Fearless Fourteen: A Stephanie Plum Novel

by Janet Evanovich

  “I’m off to North Trenton,” I said to Connie. I cut my eyes to Lula. “Are you coming with me?”

  “I guess I am,” Lula said. “Someone’s gotta go along and protect your skinny ass.”

  “You didn’t do a lot of protecting yesterday. You sat in the car when I chased down Dom.”

  “Darn right. I knew there was gonna be dogs. These people got dogs and all kinds of security shit. Did you think of that? No. You chased Dom into that yard, and next thing, there was a pack of killer dogs running after you.”

  We got out on the sidewalk, and Lula looked at my car. “No more Zook,” she said. “I thought the Zook was an improvement.”

  “It was too recognizable with Zook on it.”

  “Yeah, Connie and me always knew when you were trying to sneak past the office.”

  I drove to North Trenton and parked in Susan’s lot. We took the stairs, and I knocked on her apartment door. No one answered, but the door eased open.

  “Uh-oh,” Lula said. “There’s always dead bodies inside when this happens.” She stuck her head in and sniffed. “I smell monkey,” she said.

  I rapped on the open door. “Anyone home?” I yelled.

  No one answered, but I could hear a television squawking somewhere. I stepped into the apartment and scanned for the monkey. No monkey in sight.

  Lula was pressed tight behind me. “I better not get attacked by no monkey,” she whispered. “I’m gonna be mad at you if I get a monkey on my head. There was lots of other losers we could have gone after.”

  The living room and kitchen area was unoccupied. The television was blaring from the bedroom.

  “Hello,” I yelled again. “Anyone home?”

  “Who could hear over that television?” Lula said. “Sounds like one of them music video stations.”

  We cautiously crept to the bedroom and peeked through the open door. Susan was naked on top of some guy with a cast on his leg, and she was going to town on him, grinding and pounding away in time with the music.

  “Oops,” I said. “Sorry.”

  Susan paused for a moment and covered her breasts with her hands. “We made up,” she said.

  I was telling myself not to look, but my eyes weren’t cooperating. “Great, but you still have to get your bond straightened out.”

  “It was for Carl,” she said. “He was unhappy.”

  “Un-hunh.”

  I could hear Lula making choking sounds behind me.

  “We’ll wait in the hall until you’re done,” I said to Susan.

  “Okay,” she said. “It never takes long.”

  “Cripes,” the guy said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Lula and I almost knocked each other over trying to get out of the bedroom.

  “I gotta get outta here before I bust from trying not to laugh out loud,” she said. “I didn’t want to be rude, but I was a ’ho for a bunch of years, and I never seen anyone bouncing around on a wanger like that. That woman still got some anger left in her. He’s lucky if she don’t bend something and do permanent damage.”

  Lula was looking at me and not paying attention to what she was doing. She opened the powder room door instead of the front door and Carl lunged out at her and grabbed her face.

  “Eeeeee,” she squealed. “I got a monkey on my face. Help! Do something.”

  Carl backflipped off her and ran around the room.

  “Get me out of here,” Lula said. “Where’s the door? Someone open the door!”

  She found the door, yanked it open, and Carl scampered out. He ran down the hall, jumped up, and punched the elevator button. The elevator doors opened, Carl leaped inside, and the doors closed.

  “I didn’t see that,” Lula said. “I had nothing to do with it, and I never was here.”

  I didn’t want to go back into the bedroom, so I yelled as loud as I could. “Susan! Your monkey just got into the elevator.”

  “Oh yes!” Susan shouted. “Yes, yes, yes. Yippie-ki-yay, cowboy!”

  “I’m gonna pretend she heard,” Lula said.

  “I did my best to tell her.”

  Lula nodded in agreement. “Nobody could ask for anything more from you.”

  The racket was still going on in the bedroom.

  “Probably we shouldn’t wait for Susan to get done,” I said.

  “Yeah. I just remembered I got something to do.”

