Smokin' Seventeen: A Stephanie Plum Novel (Stephanie Plum Novels)

by Janet Evanovich

  I reached the bonds office lot and saw that everyone was still in place, plus Connie’s car had been added to the mix. I parked and crossed to where Connie and Vinnie were standing, looking not too happy.

  “Someone dumped another body,” Connie said. “A young woman this time.”

  “Anyone recognize her?”

  “Juki Beck,” Vinnie said. “I wrote bond for her once, a couple years ago. Shoplifting. At the rate we’re going I’ll have to call in an exorcist before the union lets me build on this lot.”

  “I need to download mail,” Connie said. “Does the bus still smell like bear?”

  “No,” Vinnie said. “It smells like Mooner.”

  I handed Connie my key. “You can use my apartment. Just don’t let Vinnie in.”

  “Nice way to treat your relative,” Vinnie said. “You know, I gave you this job, and I could take it away.”

  “You didn’t give me the job,” I said. “I blackmailed you into hiring me. And you’re not going to take it away, because you can’t find anyone else stupid enough to work for you.”

  “Not true,” Vinnie said. “There are a lot of stupid assholes out there. And where the hell’s my bear? Why aren’t you tracking down my bear?”

  “It’s on my list.”

  Connie went to her car, Vinnie went back to the bus, and Morelli broke away from the knot of cops and forensic techs and walked over to me.

  “This guy’s pushing his luck,” Morelli said.

  “Vinnie said he was able to ID the woman.”

  “Yeah. Vinnie and half the cops on the force. She got around.”

  “Did she have a connection to Dugan?”

  “Nothing apparent. She waited tables at Binkey’s Ale House. Divorced. No kids. Twenty-six years old.”

  “Maybe this was a different killer.”

  “Cause of death is the same. Dugan, Lucarelli, and Beck all had their necks broken. Dugan and Lucarelli were decomposed enough not to show a lot of detail. Beck had severe rope burns on her neck. Probably choked unconscious and then had her neck snapped.”

  I felt a wave of nausea slide through my stomach.

  “This guy is strong,” Morelli said. “It’s not that easy to choke someone, and Dugan and Lucarelli were big guys.”

  I looked to the back of the property where Juki Beck had been pulled from the car. I know him, I thought. This monster. This serial killer. He’s moving among us, looking normal. He’s a shoe salesman, or a cop, or a gas station attendant.

  “Why did he bring her here?” I asked Morelli. “I know the lot is shielded by Mooner’s bus, but it still seems risky.”

  “This is the ugly part,” Morelli said.

  “How could it possibly get uglier?”

  “There was a note pinned to her shirt. It said For Stephanie.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s all it said. Two words. For Stephanie.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  I WAS ON MY BACK, looking up at Morelli through cobwebs, and my first thought was that the 7-Eleven victim had exacted revenge on me, and I’d been stun gunned. The cobwebs cleared, and I discounted stun gunning.

  “What happened?” I asked Morelli.

  “You fainted.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I agree, but if someone sent me a dead woman I might faint, too.” He was down on one knee, bending over me. “Are you ready to get up?”

  “I need a moment.”

  “Don’t take too long. People will think I’m proposing.”

  I slowly got to my feet. “Why me?”

  “I don’t know. Have you been getting threatening letters or phone calls?”

  “The only one threatening me is your grandmother.”

  “Ranger had cameras working and apparently captured the drop. I haven’t seen the video yet, but I’m told the killer was covered head to toe. The interesting thing is he delivered the victim here in her own car.”

  “Have you found the car?”

  “Not yet. And if we don’t it’ll be following the pattern because we never found Dugan’s car or Lucarelli’s car. Disappeared without a trace.” He kissed me on the forehead. “I have to get back to the station. I want to see the video, and I’m going to run some names through the system. See if I can connect someone to you and Dugan. There are only a handful of people who know about this note, so keep it to yourself.”

  “Ranger?”

  “You can tell Ranger.”

