Fearless Fourteen

by Janet Evanovich

  “He has a gun,” Morelli said.

  “True. And a car.”

  “The car he was driving belongs to his mother. We found it abandoned.”

  “Where's he sleeping? Is he sneaking back into his mother's house?”

  “No. We've been doing random checks,” Morelli said.

  “It's warm enough to sleep outdoors. Just another street person if he migrated downtown.”

  “Yes, but he has a rifle. It would make him conspicuous if he carried it with him.”

  Bob was digging in one of the holes. He had his head below ground level and dirt was flying between his hind legs.

  “I think Dom's in the neighborhood, waiting for a chance to get into the house,” I said. “So maybe we can set a trap. Make it look like no one's home, but you could be in a closet or something, waiting to jump out and capture Dom.”

  “Gee, that sounds like lots of fun.”

  “You have a better plan?”

  Morelli blew out a sigh. “No.”

  Morelli woke me up out of a sound sleep. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.

  “I was sleeping. I didn't hear anything.”

  “Shush,” he said. “Listen.”

  It was warm and the windows were open. The white gauzy curtain still left from Aunt Rose moved on a gentle breeze.

  “There,” he said. “Did you hear it?”

  “It sounds like someone's digging.”

  “What does it take to discourage these idiots?”

  “I don't know, but I don't care if they're digging. Go back to sleep.”

  “I can't go to sleep,” Morelli said. “This is making me nuts.”

  He rolled out of bed and moved toward the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I'm going to shoot the digger.”

  “That's not a good idea. Not to mention, you're naked.”

  “The digger won't care. He'll be concentrating on his bullet hole.”

  “You needed a new lawn anyway,” I said to him. “Think of this as soil preparation.”

  He found a pair of boxers and pulled them on. “How's this? Does this meet your dress code for shooting trespassers?”

  I dragged myself out of bed and grabbed some clothes off the floor. “Let's at least see who's out there before you shoot them. If we're lucky, it'll be Dom. Do you have a flashlight?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  We padded downstairs and tiptoed through the dark house. I found the flashlight, and Morelli had his Clock in hand. We stood in the pitch-black kitchen and looked out the window. Someone was clearly digging in the backyard, but it was too dark to see much of anything.

  “Okay,” Morelli said. “On the count of three, I'm going to open the door, and you shine the flashlight on this bastard. One, two... three!”

  Morelli yanked the back door open, and I hit the button on the flashlight and caught the digger in the act.

  “Good God,” Morelli said.

  It was Grandma Mazur.

  “Howdy,” Grandma said. “Hope I didn't wake you.”

  “Of course you woke us,” I said. “It's two in the morning. What the heck are you doing?”

  “I felt lucky,” Grandma said.

  “I don't think the money is buried in the backyard,” Morelli told her.

  “That's okay,” she said. “I still feel lucky. It isn't everyday I get to see a man in his underwear.”

  “How did you get here?” I asked her.

  “I drove the Buick.”

  “You're not supposed to drive,” I told her.

  “I'm old. I've got rights,” she said.

  That could be true, but Grandma Mazur was the worst driver ever. She knew only one speed. Foot to the floor.

  “I'll drive Grandma home,” I said to Morelli.

  I dropped Grandma off at the door and locked the Buick up in my father's garage. Morelli was waiting curb-side in the SUV when I got to the front of my parents' house. I slid onto the passenger seat and looked over at him. He was only wearing the boxers.

  “I thought you might have changed your mind about the SUV,” Morelli said.

  I checked out his underwear, which was imprinted with pictures of bunnies.

  “Where did you get those shorts?” I asked.

  “Wal-Mart. They came in a pack.”

  I blew out a sigh. Morelli was irresistible in his bunny boxers. “I haven't changed my mind about the SUV, but I've changed my mind about your bedroom.”

  Morelli is at his best on a Saturday morning. His body temperature is a little higher and his blood pressure is a little lower than on a Monday. Everything about him is a little softer, a little more sensual. He was at the kitchen table in faded navy sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt that had the sleeves cut short. I suspected he was commando under the sweatpants. He'd showered, but he hadn't shaved, and he looked like he could give a dead woman an orgasm.

  He glanced up from his paper and smiled at me. “Shazam.”

  I smiled back at him. It had been a multiple shazam morning.

  I sipped my coffee. “What's going on today?”

  “I'm getting someone to demo the basement floor. And I'm going door-to-door looking for Dom. I think you're right. He's nearby.”

  It was a little after eight, and Zook was still sleeping. Mooner and Gary hadn't yet appeared on Morelli's front doorstep. The sound of car doors slamming shut and people talking carried in from Morelli's backyard.

