Fearless Fourteen: A Stephanie Plum Novel

by Janet Evanovich

  “Excuse me,” Zook said. “I meant she was . . . angry. Anyway, she was able to regen, and now she’s rolling.”

  “Yeah,” Grandma said. “I’m a newbie, so my PC runs at a pretty low level, but I’ve got some überelves camping for me. They’re evil, but they’re bitchin’.”

  “Where’d you get the clothes?” I asked her.

  “Harriet Gotler took me shopping after we paid our respects to Warren Kruzi. He had an early viewing. And I’m not Grandma no more,” she said. “I’m Scorch.”

  “Scorch?”

  “Yep, ’cause I’m hot. Get it? Scorch.”

  My mother was eyeing the cabinet alongside the stove where she kept the liquor.

  “It’s sort of early in the day,” I told her.

  She blew out a sigh and shook the potato pan. She brought it to the table and dumped the home fries into a bowl. She had eggs going in another fry pan, and she divided them up on everyone’s plates.

  MY STOMACH WAS filled with eggs and potatoes, Zook was at school, and I wasn’t scheduled to meet with Ranger until eleven. I had a stack of skips to find, but nothing recent and nothing that interested me. For lack of something better to do, I stopped at the office.

  Lula was on the couch, wading through a stack of bride magazines, marking pages with little red sticky tabs.

  I looked over at Connie, and Connie did an eye roll.

  “I saw that,” Lula said. “Don’t you do an eye roll about me. I gotta consider my options. I gotta keep an open mind. Tank could be real disappointed if he don’t see me in a long white dress. And what about his mama? She could be expecting a wrist corsage. I gotta consider flowers. I don’t want to get started on the wrong foot with his mama.”

  It was hard to imagine Tank having a mama. Much less one who would wear a wrist corsage.

  “You said you didn’t want a big wedding,” I said to Lula.

  “Yeah, but looking at the cake got the ball rolling.”

  “Have you talked to Tank about any of this?”

  “No. I didn’t see him last night. He called up and said he had one of them stomach viruses.”

  “Sometimes men don’t like elaborate weddings,” I said to Lula. Especially when they don’t want to get married.

  “That better not be Tank,” Lula said, “on account of I’m starting to get into this wedding shit. And anyways, after all the things I do for him, the least he could do is marry me in a church and all.”

  “You do lots of things for Tank?”

  “Well, I might in the future,” Lula said.

  My mother’s ring tone went off on my cell phone.

  “There’s a strange man here, and he’s looking for you,” my mother said. “I told him you weren’t here, but he won’t go away.”

  “Does he have white hair and big black glasses?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Me, too,” Lula said. “Where we going? Who has white hair and glasses?”

  SEVEN

  THERE WERE THREE cars lined up at the curb in front of my parents’ house. The white Taurus was one of them.

  “I never seen a real stalker before,” Lula said. “I’m looking forward to this.”

  I parked in the driveway and slid from behind the wheel. “Let me do the talking. I don’t want to make a big deal over this. And I especially don’t want to freak my mother out.”

  “Sure,” Lula said. “I understand that. My lips are sealed.”

  “And don’t shoot him or gas him or fry his hair with your stun gun.”

  “You got a lot of rules,” Lula said.

  “He’s harmless.”

  “That’s what those stalkers want you to believe, and then wham—they get naked pictures of you and put them on the Internet.”

  “You have personal experience?”

  “No, but I heard. Well, okay, maybe a little experience. But not with a stalker.”

  My mother was at the door waiting for me. “How do you attract these strange men?” my mother asked. “They’re never normal.”

  “He’s a stalker,” Lula said. “He might even be dangerous.”

  I turned and looked at Lula. “What about the sealed lips?”

  “I forgot. I got carried away.”

  “He’s confused,” I said to my mother. “I just need to talk to him. Where is he?”