  Lula was standing by the bus, waiting for me. She was dressed in poison green spandex pants, five-inch leopard stilettos, a low-cut scoop neck stretchy lemon yellow shirt, and she’d had her hair done up in braids that made her look like she was wearing a giant spider on her head.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Another body. This one wasn’t buried. Just deposited.”

  “We have a sick individual here. He’s killing too many people. He might even be over the legal limit for Trenton.”

  For the sake of keeping the note secret I was trying to look calm, but I was actually very rattled. In a back corner of my mind there’d been a nagging thought that Vinnie or the bonds office might have been involved somehow. It never occurred to me that I was the connection. And pinning a note on a dead woman and addressing it to me as if it were a gift tag was hideously disgusting and beyond frightening.

  “You look real freaked,” Lula said. “Are you okay?”

  “I have problems.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  There was a laundry list, ending with the big one I couldn’t talk about. “For starters, I’ve got the vordo.”

  “So you be a good time. What’s wrong with that?”

  “I’m too much of a good time. It’s even more confusing than when I wasn’t a good time at all. And I think I might be getting a bladder infection.”

  “A bladder infection’s no good. Maybe you should cut back.”

  “I can’t cut back. I’ve turned into a sex addict. I get within a foot of Ranger or Morelli and I’m ready to go … and go, and go, and go, and go.”

  “That’s a lot of going. I’m a retired professional, and it’d be a lot of going even for me. What you need are granny panties. You put on a big ol’ pair of ugly granny panties and you won’t be dropping your drawers no more. And even if you forget in the heat of the moment, and you pull your skirt up over your head, you’re not gonna see no action on account granny panties have a deflating effect on a man. Your man’s gonna be going unh ah, no way am I getting busy with a woman wearing granny panties.”

  Call me crazy, but it made as much sense as anything else going on in my life. And it was better than thinking about Juki Beck. “Okay, sign me up. Where do I get granny panties?”

  A half hour later we were at JCPenney, wandering around in the lingerie department.

  “This is the perfect all-purpose store,” Lula said. “They got panties to fit any occasion. They got everything from thongs to granny panties and everything in between.” She picked a pair of pink cotton panties off the rack and held them up for inspection. “Now this is what I’m talking about. You don’t want to be seen in these panties. You have to turn the lights out when you put them on so you don’t even see yourself.”

  “They look big.”

  “Yeah, these suckers are gonna come up to your armpits. Try ’em on, and we’ll take ’em for a test drive. See if you want to hump anybody while you’re wearin’ these panties.”

  I took the panties to the dressing room, tried them on, and checked myself out in the mirror. Not a pretty sight. I was definitely moving into birth control territory.

  “Well?” Lula asked when I came out.

  “They’re perfect.”

  “They got them in red and white, too. I bet you put the white ones on, and you want to jump off a bridge.”

  I bought one in each color, and I wore the pink ones out of the store. Better safe than sorry was my motto. Although truth is there wasn’t much to be sorry about
considering the night I’d just had. And the night before that with Morelli hadn’t exactly been shabby.

  “Now that you been back-to-back with Morelli and Ranger who’s winning the sack race?” Lula asked.

  “The food and the bed linens are better at Rangeman, but Morelli has Bob.”

  “All those things are important, only I’m talkin’ about the big O.”

  I took some time to think about it. “They’re different, but equal.”

  “That don’t tell me nothing,” Lula said. “Sounds to me like you gotta do more research.”

  Oh boy.

  “And what about boyfriend number three?” she asked.

  “Dave Brewer? I don’t know him very well.”

  “He’s good-lookin’, right? And he’s big and strong and manly?”

  “I guess.”

  “And he can cook. Seems like that equates to Ranger’s sheets and Morelli’s dog. And your mama likes him.”

  “My mother’s endorsement doesn’t count for a lot. One time she fixed me up with Ronald Buzick.”

