Twisted Twenty-Six

by Janet Evanovich

  “I like it,” Lula said. “This is right up my wheelhouse. I love those Pink Panther movies with David Niven and what’s his name.”

  “Peter Sellers,” I said.

  “Yeah, Peter Sellers,” Lula said. “And now you add a hairdresser into it. It couldn’t hardly get any better.”

  I took the file from Connie and paged through it. Lula was looking over my shoulder.

  “He even looks like David Niven,” Lula said. “He’s got the mustache.”

  “He might not have it anymore,” Connie said. “I think it was a paste-on that he used when he was doing a heist.”

  I pulled his address up on Google Maps and went to bird’s-eye view. “This is impressive. It looks out over the river, and it has its own tennis court.”

  “He’s going to have a hard time adapting to prison life,” Lula said. “Most prisons don’t have tennis courts.”

  I shoved the file into my messenger bag. “Let’s roll.”

  Thirty-five minutes later we pulled into the driveway and stopped.

  “It’s gated,” I said.

  “Maybe there’s a button you push.”

  I looked at the keypad, pushed the red button, and smiled into the camera.

  “Yes?” someone asked.

  “I’m here to see Steven Cross.”

  “Steven isn’t here.”

  “I spoke to him earlier this morning, and he said I should come over.”

  “One moment.”

  A couple minutes of silence passed, and the voice returned.

  “Who’s calling, please?”

  “Stephanie Plum.”

  More silence.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Plum. Steven isn’t here.”

  “Do you know when he’ll return?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  I backed out of the driveway and pulled to the side of the road.

  “He’s there,” I said to Lula.

  “Probably out playing tennis.”

  I brought the area back up on Google Maps. Cross’s house was squashed between two other large houses. A thick fifteen-foot-high ficus hedge ran between the houses. A wooded area bordered the back of the property. There was a generous front lawn, cut by a driveway that became a circular drive court when it reached the house. Garages were attached and to the side.

  I was able to see part of the house when I was at the gate. White with black trim. Two stories. Big. I could bushwhack my way through the hedge and walk to the house, but I’d be visible, and he could send a pack of vicious dogs out to maul and eat me. I could sit on the side of the road and wait for him to leave for the airport. This could take a long time.

  “We should launch a drone,” Lula said. “We could use it to look in his windows and see what he’s doing.”

  “I don’t have a drone. Do you have a drone?”

  “Not on me.”

  “Do you have one at home?”

  “No. I don’t have one there either.”

  There was big money involved in this capture. If I didn’t bring him in, Vinnie would be out a small fortune. If I did bring him in, I’d make enough money to buy a car. It wouldn’t be a new car. And it wouldn’t be as good as the car I was currently driving. Still, it would be mine.

  I looked at Google Maps again. If I went along the edge of the neighbor’s yard and bludgeoned my way through the hedge by the garage I might not be seen. Probably there were security cameras everywhere, but they might not be manned. Especially if Cross was getting ready to leave the country for an extended period of time and was cutting his staff.

  “I’m going to try to cut through his side yard,” I said to Lula. “Are you in?”

  “Hell, yeah. I’m not going to miss seeing David Niven.”

  The neighbor’s property was heavily shrubbed but wasn’t gated. I left the Macan on the side of the road, and Lula and I hugged the ficus hedge as best we could, scrambling around plantings. We broke through the hedge in the middle of the yard and looked around. Quiet. No dogs. Four garage bays with doors closed. A small porch with a single door to the side of the garage.

  Lula and I sauntered across the yard, looking very casual and David Nivenish in case someone was watching. I went to the side door and tried the doorknob. Unlocked. I held my breath and cracked the door. No alarm. I let my breath out in a whoosh.

  Lula and I stepped into a hallway that led to the kitchen on the ground floor and service stairs to the second floor. No one was in the kitchen. I could hear someone moving around above us. I motioned to Lula that I was taking the stairs, and she gave me a thumbs-up. I reached the second floor and stared down a long, wide hallway. A door was open toward the end of the hall. We tiptoed down and stopped just short of the open door.

