Twisted Twenty-Six

by Janet Evanovich

  We went room by room through the house.

  “This guy has nine bathrooms,” I said. “And I counted twelve televisions. So far as I could see he’s the only one living here. What the heck does he do with all the bathrooms and televisions?”

  The control room got back to Ranger. “The one male that we saw leave is also the only one we picked up on the interior monitors.”

  We returned to Ranger’s car, and reinstated the alarm and cameras.

  “I’d still like to talk to DeSalle,” Ranger said. “Let’s try Miracle Fitness.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MIRACLE FITNESS WAS PACKED. There were classes going in every room, and a lot of people in varying degrees of fitness were walking around in spandex. They were clustered at the healthy juice bar, chugging bottles of healthy water, stretching tendons while they chatted about trendy diets.

  All this healthiness had me regretting that I’d just eaten half a tin of cookies made with genuine butter and a ton of sugar. I looked down at my jeans and didn’t see anything hanging over the waistband, but it was only a matter of time before the butter and sugar turned to fat. And God knows what my arteries looked like.

  I glanced at Ranger. He’d eaten one cookie. One. How is it possible to eat only one cookie? What kind of a weirdo can do that? He wasn’t in Rangeman tactical gear today. He was wearing black slacks, a black dress shirt with RANGEMAN embroidered in black on the pocket, and a black blazer. It all fit him perfectly, and he looked like money, and muscle, and not someone you would want to mess with.

  Ranger approached the woman at the desk and asked to see DeSalle. She said Mr. DeSalle was in conference and not to be disturbed.

  “He’ll see me,” Ranger said.

  “He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s in conference,” the woman said. Nervous. Probably making minimum wage and told never to think.

  “No problem,” Ranger said.

  He called his control room and asked where DeSalle’s office was located. He turned and walked left, down a corridor, found a door that said PRIVATE, and knocked.

  DeSalle opened the door.

  “Aphrodite called and said you were on your way,” DeSalle said. “She thought you might be a hired assassin or CIA. She’s very fit but not very smart. If this is about increasing my security, I feel like I’m sufficiently covered. If you’re here to tell me my house burned down, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “I’m working with Stephanie,” Ranger said. “I’m sure you’ve heard that her grandmother was kidnapped this morning.”

  “No,” DeSalle said. “I hadn’t heard. I know an attempt was made a couple days ago. The police were here, asking about the old Zeus. I believe he was involved.”

  “How well did you know the old Zeus?” Ranger asked DeSalle.

  “Not all that well,” DeSalle said. “I employed him. He had a following. Hard-core workout junkies and hard-up women. He had a reputation for making needy women happy. Not any of my business as long as it didn’t take place on the premises.”

  “Someone hired him to do the kidnapping,” Ranger said. “Do you have any ideas?”

  “I imagine it would be someone who wasn’t connected and wasn’t real bright. The old Zeus had muscle and that’s where his talent ended. I’ve been told that Marion Beggert was one of the women he regularly made happy enough to pay off his credit card. Have you seen Marion Beggert?”

  Ranger shook his head, no.

  “If you’d schtupp Marion Beggert for a couple bucks, you’d do most anything,” DeSalle said.

  “Have you talked to any of the La-Z-Boys lately?” Ranger asked.

  “I used to play poker once a week with the La-Z-Boys, but poker night was discontinued when Charlie took off and Benny got too fat to fit at the card table.”

  “If you hear anything, let me know,” Ranger said.

  DeSalle nodded. “You bet.”

  “Did we get anything out of that?” I asked when we were back in the car.

  “Not a lot, but I agree that an amateur hired Lucca.”

  “Barbara?”

  “Maybe, but there are a couple issues that make her a long shot. She would have to assemble another kidnap team on short notice, because I don’t think she’s capable of actually doing the kidnapping herself. And she would need a place to hold Grandma. Does she own any other properties?”

  I called Connie. She was closing up shop for the day, but she ran a property check on Barbara for me.

  “I’ve got two properties,” Connie said. “A house and a storage locker. The house is rented. It was Barbara’s house before she moved next door to Jeanine. The storage locker is on the road to White Horse.”

  “We’ll take a look,” Ranger said. “We’ll do the house first.”

  I called Morelli on the way to Barbara’s rental.

  “I talked to Benny,” Morelli said. “He’s in the hospital with heart issues. Between gasping for breath, he told me to go fuck myself, and that was about the extent of our conversation. Charlie Shine made bail and was released an hour ago. I just missed him, and I haven’t been able to find him. I also haven’t been able to find Lou Salgusta.”

