Twisted Twenty-Six

by Janet Evanovich

  “As soon as they let us in, we go straight for the casket,” Grandma said. “That way I get to see the deceased, we get the condolences taken care of, and then we can hit the cookie table. That’s where you get all the dirt.”

  Sounded like an okay plan. Maybe someone at the cookie table would know something useful.

  The doors opened, and we all surged forward. I was directly behind Grandma and was scanning the area, watching to make sure no one came rushing at her. There was some initial jockeying for position, and then the line stabilized. We had about twenty people in front of us. The three sisters had elected to sit rather than get in the line. They were five rows back on the far side of the room. I didn’t see Barbara Rosolli. Julius Roman took a seat behind the sisters. Our eyes met and he nodded at me. I nodded back.

  My attention went back to Grandma. She was patiently waiting in line, and I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. My own thoughts were running in the direction of Snow White, who got saved when some hot guy kissed her, as opposed to more modern-day fairy-tale heroines who enjoyed kicking ass and saving the world. World saving was okay if you knew what you were doing. I wasn’t in that category. I knew nothing. I had no martial arts skills. I wasn’t comfortable with a gun. The thought of sticking a knife in someone made me gag. Of course, this was also true of my mom, but when it mattered, she came through with the iron. I’d like to think I have some of that same grit. I just wish I had a larger selection of tools in my toolbox.

  We inched our way along and said our words to the bereaved. We headed out of the slumber room and into the packed foyer. The women had congregated around the cookie table, and the men were collected in small groups around the perimeter of the room, talking quietly, checking their watches, and wondering how much longer they would have to stay. The cocktails-before-dinner mourners were on the porch, smoking cigars and telling off-color, politically incorrect jokes. The wives and widows were enjoying the coffee and cookies and critiquing the viewing.

  Grandma selected a couple cookies from the Nabisco collection and took a step back when Jeanine and Bernie Stupe approached us. Jeanine was the same age as my mom, and there were other similarities. Short brown hair, average height and weight, friendly but reserved. Bernie’s sandy brown hair was showing male-pattern baldness. He was slightly paunchy and an inch shorter than his wife. He was standing behind her, looking like he needed a Red Bull.

  “I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the wake,” Jeanine said to Grandma. “There was such a crush of people, and I’m a little claustrophobic. Bernie and I left early.”

  “I’m sorry about you losing your dad,” Grandma said.

  “Thank you,” Jeanine said. “And I’m sorry you weren’t able to enjoy more time with him.”

  “If it’s any consolation, he didn’t suffer at all. It was so fast. One minute he was winning at the slots, and then he was gone.”

  “Not even a last word?” Jeanine asked.

  “Well, he swore a little on the way down to the ground,” Grandma said, “but that was it.”

  Jeanine nodded and pressed her lips together. “I should be going,” she said. “I’m feeling a little sad . . . and panicky.”

  “Take care,” Grandma said. “God bless.”

  We watched Jeanine and Bernie leave, and Grandma shook her head.

  “Poor Jeanine,” Grandma said. “It’s hard when you lose someone so sudden. Even at Jimmy’s age, no one expected him to go like that.”

  I followed Grandma as she made her way around the cookie table, sampling the cookies and talking to the other women. The conversation ranged from comments on the deceased’s complexion, to Melanie Glick’s divorce, to the sudden disappearance of Bubbies pickles from Dittman’s Meat Market. No one mentioned the missing keys.

  We left shortly before closing and were ambushed on our way out by Barbara Rosolli.

  “Edna!” she said, rushing up to Grandma. “I almost missed you. I didn’t get to talk to you at Jimmy’s wake, and I wanted to share sympathies on our loss. Just tragic.”

  “He was a good man,” Grandma said.

  “He was a vicious, cheating bastard,” Barbara said, “but we loved him anyway, didn’t we?”

  “God don’t like when you talk ill of the dead,” Grandma said.

  Barbara made the sign of the cross. “God knows what I went through with that man. I’m sure God understands when I speak candidly.”

