“For Christ’s sake,” Spiro said. “It’s not a meat wagon.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot. It’s a slumber coach.” Kenny stood up and yanked me to my feet. “The cops watch Spiro, and they watch the house. They don’t watch the slumber coach and Louie Moon. Or at least who they think is Louie Moon. You could put a hat on Bonzo the chimp and put him behind those tinted windows, and the cops would think it was Louie Moon. And good old Louie is real cooperative. You just give Louie a hose and tell him to clean things up, and Louie is busy for hours. He don’t know who’s driving around in his goddamn slumber coach.”
Not bad. They dressed Kenny up to look like Louie Moon, brought the guns and ammo to the funeral home in the hearse, parked the hearse in the garage, and then all they had to do was run the boxes between the garage and the back door to the cellar. And Morelli and Roche couldn’t see the back door to the cellar. They probably couldn’t hear anything in the cellar either. I didn’t think it likely Roche would have bugged the cellar.
“So what’s with the old lady?” Spiro asked Kenny.
“She was in the kitchen looking for a teabag, and she saw me cutting across the lawn.”
Spiro’s face tightened. “Did she tell anybody?”
“No. She came barreling out of the house, yelling at me for stabbing her in the hand. Telling me I needed to learn respect for old people.”
So far as I could see, Grandma wasn’t in the cellar. I hoped it meant Kenny had her locked in the garage. If she was in the garage she might still be alive, and she might be unhurt. If she was tucked away somewhere in the cellar, beyond my view, she was much too quiet.
I didn’t want to consider the reasons for too quiet, preferring to squash the panic clawing at my stomach and replace it with some more constructive emotion. How about cool reasoning? Nope. I didn’t have any of that available. How about cunning? Sorry, low on cunning. How about anger. Did I have any anger? Fucking A. I had so much anger my skin could hardly contain it all. Anger for Grandma, anger for all the women Mancuso’d abused, anger for the cops who were killed with the stolen ammo. I pulled the anger in until it was hard and razor sharp.
“Now what?” I said to Kenny. “Where do we go from here?”
“Now we put you on ice for a while. Until the house empties out. Then I’ll see what kind of a mood I’m in. We have a bunch of options being that we’re in a funeral parlor. Hell, we could strap you to the table and embalm you while you’re still alive. That would be fun.” He pressed the tip of the knife blade to the back of my neck. “Walk.”
“Where?”
He jerked his head. “Over to the corner.”
The crated caskets were stacked in the corner. “To the caskets?”
He smiled and prodded me forward. “The caskets come later.”
I squinted into the corner shadows and realized the caskets weren’t flush to the wall. Tucked behind the caskets was a refrigeration unit with two body drawers. The drawers were closed, the metal trays locked behind heavy metal doors.
“Gonna be nice and dark in there,” Kenny said. “Give you time to think.”
Fear slid down my spine and sickened my stomach. “Grandma Mazur …”
“Turning into a Popsicle, even as we speak.”
“NO! Let her out! Open the drawer, I’ll do whatever you want!”
“You’ll do whatever I want anyway,” Kenny said. “You’re not going to be moving too fast after an hour in there.”
Tears were pouring down my cheeks and sweat prickled under my arms. “She’s old. She’s no threat to you. Let her go.”
“No threat? Are you kidding? That old lady is criminally insane. You know what it took to get her in that drawer?”
“She’s probably dead by now, anyway,” Spiro said.
Kenny looked at him. “You think so?”
“How long she been in there?”
Kenny checked his watch. “Maybe ten minutes.”
Spiro stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You lower the temperature?”
“No,” Kenny said. “I just shoved her in.”
“We don’t keep the drawers cold if they’re unoccupied,” Spiro explained. “Saves on electricity. Probably it’s only around room temperature.”
“Yeah, but she could have died from fright. What do you think?” Kenny asked me. “You think she’s dead?”
A sob stuck in my chest.
“Sweetie pie is speechless,” Kenny said. “Maybe we should open the drawer and see if the old bag’s breathing?”
