Fearless Fourteen: A Stephanie Plum Novel

by Janet Evanovich

  “Yeah, but you might be a nut,” Lula said.

  “Hey,” I yelled at Zook and Mooner. “Stop digging. The money isn’t in the backyard.”

  A murmur went up from the people pressed against the crime scene tape. Two of them had shovels.

  “It isn’t in the front yard, either,” I told everyone. “Go home!”

  Mooner, Zook, Bob, Gary, Lula, and I left the yard and huddled in the kitchen. I gave everyone an ice cream sandwich, except Bob. Bob got a slice of ham.

  “How come you think the money isn’t in the yard?” Lula wanted to know.

  “People wouldn’t be breaking into Morelli’s house if the money was in the yard. The only people digging in the yard are idiots who saw Brenda on television.”

  Lula peeled the wrapper off her ice cream. “So you think the money’s in the house?”

  “I’m not sure there is any money. I suspect it was here at one time, but Dom was in prison for almost ten years, and there were a lot of changes. Rose died. Morelli moved into the house. Things were thrown away. Rooms were renovated. For all we know, Rose could have found the money and given it to the church.”

  “I don’t think so,” Gary said. “I’m getting a sharp pain in my forehead.”

  “It’s the ice cream,” I told him. “You’re getting a brain freeze.” I herded everyone into the living room and found some Saturday morning cartoons on television. “I need to go out again, but I’ll be back by noon.”

  I found the keys to Morelli’s car and left my keys in their place. I drove to Jelly’s house and idled across the street. It was a small two-story house that had been converted into two apartments. There was only one front door, so I assumed the owner had made a small foyer with two inner doors. I looked up to the second floor. Four windows going across. The shades had been raised on all four windows. It would be easier to snoop if Jelly lived on the ground floor. I drove around the block. Sometimes older neighborhoods in Trenton have alleys intersecting the blocks. This block wasn’t divided by an alley. I parked around the corner, walked to Jelly’s house, and tried the front door. Ordinarily, if you look like you belong somewhere, no one pays attention. Unfortunately, I was blue, and I looked like I belonged in some distant galaxy.

  The front door was unlocked, so I stepped inside. Just as I’d thought, there was a small foyer. The door to my left led to the ground-floor apartment. The door directly in front of me led upstairs. I rang the bell. No answer. I rang again. Nothing. I tried the doorknob. Locked. I looked under the mat. No key. I felt the top of the doorjamb. Eureka . . . a key. I plugged the key into the lock, the door clicked open, and I stepped inside. I closed the door and stood listening, hearing nothing but quiet.

  I crept up the stairs and cautiously peeked into the apartment. Living room with a galley kitchen at one end. A small hall leading to a bedroom and a bathroom. Dirty dishes in the sink. A cereal box on the counter. A pillow on the couch in front of the small television. An open half-empty bag of chips on the coffee table. I moved to the bathroom. Not clean. Two toothbrushes. Two razors. Towels on the floor. Toilet lid up. Ick. The door was open to the bedroom. Bed unmade. Sheets looked like they’d been on there since Christmas. Socks and underwear on the floor. Top bureau drawer open. Big mess.

  I thought there was a good chance Dom was crashing here. I was tempted to do a more thorough search, but I wasn’t sure what it would produce. And the longer I lingered, the better my chance of getting caught in the act. I decided to sneak out and do a background search on Jelly and turn the whole mess over to Morelli.

  I walked out of the bedroom into the short hallway, and I heard the door open and close at the foot of the stairs. Instant panic! I was trapped. I wasn’t in a position where I felt I could successfully detain Dom, and I didn’t want to blow his cover and have him run. I did a ten-second imitation of a cat on roller skates. I pulled myself together, scurried into the bedroom, and dove under the bed.

  The reality of hiding under a bed is that it’s uncomfortable, it’s terrifying, and you feel like an idiot. I inched to the middle, so there was less chance I’d be seen, and I tried to breathe quietly.

  There were two sets of footsteps on the stairs and then there was a moment of quiet, and I knew they were in the living room.

  “Nobody home,” a male voice said. Not Dom’s.