  As a designated representative of a licensed bondsman I can legally enter a home if I believe my man is inside. It’s considered polite to announce yourself.

  “Knock, knock,” I said, and I stuck my head around the doorjamb.

  Steven Cross was in his gargantuan master bedroom suite. He was packing, throwing things into a large suitcase that was open on his bed. Another man slouched in a club chair nearby.

  “Oh, dear God,” the second man said. “Now what?”

  “I bet you’re the hairdresser,” Lula said. “I could tell by your complexion that you have an excellent skin care regimen.”

  “Steven Cross?” I asked.

  “Better known as David Niven,” Lula said.

  Cross stopped packing. “Yes?”

  I held my fake badge out, so he could see I was official. “I represent your bail bondsman. You missed your court date and you need to reschedule.”

  “Sure. Reschedule me,” he said. “Now go away. I’m busy.”

  “Looks like you’re going on a trip,” Lula said.

  “Brilliant,” Cross said. “What gave me away? The suitcase?”

  “No need for sarcasm,” Lula said. “I was just making conversation. Although the clever sarcasm is very David Niven.”

  “You need to reschedule in person,” I said.

  “Not gonna happen, cutie pie.”

  Lula was in Bohemian dress today with platform sandals, skintight poison-green tights, and a tie-dye tank top that was three sizes too small. The outfit was completed with a large faux-leather-fringed boho bag.

  “We’re official bond enforcement people,” Lula said, rooting around in her bag. “We’re almost like police, and I got a gun in here somewhere.”

  “I’m unarmed,” Cross said. “And I have Georgio as a witness. You can’t shoot me.”

  “How about if I knock you down and sit on you until you turn blue?” Lula said.

  Georgio unslouched himself and stood.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said to Cross. “We’re already behind schedule. Carmine is going to be here any minute, and I’ve been notified that the plane is in place. Forget the packing. You can buy new. Everything in that suitcase is horribly wrinkled anyway. I mean honestly, you can’t just throw things in there.”

  Lula was still pawing through the junk in her bag. “I was almost sure I put it in here.”

  “As it turns out, I do have a gun,” Cross said, taking a Glock out of his suitcase. “And I don’t care if you’re armed or not, I’d shoot you without remorse, because that’s the kind of guy I am.”

  “David Niven didn’t go around shooting people,” Lula said.

  “I’m not David Niven.” He glanced at Georgio. “What should I do with them? Should I kill them? Cripple them? I could just shoot them in the knees.”

  “Only if they don’t cooperate,” Georgio said. “I hate to see this carpet ruined. It’s hand-knotted from Nepal, and you know how difficult it is to remove bloodstains.”

  A car horn honked outside.

  “That’s Carmine,” Georgio sai
d. “We need to lock these two up somewhere.”

  Cross looked around. “Everything locks from the inside.”

  “The cellar door has a lock on it,” Georgio said. “We can put them in the cellar.”

  “I’m not going in no cellar,” Lula said. “There’s always spiders in cellars.”

  Cross fired off a shot that missed Lula’s little toe by an eighth of an inch.

  “Okay,” Lula said. “Maybe just this once.”

  Three minutes later we were standing in front of the cellar door.

  “No good,” Cross said. “The lock works both ways. Maybe I should just shoot them.”

  “How about the wine cellar?” Georgio said. “The new one you just put in the game room. It has a padlock.”

  We were marched into the game room. Cross unlocked the padlock and motioned us in.

  “Wow, this is amazing,” Lula said. “It’s a real wine cellar. There must be a thousand bottles of wine here. And there’s a little wine-tasting bistro table and everything.”

  There was also a glass door.

  “You’re looking at the glass door,” Cross said. “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s impact glass. Bulletproof. No good to you even if your friend ever finds her gun. You can make a phone call, but by the time someone crowbars you out of there we’ll be long gone.”