Spiro released the latch and yanked the door open. He grabbed the end of the stainless steel tray and slowly rolled it toward him, so that the first thing I saw was Grandma Mazur’s shoes pointing toes up, then Grandma’s bony shin, her big blue coat, arms rigidly at her sides, hands hidden under the folds of the coat.
I felt myself sway under a wave of grief. I forced air into my lungs and blinked to clear my vision.
The tray reached its full extension and clicked into place. Grandma stared unflinching at the ceiling, eyes open, mouth set, still as stone.
We all gaped at her in silence for several moments.
Kenny was the first to speak. “She looks dead all right,” he said. “Roll her back in.”
The whisper of a sound stuck in the corner. A hiss. We all pricked our ears and concentrated. I saw the very slightest tightening around Grandma’s eye. The hiss again. Louder this time. Grandma sucking air through her dentures!
“Hmmm,” Kenny said. “Maybe she’s not dead yet.”
“You should have cranked the unit down,” Spiro offered. “This baby’ll go down to zero. She wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes if you’d had it at zero.”
Grandma made some feeble movements on the tray.
“What’s she doing?” Spiro asked.
“She’s trying to sit up,” Kenny said. “But she’s too old. Can’t get those old bones to cooperate, huh, Granny?”
“Old,” she whispered. “I’ll show you old.”
“Shove the drawer back in,” Kenny said to Spiro. “And fix the freezer setting.”
Spiro started to roll the tray in, but Grandma kicked out with her feet, stopping the slide. She had her knees bent, and she was pounding against the steel with her feet, clawing and knocking inside the drawer.
Spiro grunted and rammed the tray home, but the tray was inches short of clicking into place, and the door wouldn’t close.
“Something’s stuck,” Spiro said. “This won’t go in all the way.”
“Open it up,” Kenny said, “and see what’s wrong.”
Spiro eased the tray back.
Grandma’s chin appeared, her nose, her eyes. Her arms were extended over her head.
“You making problems, Granny?” Kenny asked. “You jamming the drawer with something?”
Grandma didn’t say anything, but I could see her mouth working, her dentures grinding against each other.
“Get your arms down at your sides,” Kenny told her. “Stop fucking with me. I’m gonna lose my patience.”
Grandma struggled to get her arms out, and finally her bandaged hand popped free. The other hand followed, and in that hand was the .45 long-barrel. She swung her arm straight from the shoulder and squeezed off a round.
We all hit the floor, and she fired again.
Silence followed the second shot. No one moved but Grandma. She elbowed herself to a sitting position, and took a moment to settle.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Grandma said into the silence. “Do I have any more bullets in this here gun? Well, with all the confusion, what with being locked up in a refrigerator, I plum forgot what was in here to start with. But being that this is a forty-five magnum, the most powerful handgun in existence, and it could blow your head clean off, you just got to ask yourself one question. Do you feel lucky today? Well, do you, punk?”
“Christ,” Spiro whispered. “She thinks she’s fucking Clint Eastwood.”
BAM! Grandma fired and knocked out a lig
ht.
“Dang,” she said, “must be something wrong with this sight.”
Kenny scrambled to the ammo cases to get a gun, Spiro ran for the stairs, and I inched toward Grandma on my belly.
BAM! She got another shot off. It missed Kenny, but it tore into one of the cases. There was an instant explosion, and a fireball rose to the basement ceiling.
I jumped to my feet and dragged Grandma off the tray.
Another case exploded. Fire crackled across the floor and traced along the wooden casket casings. I didn’t know what was exploding, but I thought we were lucky not to have been hit by flying fragments. Smoke roiled from the burning boxes, cutting into the light, stinging my eyes.
I yanked Grandma to the back door and shoved her out into the yard.
“Are you okay?” I yelled at her.
“He was going to kill me,” she said. “He was going to kill you too.”
“Yes.”
“It’s terrible what happens to people. That they lose respect for life.”
“Yes.”
