Fearless Fourteen: A Stephanie Plum Novel

by Janet Evanovich

  “I’ve got his address,” Morelli said. “Spanner fed me the information on my way over. The tech’s name is Steve Fowler, and besides being a crime scene tech, he also did some moonlighting as security at the bank ten years ago.”

  I followed Morelli and we wound through the Burg and took a left into Morelli’s neighborhood. He parked in front of a row house that looked like all the other row houses on the street. Two stories. Small front yard. Neat but unexceptional. No indication that a killer lived inside.

  We all piled out of our cars and went to the door. We all looked a little grim. We weren’t sure what we’d find. Amputation isn’t pretty. And for that matter, we weren’t convinced Loretta was still alive.

  Morelli tried the door. Locked, of course. He moved to a window. Also locked. He put his elbow to it, and it shattered. He cleared some glass away, opened the window, and went in. He opened the door for us and told everyone to stay in the foyer. He drew his gun and moved to the cellar door.

  Dom and I were silent, gnawing on our lower lips, barely breathing. A couple minutes passed, and there were footsteps on the cellar stairs, and next thing, Loretta was standing there in front of us. She was pale and shaking and her hair was snarled. She was crying and laughing. Borderline hysteria.

  We all stared at her feet and hands. No big bandages. No sign of amputation.

  “You have all your toes,” I said to her.

  She looked down at herself. “Yeah,” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “He said he chopped off two toes. I saw them.”

  “Not mine,” Loretta said.

  I looked at Morelli, and Morelli shrugged. He hadn’t a clue who belonged to the toes.

  _______

  IT WAS SIX o’clock, and we were all in front of the television eating meatball subs, tuned in to the news. Mooner, Gary, Zook, Loretta, Dom, Morelli, Bob, and me. Lula had declined in favor of a night with her big Honey Pot. The party was thrown by Mooner with money he’d collected when the Econoline exploded. Mooner’d given twenty thousand to Loretta and Zook, ten thousand to the animal shelter so they could offer free cat-spaying, and he’d bought a very used mellow yellow Corvette with the remaining money. True, the money was slightly illegal, but hell, this was Mooner we were talking about. Almost everything he did was slightly illegal.

  Brenda’s theme song came up, and we all sat forward. Brenda popped onto the screen wearing a low scoop-neck sweater and a tiny skirt. She had two black eyes and a Band-Aid on her nose.

  “Here I am with an exclusive on the nine-million-dollar-mystery conclusion,” Brenda said. “You’ll have to excuse my appearance, as I was in a freak pizza accident.”

  There was film of the maroon Econoline going out of control, crashing into the deli, and exploding. And then Brenda was on film with the tissues up her nose. “And here we have an interview with the man who took down the vicious criminal responsible for murder, mayhem, and kidnapping.”

  The camera panned to Mooner, and everyone in Morelli’s living room yelled and whistled.

  “Tell us exactly how you did it,” Brenda said, pointing the mic at Mooner.

  “It was with my potato rocket,” Mooner said, looking into the camera. “And my munitions man, Gary, deserves some credit for giving me exactly the right potato.”

  The camera returned to Brenda. “There you have it,” she said. “Another exclusive from Brenda. And, sadly for you, but happily for me, this is my last piece of news on this station. I’m going national with my own reality show. And I’m cohosting the show with my very own stalker and psychic, Gary.”

  There was more whistling and cheering on our part, and Gary took a bow.

  Dom stood and raised a bottle of beer. “Now that all this is over and Loretta’s safe, I want to say, let bygones be bygones, and I still think Morelli’s a piece of shit for getting Loretta pregnant and walking away, but I’m not gonna kill him like I planned.”

  Loretta looked up at Dom. “What the heck are you talking about? Morelli isn’t Mario’s father. Morelli was a jerk. I wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”

  “Then who’s the father?” Dom wanted to know.

  “It was Lenny Garvis. I got pregnant the night before he died. I didn’t want to make a big deal about it. Mario always knew, but I didn’t tell anyone else.”

  Lenny Garvis! He was in Morelli’s class. Two years ahead of me and mentally a few years behind. I remembered his death. The idiot choked on a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I mean, how could you possibly choke on a peanut butter sandwich?

  Dom wasn’t convinced. “I saw you in the garage with Morelli.”

  “That wasn’t me,” Loretta said. “That was Jenny Ragucci. She was such a slut.”

  Morelli smiled. “It could have been Jenny Ragucci. That makes much more sense. I had good luck with sluts.”

  I looked over at him.

  “All in the past,” Morelli said. “I’m a cupcake man now.”

  “Whoa, dude,” Mooner said. “That’s so, like, cosmic.”