  “You got something else you want to say?” Grandma asked.

  “I didn’t get a chance to drop something off for the wake, so I brought a box of cookies for you,” Barbara said, handing Grandma a cookie tin decorated with a black bow. “Better late than never, right? I baked them myself.”

  “That’s real nice of you,” Grandma said. “Thank you.”

  “I need to be getting home now,” Barbara said. “We should get together sometime. Have a coffee or a drink.”

  “Sure,” Grandma said. “That would be okay.”

  Barbara walked away, and I looked at the cookie tin Grandma was holding.

  “You aren’t going to eat those, are you?” I asked.

  “Heck, no,” Grandma said. “I don’t even like holding the tin. I can feel the evil burning my fingertips.”

  “Is she usually friendly like that to you?”

  “I wouldn’t say we were ever friendly. She moved out of the Burg after the divorce, and I didn’t see much of her. Five years ago, she bought a house next to Jeanine on Chambers Street and she started going to bingo. All she could talk about was how Jimmy’s second wife took all his money and she didn’t get any of it even though she raised their daughter. I never sat by her, so I didn’t have much to do with her. Then all of a sudden when word got out that Jimmy had died and we were married she went nuts. Emma Gorse said Barbara was going around telling everyone that I killed Jimmy for his money. She said that she had proof it wasn’t a heart attack, and that three people at the casino saw him give me the keys. Can you imagine?”

  I looked over Grandma’s shoulder and saw the Rosolli sisters coming our way. Rose was leading the pack, shoulders hunched, mouth set.

  “You!” she said to Grandma. “You have a lot of nerve showing your face with all these decent people.”

  “They aren’t all decent,” Grandma said.

  “You should get out of this community. We don’t want your kind here.”

  “I’m not so bad,” Grandma said. “I’m going to take some of your brother’s money and give it to the orphaned cats and dogs. I’m thinking there’ll be a lot left over after my trip to the Galapagos Islands.”

  “I thought you were going to Antarctica,” I said to Grandma.

  “I’m stopping at the Galapagos on the way home,” Grandma said.

  “You should burn in hell,” Rose said. “And your hair is a disgrace. You look ridiculous.”

  “I’m real sorry you feel that way,” Grandma said. “I was hoping we could be civil. I even brought these cookies for you.” Grandma handed Rose the tin with the black bow. “I baked them myself.”

  “Oh,” Rose said, looking at the tin. “That was nice of you. Thank you.”

  “It’s a pretty tin,” Tootie said.

  “We still don’t like you,” Rose said.

  “We gotta go now,” Grandma said. “You girls have a good night.”

  Grandma and I hurried to the car and locked the doors.

  “I’m a terrible person,” Grandma said. “She’s probably right about me burning in hell.”

  “Those cookies could be perfectly okay. I’m sure Barbara wouldn’t give you poison cookies.”

  “Would you have eaten them?” Grandma asked.

  “No way.”

  I drove Grandma home and waited until she was in the house and waved to me that all was good. Fifteen minutes later I cruised into my apartment building par
king lot and spotted Morelli’s SUV. I parked next to it and went upstairs. Morelli was in the kitchen, watching Rex run on his wheel.

  “Not watching television?” I asked.

  “There’s nothing on. I got bored at home, so I thought I’d stop in and see if you wanted to have some wild sex. I was going to make a sandwich while I waited, but you have no food.”

  “I have peanut butter and cereal. That covers every meal.”

  “Did you ever hear of a vegetable?”

  “Pickles. I have two different kinds. Bread and butter and dill.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “I might have hot dogs in the freezer.”

  Morelli opened the freezer, and his phone dinged with a text message. He checked the message and closed the freezer.

  “I have to make a call,” he said. “And I’m going to pass on the hot dogs.”

  He placed the call and rummaged through my junk drawer, coming up with a pen and a small sticky notepad. He took a bunch of notes from the person on the other line and hung up.