Grandma looked back at the house. “Good thing not everyone’s like Kenny. Good thing some human beings are decent.”
“Like us,” I said.
“Well, I suppose, but I was thinking more of Dirty Harry.”
“That was some speech you gave.”
“Always wanted to give that speech. Guess there’s a silver lining to everything.”
“Can you walk around to the front of the building? Can you find Morelli and tell him I’m back here?”
Grandma lurched toward the driveway. “If he’s there, I’ll find him.”
Kenny had been on the opposite side of the cellar when we rushed to get out. Either he’d gone up the stairs, or he was still inside, making his way close to the floor, trying to get to the back door. I was putting my money on the latter. Too many people at the top of the stairs.
I was standing about twenty feet from the door, and I wasn’t sure what I’d do if Kenny appeared. I didn’t have a gun or a defense spray. I didn’t even have a flashlight. Probably I should get the hell out of there and forget about Kenny. The money’s not worth it, I said to myself.
Who was I kidding? This wasn’t about money. This was about Grandma.
There was another small explosion, and flames flared through the kitchen windows. People shouted from the street, and I could hear sirens in the distance. Smoke poured through the cellar door and swirled around a human form. A hellish creature, backlit by fire. Kenny.
He bent at the waist and coughed and took in some air. His hands hung loose at his sides. Didn’t look like he’d been able to find a gun. That was a break. I saw him glance side to side and then come straight toward me. My heart almost jumped out of my chest, until I realized he didn’t see me. I was standing, lost in shadow, in his line of escape. He was going to skirt the garage and disappear into the back alleys of the burg.
He moved stealthily forward, silent against the roar of the fire. He was less than five feet away when he saw me. He stopped short, startled, and our eyes locked. My first thought was that he would bolt and run, but he lunged at me on an oath, and we both went down, kicking and clawing. I gave him a good shot with my knee and stuck my thumb in his eye.
Kenny howled and pushed off, rising to a crouch. I grabbed for his foot, and he went down again, hard on his knees. We did more rolling on the ground. More kicking and clawing and swearing.
He was bigger and stronger than me, and probably crazier. Although some might argue that last point. What I had on my side was anger. Kenny was desperate, but I was freaked-out enraged.
I didn’t just want to stop him … I wanted to hurt him. Not a nice thing to have to admit. I’d never thought of myself as a mean and vengeful person, but there it was.
I squeezed my hand tight in a fist and swung into him backhand, landing a blow that sent shock waves up my arm. There’d been a crunch and a gasp, and I saw him flail out in the darkness, arms wide open.
I grabbed hold of his shirt and shouted for help.
His hands clamped onto my neck, his breath hot on my face. His voice was thick. “Die.”
Maybe, but he’d go down with me. I had his shirt in a death grip. The only way he was going to get away was to take the damn thing off. If he strangled me unconscious, I’d still have my fingers dug into his shirt.
I was so focused on the shirt it took me a while to realize the pack had enlarged to three.
“Jesus,” Morelli was yelling in my ear. “Let go of his shirt!”
“He’ll get away!”
“He won’t get away,” Morelli shouted. “I’ve got him.”
I looked beyond Morelli and saw Ranger and Roche round the corner of the house with two uniforms.
“Get her off me,” Kenny screeched. “Jesus! These Plum bitches are goddamn animals!”
There was another crunch in the darkness, and I suspected Morelli had accidentally broken something belonging to Kenny. Like his nose, maybe.
I had Rex’s cage wrapped in a big blue blanket so he wouldn’t get a chill while I transported him. I eased him off the Buick’s front seat and pushed the door closed with my butt. It was nice to be moving back to my apartment. And it was nice to feel safe. Kenny was locked up without bail, and I expected he’d be locked up for a good long time. Hopefully for life.
Rex and I took the elevator. The doors slid open on the second floor, and I stepped out feeling good inside. I loved my hallway, and I loved Mr. Wolesky, and I loved Mrs. Bestler. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and I was going to take a shower in my very own bathroom. I loved my bathroom.