  “Yeah, but I know he was here. I can smell him.”

  The second voice was also male. And again, not Dom’s.

  “Look around. Maybe he left something laying out that would tell us something.”

  “He wouldn’t do that. He’s living with Jelly. He’s not going to let Jelly see anything.”

  “Look around anyway. People are stupid. They do stupid things. And maybe if we stay here long enough, he’ll come home, and we can persuade him to talk to us.”

  “We’ve got his sister on ice. How much more persuading can we do? Personally, I don’t think he knows where the money is.”

  “For crissake, just look! Would it kill you to look?”

  Holy crap. Dom’s partners. And I was stuck under the bed. I went cold inside. I could feel everything liquefying in my intestines. How does this happen to me? How do I get myself into these situations? I heard them rummaging through the living room and kitchen. They came into the bedroom, and my heart rate picked up.

  “These guys are such slobs,” one of them said. “It’s like two pigs living in their own slop.”

  “You should talk. I’ve been in your apartment and it isn’t that great.”

  “Wait until I get my hands on the money, and you’ll see great. I’ll be out of that shit-hole apartment. I’ll be cruising the islands in my boat. Did I ever show you a picture of my boat?”

  “Only about a million times.”

  They were walking around the bed, and I could see their shoes and the bottoms of their slacks. The one guy was wearing scuffed brown tie shoes, worn down at the heel, and tan slacks with cuffs. The other was in jeans and beat-up CAT boots with a gash in the toe. They went through the bureau drawers and rifled the single drawer in the bedside chest.

  “There’s nothing here,” the one guy said. “What do you want to do now?”

  “I don’t feel like waiting. I got stuff to do. My wife’s on my ass.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Yeah, no one would marry you.”

  “Lots of women would marry me.”

  “Oh yeah? Who?”

  “Lots of women. And I’m not paying through the nose for a woman I’m not even getting anything from.”

  They left the bedroom, and moments later, I heard them on the stairs. The door opened and closed, and the apartment was quiet. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to crawl out from under the bed. I was pretty sure they were no longer in the apartment, but what if I was wrong? I waited a couple minutes more and slithered to the edge, where I had a better view. I held my breath and listened. I carefully looked around. Now or never, I thought. I belly-crawled out, got to my feet, and forced myself to creep down the hall to the living room. I almost keeled over with relief when no one was there. I hurried to the foyer at the bottom of the stairs and hesitated. If the two bad guys saw me leave, they might think I was coming from the downstairs apartment. Unless they watched the evening news. Then they’d know who I was because I was blue.

  I locked the door, placed the key on the top of the doorjamb, opened the front door a crack, and looked out. No one standing there with a gun in his hand. No black mafia staff cars with tinted windows lined up at the curb. I casually walked away from the house, down the block to the corner, around the corner, and angled myself behind the wheel of Morelli’s SUV. I two-handed the key into the ignition and pulled away from the curb with a white-knuckle grip on the wheel. Okay, so I was a little freaked, but I hadn’t messed my pants. That was pretty good, right?

  By the time I got to Morelli’s house, I’d calmed down a little but not entirely. It was almost noon and Morelli was sitting on his fro
nt step with Bob. I plunked myself down next to him, he put his arm around me, and I collapsed into him.

  “Either you like me a lot, or you’ve had a bad morning,” Morelli said.

  “It’s both. I did some legwork and ended up at Jelly Kantner’s apartment.”

  “At his apartment or in his apartment?”

  “In.”

  “Were you invited in?”

  “No, but I also wasn’t told to stay out.”

  “Nobody home,” Morelli said.

  “Mmm. Anyway, it was obvious someone was staying with Jelly, and it wasn’t a woman.”

  “You think it was Dom?”

  “Yes. And I wasn’t the only one to reach that conclusion, because just as I was about to leave, two guys showed up.”

  I felt Morelli tense against me and go silent for a beat. “You told them you were the maid?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything. I was under the bed.”

  “This is why our relationship is stressful,” Morelli said.

  “I think they were Dom’s two remaining partners. They were looking for him because they wanted the money. And they have Loretta. They’re holding her hostage, but so far Dom hasn’t come through.”