  “He’s in the kitchen. I have a full house today. Your grandmother is in the dining room with Betty Greenblat and Ruth Szuch. They’re all insane. They each have a computer, and they’re playing that game. They don’t even take bathroom breaks. I think they’re all wearing Depends. They said they’re ganging up on the griefer. They don’t like being disturbed, so you have to sneak past them.”

  My mother, Lula, and I tiptoed past Grandma, Betty, and Ruth. They were all dressed like Zook, and they were all hunched over their computers.

  “We got a bad snert here, girls,” Betty said. “Let’s kick ass.”

  “This looks like the Queen of the Damned costume party at the Shady Rest Nursing Home,” Lula whispered to me. “Is this what the golden years looks like?”

  “I heard that,” Ruth said. “The golden years are for pussies. We went straight to brass.”

  The stalker was in the kitchen stirring a pot of chili. He did a big smile when he saw me. “Surprise,” he said.

  “So you’re the stalker,” Lula said, looking him over. “I thought you’d be nastier. You’re kind of a disappointment.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I’m not any good at this. I can’t get anyone to pay attention to me.”

  “You gotta look assertive if you want people to hear you,” Lula said. “You gotta talk with authority. You gotta walk the walk and use the language. You see what I’m saying?”

  “I guess so. I guess I could try that.” He stiffened his spine and pointed his finger at me. “Listen, bitch . . .”

  My mother gave him a whack on the head with her wooden spoon. “Behave yourself.”

  “Don’t you have anything better to do?” I asked him. “Don’t you have a job?”

  “I’m currently between positions. I had a job, but then I had the dream, and I had to give the job up so I could follow Brenda around.”

  “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” Lula said. “This is about a dream?”

  “I told all this to the police and the judge and the psychiatrist,” the stalker said.

  “Then you should have the story down good,” Lula said. “Tell it to me.”

  “Three years ago, I was struck by lightning in the Wal-Mart parking lot. All my hair fell out, and when it grew back, it was this white color. And I was sort of psychic. Like sometimes people glow and I can see their aura.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s my aura?” Lula wanted to know.

  “I’m not seeing one right now.”

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “Some psychic. Can’t even see my aura. I bet I have a hell of a aura, too.”

  “Wait a minute. I think I’m starting to see one. It’s . . . red.”

  “That’s a powerful color,” Lula said.

  “Anyway, sometimes I have these vision dreams that I’m pretty sure mean something. And I started having them about Brenda. And I got this feeling that I was supposed to be protecting her. You know, like staying close by for when I got a vision of danger.”

  “What’s this vision of danger look like?” Lula asked him.

  “It’s . . . um, a pizza.”

  “Say what?”

  “It’s a big pizza. It’s symbolic. See, there’s Brenda, and there’s this big pizza she’s running away from.”

  “Maybe you’re the pizza,” Lula said.

  “Or maybe the danger is that she’ll get fat if she eats the big pizza,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No, this is an evil pizza. It’s none of those things.”

  “And you told this to the psychiatrist and he still let you run around loose?” Lula said.

  “I’m not considered danger
ous,” he said. “Just annoying.”

  “Here’s the deal,” I said to him. “I promise to keep my eyes open for the big pizza, if you’ll go away.”

  “How about if I just keep a distance?”

  “Sure. But it has to be out of sight.”

  “Okay. And I’ll let you know right away if I get any more messages.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  I walked him out of the kitchen, past Grandma and the ladies, and into the hall. I watched him leave, and then I locked and bolted the front door.

  When I got back to the kitchen, my mother had the spray bottle of bleach in hand and she was disinfecting the counters and the stalker’s chair. “Marion Zajak’s daughter doesn’t have stalkers. Catherine Bargalowski’s daughter doesn’t have stalkers. Why do I have to be the one with the daughter who has stalkers? Isn’t it enough that my mother kills griefers? I mean, what kind of a woman kills griefers? Can she go to jail for that? Am I an accomplice?”

  Grandma came into the kitchen. “That no-good son of a peach basket ganked me. I had my bitches here and I still got ganked.”

  “You didn’t kill the griefer, did you?” my mother asked.

