Janet Evanovich - Last Peep

by Last Peep (lit)

  If this was the movies there'd be a cop watching the Zaremba house, waiting for Biggy. Since Hollywood was a long way from Trenton, I was on the street alone. Round-the-clock surveillance wasn't in the Trenton cop budget.

  I followed the sidewalk to the alley and hung a left. I'd only walked a few feet when a car cruised down Green and pulled to the curb. It was a red Firebird with rap music playing so loud the car seemed to levitate at standstill. The driver cut the music and got out of the car. Lula.

  "Hah!" she said. "Knew I'd find you sneaking around here. Could hear on the phone you weren't satisfied."

  "Curiosity is a terrible thing."

  "Killed the cat," Lula said. "Biggy catches you in his yard it gonna kill you too."

  "If Biggy has any sense at all, he's on his way to Mexico."

  "Uh-oh," Lula said. "Don't look now, but we have company."

  The company was Grandma Mazur. She was husling across the street, waving at us, her white tennis shoes a beacon in the darkness, a distant streetlight reflecting off the big patent leather purse looped into the crook of her arm. I dreaded to speculate what was in the purse.

  "I thought you might be coming here to do investigating," she said. "Thought you might need a hand."

  What I needed was a parade permit.

  "Bet you snuck out of the house," Lula said to Grandma.

  "Was easy," Grandma said. "They don't pay attention to me. All I have to do is say I'm getting a glass of water and then walk out the back door."

  "I wanted to go through the alley at night," I said. "I wanted to be out here like Sam. See what he saw."

  "Then let's do it," Lula said.

  "Yeah," Grandma chirped. "Let's do it."

  We strolled forward in silence and stopped when we got to the house owned by Lucille and Walter Kuntz. We moved ten feet into the yard, and we could clearly see Lucille watching TV in the back room. She was dressed in a nightgown, her hair was slicked back, and I guessed she was fresh from the shower.

  "Where's her husband?" Grandma wanted to know.

  "Works the night shift at the stadium. Security guard. Gets off at twelve. Except last night he worked a double shift and didn't get home until eight in the morning."

  We simultaneously swiveled our heads to Myra Smulinski's house when the downstairs lights blinked off.

  "Myra goes to bed early," Lula said.

  We turned our attention back to Lucille. Lucille stayed up late. Maybe she even fell asleep in front of the television.

  "Squirrel wasn't peeping in Myra's windows," Lula finally said. "Nothing to see in Myra's windows. Lots to see in Lucille's."

  "Nothing to see in Biggy's windows either," I said. "Biggy keeps his shades drawn. So why did Biggy kill Sam if it wasn't for peeking in his windows?"

  "Could be anything," Lula said. "Sam could have seen Biggy unloading a van full of hot blenders."

  "Maybe it's something homosexual," Grandma said. "Maybe Sam and Biggy were having an affair. And Biggy wanted to end it, and Sam wouldn't hear of it. And so Biggy shot him."

  We both just looked at Grandma.

  "I was watching television last week and one of talk shows was about homosexuals," Grandma said. "I know all about them now. And it turns out they're all over the place. You never know who's gonna pop out of the closet next. Some of those homosexual men even wear ladies underpants. Must be hard to fit your ding dong into a pair of lace panties. Maybe that's why Biggy is so mean. Maybe his ding dong don't fit."

  Sort of like the Grinch whose shoes were too tight.

  "I gotta lot of theories," Grandma said. "Old ladies got a lot of time to think about these things."

  A car swung into the alley and caught us in its headlights.

  "Hope it's not the police," Lula said. "The police give me the hives on account of my previous profession."

  "Hope it's not my dumb son-in-law," Grandma said. "He gives me the hives on account of he's such an old fart."

  I wasn't nearly so concerned about the hives as I was about my life expectancy. I didn't have a good feeling about the car. Normally a driver would slow at the sight of three women walking in an alley. This car seemed to be accelerating. In fact, this car was flat-out aiming for us!

  "Run!" I yelped, spinning Grandma around, pointher at Myra's back door. "Run for cover!"

  "Holy cow!" Lula shouted. "This dumb sonnovabitch is trying to mow us down!"

  We scattered in three directions. Grandma, having seen the last of her running days, did a fast shuffle to Myra's side of the house. Lula ran to Lucille's side of the house. And for no reason other than dumb panic, I jumped behind the single garage that belonged to Lucille and her husband and sat at the back edge of their lot.

  The car slid to a stop, spraying dirt and gravel, the door flew open, and Biggy lunged out and took off after me.

  "You!" he yelled. "You set me up! I heard about the police report. You were the first one at the van. You found that body in the house and then you stole my truck and set me up, you pussy liar! I want to know who paid you to set me up!"