  “Did you get to see them? Do you have names?”

  “No names. One is married and one isn’t. One of them lives in an apartment. One was wearing beat-up CAT boots and jeans, and the other was wearing tan slacks with cuffs and brown shoes. I couldn’t see more than that.”

  What I didn’t say was that the voice on the single guy sounded familiar. It had a slight rasp, like a smoker. And there wasn’t a lot of inflection. I couldn’t associate a name or face with the voice. I just felt like I’d heard it before.

  “I’ll bring Bob in and then I’ll go to Jelly’s and wait for Dom,” Morelli said. “Where’s Zook?”

  “Zook’s in the house with Lula.”

  “I got back about ten minutes ago, and Lula’s car was here, but no one was in the house.”

  “Did you look in the backyard?”

  “Yeah,” Morelli said. “No one’s in the backyard. It’s wall-to-wall mud. I think if I keep turning the hose on it no one will dig there.”

  “That’s weird,” I said, “because I could swear I hear digging.”

  Morelli listened. “It doesn’t sound like digging. It’s more like drilling and . . . oh shit.”

  “What?”

  Morelli was on his feet. “That’s a jackhammer.”

  I followed Morelli to the kitchen and down the cellar stairs. Mooner was wailing away at the concrete floor with a pickax, and Lula had a jackhammer propped against her belly. She gave the jackhammer a blast of juice, and I was afraid her breasts were going to break loose from their moorings and knock her out. Gary and Zook were in a corner, mesmerized by the spectacle.

  “This is my basement floor,” Morelli yelled. “You can’t just go into a man’s house and jackhammer his floor!”

  Lula jiggled to a stop. “Well, excuse me. It’s not like we weren’t gonna share the money with you.”

  “There’s no sharing,” Morelli said. “The money was stolen.”

  “It was over ten years ago,” Lula said. “Isn’t there some kind of time limit and then it’s finders keepers losers weepers?”

  “No,” Morelli said. “Where’d you get the jackhammer?”

  “I sort of borrowed it.”

  “Oh great,” he said. “A hot jackhammer.”

  “It’s a Saturday. You can borrow these things on a Saturday,” Lula said.

  “This is a lot of floor to demo,” Morelli said. “And after we demo the floor, we still don’t know where to dig.”

  “Guess that’s why there were directions,” Lula said. “Probably it was like a treasure map. Seven paces north and two paces west and the treasure is buried under the piece of floor with the X marked on it.”

  “I thought you had an appointment with your lawyer,” I said to Lula.

  “Yeah, I guess I better get going.” She turned to Morelli. “You want me to come back and jackhammer some more when I’m done with the lawyer?”

  “No,” Morelli said. “But I appreciate the offer.”

  “So, like, now what?” Mooner asked Morelli. “This is majorly disappointing. I was counting on some moola, man. Like, being a griefer doesn’t pay a lot, you know what I mean? And a man has needs, right? Like, what happens when I have a craving for a Big Mo candy bar or a crab puff?”

  “Here’s a deal,” Morelli said. “I could use some security in the house. Suppose I pay you guys to protect the house. That means you have to keep people from digging in my yard, pickaxing my basement, spray-painting my dog . . .”

  “Whoa, cool,” Mooner said. “And how about the Zookduder and me? Can we do those things?”

  “No,” Morelli said. “You have to protect the house from everyone, including yourselves.”

  “How much?” Zook asked.

  “Five dollars a day.”

  “No way,” Zook said.

  “Ten.”

  “Twenty,” Zook said. “Apiece.”

  “Ten,” Morelli said. “Apiece.”

  “Take it, dude,” Mooner said to Zook. “It’s a cool gig.”

  “Me, too?” Gary asked.

  “Yeah, you, too,” Morelli said.

  “Should we be, like, packing heat, or something?” Mooner wanted to know.

  “No!” Morelli said. “If someone comes to the house, you politely tell them to go away. If they won’t go away, you call me.”

  “Gotcha,” Mooner said.

  “Looks like we’re done in the basement,” I said. “Everyone upstairs for lunch.”