  “The butcher? The fat, bald guy?” Lula followed me out of the mall. “He’s not a real attractive man. Your mama must have been thinking about free sausage. I got some kielbasa from him once that was outstanding.”

  I unlocked my Escort, and I thought about Ronald Buzick. He was about the same size as the killer. The jumpsuit had looked padded, but maybe those lumps were actually Ronald. He was strong enough to break someone’s neck. And he was a little odd. He seemed jolly on the outside, but I was guessing he had a lot of anger on the inside. I mean the man had his hand up chicken butts all day long.

  “Do you think Ronald Buzick could kill someone?” I asked Lula.

  “I think anyone could kill someone. People get a little wacky, and bang someone’s dead. At least in my neighborhood. What are we gonna do now? Do we need lunch?”

  “We just ate lunch at the mall.”

  “Oh yeah. I forgot.”

  I put the car in gear and drove out of the lot. “I think it’s time to visit Merlin Brown again.”

  “That’s a good idea on account of I haven’t been knocked on my ass yet today. It wouldn’t be right for a day to go by without him knocking me on my ass.” She looked over at me. “Do we have a plan?”

  “No.”

  “Probably you still don’t want me to shoot him or run over him with your car.”

  “Right.”

  “I got a new idea. How about we bring him a poison pizza. I’m not saying we want to kill him or anything. I’m thinkin’ we could just slip him some pepperoni roofies.”

  “That’s illegal.”

  “Only a little. People eat roofies all the time. At least in my neighborhood.”

  “You need to move into a new neighborhood.”

  “Yeah, but I got real cheap rent.”

  “I bet.”

  “And my apartment got a big closet.”

  “It also hasn’t got a kitchen.”

  “A girl’s gotta have priorities,” Lula said. “I happen to be a stylish person. And I have my whole professional wardrobe from my previous vocation.”

  “I used to be a stylish person. And now I’m wearing granny panties.”

  “First off, you never been a stylish person. You don’t own a bustier or a single thing in leopard. And second you be out of those panties in no time. You just need to give your lady parts a rest.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  MERLIN’S CAR WAS PARKED in the lot to his apartment building.

  “We got some good news, and we got some bad news, and it’s all the same news,” Lula said. “Looks like Merlin’s home. Now what?”

  “We go talk to him.”

  “Say what?”

  I cut the engine and grabbed my shoulder bag. “We aren’t having any luck wrestling him to the ground, so I thought I’d talk to him.”

  I crossed the lot with Lula trailing after me. We took the stairs to Merlin’s apartment, and I knocked on the door.

  Merlin answered on the second knock. He was naked again, and he had a boner.

  Lula checked Merlin out. “Must be that time of day.”

  “I was hoping we could talk,” I said to Merlin.

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  He gestured to his wanger. “I don’t suppose you could help me out with this.”

  “No,” I said. “Not even a little.”

  He looked at Lula. “How about you?”

  “I don’t do that no more,” Lula said. “I gotta be in love now. In the meantime I’d appreciate it if you’d put it away on account of it’s distracting waving around like that.”

  Merlin looked down at himself. “It kind of has a mind of its own.”

  “Well take it into the bathroom and talk to it,” Lula said. “It’s not like we got all day.”

  Merlin sighed and shuffled off to the bathroom.

  “Sometimes it’s good to have an ex-hooker for a partner,” I said to Lula.

  “You bet your ass. How are the panties working for you? You feel any twinges lookin’ at Merlin’s big boy?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “I felt something, but I’m not sure what it was. It’s kinda like lookin’ at a train wreck. Horrible but fascinating all at the same time.”

  There was a lot of grunting coming from the bathroom. “Oh yeah,” Merlin said, behind the closed door. “Give it to me. Do it. Do it.” Slap! “Do it again, bitch.” Slap! And then more grunting. “Unh, unh, unh.”

  I shifted foot to foot and gripped my purse strap. “I’m feeling uncomfortable.”

  “Yeah,” Lula said. “I can’t tell if he’s whackin’ off or he needs more fiber in his diet.”