  “No. Aren’t you listening? He ganked me.”

  My mother and I had no clue what happened when someone got ganked, but it didn’t sound good.

  “Thank heaven,” my mother said. And she made the sign of the cross.

  “I got big news,” Lula said, flashing the ring. “Notice anything new?”

  “Wow, that’s a pip of a ring,” Grandma said.

  “I’m engaged to my big sweet potato, Tank,” Lula said. “I’m thinking of a June wedding.”

  “You can’t go wrong with a June wedding,” Grandma said. “Do you have the hall?”

  “No,” Lula said. “I only just got started.”

  “What about flowers?” Grandma asked.

  “I was thinking little pink sweetheart roses.”

  “You could put them on the cake, too. Only make them out of icing,” Grandma said. “And then you need table decorations, and what color were you gonna use for bridesmaids?”

  “Pink,” Lula said. “Everything could be pink, like the roses. It could be my theme. I read in one of the magazines the best weddings have themes.”

  “They’re more memorable that way,” Grandma said.

  Lula’s eyes got wide. “I just got the best idea. We could put Tank in a pink tuxedo.”

  “I’ve never seen a groom in a pink tuxedo,” Grandma said. “It might make the news. You could be on television.”

  “It would look real good with his skin tone,” Lula said. “We might have to get it made special, though. I should get started right away.”

  I wasn’t a Tank expert, but I was pretty sure he’d drive his car off a bridge before he’d be seen in a pink tuxedo.

  “I’m going back online, and I’m gonna get my chameleon going,” Grandma said. “I might even raise my sneak level and go invisible. I got a feeling about the griefer. There’s something familiar about him.”

  Connie called on my cell. “Good news,” she said. “Dom just bailed Loretta out. He got their mother to use her house as collateral.”

  “I thought her mother was in rehab.”

  “She is. I didn’t look too hard at the signature. Here’s the problem. I can’t leave the office, and I need someone to spring Loretta and drive her home. Dom won’t go anywhere near the jail.”

  EIGHT

  “I JUST WANT to go home and take a shower and get into clean clothes,” Loretta said. “And for the rest of my life, I don’t want to ever see a Tom Collins.”

  I turned down her street, and a block away we could see the disaster. There was a mound of furniture and assorted junk at the curb in front of her house.

  “Shit,” Loretta said. “It’s that bastard slum lord who owns my house. He’s evicted me.”

  I parked and looked at Loretta’s front door. It had a board nailed across it and an eviction notice tacked to the board.

  “You had to know this was coming,” I said to Loretta.

  “I was behind on my rent, but I was hoping he’d give me another month. We’re coming into wedding season, and the firehouse is booked solid with showers and receptions. I could have caught up this month.”

  She wrenched the passenger-side door open and got out and stood staring at all her worldly possessions.

  “Is this everything?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Pathetic, isn’t it? Most of the big furniture pieces, like the beds and the couch, came with the rental.”

  “You need to get this trucked out of here. There’s not that much. You could haul it in a pickup and store it in your mom’s garage.”

  “I don’t have a phone,” she said. “My phone went dead in jail.”

  I gave her my phone, and she called Dom.

  Forty minutes later, Dom rolled in driving a rattletrap truck. He pulled to the curb, and I took off. I didn’t want another confrontation with crazy Dom, and I was due at the hotel at eleven. I was wearing black slacks and black boots, a stretchy white T-shirt, and a fitted black leather jacket. I was ready to represent Rangeman.

  TANK WAS ON guard in front of Brenda’s suite when I stepped out of the elevator. I tried to imagine him in a pink tuxedo, but the picture wouldn’t come together.

  “How’s it going?” I asked him.

  “Good,” he said.

  “No trouble with Brenda?”

  “No.”

  So much for conversation.

  At precisely eleven o’clock, Ranger arrived, walked straight to Brenda’s door, and knocked.

  Nancy opened the door a crack and looked out at Ranger.

  “The car is here,” Ranger said.

