Plum Boxed Set 1, Books 1-3 Stephanie Plum Novels)

by Janet Evanovich

  Louie Moon’s house was set apart by a bright turquoise paint job, a full array of Christmas lights, and a five-foot-tall plastic Santa strapped to a rusted TV antenna.

  “Guess he gets into the spirit early,” Lula said.

  From the droop of the lights haphazardly stapled to his house and the faded look to Santa, I’d guess he was in the spirit all year long.

  The house didn’t have a garage, and there were no cars in the driveway or parked at the curb. The house looked dark and undisturbed. I left Lula in the car and went to the front door. I knocked twice. No answer. The house was one floor built on a slab. The curtains were all open. Louie had nothing to hide. I circled the house, peeking into windows. The inside was neat and furnished with what I guessed to be an accumulation of discards. There was no sign of recent wealth. No boxes of ammo stacked on the kitchen table. Not a single assault rifle in sight. It looked to me like he lived alone. One cup and one bowl in the dish drain. One side of the double bed had been slept in.

  I could easily see Louie Moon living here, content with his life because he had a little blue house. I toyed with the idea of illegal entry, but I couldn’t produce enough motivation to warrant the intrusion.

  The air was damp and cold and the ground felt hard underfoot. I pulled my jacket collar up and returned to the car.

  “That didn’t take long,” Lula said.

  “Not much to see.”

  “We going to the undertaker next?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good thing he don’t live where he do his thing. I don’t want to see what they collect in those buckets at the end of those tables.”

  It was heavy twilight by the time we got to Century Courts. The two-story buildings were red brick with white window trim. Doors were set in four-door clusters. There were five clusters to a building, which meant there were twenty apartments. Ten up and ten down. All of the buildings were set on pipestems coming off Demby. Four buildings per pipestem.

  Spiro had an end unit on the ground floor. His windows were dark, and his car wasn’t in the lot. With Con in the hospital, Spiro was forced to keep long hours. The Buick was easily recognizable, and I didn’t want to get caught if Spiro should decided to bop in for a fast change of socks, so I drove one pipestem over and parked.

  “I bet we find some serious shit here,” Lula said, getting out of the car. “I got a feeling about this one.”

  “We’re just going to scope things out,” I said. “We’re not going to do anything illegal … like breaking and entering.”

  “Sure,” Lula said. “I know that.”

  We cut across the grassy area to the side of the buildings, walking casually, as if we were out for a stroll. Curtains were drawn on the windows in the front of Spiro’s apartment, so we went to the back. Again, curtains were drawn. Lula tested the sliding patio door and the two windows and found them both to be locked.

  “Ain’t this a bitch?” she said. “How we supposed to find anything out this way? And just when I had a feeling, too.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d love to get into this apartment.”

  Lula swung her pocketbook in a wide arc and crashed it into Spiro’s window, shattering the glass. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said.

  My mouth dropped open, and when words finally came out they were in a whispered screech. “I don’t believe you did that! You just broke his window!”

  “The Lord provides,” Lula said.

  “I told you we weren’t doing anything illegal. People can’t just go around breaking windows.”

  “Cagney would of done it.”

  “Cagney would never have done that.”

  “Would of.”

  “Would not!”

  She slid the window open and poked her head inside. “Don’t look like nobody home. Guess we should go in and make sure this broken glass didn’t do any damage.” She had the entire upper half of her body shoved into the window. “Could of made this window bigger,” she said. “Can’t hardly fit a full-bodied woman like me in this sucker.”

  I gnawed on my lower lip and held my breath, not sure whether I should push her through or pull her out. She looked like Pooh when he was stuck in the rabbit hole.

  She gave a grunt and suddenly the back half of her disappeared behind Spiro’s curtain. A moment later the patio door clicked open and Lula poked her head out. “You gonna stand out there all day, or what?”

  “We could get arrested for this!”

  “Hah, like you never did any illegal entry shit?”

  “I never broke anything.”

  “You didn’t this time neither. I did the breaking. You just gonna do the entering.”

  I supposed it was okay since she put it that way.

  I slipped behind the patio curtain and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. “Do you know what Spiro looks like?”

  “Ratty-faced little guy?”

  “Yeah. You do lookout on the front porch. Knock three times if you see Spiro drive up.”

  Lula opened the front door and peeked out. “Everything clear,” she said. Then she let herself out and closed the door.

  I locked both doors and flipped the dining room light on, turning the dimmer until the light was low. I started in the kitchen, methodically going through cabinets. I checked the refrigerator for phony jars and did a cursory search of the kitchen trash.

  I made my way through the dining room and living room without discovering anything worthwhile. Breakfast dishes were still in the sink, the morning paper was strewn across the table. A pair of black dress shoes had been kicked off and left in front of the TV. Other than that the apartment was clean. No guns, no keys, no threatening notes. No addresses hastily scribbled on a pad beside the kitchen wall phone.

  I flicked on the light in the bathroom. Dirty clothes lay in a heap on the bathroom floor. There wasn’t enough money in the world to get me to touch Spiro’s dirty clothes. If there was a clue in his pocket, it was safe from me. I went through the medicine chest and glanced at the wastebasket. Nothing.