  “Its Saturday morning,” Morelli said. “Don't these people take a day off?”

  I peeked out the window. “Brenda is in the yard with the film crew.”

  Morelli took his coffee to the door and stepped out.

  “Hell-o!” Brenda said, eyeballing Morelli. “You are hot. Hold me back!”

  Morelli turned and looked at me. “Is she for real?”

  “Yes. And you want to keep arm's distance, or she'll give you a pat-down.”

  “You're trespassing on private property,” Morelli said. “And you've ignored the crime scene tape.”

  “We didn't ignore it,” the cameraman said. “We got a real good shot of it.”

  Brenda was in another black leather outfit. She was wearing four-inch spike-heeled shoes, and her hair and her face and her chest were blue. She had a handheld mic, and she was having a hard time navigating because her heels were sinking into the freshly dug dirt. She climbed onto a dirt mound and looked down into the hole. The cameraman focused on Brenda.

  “Here we are at Aunt Rose's house,” Brenda said to the camera. “And as you can see, digging for the stolen money has already begun.”

  “Excuse me,” Morelli said. “You're going to have to leave.”

  Brenda stumbled over to Morelli with the mic. “Are you by any chance the handsome owner of the property-”

  “That's it,” Morelli said. “I've had enough.”

  He set his coffee cup on the stoop, reached over the railing, grabbed the garden hose, and turned it on Brenda and the cameraman.

  Brenda hit high C at the first blast of water. “Eeeeeee!” she shrieked.

  “Dammit, shit, sonovabitch!”

  The dirt instantly turned to mud, and Brenda lost her footing and went down.

  The sound guy rushed in to help, and he went down, too.

  “Maybe you want to turn the hose off,” I said to Morelli.

  Brenda had one shoe on and one shoe in her hand. “What is your problem?” she yelled at Morelli. “Do you know who I am? I'm Brenda. I'm doing the news here, and the news is sacred, for cripe's sake. You can't turn the hose on the news, you moron!”

  Morelli shut the water off and retrieved his coffee cup. “This is going to be another one of those days,” he said.

  We backed into the house, closed and locked the door, and pulled all the shades down.

  Morelli stood in the middle of his kitchen. “I hate this,” he said. “I hate bringing this shit into my home.”

  “We need to find Dom.”

  Morelli n
odded agreement. “I'm going to change my clothes and canvass the neighborhood.”

  “We'll split it in half.”

  Morelli smiled down at me. “Nice offer, Cupcake, but you're blue. You'll scare the crap out of everyone.”

  “I forgot.”

  “Stay here with Zook. Keep people out of my yard. Get me some estimates on jackhammer rentals.”

  Morelli went upstairs, and I crept to the window and looked out. No Brenda. No cameraman. No film crew van. I went to the front of the house. No one was there, either. Good deal.

  Bob was sleeping in a patch of sun in the living room. He was still spray-painted. He didn't seem to care. While I was standing, looking out the window, Lula's red Firebird slid to a stop in front of Morelli's house. Lula hoisted herself out of the car and marched to Morelli's front door.

  “Hey,” I said, opening the door to her. “What's up?”

  “I need you to help me with my prenup. I got a lawyer appointment this afternoon, and I gotta have this ready.”

  “I don't know anything about prenups.”

  “You just gotta help me make out my list. I'm supposed to list all my assets. And then Tank lists all his assets. And we got what we got.”

  “So Tank is doing this, too?”

  “I left a message on his phone. I said if you got anything you want to keep, you better list it out or I could get it in case of divorce. Not that I intend to get a divorce, but I guess you never know, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Do you think Tank and me would ever get divorced?”

  “I'm still struggling with you and Tank getting married.”

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “Anyways, I got this list. You want to hear it?” Sure.

  “I got a television, a DVD player, a cable box.” Lula cut her eyes to me. “I hate those cable fuckers.”

  “Everybody hates them.”

  “I got my Firebird, my Glock, a fur coat that's almost mink, a clock radio, a whip.”

  “Wait a minute. You have a whip?”

  “Don't everyone?”

  “I don't have a whip.”

  “Hunh.”

  “What do you do with the whip? What does it look like? Is it one of those long black ones like Zorro uses?”

  “No,” Lula said. “It's the kind a jockey uses. It's for bad boys.”

  “Eeuw.”

  “Okay, if you're gonna be squeamish about it, I'll skip over my collection of professional experience enhancement tools. I never used the whip anyway. It went with a Halloween outfit.”

  Morelli came down the stairs in jeans and running shoes, and a sweatshirt over a T-shirt.

  “What's up?” he said to Lula. “I see you're a member of the Blue Girl Group.”

  “Blue isn't my best color,” Lula said.