  Nancy grimaced. “She can’t get her eyelashes on.”

  “And?”

  “She can’t do television without eyelashes.”

  Ranger looked over at me. “You want to step in here and translate?”

  “False eyelashes,” I told him. “Doesn’t the station have someone doing makeup?” I asked Nancy.

  “No. Budget cuts. We have hair and makeup coming in from New York for the concert, but there was a scheduling screwup and they won’t arrive in time for this television show.”

  “Good grief,” I said. “This isn’t rocket science.” I pushed past Nancy and found Brenda in the bathroom, fiddling with her hair. She was wearing a white stretch wraparound shirt that tied in the front and showed a lot of cleavage and a lot of skin between the bottom of the shirt and the top of her jeans. She had her hair in two ponytails. She looked like Daisy Duke.

  I looked at the mess of makeup spread out on the bathroom counter. She had individual lashes, which would take an hour to get on, and she had strip lashes, which any idiot could glue to her lids in ten seconds.

  “I can do this,” I told her. “We’ll go with the strip lashes. You don’t have time for the individuals.”

  “Are you a professional?” she asked.

  “Even better. I’m from the Burg. I was putting lashes on my Barbie doll when I was seven. Close your eyes.”

  I glued the lashes to her eyes and swiped on liquid eyeliner. I looked at my watch. Ten minutes late. Could be worse.

  We maneuvered Brenda through the lobby to a side exit, where three black Rangeman SUVs idled. Ranger, Nancy, Brenda, and I got into the middle car, and we all cruised off into traffic.

  I was in the backseat, and I was thinking I should be sort of excited to be part of Brenda’s entourage. After all, she was a star. And she was going to be on television. And I was going to be a backstage insider for the concert. That’s a big deal, right? Problem was, she didn’t look like a star up close. She looked like she sold real estate to people with more money than brains.

  It was a short ride to the station. We signed in at the front desk and followed an intern through a maze of shabby corridors to the green room, which turned out to be painted tan. Some pastries and fruit and coffee ha
d been set out. There were some dog-eared magazines on a side table. The upholstered couch and chairs were leather and slightly shabby. The carpet was the color of dirt.

  We all took a seat and watched the television set that was tuned to the station. This was midday news and the anchors and guests were wearing conservative suits. Brenda looked like she was ready to get raffled off at a hoedown.

  “How do I look?” Brenda asked Nancy. “Do I look okay? Is my hair okay?” She reached in and rearranged her breasts. “Are the girls okay?”

  “Remember to plug the concert tonight,” Nancy said. “We need to sell tickets.”

  The producer popped in with the soundman, and they hooked a mic to Brenda and led her away.

  “I don’t have to do this,” Nancy said. “I could get lots of good jobs. I could sell shoes at Macy’s, or I could clean kennel cages.”

  Ranger was on his cell phone, conducting business. His eyes were on me, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Nancy and I, smelling disaster, nervously scarfed down doughnuts.

  A man and a woman were anchoring the news. They talked a little about the concert, and they introduced Brenda. And then Brenda was suddenly onstage, in a chair next to the female anchor. Brenda’s legs were demurely crossed and her bulging breasts looked like polished marble. She was all smiles and white teeth and sparkling eyes. Brenda was stunning. Something happened between Brenda and the camera. Even the whole Daisy Duke thing was working.

  Nancy had her fingers in her ears and her eyes squinched shut. “Tell me when it’s over.”

  “It’s good,” I told her. “You have to see this. She’s beautiful.”

  Nancy opened one eye. “Really?”

  “It’s magic,” I said to her.

  “I just love it here,” Brenda said to the anchor. “I’m in Trenton, right?”

  The anchors laughed. Brenda was adorable.

  “Everyone is wondering about your love life,” the anchor said. “There’s a rumor that you’re engaged . . . again.”

  Brenda clapped her hands over her eyes. “Good Lord,” she said. “No way!”

  She took her hands away and a feathery black object dropped onto her cheek.