  Cross attached the padlock and waved goodbye.

  “Good thing he looks like David Niven,” I said, “because that’s all he’s got. He isn’t very smart. And the hairdresser isn’t a rocket scientist, either. The door might be impact glass, but it’s not thick enough to be completely bulletproof,” I said to Lula. “Empty a clip into it while I call Connie.”

  I went to the back of the wine cellar, dialed Connie, and told her to find Cross’s plane. “It sounds like he’s flying private,” I said. “Does he have his own plane? Does his credit show any action with a charter company? We need to get to him before he takes off.”

  “The closest airport would be Trenton-Mercer,” Connie said. “If he’s flying private, he’d be flying out of an FBO. I think Signature is there. I’ll see what I can do to stop him, and I’ll get back to you.”

  “How’s it going?” I asked Lula.

  “I’ve run out of bullets, and the glass got all these spiderwebs going through it, but it didn’t break.”

  I found a magnum of champagne and swung it at the door. The bottle broke, spraying champagne everywhere, and a small hole appeared in the door. I hit the door with another bottle and the door shattered. Lula and I cleared the door, bolted out of the house, and ran for the Porsche.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WE CROSSED THE DELAWARE and were back in New Jersey. Lula had the map app programmed for Signature Flight Support at Trenton-Mercer Airport. I hadn’t heard from Connie, so I was going with my best guess.

  “He has a good head start on us,” Lula said.

  “I’m counting on him wanting to use the restroom and visit the popcorn machine before he gets on the plane.”

  I was also flying in the Porsche, getting it into the nineties when I had open road. I knew it had a radar detector and a laser scrambler, and I was counting on them working.

  I got a call from Connie just as I pulled into the Signature lot and screeched to a stop.

  “Sorry this took so long,” Connie said, “but I’m new at this airplane-tracking thing. I’m texting you his tail number. His plane is at Signature. Looks like he hasn’t left yet. I’m trying to get a delay put on his plane, but so far, I haven’t been able to get through to the right person. How close are you? I’m on hold with airport security.”

  “I’m on the ground and running,” I said.

  Lula was some distance behind me, trying to run in her stupid platform sandals. I pushed through the entrance door and stopped to look around. I didn’t see Cross or Georgio.

  “I’m looking for Steven Cross,” I said to the woman at the reception desk. “I have papers for him.”

  She motioned at the side door. “He just walked through. You should be able to catch him.”

  I looked through the glass and saw Cross and Georgio and a uniformed pilot heading for a plane with the boarding steps down. The receptionist buzzed me out and I ran toward Cross. He was talking to the pilot and holding a big box of popcorn from the lobby machine. I was wearing my messenger bag across my body, and I had my cuffs tucked into the back of my jeans. Cross turned when I was about fifteen feet away. He one-handed the popcorn and reached inside his jacket with the other. I closed the distance and tackled him. There was an explosion of popcorn, his gun discharged, and was knocked out of his hand when we hit the pavement. I got one bracelet on his wrist before the pilot and Georgio wrestled me away. Lula burst out of the FBO followed by a security guy. She was running full steam ahead in her green spandex tights, waving her arms in the air, yelling, “Stop! Police!”

  “She misspoke in her excitement,” I said to the security guard. “We aren’t police. We’re apprehension agents. This man is in violation of his bond agreement and is attempting to flee.”

  “We’re almost police,” Lula said.

  Georgio shook his head at Cross. “You just had to get popcorn. I told you there was food on the plane, but you insisted on using the restroom and getting popcorn. And then you had to pick out a magazine.”

  “I should have shot them when I had the chance,” Cross said.

  “You’re no David Niven,” Lula said. “You probably don’t even play tennis.”

  I’d torn the knee out of my jeans and scraped my elbow when I tackled Cross. By the time we got things sorted out and security released him into my custody, I was already scabbing over.

