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

by Janet Evanovich

  I could see the glow from the franchise a block away. The one-story blocky little building had been painted yellow inside and out. At night light spilled from the big plate-glass windows, and a spot played on the seven-foot-tall plastic chicken that was impaled on a rotating pole in the parking lot.

  I parked at the back of the Cluck in a Bucket lot and decked myself out in my bounty hunter gear. Cuffs stuffed into one jacket pocket; defense spray in the other. Stun gun clipped to the waistband of my sweats. Smith & Wesson forgotten in the rush, left lying on my bedside table.

  Lula was waiting for me just outside the front entrance. “There he is,” she said. “He’s the one handing out paper chicken hats to the kiddies.”

  It was Stuart Baggett all right…dressed up in a big fat chicken suit, wearing a chicken hat. He did a chicken dance for a family, flapping his elbows, wagging his big chicken butt. He made some squawking sounds and gave each of the kids a yellow-and-red cardboard hat.

  “You gotta admit, he makes a cute chicken,” Lula said, watching Stuart strut around on his big yellow chicken feet. “Too bad we gotta bust his ass.”

  Easy for her to say. She didn’t have orange hair. I pushed through the front door and crossed the room. I was about ten feet away when Stuart turned and our eyes locked.

  “Hello, Stuart,” I said.

  There was a young woman standing next to Stuart. She was wearing a red-and-yellow Cluck in a Bucket uniform, and she was holding a stack of Cluck in a Bucket giveaway hats. She gave me her best “don’t ruin the fun” look and wagged her finger. “His name isn’t Stuart,” she said. “Today his name is Mr. Cluck.”

  “Oh yeah?” Lula said. “Well we’re gonna haul Mr. Cluck’s cute little chicken tushy off to jail. What do you think of that?”

  “They’re crazy,” Stuart said to the Cluck in a Bucket woman. “They’re stalkers. They won’t leave me alone. They got me fired from my last job because they kept harassing me.”

  “That’s a load of horse pucky,” Lula said. “If we were gonna stalk someone it wouldn’t be no chicken impersonator working for minimum wage.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, elbowing Lula away from Stuart, turning the force of my most professional smile on the young woman with the hats. “Mr. Baggett is in violation of a bond agreement and needs to reinstate himself with the court.”

  “Harry,” the young woman yelled, waving to a man behind the service counter. “Call the police. We’ve got a situation here.”

  “Damn,” Lula said. “I hate when people call the police.”

  “You’re ruining everything,” Stuart said to me. “Why can’t you leave me alone? Who’s going to be Mr. Cluck if you take me in?”

  I pulled the cuffs out of my pocket. “Don’t give me a hard time, Stuart.”

  “You can’t put cuffs on Mr. Cluck!” Stuart said. “What will all these kids think?”

  “Wouldn’t get my hopes up that they’d give a hello,” Lula said. “Isn’t like you’re Santa Claus. Truth is, you’re just some whiny little guy dressed up in a bad suit.”

  “This isn’t a big deal,” I said to Stuart as calmly as possible. “I’m going to cuff you and walk you out the door, and if we do it quickly and quietly no one will notice.”

  I reached out to snap the cuffs on Stuart, and he batted me away with his chicken wing. “Leave me alone,” Stuart said, knocking the cuffs out of my hand, sending them sailing across the room. “I’m not going to jail!” He grabbed the mustard and the special-sauce squirters off the condiments counter. “Stand back!” he said.

  I had pepper spray and a stun gun, but it seemed like excessive force to use them against a chicken armed with special sauce.

  “I haven’t got all day,” Lula said to Stuart. “I want to get some chicken and go back to work, and you’re holding me up. Put those stupid squirters down.”

  “Don’t underestimate these squirters,” Stuart said. “I could do a lot of damage with these squirters.” He held the red squirter up. “See this? This isn’t just any old special sauce. This is extra spicy.”

  “Oh boy,” Lula said. “Think he’s been sniffing aerosol from the roach spray.”

  Lula took a step toward Stuart, and SQUISH, Stuart gave Lula a blast of mustard to the chest.

