Twisted Twenty-Six

by Janet Evanovich

  I know I’m supposed to be protecting Grandma, but I’m not sure she needs me. I suspect she’s better equipped to do the job than I am.

  “I’ve been getting phone calls all day, between my cookie making, about Julius Roman,” Grandma said. “There’s a lot of finger-pointing going on. I guess things are pretty tense at the Mole Hole.”

  “I saw Jeanine in the supermarket, and she thinks it was an outside hit. Someone not related to the keys business.”

  “I guess Julius could have been involved in something we don’t know about,” Grandma said.

  I parked in the firehouse lot, and Barbara pulled in next to us.

  “Oh jeez,” Grandma said. “What are the chances? Maybe we should skip bingo and go to dinner.”

  Barbara got out of her car and walked over to us.

  “Edna! So good to see you again,” she said.

  Grandma unbuckled and got out. “It was only just yesterday.”

  “Did you like my cookies?” Barbara asked.

  “Yeah,” Grandma said. “They were delicious.”

  “I used real butter,” Barbara said.

  Grandma nodded. “Yup. I could tell.”

  “And they weren’t too spicy?”

  “I like a little spice,” Grandma said.

  “Well, I guess they agreed with you. You’re looking good. Healthy and all.”

  “Did you expect something else?” Grandma asked.

  “No, no,” Barbara said. “It’s just that you’re always so hearty for your age.”

  “I’m not so old,” Grandma said. “I think you’ve got a couple years on me, but you look like you’re doing okay, too. Mostly. I hope I look as good as you when I get to be that old.”

  “Time will tell,” Barbara said. “Here today and gone tomorrow.”

  “I gotta get in and get my seat,” Grandma said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  We went into the firehouse and looked around. The sisters were across the room in their usual places.

  Grandma waved and they stared back.

  “They look okay,” Grandma said. “I bet they didn’t eat the cookies.”

  Miriam Flock was at the head table with the bingo balls. “I’ll be calling today,” she said. “Marvina is under the weather. She came down with something at lunch today. We all hope it isn’t anything serious.”

  “Marvina lives next door to Tootie,” Grandma said. “They haven’t gotten along in years. Dollars to donuts they gave the cookies to Marvina.”

  Tootie smiled at Grandma.

  “Pure evil.” Grandma said.

  “We’re sort of involved,” I told her.

  “I guess that’s true,” Grandma said. “I’ll go to Mass with your mother tomorrow.”

  Two hours later, we were leaving, and Barbara followed us to our car.

  “I heard more about Marvina,” she said. “A friend of mine works in the ER, and she said Marvina was admitted to St. Francis. Some kind of stomach thing.”

  “That’s terrible,” Grandma said.

  “Well, you know, stuff happens. I was wondering if you wanted to have coffee tomorrow. We could meet at the coffee shop on Hamilton.”

  “I’m pretty busy,” Grandma said. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  “Sure,” Barbara said. “Give me a call.”

  Neither Grandma nor I said anything on the five-minute drive home. I parked in front of my parents’ house and gave up a sigh.

  “Yeah,” Grandma said. “Me too. I don’t know if she wants to pump me for information or just kill me.”

  “I feel really bad about Marvina.”

  “I’ll go in and make some phone calls and see if I can get more information. I don’t want to make a big deal about Barbara’s cookies if it turns out Marvina didn’t eat any.”

  I watched to make sure Grandma got into the house, and then I drove off with my bag of cookies. I pulled into my building lot and saw that the lights were on in my apartment. I looked around and spotted Ranger’s black Porsche 911 Turbo parked close to the rear lobby door.

  He was checking his texts when I walked in. I set the grocery bag on the counter and hung my messenger bag on the back of a dining room chair.

  “Have you been waiting long?” I asked.

  “Just got here. I know the bingo schedule.”

  I took all of the tins out of the grocery bag, set them on the counter, and opened them. Hungarian filled cookies, butter cookies, chocolate chip, gingerbread, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chocolate chip, peanut butter, and sugar cookies.

  Ranger put his phone down and grinned at the tins of cookies. “There’s a story here,” he said.

  “Grandma wanted to make the house smell happy, so she spent the day baking cookies.”

  He nodded. “She’s a smart woman.”

  I took a sugar cookie, and Ranger took a chocolate chip.

  “Whoa,” I said. “I thought you didn’t eat cookies. I thought you only ate tree bark.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “Chocolate chip, too. You went right for the money cookie.”

  “They’re my favorite,” he said.

  I chose a Hungarian filled as my second cookie. “You even have a favorite. You’ve been leading a secret life.”

  “In many ways,” Ranger said.

  I knew this to be true. “Is there a special reason for this visit, beyond cookies?”

  “I heard you were a hero today. I thought I’d come by and say congratulations. Usually when we see each other anymore it’s for something bad. I thought this was an opportunity to stop by for something good.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate the thought, but I don’t feel like a hero.”

  “Connie said you saved the bonds office from bankruptcy. I know that’s not entirely true because Vinnie is insured, but you still made a good capture.”