I balanced Rex on my hip while I unlocked my door. Later today I’d stop by the office and pick up my recovery fee. Then I’d go shopping. Maybe I’d buy a new refrigerator.
I set Rex on the table by the couch and opened the curtains. I loved my curtains. I stood there for a while, admiring my view of the parking lot, thinking that I also loved the parking lot.
“Home,” I said. Nice and quiet. Private.
There was a knock at the door.
I squinted through the peephole. It was Morelli.
“Thought you’d want to get filled in on some details,” Morelli said.
I opened the door to him and stepped back. “Kenny talked?”
Morelli moved into the foyer. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes ticked off the details of his surroundings. Always the cop. “Enough to piece things together,” he said. “Turns out there were three conspirators, just as we thought … Kenny, Moogey, and Spiro. And they each had a key to the storage locker.”
“One for all, and all for one.”
“More like nobody trusted anybody else. Kenny was the brains behind it all. He planned the theft, and he had an overseas buyer for the stolen ammo.”
“The phone numbers to Mexico and El Salvador.”
“Yeah. He also got a nice advance …”
“Which he spent ahead of time.”
“Yep. Then he went to the locker to get the stuff ready for shipment, and guess what?”
“No stuff.”
“Yep again, “ Morelli said. “Why are you wearing your jacket?”
“I just got in.” I looked wistfully toward the bathroom. “I was about to take a shower.”
“Hmmm,” Morelli said.
“No hmmm. Tell me about Sandeman. Where does Sandeman figure in?”
“Sandeman heard some conversations between Moogey and Spiro and got curious. So he tapped into one of the many skills he acquired during a life of petty crime, duped the locker key off Moogey’s key ring, and by process of lengthy elimination, found the locker.”
“Who killed Moogey?”
“Sandeman. He got nervous. Thought Moogey might have eventually figured out about the borrowed furniture truck.”
“And Sandeman told all of this to Kenny?”
“Kenny can be very persuasive.”
There was no doubt in my mind.
Morelli played with the zipp
er on my jacket. “About that shower …”
I pointed with straight arm and extended finger to my door. “Out.”
“Don’t you want to know about Spiro?”
“What about Spiro?”
“We haven’t caught him yet.”
“He’s probably gone underground.”
Morelli winced.
“That’s undertaker humor,” I told him.
“One more thing. Kenny had an interesting spin on how the fire got started.”
“Lies. All lies.”
“You could have avoided a lot of terror if you’d just left that bug in your pocketbook.”
I narrowed my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “This is a subject best forgotten.”
“You left me standing bare-assed in the middle of the street!”
“I gave you your gun, didn’t I?”
Morelli grinned. “You’re going to give me more than that, cupcake.”
“Forget it.”
“Not likely,” Morelli said. “You owe me.”
“I owe you nothing! If anyone is owed, it’s me! I caught your cousin for you!”
“And in the process burned down Stiva’s Mortuary and destroyed thousands of dollars worth of government property.”
“Well, if you’re going to be picky about it …”
“Picky? Sweetie pie, you are the worst bounty hunter in the history of the world.”
“That does it. I have better things to do than to stand here and take your insults.”
I pushed him out of my foyer, into the hall, slammed the door closed, and threw the bolt. I pressed my nose to the door and looked through the peephole.
Morelli grinned at me.
“This is war,” I yelled through the door.
“Lucky for me,” Morelli said. “I give good war.”
ALSO BY JANET EVANOVICH
IN THE STEPHANIE PLUM SERIES
TEN BIG ONES
TO THE NINES
HARD EIGHT
SEVEN UP
HOT SIX
HIGH FIVE
FOUR TO SCORE
THREE TO GET DEADLY
TWO FOR THE DOUGH
ONE FOR THE MONEY
VISIONS OF SUGAR PLUMS
THREE PLUMS IN ONE
Plum Boxed Set 1, Books 1-3 Stephanie Plum Novels) Page 48