  We hurried down the stairs and slunk through the lobby to the lot. We didn’t see Carl.

  “I hope Carl’s okay,” I said to Lula.

  “Carl’s probably on his way to stick up a 7-Eleven.”

  NINETEEN

  I DROPPED LULA at the office and went to my apartment to check on Rex. I leaned over his cage and told him about my day so far. He was in his soup can and probably wasn’t listening, but I talked to him anyway. I gave him an olive and a corn chip, and I called Susan Stitch.

  “Did you find Carl?” I asked her.

  “Yep. He escapes like that all the time. He’s such a clever little dickens. He was on the first floor visiting with Mrs. Rooney. He likes to play with her beagle.”

  “Would this be a good time to get rebonded?”

  “It’s perfect, but you don’t have to worry about it. Ron and I are going to the courthouse together. We’re meeting his lawyer there, and hopefully this can all be worked out.”

  “That’s great,” I said, assuming Ron was the guy with the leg cast and stiffy. “Good luck.”

  I hung up, and I took a moment to enjoy being in my own space. Morelli’s house had ice cream sandwiches, but my apartment was home. My apartment was quiet and sane and was free from überelves and bank robbers.

  My cell rang, and I saw on the screen that it was Morelli. I was tempted not to answer, but I knew he’d keep calling until I connected.

  “Hola,” I said to him.

  “Do you have a landline?”

  “Yes. I’ll get back to you on my kitchen phone.”

  “Here’s the deal,” he said when we reconnected. “The address I gave you earlier is actually a storage facility down by the river. The lockers are big. Garage-size. People keep furniture and boats and ATVs in them. It’s not a stretch to drive a van into one. It’s locker number twenty-four, and it’s rigged with a lock that will open with any key. Inside is an exact replica of the van used in the robbery. The key is in the ignition. We’ve got nine million in dummy money in the back of the van. All you have to do is go along with the deal.”

  “How am I going to communicate?”

  “I’ll put a wire on you. Give me twenty minutes.”

  I put the phone down and went back to talking to Rex.

  “I hate this,” I said to him. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not the hero type. I wanted to be Wonder Woman when I was a kid. Now that I’m an adult, I think kicking ass leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, I’m not that good at it. And wearing a wire makes my stomach feel squishy. I’m always afraid I’ll get found out, and I’ll end up with a bullet in the head like Allen Gratelli.”

  It was a sobering thought when said out loud.

  “Not that it would happen,” I said to Rex.

  I refilled Rex’s water bottle and gave him an extra bowl of hamster food, just in case. And then Rex and I waited in silence in the kitchen for Morelli to arrive.

  Ten minutes later, Morelli knocked and opened the door. He had a key.

  “I’m not supposed to be doing this,” he said. “I’m still working the gang thing, but I didn’t want anyone else feeling you up when they taped the wire.”

  “If something happened to me, you’d take care of Rex, wouldn’t you?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  “Yes, but if it did.”

  “If anything happened to you, I’d be so destroyed they’d have to strap me to a bed and feed me through a tube. After five or six years, I might be capable of taking care of Rex. In the interim, you should assign a guardian.”

  Mo
relli had his hands under my shirt and supposedly was installing the wire, but his thumb kept tracing a line across the tip of my breast. I was starting to lose focus.

  “If you’re trying to get my mind off the ransom, it’s working,” I told him.

  “Yeah, sometimes I love my job,” he said, giving me a whole-hand fondle. He took a small receiver out of his pocket, put the attached earbud into his ear, and stepped back. “Push the button and switch it on.”

  I felt along the battery pack and pushed the button. “Testing,” I said. “Mary had a little lamb. Yada, yada, yada.”

  “Perfect,” Morelli said. “You’re going to be transmitting to the Fed. Unfortunately, he won’t be able to talk to you, so you’ll have to run with it. If you feel like you’re in trouble, do whatever you have to do. It’s okay if you abort.”

  “I’m a little weirded out,” I said.