  He didn't look like a man who would listen to reason, so I bagged the denial and raced for Roosevelt Street. He caught me with a flying tackle in Lucille's side yard, and we both went down to the ground, cussing and clawing. We rolled around without making much progress for a few seconds, and then I accidentally pushed his gonads into the space normally reserved for his pancreas.

  "Ulp," Biggy whispered, releasing his grip on me.

  "I didn't set you up!" I told him. "I had nothing to do with it."

  He dragged himself to his knees. "This is what happens when I help someone out of a jam. I get goddamn screwed. I didn't even kill that little retard, but I'm going to freaking kill you. I'm going to cut you up into little pieces. I'm going to carve my initials in your tongue."

  "Help!" I shrieked. I looked around. No one was coming to help. So I did what any intelligent person would do. I hauled ass out of there. I was moving so fast when I hit Roosevelt Street my feet were airborne. Biggy was thundering behind me. And in my peripheral vision I saw the Firebird rip around the corner and screech to the curb in front of me.

  "Get in!" Lula hollered.

  I dove into the backseat and the Firebird rocketed away.

  Lula slowed after a block. "He's not handling this murder thing well," she said. "Good thing he's not a woman. He'd never make it through the monthly."

  Grandma was in the front seat, holding her purse her chest. "All them Zarembas are soreheads. The whole lot of them. Bunch of big babies."

  "We need to call the police," I said. "Who's got a phone?"

  "Not me," Lula said. "I don't make that kind of money."

  "Not me," Grandma said. "I'm on social security."

  I had one, but it was in my car, along with my gun and my pepper spray and my stun gun and my bulletproof vest. And unfortunately, my car was parked back on Roosevelt.

  "We're only a block from St. Francis Hospital," I told Lula. "You can drop me off there, and I'll run in and make the call."

  "Sounds like a good plan to me," Lula said. "That way if Biggy catches up to you, you're real close to the trauma unit."

  Lula stopped for a light at Hamilton. High beams flashed in her rearview mirror, and we all swiveled to look.

  "Oh, boy," Lula said. "I think I know this car."

  I knew the car too. Ford Explorer with bug lights on the top. Biggy's car.

  "You might not want to wait for the light to turn," I suggested to Lula. "You might want to move now!"

  Lula stomped on the gas, and the Firebird jumped forward. Biggy was less than half a car length away, hunched at the wheel, looking like the antichrist, eyes glittering red, reflecting our taillights.

  Lula paused at a cross-street and... wham! Biggy slammed into the back of the Firebird. I felt my head snap, felt the Firebird accelerate again, away from Biggy.

  "Did you see that!" Lula squeaked. "He hit my car! I have six more payments to make on this car."
r />   Grandma had a hand braced against the dash. "You think he did that on purpose?"

  Wham! Another jolt from behind.

  "He's trying to kill us!" Lula said. "That crazy bastard is trying to kill us!"

  Grandma leaned her head out the window and yelled back at Biggy. "You stop hitting us this instant! I'm an old lady. You can't go around whacking an old lady like this! I've got bones like a bird. Another crash and my neck could snap like a dry stick!"

  Wham! Biggy didn't care much about old ladies' bones.

  "Eeeeee," we all shrieked on impact.

  Grandma sucked air. "If that don't beat all!" She fumbled in her purse. "I'll put a stop to this! I'll shoot out his tires. That'll slow him down!" She dragged the big.45 out two-handed, leaned out the window for a second time, and before I could reach her, she squeezed one off. A streetlight exploded and the kick from the gun knocked Grandma off her seat. "Dang," she said. "It looks a lot easier in the movies. Clint Eastwood never has this problem."

  Biggy gave us another smack from behind, Lula lost control of the wheel, and the Firebird smashed into a parked car and stalled out.

  "Okay, now I'm getting irritated," Lula said. "Now my car don't work at all."

  We looked back at Biggy, and we gave a collective gasp when he sprang from his car with a tire iron in his hand and raced toward us.

  "Yow!" Lula shrieked at Grandma. "Shoot him! Shoot him!"

  Grandma examined her gun. "Looks to me like I only had one bullet." She rolled her window up. "Don't worry, he can't get to us in here."

  Smash. The back window went out with one swing of the tire iron. Smash. Another window. I crouched to the floor, cowering and praying, and making promises to God, and safety glass chunked down on me. I should have listened to my mother, I thought. I should have gotten a job at the tampon factory. Hardly any one got beaten senseless at the tampon factory. If I worked at the tampon factory I'd be home with my nose stuck in a thick book. A smutty romance with a half-naked man on the cover.

  Red light flashed through the shattered windows, and I realized cops were shouting to Biggy to get off the car and drop his weapon. I raised my head and saw Carl Costanza looking in at me. "We've gotta stop meeting like this," he said. "People are gonna talk."