  Lula stopped in her tracks. “What the…”

  SPLOT! Special sauce on top of the mustard.

  “Did you see that?” Lula said, her voice pitched so high she sounded like Minnie Mouse. “He squirted me with special sauce! I’m gonna have to get this jacket dry-cleaned.”

  “It was your own fault, Fatty,” Stuart said. “You made me do it.”

  “That’s it,” Lula said. “Out of my way. I’m gonna kill him.” She lunged forward, hands reaching for Stuart’s chicken neck, slipped on some mustard that had leaked out of Stuart’s squirter and went down on her ass.

  Stuart took off, shoving his way around tables and customers. I took off after him and caught him with a flying tackle. We both crashed to the floor in a flurry of chicken feathers, Stuart squirting his squirters, and me swearing and grabbing. We rolled around like this for what seemed like an eternity, until I finally got hold of something that wasn’t a fake chicken part.

  I was breast to breast, on top of Mr. Cluck, twisting his nose in a damn good impression of Moe and Curly, when I felt hands forcefully lifting me off, disengaging my nose hold.

  One set of hands belonged to Carl Costanza. The other set of hands belonged to a cop I’d seen around but didn’t know on a first-name basis. Both cops were smiling, rocking back on their heels, thumbs stuck into their gun belts.

  “I heard about your cousin Vinnie and what he did to that duck,” Carl said to me. “Still, I’m surprised to find you on top of a chicken. I always thought you were more like the Mazur side of the family.”

  I swiped at the gunk on my face. I was covered with mustard, and I had special sauce in my hair. “Very funny. This guy is FTA.”

  “You got papers?” Carl asked.

  I scrounged in my shoulder bag and came up with the bond agreement and the contract to pursue that Vinnie had issued.

  “Good enough,” Carl said. “Congratulations, you caught yourself a chicken.”

  I could see the other cop was trying hard not to laugh out loud.

  “So what’s your problem?” I asked him, feeling sort of aggravated that maybe he was laughing at me.

  He held up two hands. “Hey lady, I haven’t got a problem. Good bust. Not everyone could have taken that chicken down.”

  I rolled my eyes and looked at Costanza, but Costanza wasn’t entirely successful at controlling his amusement either.

  “Good thing we got here before the animal rights people,” Costanza said to me. “They wouldn’t have been as understanding as us.”

  I retrieved my cuffs from the other side of the room and clicked them onto Baggett’s wrists. Lula had disappeared, of course. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t expect Lula to share airspace with cops.

  “Do you need any help?” Costanza wanted to know.

  I shook my head, no. “I can manage. Thanks.”

  Half an hour later I left the station with my body receipt, happy to escape the cracks about smelling like a barbecue. Not to mention the abuse I took for bringing in a chicken.

  A person can take only so much cop humor.

  Rex was nosing around in his food cup when I got home, so I gave him a grape and told him about Stuart Baggett. How Stuart had been dressed up in a chicken suit, and how I’d bravely captured him and brought him to justice. Rex listened while he ate the grape, and I think Rex might have smiled when I got to the part about tackling Mr. Cluck, but it’s hard to tell about these things with a hamster.

  I love Rex a lot, and he has a lot of redeeming qualities, like cheap food and small poop, but the truth is sometimes I pretend he’s a golden retriever. I’d never tell this to Rex, of course. Rex has very sensitive feelings. Still, sometimes I long for a big floppy-eared do
g.

  I fell asleep on the couch, watching Rex run on the wheel. I was awakened by the phone ringing.

  “Got a call about my car,” Ranger said. “Want to ride along?”

  “Sure.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Were you sleeping?” he asked.

  “Nope. Not me. I was just going out the door to look for Mo.” Okay, so it was a fib. Better than looking like a slug. Or even worse, better than admitting to the truth, because the truth was that I was becoming emotionally dysfunctional. I was unable to fall asleep in the dark. And if I did fall asleep, it would be only to doze and to wake up to bad dreams. So I was starting to sleep during daytime hours when I had the chance.