  “That was Fitzgerald,” he said. “He got called out to a shooting, and he thought I’d want to take a look. It’s a couple blocks from here.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Julius Roman. Shot execution style in front of his house. Close range. Single bullet to the head. He was found slumped over the steering wheel of his car.”

  My heart skipped a bunch of beats and I was breathless for a moment. “I just saw him. He was at the viewing.”

  “Obviously he didn’t stay long. The ME hasn’t gotten there yet, so time of death hasn’t been determined, but it had to be around eight o’clock. Fitzgerald said a neighbor was out walking his dog and noticed Roman. I don’t have a time on that, but the first responders rolled in at eight-thirty. Fitzgerald just got there and realized it was one of the La-Z-Boys.”

  “I feel sort of sick.”

  “Yeah, you’re a little pale.” Morelli got a cold bottle of beer from the fridge and put it to the back of my neck. “Breathe.”

  “This leaves Benny the Skootch, Charlie Shine, and Lou Salgusta,” I said. “I don’t like any of those men. I almost liked Julius Roman. He seemed more conservative than the rest. I thought he might be the voice of reason in the group. And he had an idea who hired Lucca to kidnap Grandma, but he wouldn’t give me a name. He said it was just a suspicion.”

  Morelli stopped holding the beer against my neck. He cracked it open and handed it to me. “I have to go. I’ll call when I know more.”

  I locked my door after him and chugged half the bottle.

  “I hate this,” I said to Rex. “I’m always nauseous. I keep thinking about Lou Salgusta burning his initials into women. It’s so disgusting. And people getting killed over stupid keys. What the heck is that about?”

  I drank the rest of the beer and ate some Froot Loops out of the box. I ran a hand through my hair and felt the extensions. I’d forgotten about them. I went into the bathroom and checked them out in the mirror. I flipped my head around to make them move. They were pretty. Something was right in the world. It was a small something, but it was something all the same.

  I found a Fred Astaire movie on the old movie channel and watched him dance with Ginger Rogers. Ginger was slim and Fred was slim and instead of talking all the time, sometimes they would sing. And then they would dance for no special reason and they’d be in perfect step without practicing. How cool is this? This is the planet I want to live on.

  Morelli called at ten-thirty. He had nothing new to tell me, and he was going home to let Bob out and go to bed. He said all this to me in his flat cop voice. This meant that either he was exhausted, or he was putting a lid on unwanted emotion. I honestly don’t know how he does it day after day, slogging through the horror. My job isn’t nearly as demanding as his, and I’m burned out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  GRANDMA CALLED ME at seven o’clock in the morning. I was half asleep when the phone rang, and my first thought was that something horrible had happened. As it turned out I was partly right.

  “Did you hear about Julius Roman?” she said.

  “Yes. Morelli told me about the shooting last night.”

  “It’s because of the keys, isn’t it?”

  “Probably, but I don’t think anyone knows for sure. I’m sure Julius had enemies.”

  “When you live here in the Burg, you know you have neighbors who are in the mob, but you don’t think about it a lot. I mean, people in the mob have to live somewhere. So why not in the Burg? And they look just like everyone else. Their kids go to school. The wives shop at Dittman’s and Macy’s. The men belong to the K of C. I guess that’s why I could marry Jimmy. I saw the normal part of him. I wasn’t thinking about the bad part. The crazy thinking that he had some sort of permission to do terrible things. People shouldn’t think like that. You don’t do bad things just because you want something . . . like the keys, or money, or to make someone think like you do. Nobody has the right.”

  “Are you wearing your necklace?”

  “Yep. I got it on.”

  “There are a lot of people working to sort this out. In the meantime, you have to be careful.”

  “I’m staying home and making cookies all day. Fresh-baked cookies go a long way to filling a house with goodness and happiness. And I’m going to give some of the cookies to the sisters to make up for Barbara’s. I hope they didn’t get too sick from them.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t trying to poison you,” I said. “Maybe she was trying to butter you up, so you’d tell her about the keys.”