  His bedroom door was closed. I held my breath, opened the door, and almost fainted with the relief of finding the room empty. The furniture was Danish modern, the bedspread was black satin. The ceiling over the bed had been covered with paste-on mirror tiles. Porn magazines were stacked on a chair beside the bed. A used condom was stuck to one of the covers.

  Soon as I got home I was going to take a shower in boiling water.

  A desk hugged the wall in front of his window. I thought this looked promising. I sat in the black leather chair and carefully rifled through the junk mail, bills, and personal correspondence that lay scattered across the polished desk top. The bills all seemed within reason, and most of the correspondence related to the funeral home. Thank-you notes from the recently bereaved. “Dear Spiro, thank you for overcharging me in my time of sorrow.” Phone messages had been recorded on whatever was handy … backs of envelopes and letter margins. None of the messages were labeled “death threats from Kenny.” I made a list of unexplained phone numbers and stuffed it into my pocketbook for future investigation.

  I opened the drawers and poked through paper clips, rubber bands, and other assorted stationery flotsam. There were no messages on his answering machine. Nothing under his bed.

  I found it hard to believe there were no guns in the apartment. Spiro seemed like the kind of person to take trophies.

  I pawed through his clothes in the dresser and turned to his closet. The closet was filled with undertaker suits and shirts and shoes. Six pairs of black shoes lined up on the floor, and six shoe boxes. Hmmm. I opened a shoe box. Bingo. A gun. A Colt .45. I opened the other five boxes and ended up with a tally of three handguns and three shoe boxes filled with ammo. I copied the serial numbers off the guns and took down the information on the boxes of ammo.

  I pulled the bedroom window aside and peeked out at Lula. She was sitting on the stoop, filing her nails. I rapped on the windowpane, and the file flew from her f
ingers. Guess she wasn’t as calm as she looked. I motioned to her that I was leaving and would meet her out back.

  I made sure everything was as I’d found it, shut off all lights, and exited through the patio door. It would be obvious to Spiro that someone had broken into his apartment, but chances were good he’d blame it on Kenny.

  “Give me the shit,” Lula said. “You found something, didn’t you?”

  “I found a couple guns.”

  “That don’t float my boat. Everybody got guns.”

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “Yo, momma. Damn right I got a gun.” She pulled a big black gun out of her pocketbook. “Blue steel,” she said. “Got it off Harry the Horse back when I was a ho. You want to know why we call him Harry the Horse?”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “That mother was fearful. He just wouldn’t fit in anywhere. Hell, I had to use two hands to give him the poor man’s special.”

  I dropped Lula back at the office and went on home. By the time I pulled into my lot, the sky had blackened under the cloud cover and a light rain had begun to fall. I slung my pocketbook over my shoulder and hurried into the building, happy to be home.

  Mrs. Bestler was doing hall laps with her walker. Step, step, clomp. Step, step, clomp.

  “Another day, another dollar,” she said.

  “True enough,” I replied.

  I could hear the rise and fall of audience participation as Mr. Wolesky’s TV droned on behind his closed door.

  I plugged my key into my lock and did a quick, suspicious look around my apartment. All was secure. There were no messages on the machine, and there’d been no mail downstairs.

  I made hot chocolate and a peanut butter and honey sandwich. I stacked the plate on top of the mug, tucked the phone under my arm, grabbed the list of numbers I’d retrieved from Spiro’s apartment, and carted everything off to the dining room table.

  I dialed the first number and a woman answered.

  “I’d like to speak to Kenny,” I said.

  “You must have the wrong number. There’s no Kenny here.”

  “Is this the Colonial Grill?”

  “No, this is a private number.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  I had seven numbers to check out. The first four were exactly alike. All private residences. Probably clients. The fifth was pizza delivery. The sixth was St. Francis Hospital. The seventh was a motel in Bordentown. I thought this last one had some potential.

  I gave Rex a corner of my sandwich, heaved a sigh at having to leave the warmth and comfort of my apartment, and shrugged back into my jacket. The motel was on Route 206, not far from the turnpike entrance. It was a cut-rate motel, built before the motel chains moved in. There were forty units, all ground floor, opening to a narrow porch. Lights shone from two. The neon sign at roadside advertised efficiencies available. The exterior was neat, but it was a foregone conclusion that the inside would be dated, the wallpaper faded, the chenille spread threadbare, the bathroom sink rust-stained.

  I parked close to the office and hustled inside. An elderly man sat behind the desk, watching a small TV.

  “Evening,” he said.

  “Are you the manager?”

  “Yep. The manager, the owner, the handyman.”

  I took Kenny’s picture out of my pocketbook. “I’m looking for this man. Have you seen him?”

  “Mind telling me why you’re looking for him?”

  “He’s in violation of a bond agreement.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means he’s a felon.”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “I’m an apprehension agent. I work for his bonding company.”

  The man looked at the picture and nodded. “He’s in unit seventeen. Been there for a couple days.” He thumbed through a ledger on the counter. “Here he is. John Sherman. Checked in on Tuesday.”