  My incentive for finding Mo had changed in the last couple of days. I wanted to find Mo so the killing would stop. I couldn’t stand seeing any more blown-apart bodies.

  I rolled off the couch and into the shower. While in the shower I noticed blisters on my heels as big as quarters. Thank God. I finally had a legitimate excuse to stop running. Eight minutes later, I was dressed and in the hall, with my apartment locked up behind me.

  As soon as I climbed into the Bronco I knew this was serious because Ranger was wearing no-nonsense army fatigues and gold post earrings. Also the tear gas gun and the smoke grenades in the backseat were a tip-off.

  “What’s the deal?” I asked.

  “Very straightforward. I got a call from Moses Bedemier. He apologized for borrowing my car. Said it was parked in his garage, and that his neighbor, Mrs. Steeger, had the keys.”

  I shuddered at the mention of Mrs. Steeger.

  “What’s that about?” Ranger asked.

  “Mrs. Steeger is the Antichrist.”

  “Damn,” Ranger said. “I left my Antichrist gun at home.”

  “Looks like you brought everything else.”

  “Never know when you’ll need some tear gas.”

  “If we have to gas Mrs. Steeger, it’ll probably ruin my chances of being Miss Burg in the Mayflower Parade.”

  Ranger turned into the alley from King and stopped at Mo’s garage. He got out and tried the door. The door was locked. He walked to the side window and peered in.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “It’s there.”

  A back curtain was whisked aside and Mrs. Steeger glared out at us from her house.

  “Is that her?” Ranger wanted to know.

  “Yup.”

  “One of us should talk to her.”

  “That would be you,” I said.

  “Okay, Tex. I don’t think Mo’s here, but you cover the back just in case. I’ll have a word with Mrs. Steeger.”

  After ten minutes I was stomping my feet to keep warm and beginning to worry about Ranger. I hadn’t heard any shots, so that was a good sign. There’d been no screams, no police sirens, no glass breaking.

  Ranger appeared at the back door, smiling. He crossed the yard to me. “Did you really tell fibs when you were a kid?”

  “Only when it involved matters of life or death.”

  “Proud of you, babe.”

  “Has she got the key?”

  “Yeah. She’s getting her coat on. Taking this key thing very seriously. Says it’s the least she could do for Mo.”

  “The least she could do?”

  “Have you read the paper today?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “It turns out that all these murders are having a significant impact on crime. Drug sales are way down. Pharmaceutical representatives are booking flights for obscure southern towns.”

  “Are you telling me Mo is a hero?”

  “Let’s just say, he isn’t despised.”

  Mrs. Steeger materialized at the back door wearing a coat and hat. She huffed down the porch stairs and across her yard. “Hmmph,” she said to me. “Still snooping, I see.”

  My left eye started to twitch. I put my finger to my eyelid and sank my teeth into my lower lip.

  Ranger grinned.

  The superhero wasn’t afraid of the Antichrist. The superhero thought an eye twitch was funny.

  Mrs. Steeger opened the door and stepped back, arms folded over her chest. “I’ll lock up when you get your car out,” she said to Ranger.

  Guess she was worried we’d snitch some jugs of used motor oil.

  Ranger handed me the keys to the Bronco. “I’ll drive the BMW, and you can follow.”

  Normally a person would take his cars home. Since Ranger wasn’t normal I wasn’t sure where we were headed.

  I held the tail through center city. Traffic was heavy and people walked head down into the wind on the sidewalks. Ranger turned off State onto Cameron and pulled into a small, attended parking lot. We were behind the state buildings, two blocks from Stark, in an area of quasi-government office buildings. Definitely not residential.

  Ranger got out of his car and spoke to the attendant. The attendant smiled and nodded. Friendly. They knew each other.

  I parked behind the Beemer and walked over to Ranger. “Are we leaving the cars here?”

  “Benny will take care of them while I pick up my mail.”

  I looked around. “You live here?”

  “Office,” Ranger said, gesturing to a four-story brick building next to the lot.

  “You have an office?”

  “Nothing fancy. It helps to keep the businesses straight.”