  Morelli grabbed me and kissed me and went off to do his cop thing.

  “He looks like he got some last night,” Lula said. “Where's he going?”

  “He thinks Dom is somewhere in the neighborhood. He's going to look around.”

  “How come you're not helping him?”

  “I'm blue.”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot. I'm starting to get used to it.”

  “And someone has to stay here with Zook. I don't want to leave him in the house alone.”

  “I could baby-sit him,” Lula said. “I'm taking the morning to put my prenup in order. I could just as well do it here.”

  “I'd really like to go back to my apartment and check on Rex and get some clothes.”

  “Go for it,” Lula said.

  I ran upstairs and knocked on Zook's door.

  “Yeah?” he said. A moment later, he was at the door, looking almost awake.

  “I have to go back to my apartment for an hour or so. Morelli is working, so Lula is going to stay here with you.”

  “No way! She scares the crap out of me.”

  “You'll be fine as long as you don't tell her she's fat. And you might want to avoid mentioning the blue dye.”

  “I'm not going out of my room.”

  “That would be okay, too.”

  I grabbed my purse and ran downstairs. “Don't let anyone dig in the yard,” I told Lula. “Morelli takes it personally. And Zook is a good kid, but it would be great if he didn't paint anything.”

  “I'm on it. You can count on me. Do you think I should list shoes in the prenup?”

  “Do you and Tank wear the same size?”

  “No.”

  “Then probably your shoes are safe.”

  My apartment isn't that far from Morelli's house. Too far to walk but fast to drive. I parked the Zook car, bypassed the elevator for the stairs, and let myself into my apartment. I tapped on Rex's cage, and he peeked out at me. I dropped a baby carrot and a piece of cheese into his food dish and gave him fresh water. I stuffed clean jeans and a couple shirts into a tote bag. I didn't need much. Just enough to get me through a couple more days while we straightened out the Zook arrangements.

  I took one last look at myself in my bathroom mirror. I wanted to believe that the blue was fading, but truth is, it wasn't. I was hideously blue. I was like Dom... conspicuous. A bunch of people were looking for Dom, and Dom didn't want to be found. And Dom didn't have the luxury of taking off for Rio. Dom had to hang close. Dom had his own agenda.

  So let's step into Dom's shoes. I'm ultra-recognizable, and I'm confined to a small area. How would I move around? In disguise or at night. Second problem, I have no money. So either I mooch from someone I trust or else I hold up a convenience store. I'm going to guess he's mooching.

  I called Connie. “Would you run a personal history on Dom for me?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Where was he living when he was sent to prison?”

  “That's easy. He owned a house on Vine Street. When he was sentenced, his wife divorced him and got the house. So far as I know, she's still living there and has remarried.”

  I got the house number from Connie and hung up. I'd forgotten about the ex-wife. This was great. Ex-wives loved ratting on their ex-husbands.

  The Vine Street house was a small single-family cape with a detached single-car garage. It had a green Subaru sitting in the driveway.

  I parked and knocked on the front door. A woman answered and gasped when she saw me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I know I'm blue. I had an accident with some dye.”

  “I know who you are,” she said. “You're Stephanie Plum. There was a piece on you on the late news last night. They said you were involved in the robbery treasure hunt, and you and Brenda got sprayed with blue dye. Do you really know Brenda?”

  “Yes.”

  “What's she like?”

  “She's like Brenda. Could I ask you some questions about Dom?”

  “Sure, but I don't know much about him anymore. I haven't seen him since he got out.”

  “I'm interested in the guys he used to hang with.”

  “Mostly they were from his old neighborhood. Victor Raguzzo, Benny Stoli, Jelly Kantner. And the guy who was shot. Allen Gratelli. Allen and Dom worked together.”

  “Did you think any of those guys pulled the job with him?”

  “I could see Allen doing it. Victor, Benny, and Jelly, no.”

  “Dom's hiding out somewhere. Do you have any ideas?”

  “He's not with his mom?”

  “No.”

  “Jelly would be dumb enough to take him in. Or maybe he's still seeing Peggy Bargaloski. That's why I divorced him. I found out he was spending a lot of time at Peggy's house.”

  I gave her my card and told her to call me if she saw Dom.

  I drove around the corner, pulled to the curb, and got addresses from Connie.

  Jelly was living in a second-floor apartment two blocks from Dom's mother's house. Peggy was in Cleveland.

  I wanted to do a drive-by on Jelly's house, but I was too obvious in the Zook car. There was a car wash minutes away on the corner of Hammond and Baker, but I didn't wan
t to put up with the car wash crew and their comments on my blueness. I know that's chickenshit of me. What can I say? I'm blue, and I'm feeling fragile.