  “I don’t want to do this job anymore. I’m not good at it. I don’t like it. I don’t like being in the bad neighborhoods, looking for the bad people.”

  “What would you rather do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Do you have a direction?”

  “No.”

  “Babe.”

  “Yeah, I’m a mess.”

  “You aren’t a mess,” he said. “You’re just a little burned out.”

  “It’s more than that. I’m stagnant. There’s no growth in my life.”

  “That’s okay as long as you like what you’re doing. Not everyone needs to keep moving up the ladder.”

  “You moved up the ladder.”

  “I discovered that I had certain talents, and I found a way to use them to my best advantage. There’s very little gray in my life. I see things as black or white, and sometimes the dividing line isn’t always the norm for other people. I can be ruthless and aggressive. I have qualities that allow me to take advantage of people and situations. You don’t have any of those qualities. You have the talent and intelligence to go wherever you want to go, but you aren’t driven. The truth is that you’re much too sane. You’ll probably never amount to anything.”

  I threw a cookie at him, and he caught it one-handed.

  “You weren’t serious, were you? Do you really think I’ll never amount to anything?”

  “You’re already more successful than I am. You’ve accomplished more.”

  “What have I accomplished?”

  “You’re a nice person.”

  “So are you.”

  Ranger shook his head. “I’m many things. Nice isn’t one of them.”

  “You’re nice to me.”

  “You’re an experiment. I’m trying to learn.”

  “You’re full of crap,” I said.

  That got a smile out of him.

  “What I know about
success in business is that it helps to have a passion,” Ranger said. “I feel passionate about tracking down bad people and protecting good people. It’s not a job for me . . . it’s a calling. And I’m willing to wade through some ugliness to do it.”

  “Don’t you get tired of the ugliness?”

  “Yes, but you deal with it. And you hope you’re helping to make things better.”

  “I don’t have a passion.”

  “Sometimes it takes a while to figure it out,” Ranger said.

  Rex came out of his can to see what was going on in the kitchen. I gave him a piece of butter cookie, and he scurried back into his soup can with it.

  “Life is easy when you’re a hamster,” I said to Ranger.

  “It looks boring. I’ll take ugly over boring.”

  I was going to tuck that statement away in a corner of my brain for future consideration.

  “This is the part of the night where you have to make a decision,” Ranger said. “You can ask me to stay or you can tell me to leave.”

  “I can’t ask you to stay.”

  Not because I didn’t want him to stay, but because he was part of the problem, and I wasn’t ready to confront him with the issue.

  “There’s another part to success,” Ranger said. “You have to be brave.”

  I dropped four chocolate chip cookies into a plastic baggie and handed them to Ranger. “I’m working on it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I WOKE UP thinking about being brave. Sometimes I believe I was brave on the job. I didn’t think of it as being brave when I was doing it. It was just something that had to get done. Like taking a look at Emory Lindal’s trailer. And tackling Steven Cross when I saw him reach for his gun. Okay, so it’s not like a firefighter running into a burning building or a cop putting his life on the line every day. It’s brave in a small way.

  Anyway, I don’t think that’s the kind of brave Ranger was talking about. He was talking about taking a chance on a dream. And taking a chance on a personal relationship. And I was sorely lacking in this kind of bravery.

  I called Grandma to see if she knew any more about Marvina.

  “Appendicitis,” Grandma said. “She’ll be home in a couple days, and we might want to make sure she hasn’t got that cookie tin sitting in her kitchen.”

  * * *

  —

  Lula was already in the office when I arrived. She’d eaten the Boston Kreme and many more. Her short hair was in a state of natural frizz, and she was dressed entirely in pink. Pink tank top. Pink leather skirt that was obscenely short. Pink thigh-high boots.

  “What happened to the boho?” I asked.

  “That was yesterday. Today I’m in homage to the Pink Panther. And I’m not referring to Steven Cross, who was a total imposter.”

  “Is there any news on Roman?” I asked Connie.

  “Nothing, but I’d keep a close watch on Grandma. I’m hearing that the La-Z-Boys are nervous.”

  “There are only three of them now,” I said. “Are they going to be able to pull off a kidnapping?”

  Connie shrugged. “It would be good if you could take Shine off the streets. That would narrow it down to Lou Salgusta, who is batshit crazy, and Benny.”

  “Were you ever able to get a current address for Shine?” I asked Connie.

  “No. He’s not leaving any tracks. No new credit action to indicate a hotel or a rental car. My mother and my Aunt Stella haven’t heard anything. My guess is that he’s staying with someone. He has friends and relatives who would be willing to hide him. He also has Darlene.”

  “Darlene is too obvious,” I said. “He might visit her, but I doubt he’s staying there.”

  “If the remaining La-Z-Boys are getting ready to make a move on Grandma, they could be huddling at the Mole Hole,” Connie said.

  I checked the time. It was early for the Mole Hole.

  “Let’s talk to Darlene,” I said to Lula. “If we don’t learn anything from her, we can stake out the Mole Hole.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” Lula said.