  I followed Ranger through the double glass doors into the vestibule. There were two elevators to our left. A tenant directory hung on the wall beside the elevators. I scanned the directory and could find no mention of Ranger.

  “You’re not listed,” I said.

  Ranger moved past the elevators to the stairs. “Don’t need to be.”

  I trotted after him. “What businesses are we talking about?”

  “Mostly security related. Bodyguard, debris removal, security consultation. Fugitive apprehension, of course.”

  We rounded the first floor and were working our way up to two. “What’s debris removal?”

  “Sometimes a landlord wants to clean up his property. I can put together a team to do the job.”

  “You mean like throwing crack dealers out the window?”

  Ranger passed the second floor and kept going. He shook his head. “Only on the lower floors. You throw them out the upper-story windows and it makes too much of a mess on the sidewalk.”

  He opened the fire door to the third floor, and I followed him down the hall to number 311. He slid a key card into the magnetic slot, pushed the door open and switched the light on.

  It was a one-room office with two windows and a small powder room. Beige carpet, cream-colored walls, miniblinds at the windows. Furniture consisted of a large cherry desk with a black leather executive chair behind the desk and two client chairs to the front of the desk. No gun turrets at the windows. No government-issue rockets stacked in the corners. A Mac laptop with a separate Bernoulli drive was plugged in on the desk. Its modem was hooked to the phone line. There was also a multiline phone and answering machine on the desk. Everything was neat. No dust. No empty soda cans. No empty pizza boxes. Thankfully, no dead bodies.

  Ranger stooped to pick up the mail that had been delivered through the mail slot. He came up with a handful of envelopes and a couple flyers. He divided the mail into two stacks: garbage and later. He threw the garbage into the wastebasket. The later could wait until later. I guess there hadn’t been any now! mail.

  The red light on the answering machine was going ballistic with blinking. Ranger lifted the lid and popped the incoming tape. He put it in his shirt pocket and replaced the tape with a new one from the top drawer of the desk. No now! messages there either, I suppose.

  I took a peek at the lavatory. Very clean. Soap. Paper towels. Box of tissues. Nothing personal. “You spend much time here?” I asked Ranger.

  “No more than is necessary.”

  I waited for some elaboration but none was forthcoming. I wondered if Ranger was still interested in Mo now
that he had his BMW back.

  “Are you feeling vengeful?” I asked Ranger. “Does justice need to be served?”

  “He’s back on your slate, if that’s what you’re asking.” He killed the light and opened the door to leave.

  “Did Mrs. Steeger say anything that might be helpful?”

  “She said Mo showed up around nine. Mo told her he’d borrowed a car from someone, and that he’d left the car in his garage for safekeeping until the owner came to retrieve it. Then he gave her the key.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Maybe I should have a chat with Mrs. Steeger.” I knew it was a long shot, but Mo might come back for his key. Or at least call to see if everything worked out. I wasn’t looking forward to spending time with Mrs. Steeger, but if I could get her to arrange a meeting or a phone call between Mo and me it would be worth it.

  Ranger checked his door to make sure it was locked. “Gonna explain to her how Mo’s crime career is in the toilet, and she should pass him your personal number? The one that guarantees him safe passage to the state spa?”

  “Thought it was worth a shot.”

  “Absolutely,” Ranger said. “He didn’t want to talk to me about it, but you might have more luck. Are you running tomorrow morning?”

  “Gee, I’d love to, but I have blisters.”

  Ranger looked relieved.

  CHAPTER 13

  I thought it wouldn’t hurt to look professional when I went to see Mrs. Steeger, so I’d dressed in a tailored black suit, white silk shirt, leopard print silk scarf, taupe stockings and heels. I wasn’t a master at long division, but I could accessorize with the best of them.

  I’d called ahead to tell Mrs. Steeger I was stopping by. Then I’d spent a few moments lecturing myself about attitude. I was an adult. I was a professional. And I looked pretty damn good in my black suit. It was unacceptable that I should be intimidated by Mrs. Steeger. As a final precaution against insecurity, I made sure my .38 was loaded and tucked into my shoulder bag. Nothing like packing a pistol to put spring in a girl’s step.