  I could hardly believe it! Damned if I wasn’t good. “Is he alone?”

  “So far as I know.”

  “Do you have vehicle information?”

  “We don’t bother with that. We got lots of parking space here.”

  I thanked him and told him I’d hang around for a while. I gave him my card and asked that he didn’t give me away should he see Sherman.

  I drove to a dark corner of the lot, shut the engine off, locked the windows, and hunkered down for the duration. If Kenny showed up I’d call Ranger. If I couldn’t reach Ranger, I’d go to Joe Morelli.

  By nine o’clock I was thinking I might have chosen the wrong profession. My toes were frozen, and I had to pee. Kenny hadn’t materialized, and there was no activity at the motel to break the monotony of waiting. I ran the engine to warm things up and did some isometrics. I fantasized about going to bed with Batman. He was a little dark, but I liked the look of the codpiece on his rubber suit.

  At eleven I begged the manager to let me use his bathroom. I mooched a cup of coffee from him and returned to Big Blue. I had to admit, while the wait was uncomfortable, it was immeasurably better than it would have been in my little Jeep. There was a feeling of encapsulation in the Buick. Sort of like being in a rolling bomb shelter with windows and overstuffed furniture. I was able to stretch my legs across the front bench seat. Behind me, the backseat had real boudoir potential.

  I dozed off somewhere around twelve-thirty and woke up at one-fifteen. Kenny’s unit was still dark, and there were no new cars in the lot.

  I had several choices available to me. I could try to stick it out myself, I could ask Ranger to rotate shifts with me, or I could pack it in for the night and return before daybreak. If I asked Ranger to rotate shifts I’d have to give him a bigger piece of the pie than I’d originally intended. On the other hand, if I tried to stick it out by myself I was afraid I’d nod off and freeze to death like the little match girl. I chose door number three. If Kenny returned tonight it would be to sleep, and he’d still be here at six in the morning.

  I sang “Row, row, row your boat” all the way home to keep awake. I dragged myself into my apartment building, up the stairs, and down the hall. I let myself into my foyer, locked the door behind me, and crawled into bed fully clothed, shoes and all. I slept flat out until six, when an inner alarm clock prodded me awake.

  I stumbled out of bed, relieved to find I was already dressed and could forgo that chore. I did the bare minimum in the bathroom, grabbed my jacket and my pocketbook, and trudged out to the parking lot. It was pitch black above the lot lights, still drizzly, and ice had formed on car windows. Lovely. I started the car, turned the heater on full blast, took the scraper out of the map pocket and chipped the windows free. By the time I was done chipping I was pretty much awake. I stopped at a 7-Eleven en route to Bordentown and stocked up on coffee and doughnuts.

  It was still dark when I reached the motel. There were no lights on in any of the units, and there were no new cars in the lot. I parked to the dark side of the office and cracked the lid on my coffee. I was feeling less optimistic today and considered the possibility that the old man in the office had been having some fun at my expense. If Kenny didn’t show by midafternoon I’d ask to be let into his room.

  If I’d been clever, I’d have changed my socks and brought a blanket. If I’d been really clever, I’d have given the guy in the office a twenty and asked him to call me if Kenny showed up.

  At ten minutes to seven a woman drove up in a Ford truck and parked in front of the office. She gave me a curious look and went inside. Ten minutes later the old man came out and ambled across the lot to a beat-up Chevy. He waved and smiled and drove off.

  There was no way I could be sure the old guy had told the woman about me, and I didn’t want her calling the police to report a strange person loitering on the premises, so I hauled myself over to the office and went through the same drill as the night before.

  The answers were the same. Yes, she recognized the picture. Yes, he was registered as John Sherman.

  “Good-looking
guy,” she said. “But not real friendly.”

  “Did you notice the car he was driving?”

  “Honey, I noticed everything about him. He was driving a blue van. Wasn’t one of those fancy conversion vans. Was more of a work van. The kind without all the windows.”

  “Did you get a plate number?” I asked.

  “Hell no. I wasn’t interested in his plates.”

  I thanked her and retreated to my car to drink cold coffee. Every now and then I got out and stretched and stomped my feet. I took a half-hour break for lunch, and nothing had changed when I got back.

  Morelli pulled his cop car beside me at three. He got out and slid onto the seat next to me.

  “Christ,” he said. “It’s freezing in this car.”

  “Is this a chance meeting?”

  “Kelly drives by here on his way to work. He saw the Buick and started a pool on who you were shacked up with.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Unh.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “Through some superb detective work, I discovered that Kenny is staying here, registered as John Sherman.”

  A spark of excitement flickered across Morelli’s face. “You have an ID?”

  “Both the night clerk and the day clerk recognized Kenny from his picture. He’s driving a blue panel van and was last seen yesterday morning. I got here early last night and sat until one. I was back here at six-thirty this morning.”

  “No sign of Kenny.”

  “None.”

  “Have you been through his room?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The maid been through?”

  “Nope.”

  Morelli opened his door. “Let’s take a look.”

  Morelli identified himself to the day clerk and got a key to number 17. He rapped on the unit’s door twice. No answer. He unlocked the door, and we both entered.