  “You’re a fast healer,” Lula said to me. “I don’t know why you’re so opposed to being a bounty hunter. You got all the qualifications for it. You don’t want to underestimate good clotting time.”

  We dropped Cross off at the police station, made a stop at Cluck-in-a-Bucket for a large bucket of fried chicken and a quart of macaroni salad, and went to the office to eat lunch.

  Connie was all smiles when we rolled in. “That was amazing,” she said. “Ranger couldn’t have done it better. If we’d lost that bond, we might have been looking at bankruptcy.”

  “You should have seen Stephanie doing a hundred miles an hour on the way to the airport,” Lula said. “And then she tackled Cross when he had a gun in his hand and took him down. It was like she was Bruce Willis in one of those Die Hard movies.” Lula set the chicken and macaroni on Connie’s desk and pulled a bottle of champagne out of her boho bag. “Compliments of Steven Cross, who, by the way, is a horrible human being.”

  I ate two pieces of chicken, had a mug of champagne, and called Grandma.

  “We got cookies all over the place,” Grandma said. “I’m all baked out. It’ll be nice to get out of the house and go to bingo tonight.”

  Bingo. Groan.

  “I’ll pick you up at six forty-five,” I said.

  “Do you think I should give new cookies to the sisters?”

  “No. I think you should avoid the sisters.”

  “We haven’t heard anything about them dying, so that’s a good sign,” Grandma said.

  I hung up and thought about having another mug of champagne, but I had to drive home, so I passed.

  “Gotta go,” I said. “Big night at bingo. I need to patch myself up.” I looked down and saw a shiny blue extension lying on the floor. No problem. I still had lots left.

  * * *

  —

  My elbow was scraped, and my knee was scraped. Fortunately, I had some big Band-Aids left over from my gunshot wound. The jeans were unsalvageable.

  I went to my office, which was better known as the dining room table, and reread my information on the La-Z-Boys and Sylvester Lucca. I knew there had to be a connection. I knew I was missing som
ething.

  I fell asleep facedown on the table halfway through the Miracle membership list, and I woke up a little before six o’clock. Another extension had fallen out and was lying on the table. I used it as a gossamer-thin bookmark, went to the kitchen, and looked in my freezer. I had all sorts of food, but it all involved defrosting and heating. As it turns out, defrosting and heating aren’t in my current skill set. My current skill set includes peanut butter spreading. I’m good at it. Practice, practice, practice. If I spent as much time on the rifle range as I spend with my knife in the peanut butter jar, I’d be a crack shot. So, I made a peanut butter sandwich and washed it down with chocolate milk . . . because I also know how to squeeze chocolate sauce into a glass of milk.

  I got dressed in boyfriend jeans that were comfortably loose over my newly bloodied knee. And I coupled them with a long-sleeved jersey that eliminated the need to explain the Band-Aid on my elbow.

  I drove to my parents’ house to get Grandma, and I could smell the cookies when I got out of the Macan. Chocolate chip. By the time I reached the porch the chocolate chip aroma was mingled with gingerbread. My father was asleep in his chair, in front of the television. No doubt in a post-cookie stupor. Grandma was in the kitchen packing a grocery bag with cookie tins.

  “These are for you,” Grandma said. “There’s some of each kind.”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “Next door. She went over with cookies. I kind of got carried away with the baking. Now we gotta get rid of some before your father eats them all and explodes.”

  I helped myself to a sugar cookie from the glass cookie jar, and I took my grocery bag. Grandma shrugged into a sweater and hung her big patent leather purse in the crook of her arm.

  “I’m ready,” she said. “And I have an extra bingo dauber for you.”

  “I’m surprised you have room for daubers in your purse.”

  “I hear you,” Grandma said. “From time to time I think about getting something more compact. Maybe a semiautomatic. I like the idea of having more ammo available in case I’m in a shootout, but I’m used to this big boy.” She patted her purse. “It’s been with me for a long time.”