  We crept through town in rush-hour traffic. Retail wasn’t open for business yet, but office buildings were filling up. Darlene’s parking lot was already half empty.

  “A lot of government workers live in this building,” Lula said. “They get to work early so they can leave early and play golf.”

  We took the elevator to the third floor and rang Darlene’s doorbell. There was no answer, so I knocked.

  I could hear movement on the other side, and Lula put her face up to the security peephole.

  “Hey, Darlene,” she said. “It’s Lula.”

  The door cracked open with the chain attached, and Darlene looked out.

  “I’m not up to visitors,” she said.

  “Good lord,” Lula said, taking in Darlene’s swollen face. “What happened to you?”

  “I can’t talk right now,” Darlene said.

  “You need help,” Lula said. “Open the door. If you don’t open the door, I’ll break it down. I could do it too. I got a lot of skills since I went into law enforcement.”

  Darlene slipped the chain, and we hurried in. Her eye was swollen shut. Her cheek was bruised and swollen. Her lip was split open.

  “What happened?” Lula asked.

  I looked around. A round end table was overturned, and a vase was smashed on the floor. The floor by the smashed vase had a blood smear.

  “Are you alone?” I asked Darlene.

  “Yes,” she said. “And I’m going to stay that way.”

  She slowly walked toward the bedroom, holding her side. “I need to keep moving,” she said. “I need to be out of here before he returns.”

  “Charlie?” Lula asked.

  “Yeah. He let himself in around two o’clock. Drunk.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Sorry, I know I’m hard to understand. It’s painful to talk.”

  “Honey, you need stitches,” Lula said.

  “I need to get out of here first,” Darlene said.

  “No problem,” Lula said. “We’re gonna help you. Do you have someplace to go?”

  “I’m going to stay with my sister in Piscataway until I get a job and a place of my own.”

  “Are you going back to hooking?”

  “No. My sister said she might be able to get me something where she works. And I’ve been putting money aside. I have some savings.”

  “We’re still looking for Charlie,” I said. “Do you have any idea where we might find him?”

  “He’s staying with someone. I don’t know more than that. He goes to the Mole Hole. That’s where they all collect.” She took a stack of T-shirts from a dresser and put them into a half-filled suitcase that was on the bed. “You want to be careful,” she said. “He’s in a nasty mind. I’m lucky he didn’t kill me. He was drunk and angry. Ranting about Jimmy being an idiot. How the keys were a stupid idea, and he couldn’t leave Trenton until they were found. He said if he’d had his way, Edna would have talked by now. He blamed the delay on Julius Roman. Said he had no guts.”

  “Do you think he killed Roman?” I asked.

  “I’d like to pin it on him. And he’s capable of doing it. Unfortunately, he was with me when Roman was killed.”

  Lula was emptying closets and stuffing clothes and shoes into large black plastic garbage bags.

  “What else do you want?” Lula asked Darlene. “You got jewelry? Personal stuff, like photographs? Do you have a car parked outside?”

  “Charlie owns the car and this apartment,” she said. “I don’t want to make more trouble by taking it.”

  Fifteen minutes later we had the apartment cleaned out and the Porsche stuffed full of bags. Darlene didn’t want to get medical care in Trenton, so we drove her to her sister’s house.

  * * *

  —


  “I hated to leave Darlene like that,” Lula said when we were back on the road.

  “Her sister seems nice. She’ll take care of her.”

  “I guess. But it’s terrible to see someone get beat up like that.”

  It was almost lunchtime when we pulled into the Mole Hole parking lot. Lula and I went inside and sat at a table that gave us a view of the inner sanctum door. No way to know who was inside.

  We ordered lunch and watched the door. The two slick-haired kids who worked for Benny the Skootch went in and came out five minutes later. No sign of Stan. We got our mega-burgers and fries, and a waitress exited the kitchen and went to the door. She had three plates, plus sides, stacked on a large tray. She balanced the tray on her shoulder and knocked on the door. It opened and she went in. She came out minutes later without the food.

  “He’s in there,” I said.

  “You don’t know for sure,” Lula said.

  “I have a feeling.”

  “Oh boy.” She added extra salt and ketchup to her burger. “How are you going to get him out?”

  “I guess I’m going to drag him out.”

  “You and who else?”

  “You. And Ranger.”

  “Okay, now you’re talking.”

  I called Ranger and asked for help. I told him to give me ten minutes so I could finish my lunch.

  “Babe,” he said. End of conversation.

  After eight minutes I pushed back from the table.

  “Are you carrying?” I asked Lula.

  “Do bears poop in the woods?” Lula said.

  “Pass me your gun under the table.”

  “Say what?”

  “I need a gun, and mine is home in the cookie jar.”

  “I got a Glock nine with me,” Lula said. “Do you know how to use a Glock nine?”

  “You pull the trigger and it goes bang?”

  “That would be your little Smith and Wesson.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t intend to use it.”

  I slipped Lula’s Glock into my sweatshirt pocket and went to the bar. I ordered a Coke and watched the front door. At precisely ten minutes after I hung up with Ranger, the front door opened, and Ranger and Tank walked in.