  Morelli looked down at me. Serious. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He kissed me on the forehead. “You’ll be fine.”

  I went to the window and watched him cross the lot to his car. He opened the driver’s side door, stood for a moment, and then slammed the door shut without getting in. My window was closed, so I couldn’t hear what Morelli was saying, but clearly he was talking to himself. He was waving his arms and pacing and his face was getting red. He punched the car and stood hands on hips, starring down at his shoes. I’ve seen him do this a million times. Getting a grip.

  I called him on my cell. “I’ll be fine,” I told him.

  “This really sucks,” he said. And he got in his car and drove away.

  THE STORAGE FACILITY chosen by the Feds was down by the river, off Lamberton Road. I took Hamilton and passed by the bonds office and the hospital. I turned at the junction of South Broad and felt my way around until I hit Lamberton. I was watching my mirror for a tail, but I didn’t pick one up. I turned onto a private road leading to a small industrial park, and kept driving until I saw the sign for the storage facility. The facility itself was about a half acre in size and protected by a chain-link fence. The gate to the fence was open. There was a one-room cinderblock building that served as office. So far as I could see, the office was vacant. Beyond the office were rows of storage lockers, each the size of a single-car garage.

  I drove down the second row of lockers and stopped at number 24. I got out of my car and looked around. Very quiet. No sign of the fourth partner. No indication of police presence. I had the wire switched on, but I wasn’t saying anything.

  I walked to the garage door, took a deep breath, and shoved the key in. The door rolled up to reveal a dark maroon Econoline van with Pennsylvania plates.

  I looked in the driver’s side window. The key was in the ignition, as promised. I wrenched the door open and climbed in. I was feeling calmer now that everything was in motion. Piece of cake, I said to myself. Cool as a cucumber. Wonder Woman on board.

  I cranked the engine over, backed the van out, put my car in the garage, and rolled the garage door down. I carefully drove the van out of the storage facility, parked on the side of the road, and dialed the number the fourth partner gave me.

  “Long time no hear,” he said.

  “I had things to do. I had to look in on a skip.”

  “Is that all you had to do?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What about waiting for the police to set the trap?”

  “Nope. Didn’t do that.”

  “I told you I would know. I know everything.”

  “Not everything,” I said.

  “I know you’ve got phony money in the back of that phony Econoline. I know you got the van out of a phony garage off Lamberton. I know you’re wired. Now, here’s the deal. Hang the scarf in the window when you’re ready to make a trade without police involvement. If I don’t see the scarf by noon tomorrow, I’m cutting Loretta’s hand off.”

  “But I don’t . . .”

  He was gone.

  “He knew,” I said into the wire. “He knew the whole deal. You need to clean house. He’s on the inside.”

  _______

  I RETRACED MY route back to the garage and traded the van for my car. Still no one walking around, but I knew police were planted somewhere. I drove out of the industrial park and went straight to Morelli’s house. School was still in session. Just me and Bob at home.

  I took the red scarf from the upstairs window and set it on Morelli’s desk. All the way home, I’d been boiling inside, seething mad that this had gotten screwed up. I wanted it over and done. I wanted Loretta to be safe. I was angry at Dom for running away from me, and I was angry at the police that they couldn’t manage a secure operation.

  I sat in Morelli’s chair and forced myself to think. Who is this fourth partner? A cop? A computer whiz? A professional crook? I looked at the red scarf. He wanted it hung from the second-floor window. Why the second floor? Wouldn’t it be easier to see it from the first floor if you were walking or driving past the house?

  I swiveled around and stared out the window. The houses on the opposite side of the street were all two-story, like Morelli’s. Easy to see into their bedroom windows from here. The convenient assumption would be that the partner lived in one of these houses, but Morelli had already gone door-to-door in his neighborhood and hadn’t found anything odd.

  I called Morelli, but got his voice mail. I called my mother, and got my grandmother. She said my mother couldn’t come to the phone because she’d taken a pill and fallen asleep after seeing me wrestling with the chicken on News at Noon. I called the office and was transferred to Connie’s cell. She was at the courthouse trying to help resolve the Susan Stitch mess.