  “We’re running down Lucca leads,” I said. “Let me know if you want us to change direction.”

  * * *

  —

  The house in Hamilton was in a family-oriented neighborhood of nice middle-income homes. Lots of swing sets visible in backyards. An occasional basketball hoop attached to a garage.

  Barbara’s rental house had a red and yellow Big Wheel tricycle parked on the short sidewalk leading to the small front porch.

  Ranger and I walked around the tricycle and stepped onto the porch. A young woman carrying a baby answered the doorbell. Two toddlers and a dog were running around behind her. The kids were laughing and yelling, and the dog was barking.

  “I’m looking for Barbara Rosolli,” I said to the woman.

  “We rent the house from her,” the woman said, “but she’s never here. I’ve only seen her once, a couple years ago.”

  One of the toddlers turned and ran past the woman and onto the porch. Ranger snagged him and redirected him back into the house.

  “Thanks,” I said to the woman. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”

  We returned to the Porsche, and I buckled myself in. “You’re good with children,” I said to Ranger.

  “You’ve seen my family in Newark. Lots of kids. Even more in Miami when I lived with my grandmother. I can change a diaper, make an omelet, and dance the salsa without my Hispanic machismo being threatened.”

  “Do you miss Miami?”

  “Less as time goes on.”

  Thirty-five minutes later we were riding through two acres of storage lockers, looking for number 3175. Ranger found it and parked in front of it so that the SUV would shield us from view if other cars drove by. We got out, he picked the lock and unholstered his gun. The locker itself was the size of a small single-car garage. We rolled the door up and looked inside. No Grandma.

  “This would have been too easy,” Ranger said. “Now what? Do you have any other suspects?”

  “I have a long list of people who belonged to Miracle Fitness. Drop me off at my parents’ house so I can check on my mom and dad, and I’ll comb through the list one more time.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll go back to Rangeman and see what I can find.”

  * * *

  —

  My dad was in front of the television. The baseball bat was beside him, leaning against his chair. My mom was in the kitchen, staring into the refrigerator. No ironing board in sight. No Big Gulp of iced tea on the counter.

  “Hey,” I said to my mom, “how’s it going?”

  “I was just going to pull out some leftovers for dinner. Will you be eating with us?”

  “Yep. I thought I’d gra
b something here. Why don’t I order pizza?”

  “Pizza would be great. Your father would like that.”

  I called Morelli to see if he wanted to join us.

  “No,” he said. “I want to keep on this. Shine and Salgusta are holed up somewhere. I know something is going down with them. We’re looking for their cars, and we’re talking to relatives and neighbors.”

  “What about Benny?”

  “He’s in St. Francis. Looking at getting a stent tomorrow. I think he’s already got a bunch of them.”

  There’s my weak link, I thought. I hung up with Morelli and called Pino’s. Twenty minutes later we got pizza delivery. One large pie with extra cheese, one large pie with the works, one small pie with the works.

  “I’m taking the small pizza to a friend,” I told my mom. “You and Dad go ahead and eat without me. I’ll eat when I get back. I won’t be long.”

  St. Francis Medical Center is on the edge of the Burg and a three-minute car ride from my parents’ house. I parked, got Benny’s room number from the attendant at the lobby desk, and went straight to his room.

  There were two beds. One was empty. Benny was in the other. He was in a hospital gown, looking like he was about to give birth to twins. He had an oxygen thing hooked up to his nose and an IV drip hooked up to his arm. He was clearly shocked to see me.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “I heard you were here,” I said, “and I thought you might be hungry.” I opened the pizza box and set it on his bedside table.

  “Oh man,” Benny said. “That’s a Pino’s with the works.” He pushed a button on the side of his bed, and it raised him up into a sitting position. “Close the door a little so the nurses don’t see. I’m supposed to be on a special diet.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn’t eat this.”

  “You try to take this away and I’ll kill you. I could do it too. I know I look like a pussy in this hospital gown, but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep this pizza. They fed me Cream of Wheat and Jell-O for lunch. It was disgusting.”

  I closed the door and walked back over to him. “So, what’s the deal here? You looked healthy last time I saw you.”

  “I got a lot of plaque, whatever the hell that is. They put these stent things in me and then I’m okay. Gonna get another one on Monday. Personally, I think it was stress this time.” He took a bite and closed his eyes. Some pizza grease ran down his chin. “Oh boy. Oh man. There’s nothing like a Pino’s pie.”