  It took about an hour to complete the police report, get Lula's car towed away, and receive assurances that Biggy would be locked up and not let out anytime soon. It was a nice night out, and Lula, Grandma and I were only a couple blocks from my parents' house, so we decided to walk. We took a shortcut through the alley behind Roosevelt and fell quiet when we reached Lucille's backyard. Lucille was still watching in her nightgown. We stood there for few moments, all of us lost in our own thoughts. I was the first to break the silence.

  "I think Lucille killed Sam Franco," I said.

  Lula smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead. "Unh!"

  "I think Lucille woke up on the couch here, in the middle of the night, and saw someone looking in her window. I think she got all flustered and got a gun. Walter was a security guard. He would have had guns in the house. Lucille was alone every night. She would have known where the guns were kept. Maybe she kept one in the TV room... just in case. Then I think when she was rushing around to get the gun, Sam came into the house. Easy to do if Lucille only had the screen door closed so the house could cool off. Especially if the screen was already broken from the cat. I read through Sam's priors. He'd broken into a house once before. He said he'd been watching a lady get undressed and suddenly he wanted a soda."

  "I could see that," Grandma said.

  "Makes perfect sense to me," Lula said.

  I agreed. I could see Squirrel doing such a ridiculous thing... walking into a house buck naked and asking for a soda. "Next thing you know, Lucille, who isn't in a lucid state of mind and isn't even very good with guns, has somehow managed to drill Sam Franco square in the middle of the forehead. He's stretched out in her den (after knocking her lamp over). He's obviously dead. And even more obviously he's unarmed. Walter is working, so Lucille calls the next person on her list. Kathy. And Kathy sends Biggy over to take charge. Biggy possibly having some experience in gangland body disposal, or at least having watched Goodfellas a hundred times, tags a message onto Sam and drives him home to the abandoned house."

  "What about the part where we leave and the body disa ppears," Lula said. "You got that all figured out too?"

  "The next morning Biggy goes off to the warehouse, and Kathy and Lucille get together and see the potential for getting rid of Biggy... who we all know beats the crap out of Kathy on a regular basis."

  "Frame him for the shooting," Lula said.

  "Exactly. So they hustle over with the moving van Biggy always keeps in his yard, not knowing two people have already seen Sam in the abandoned house, load Sam onto the hand truck, park him and the van in a place with foot traffic and plant the gun in Biggy's closet. Or maybe they don't even have to plant the gun. Maybe Biggy took the gun home with him."

  "I think this is all a load of cockydoody," Lula said.

  "I saw something like this in a movie," Grandma said. "On that Turner Classics station. I'm pretty sure it was Abbott and Costello."

  "I'll tell you when I got this brainstorm," I said. "It was when Grandma fired off that first shot at Biggy and got knocked off her seat. The first time I fired a forty-five I had it too close to my face and the kick mocked the barrel into my forehead. I still have the scar."

  "That little white mark?" Lula took a closer look. "Uh-oh, right in the same spot as Lucille's goose egg."

  "Yes! And I bet the police can find trace evidence over Lucille's den."

  "You mean you think there might be some left after she shampooed her rug?" Lula asked.

  I'd been so excited about my brilliant deduction I'd forgotten about the rug shampooer.

  "No self-respecting burg housewife would leave brain gunk on her walls and floors," Grandma said. "We keep our houses clean. Not like in some of them other neighborhoods."

  This was bizarre but true.

  "You think we have to tell the cops about your Lucille idea?" Grandma asked.

  "It would be the right thing to do," I said.

  "Yeah," Lula said. "And we always do the right thing. On the other hand, Biggy Zaremba is a real jerk. I don't like men who beat up on women."

  "And kids."

  I could feel Lula stiffen next to me. "He beat on his kids?"

  "That's what people tell me."

  "A man like that should be locked up."

  "You could be wrong about Lucille," Grandma said to me. "You don't have any proof."

  That was true. I could be wrong. But I didn't think so. Biggy had gone unglued when he saw me in the alley. And he said things he should have kept to himself. Like, how he'd done someone a favor, and how I'd been the one to transfer Sam from the house to the van. Biggy wasn't clever enough to orchestrate a scene like that for his own benefit. Biggy wasn't the killer. Biggy was an accomplice.

  "Not only that, but you go telling the cops this theory about Lucille it's gonna take all the fun out of it for them," Lula said. "Homicide won't get no satisfaction if you don't let them figure this for themselves."

  Jeez, I wouldn't want to ruin it for homicide.

  Grandma shuffled one foot to the other. "There's all kinds of justice, you know."

  "Fuckin' A," Lula said.

  I thought justice looked like a real big gorilla. I wasn't in the business of determining justice. I was in the business of enforcing the law. But I had to admit, the thought of Biggy in jail sort of warmed by heart.

  "Well, we could go to the police station and tell them Lucille's the one," Grandma said. "Or we could go back to the house and have some homemade chocolate cake."

  This caught my attention. I'd forgotten about the cake.