to appear for your first date, you’re now officially a felon.”

  “Screw the court. I have a business to run.”

  He threw a syringe at me and I jumped away. The syringe missed me and tagged Potts in the thigh, sticking in him like a dart in a corkboard.

  “Omigod, omigod, omigod,” Potts said, staring down at the dart. “What should I do? Should I take it out? I’m afraid to touch it. I’m paralyzed with anxiety.”

  I grabbed the dart and yanked it out.

  “I think my leg is going numb,” he said. “I’m having one of my allergic reactions. I’m having a panic attack. Is my face getting blotchy? It feels blotchy. Next thing my tongue will swell up and I’ll choke to death.”

  “Has that ever happened?” I asked him.

  “All the time,” he said. “Except I don’t usually die.”

  “What exactly was in the syringe?” I asked Trotter.

  “Nothing. It was empty. Look at the syringe.”

  “I need air,” Potts said. “I need to get out of here. Where’s the door? Everything is going black.”

  He staggered into the living room, knocking over a stack of Ritz cracker boxes, a taxidermied groundhog that was miss
ing a leg, and a tower of toilet paper.

  “That was a mean thing to do,” I said to Trotter.

  “Bite me,” he said. “And anyway, I was aiming for you.”

  I caught up to Potts on the sidewalk. He had his finger on his jugular, taking his pulse.

  “There was nothing in the syringe,” I said. “You just got stuck.”

  “Are you sure? I could feel the serum going into me.”

  “I have the syringe. It was empty.”

  “My heart is racing,” he said.

  “No doubt. Get in the car and I’ll buy you some ice cream. Do you like soft-serve?”

  “Yeah. I like when they swirl the chocolate and vanilla together.”

  “Me, too.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Connie looked up from her computer when I walked into the office. “Where’s your new best friend?”

  “He had a tough afternoon. I bought him ice cream and took him home. Any news from your mom?”

  “Yes. None of it good. Charlie Shine arranged the back room remodel. It’s primarily for some bad guys he brought in from Miami. He felt like he needed new muscle to run his operation.”

  “He has an operation?”

  “Apparently he’s coming out of retirement. My mother thinks he’s two cans short of a case. I think he needs money to hire lawyers to keep him out of jail.”

  “Do we know what the operation includes?”

  “The usual. Prostitution. Extortion. Old-school stuff. Plus, I don’t know what Jimmy had stashed away, but the word is that Shine wants it bad. And there are people who think the only reason the two witnesses in Shine’s murder charge are still alive is the fact that one or both of them holds the road map to the La-Z-Boys’ treasure.”

  “Grandma and me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “This isn’t good news.”

  The big takeaway from Connie’s news was that Shine now had the ability to grab Grandma and me. He had henchmen.

  “I don’t suppose you have a body receipt for Trotter?” Connie said.

  “No, but I’m making progress. Have you heard anything from Lula?”

  “The tooth she cracked had already been capped, so they popped it off and gave her a temporary. She would have come back to work, but she also chipped a nail and had to wait for an appointment with her nail tech.”

  I looked down at my nails. They weren’t chipped but they weren’t wonderful, either. Maybe Morelli would have liked me better if I got a manicure once in a while. Probably the blonde had perfect nails. Probably she always chose lavender nail polish.

  “Ugh!” I said.

  “It was only one nail,” Connie said.

  I blew out a sigh. “I’m heading out. Things to do.”

  I had to get Shine and Salgusta off the street, and I had to get those freaking clues. Question was how? What would Indy do? He’d enlist professional help. I wasn’t sure Lula, Potts, and Grandma Mazur fell into the category of professional, but I knew two people who did.

  If it wasn’t for the blonde, my first choice would be to go to Morelli. He had mob snitches. He was street-smart. He had all the self-defense skills I lacked. He was a cop, and law enforcement resources were available to him. Plus, he was sane. The fact that he was incredibly hot and sexy ordinarily would be in his favor, but would be a distraction right now.

  Ranger had all the same skills as Morelli, but he was rogue. His karma path didn’t always follow the letter of the law. This was a strike against him, but he got points for not having a blond girlfriend. At least not one that I knew about. Truth is, I didn’t know for sure that Morelli had a girlfriend. It was more of a dreaded suspicion.

  I called Ranger and told him I needed more help.

  “I’m committed until eight o’clock,” he said. “I’m all yours after that. Is this going to involve a field trip, or can we talk at Rangeman?”

  “Talking at Rangeman would be good.”

  It was midafternoon. I wasn’t up for spending more time with Trotter, and I couldn’t get excited about tracking down the gun-toting fry-cook, Arnold Rugalowski. It was too early to mooch dinner at my parents’ house, so I headed for home.

  I took a detour after two blocks, thinking I’d drive past Morelli’s house. See how it felt. Maybe convince myself that I was jumping to conclusions about the blonde. And even if my conclusions were correct, I needed to dial back on the indignation since I’d just spent time with Ranger. I needed to be open-minded about the situation, right? Cut Morelli some slack. Give him another chance to try to tolerate me.