  “Well, she’s in for a disappointment then, because I haven’t got anything to tell anybody.”

  I dragged myself out of bed and stood in the shower until the water started running cold and my brain started functioning. I got out and towel dried and noticed one of my extensions was lying on the tile floor. Beauty doesn’t last forever. Fortunately, in this case, I can buy replenishment. Just one of the many good things that can be said for extensions.

  I made my way to the kitchen and surveyed my breakfast options. Coffee and cereal. I was out of milk. I had the fixings for a peanut butter sandwich, but probably I should save that for dinner. I looked in the freezer. Package of hot dogs covered in freezer frost.

  I had my rent covered for the month. My credit card bill was minimal. I had a paycheck for the three FTAs I brought in. I could afford to make a quick trip to the supermarket.

  Twenty minutes later I was in the cereal aisle trying to decide between one that was sugar and gluten free and one I actually wanted to eat. I looked up from reading the ingredients and saw Jeanine Stupe coming my way.

  “I tried that healthy cereal,” she said when she reached me. “I didn’t think it was so bad, but no one else in my family would eat it. Now that it’s just Bernie and me, we settle for toast and coffee.”

  “I haven’t got a toaster,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about buying one.”

  “Get a toaster oven,” Jeanine said. “They’re more versatile. I think they’re better at heating breakfast pastries.” She leaned in a little and lowered her voice. “Did you hear about Julius Roman?”

  “Yes. I heard the news last night.”

  “He was such a sweet man. I know in his day he might have done some questionable things, but to me he’s always been Uncle Julius.”

  “I just recently got to know him,” I said.

  Jeanine gave her head a small shake. “I’m sorry you and Edna had to get drawn into this over such a silly matter. I always thought the keys were ceremonial. Like they opened the liquor cabinet or something.”

  “Have you heard any talk about who killed Julius? I thought it might have been tied to the keys.”

  “Everyone has a theory. You know the Burg. We love a murder and a scandal.”

  “Who do you think did it?”<
br />
  “I’m leaning toward someone on the outside. He had his share of enemies. I think it didn’t have anything to do with the keys. I think the timing was coincidental.”

  I nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “I have to keep moving,” Jeanine said. “I’m meeting my mom for coffee at nine o’clock, and she hates when I’m late. She’s become so rigid with age.”

  “She gave Grandma a tin of homemade cookies last night. Please thank her again for us.”

  “Oh jeez,” Jeanine said. “I hope you didn’t eat any. She makes the world’s worst cookies.”

  Besides getting staples like strawberry Pop-Tarts and coffee ice cream, I also got a bunch of frozen vegetables, frozen chicken nuggets, frozen enchiladas, and frozen turkey burgers. Next time Morelli looked in my freezer I’d have food in it. Whether I would actually get around to eating any of it, other than the ice cream, was something else.

  * * *

  —

  Connie stood at her desk and waved a file at me when I came through the door.

  “I have a priority job for you,” she said. “This just came in. Steven Cross. Didn’t show up for court yesterday. His judge set bail at six figures. High risk of flight. Vinnie should never have posted a bond for him.”

  “I remember when he was arrested. It made national news. Good-looking older guy. Worth tons of money. Hung out with movie stars and European royalty. Thought he was the Pink Panther. Robbed jewelry stores for kicks. Over a five-year period stole a couple hundred million dollars’ worth of stuff. Got carried away at Stiffow Jewelers in Trenton and beat the seventy-year-old security guard senseless.”

  “Yep, that’s him,” Connie said. “He lives in a mansion-type house across the river. Also has houses in Monte Carlo, Palm Beach, Carmel, and Washington, D.C. If you’re lucky he’s still in Pennsylvania. He has a boyfriend here.”

  Lula was on the couch, taking it all in. “What’s the boyfriend do?” Lula asked.

  “He’s a hairdresser,” Connie said. “Has a salon in downtown Trenton. Sort of a local celebrity.”