  Gary had been quietly standing in his corner. “I think it might be here,” he said.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “I feel like I have a vision coming, but it’s still in the back of my head. Sometimes it’s like that. It’s like brain constipation.”

  “Oh man, I hate when I get that,” Mooner said.

  “Maybe lunch will help,” I said to Gary.

  Gary didn’t budge from the corner. “I think I should stay here.”

  I made sandwiches for Zook, Mooner, Morelli, Bob, and me, and I brought Gary’s sandwich down to the basement.

  “How’s it going?” I said to him. “Anything coming through?”

  “I had sort of a tingle before, but it went away.”

  “Okeydokey. Shout out if you need anything.”

  Lula left, and Mooner and Zook checked in on Minionfire.

  “I’m going to get my cousin Mooch over here to finish the basement,” Morelli said. “Part of it’s torn up. I might as well finish the job.”

  Mooch owned a small construction company. He specialized in renovation, and fitting people into cement overcoats. His Yellow Pages ad read MOOCH MORELLI, DEMO AND DISPOSAL.

  “Can you trust Mooch to let you know if he finds the money?” I asked Morelli.

  “I’ll keep my eye on him.”

  “What about Dom?”

  “You can watch for Dom,” Morelli said. “Stake out Jelly’s apartment and call me if Dom shows up.”

  FOURTEEN

  FOUR HOURS LATER, I was still watching for Dom. My ass was asleep, and I had to tinkle. I got Jelly’s phone number from Connie and tried calling him. No one answered, so I called Morelli.

  “What’s new?” I said to Morelli.

  “Mooch and his guy Tiny have gone through two six-packs and have destroyed almost my entire basement. I think they only have maybe four or five more bottles of work left to do.”

  “What did they find?”

  “Dirt.”

  “Are they going to dig up the dirt?”

  “No. They’re wasted. Mooch is lucky he hasn’t jackhammered his foot.”

  “I need a bathroom break.”

  “No activity?”

  “None. It looks to me like no one’s even in the bottom half of the house.”

  “I’d take your place, but I�
�m afraid to leave Mooch alone with the kids.”

  “Afraid he’ll plant them in the cellar?”

  “No. I’m afraid he’ll share my remaining beer with them.”

  So I had a dilemma. I had to tinkle. Bad. And I had no one to relieve me. I could drive around and look for a gas station or convenience store with a bathroom, but that could take time. Or I could run across the street and use Jelly’s bathroom. If I used Jelly’s bathroom, I ran the risk of getting trapped again. Not to mention contracting a disease.

  I did a mental coin toss, and Jelly’s bathroom won. I pulled the key out of the ignition, shoved it into my pocket, and crossed the street. I let myself into the apartment, went straight to the bathroom, and lined the seat with toilet paper. Even with the toilet paper, I tried to be careful not to touch anything. This wasn’t a bathroom that inspired confidence, and better safe than sorry. I was about to squat when I heard a crash and a sizzle, and an explosion rocked the building. I yanked my pants up and ran out of the bathroom. I got to the hall and saw a wall of flames race around Jelly’s living room, creating an instant inferno. No way to get to the stairs. I ran back to the bedroom and slammed the door shut. I shoved the window up and crawled out. I hung by my hands, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and let go. My feet hit first and then I was flat on my back with the wind knocked out of me.

  I dragged myself to my feet and took a couple deep breaths. This wasn’t good. I didn’t want to be found here. I limped through the house’s little backyard and half climbed, half fell over the split-rail wood fence, into his neighbor’s yard. I crept between houses and came out on the street behind Jelly’s.

  A big black glob of smoke rose above the housetops, into the sky. Two police cruisers raced past me, and I could see the flashing lights of a fire truck farther down the street. I walked around the block and stood by Morelli’s SUV, across the street and two houses down. My face felt flushed from the heat of the fire, and the realization that I could have died on the toilet.

  My back ached and my arm was scratched and bleeding. I was having a hard time breathing, and I could feel tears collecting in my throat and behind my eyes. I managed to get into the SUV, but I was paralyzed by the horror and unable to drive. Jelly’s house was completely engulfed in flames. Firemen were spraying water on neighboring houses and the fire didn’t seem to be spreading. Thank goodness for that.