  My modus operandi when investigating is, if you have no ideas . . . eat something. It doesn’t help to get ideas, but it passes the time. So I trekked downstairs and nuked a tray of mac and cheese.

  This got me to feeling very mellow, because it’s impossible to stay upset while eating mac and cheese. Here’s the positive side, I told myself. You continue to make little inroads on the fourth partner’s identity. If you can’t find Dom and get your hands on the money, maybe you can find the fourth partner. He’s kind of full of himself, and that confidence could be his undoing.

  I called Ranger.

  “I want to get into Stanley Zero’s apartment again,” I told him.

  “That’s a sealed crime scene,” Ranger said.

  “And?”

  “It would be safer if we went in at night.”

  “I can wait.”

  “I’ll meet you in his apartment parking lot at eleven.”

  I REACHED THE school just as it was letting out. Zook ambled over to the car with his usual cluster of misfits and pulled the passenger-side door open. He slouched into the seat, dropped his backpack on the floor between his feet, and looked over at me. “The kids at school are talking.”

  I gave the Sentra some gas and moved into the stream of traffic. “What are they saying?”

  “They’re saying my mom cut out on me. Like maybe she found the nine million and took off with it.”

  “They’re wrong.”

  “I sort of wouldn’t blame her. That’s a lot of money.”

  “Your mom is okay. She’s just not . . . accessible right now.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I can’t tell you, but we’re trying to work it all out.”

  He pushed his backpack around with a foot that seemed way too big for his slim frame. He was like a puppy that hadn’t grown up to his feet yet. “I’m not some dumb little kid,” he said. “I deserve to know what’s going on with my mom.”

  I turned onto Hamilton and slid a sideways glance at him. He wasn’t dumb, and he wasn’t a little kid. He was a big kid. And he had a point. He needed to know what was going on with his mom.

  “You’re right,” I said. “You deserve to know. But you can’t tell anyone. No one at school. Not Mooner. Not Gary. No one.”

  He nod
ded his head.

  “Three men robbed the bank with your Uncle Dom. Two are dead, and your uncle is in hiding. The fourth partner has your mom and is holding her for ransom. He wants the nine million dollars. Problem is, we don’t have it, and we don’t know where it’s located. The police are involved, and we’re making progress at getting your mom back, but you have to be patient.”

  “That is so sucky,” he said.

  “You’re right,” I said on a sigh. “It is totally sucky.”

  Mooner and Gary were waiting on Morelli’s front steps when I pulled to the curb with Zook. They were dressed in Army fatigues, and they stood and saluted when I parked the car.

  Zook and I burst out laughing.

  “I know they’re goofy,” I said to Zook, “but I like them. They’re in the moment.”

  I unlocked Morelli’s front door, and Bob rushed out and ran around in circles. He did some yelping and grunting, and then he hunched and pooped out my underwear.

  “Whoa,” Mooner said. “Victoria’s Secret colonic, dude. Far out.”

  Bob ran back into the house the instant he was done, and we all followed. Eventually, I’d come out in rubber gloves and contamination suit and scoop up the deposit, but for now I was walking away from it.

  “Where did you get the clothes?” I asked Mooner.

  “Army surplus. We got some for the Zookster, too.”

  “We changed the patches,” Gary said. “We made them say ‘Homegrown Security.’”

  I got everyone settled in the living room with chips and pretzels and sodas. I phoned for pizza. I asked about Zook’s homework.

  How bizarre was this? It was like running a day-care facility. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I mean, who am I? I was raised to have traditional values, but I screwed up on my first marriage big-time, I took an odd job, and now I love two men. One is definite husband-and-father material. The other . . . I don’t know what to think of the other. And now here I was, doing my “mother cat” impersonation.

  The doorbell rang and I went to answer it. I opened the door and didn’t bother to hold back the grimace. It was Brenda and her film crew.