  I stopped in the middle of the road when I got to Morelli’s house. His car was parked at the curb and Gabriela’s Mercedes was parked behind it.

  “What the fuck!” I said. “What the fucking fuck!”

  I sat there for a full minute, waiting for my heart to start beating again. I tapped my head with my index finger. “Think, think, think.” She’s somehow connected to the La-Z-Boys. She’s looking for someone or something. It’s possible that she’s looking for the treasure. Morelli is a cop. She could assume he knows something. Or she could be a vampire and she came here to suck his blood and he’s lying on his kitchen floor, half dead. I was leaning toward the vampire theory.

  I drove to the end of the block and turned the corner. I parked, got out of the Buick, and cut through three backyards before I reached Morelli’s. His kitchen was at the back of the house. He had a window over the sink and a window in his back door. I could faintly hear muffled talking. He had a small wooden table next to his Weber grill. I moved the table, so it was under the window, climbed up on it, and peeked into Morelli’s kitchen.

  Gabriela had draped her jacket over one of the two chairs at Morelli’s small kitchen table. She was wearing a knee-length black pencil skirt, a silky black tank top that could pass for lingerie, and black strappy Chanel sandals that were trimmed in pearls and showed off her perfect pedicure and bloodred painted toes. She was casually lounging against the counter, a glass of white wine in her hand, laughing at something Morelli said. Morelli was close to her and he was smiling. The Chardonnay bottle was on the counter.

  Bob was lying under Morelli’s kitchen table, and he was looking like he couldn’t believe this was happening. Like he wanted to choke on his own vomit. Okay, maybe it wasn’t Bob that wanted to choke. Maybe it was me. I was really close to spewing all over Morelli’s window.

  I climbed off the table, returned it to the grill, and speed-walked back to the Buick. I kicked the beast’s whitewalls a bunch of times, wrenched the door open, got behind the wheel, and burst into tears. By the time I pulled into my apartment building’s parking lot I was pretty much done sobbing. Over the past couple of months, I’d acquired a laundry list of things worth crying about. My love life. My job. My apartment. My squint lines. My inability to cook, shoot, figure out streaming, understand the cloud, or complete any of the books recommended by Oprah. The list was endless. So hopefully the last twenty minutes of blubbering covered all the bases and I was good for another couple months.

  The real bummer in all this was Gabriela. She was a double whammy. She had her hooks into my ex-boyfriend, and I was pretty sure she was trying to steal my treasure. The most annoying part to all this was that I knew next to nothing about her, and Morelli undoubtedly knew all sorts of things. He probably knew her last name and where she was living. And he probably knew why she was here. The obvious, intelligent, mature way to go about this was to simply have a conversation with him. Not at this precise moment, of course, but in the near future.

  I marched up the stairs to my apartment and found Potts sitting on the floor, with his back to my door.

  “I put a Band-Aid and some antiseptic on the hole where the dart went in and I’m back on the job,” he said, getting up.

  “How did you get here?”

  “My mom brought me. She was going out to the market anyway.”

  I opened the door and Potts followed me into the kitchen. I g
ave Rex a pretzel, and I gave Potts a bottle of water. I turned the television on and gave him the remote.

  “I have work to do in my bedroom,” I said. “Don’t move off the couch. If you decide to go home, leave me a note.”

  “I’m not going home. I’m here forever.”

  “You’re a nut.”

  “I know,” Potts said. “I can’t help it.”

  I closed my bedroom door and flopped onto my bed. I didn’t have work to do. I needed a nap before I tackled the Morelli-Gabriela connection.

  Grandma called at 5:45 PM.

  “Your mother made too much spaghetti,” she said. “Do you want to come to dinner?”

  I cracked my door and looked out. Potts was still there.

  “Is your mother expecting you to be home for dinner?” I asked him.

  “No, I told her I was working the night shift.”

  “Can I bring a friend?” I asked Grandma.

  “You can bring an army. Your mother was hitting the hooch, and next thing, poof, we got two weeks’ worth of pasta.”

  * * *

  “This is getting serious,” Potts said from the backseat of the Buick. “You’re taking me to meet your parents. Do they know about us?”

  I cut my eyes to the rearview mirror and glanced at him. “What’s to know?”

  “That I protect you. That we’re life partners.”

  “We aren’t life partners. I bailed you out of jail and now I can’t get rid of you.”

  “Good thing, too. I already kept you from getting shot, and then I took a syringe in the thigh for you.”

  This is why I don’t keep a loaded gun. I might have been tempted to shoot one of us.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Grandma was waiting at the door when I arrived with Potts.

  “You remember George Potts,” I said to Grandma. “You met him at the Mole Hole.”

  “I’m her bodyguard,” Potts said. “It’s my life’s work to protect her. And we might eventually be a couple.”

  I kicked Potts in the shin.

  “Ow!” he said. “Why did you do that? I have thin skin and my blood vessels are very close to the surface. I’m going to have a bruise. I might even get a hematoma.”