  “That’s it. I’m out of here.” I whirled around and bolted for the door. “I’ll talk to him on the phone. I’ll send him an email.”

  We hustled out of the building, rammed ourselves into the Escort, and I laid rubber out of the lot.

  “I either need something to eat, or I’ve gotta take a shower,” Lula said. “That wasn’t an uplifting experience.”

  • • •

  I made an emergency run at a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru. We got twelve doughnuts divided up into two bags, so we wouldn’t fight over them, and we sat in the parking lot, and we ate our doughnuts.

  “Okay, I feel better,” Lula said.

  “Me, too, except I might throw up.”

  “You’re out of shape. You don’t eat enough doughnuts. I feel fine because I’m in condition. I could put just about anything in my body, and it only says oh boy, here we go again.”

  A text message from Dave buzzed onto my phone. DID YOU GET MY SURPRISE? MORE TO COME.

  Oh joy.

  “Bad news?” Lula asked.

  “I think Dave is turning into a stalker.” If it wasn’t for Juki Beck and the note I would have thought Dave was a more serious problem. As it was, he got back-burnered as a minor irritation. I powered my window down to get some air. “I’ve been thinking about Boris Belmen.”

  “The bear guy?”

  “He can’t remember shooting the bartender. And he said it wasn’t his gun. He didn’t know where the gun came from.”

  “This is our problem, why?”

  “The only way I could get Belmen to show up for court was to promise I’d take care of the bear if he got convicted.”

  “People in your apartment building aren’t gonna be happy about you having a bear. Probably you could shave him and dress him up in clothes except you might get arrested when he drops his pants to poop in the parking lot.”

  “If I could prove Belmen didn’t shoot the bartender I’d be off the hook.”

  “Proving people innocent isn’t our specialty,” Lula said.

  I’d hate to list our specialties. Wreck cars, eat doughnuts, create mayhem.

  I pulled Belmen’s file out of my bag and read through the police report. “The shooting took place at Bumpers Bar and Grill on Broad.”

  “I’ve been the
re,” Lula said. “That’s a real nice bar. They got crab cake sliders and about seven hundred kinds of beer. I was there once with Tank when we were seeing each other.”

  I drove the length of Stark and turned onto Broad. Bumpers was a couple blocks down, set into an area of mostly office buildings. I parked half a block away, and Lula and I got out of the car. Something compelled me to look across the street, and standing there, staring at me, was the ghost of Jimmy Alpha.

  Alpha was the manager of a boxer named Benito Ramirez. I’d killed Alpha in self-defense a bunch of years ago. I was a novice bounty hunter, way over my head in bad guys, and in a moment of sheer terror and blind panic I’d managed to shoot Alpha before he shot me.

  And now here he was glaring at me from across the street. He made a sign with his fingers to his eyes, letting me know he saw me and recognized me. And then he walked away and disappeared around the corner.

  “Did you see him?” I asked Lula.

  “Who?”

  “It was a man who looked like Jimmy Alpha.”

  “You killed Alpha.”

  “I did. But this man looked like him.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  “THEY SAY EVERYBODY got a double somewhere,” Lula said. “You just saw a double of Jimmy Alpha. Or maybe you got some kind of stress syndrome, and you hallucinated a repeat of a traumatic moment.”

  Here’s what I knew … I needed to keep it together. I was having a bad day, and I had to do some deep breathing and move forward. One thing at a time.

  Right now we were checking on the Boris Belmen shooting.

  We walked the half block to Bumpers, pushed through the heavy oak doors, and made our way past booths and tables to the bar. I hitched myself up onto a stool.

  “Where was the bartender shot?” Lula asked me.

  “In the leg.”

  We both leaned over the bar and looked at the bartender.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You’re trying to see if I’m the one who got shot.”

  He was too tan, in his twenties, and blond. He had a tribal tattoo on his wrist and a gold chain around his neck.

  “You look healthy,” I said.