  “What were you stressed about?”

  “Your granny, what else? She’s got the keys, and now it’s a real cluster fuck. Excuse my language, but that’s what it is. We should never have listened to Julius. He kept saying to give her more time. ‘She’ll come around,’ he said. ‘She’s grieving.’” He finished the first piece and took a second.

  “Did Charlie or Lou come to visit you? Do they know you’re here?”

  “They got their hands full. They got to negotiate now.”

  “What are they negotiating?”

  “Price. The asshole who has your granny is nuts. If we’d snatched her in the beginning it wouldn’t have cost us anything. Now this guy wants to ruin us.”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “No. It’s all done by Internet and throwaway phones. If you ask me, technology sucks. Nothing’s personal anymore.”

  “But you know it’s a guy?”

  “No. I just assume.” He started on another piece of pizza. “You should have brought beer with this.”

  “Next time,” I said.

  “You’re okay,” Benny said. “You come here to pump me for information, but you’re nice enough to bring pizza. And I like that you listen. It’s like we’re just having a conversation.”

  “I think you’re okay, too,” I said to Benny. “Take care. I hope everything works out on Monday.”

  “Walk in the park,” Benny said.

  My mom and dad were still at the table when I got back. I got a soda from the fridge and helped myself to a slice of the extra cheese.

  “Who got the pizza?” my mom asked.

  “Benny the Skootch. He’s in the hospital. Needs a stent.”

  “Him and everybody else,” my dad said. “You get to be our age and things start to clog up.”

  “I didn’t know you were friends with Benny,” my mom said.

  “I wanted to ask him if he knew who took Grandma.”

  “Did he know?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  I finished eating and went into the kitchen with my mom. She tidied up and I sat at the little table and read through the Miracle Fitness list. It was a long list, and I took my time. Morelli and his co-workers couldn’t find a connection between Lucca and the La-Z-Boys. Ranger and Connie couldn’t find anything in Lucca’s history that would connect him to the La-Z-Boys. The connection had to be on the list in front of me. I got through all the names and came back to Barbara. She had real motivation. She never got over the divorce. She had anger. And she wanted money. Maybe not for herself, but for Jeanine and her grandchildren. If she couldn’t access whatever treasure the keys had locked away, she could ransom Grandma to the La-Z-Boys. It was smart. Actually, it was brilliant.

  I called Morelli and told him about my visit with Benny and my theory about Barbara.

  “I’m impressed,” Morelli said. “I took the wrong approach with Benny, and you did the right thing. And I think you’re right about Barbara. She has a motive, and she has the connection. I just can’t see her acting alone.”

  “If she was able to talk Lucca into kidnapping Grandma, she probably is capable of finding another fall guy.”

  “I’m tied up right now. I was pulled off the kidnapping temporarily. Had a gang bloodbath in the projects. I’ll be here all night, but tomorrow morning we’ll visit Barbara. In the meantime, you might want to have Ranger do something illegal, like put her under physical and technical surveillance.”

  I hung up and looked over at my mom. “You’re still not ironing.”

  “It isn’t the same without your grandmother making fun of me.”

  “I’m heading out,” I told her. “If anything scary happens, call me right away.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I DROVE FROM my parents’ house directly to Barbara Rosolli’s. Waiting for Morelli or asking Ranger for help would be the smart thing to do, but sometimes you need to go with your gut and just charge ahead. Morelli and Ranger were intimidating. Me, not so much. Barbara would be more willing to talk to me if I was alone. I didn’t think she was going to admit to kidnapping Grandma, but she might slip and say something useful. And if she didn’t make a slip, I had a speech prepared to spur her into action.

  I rang her bell, and she answered the door with a glass of wine in her hand. Yes! Off to a good start.

  “Stephanie,” she said, looking around me. “Where’s Mr. Sexy?”

  “I’m alone.”

  “Too bad. He was hot.”

  “Can I come in for a moment?”

  “Sure, what the hell, join the party. Jeanine and I were having a glass of wine. Her husband is working late again.”

  They were drinking wine at the kitchen table. This is something I would do with my mom. There was comfort at the table that couldn’t be found anyplace else in the house. I sat down and accepted a glass of wine. There was a chunk of Parmesan on a cutting board, and some slivers had been sliced off.

  It was disarming that I was invited to be part of this. Just as it was disarming that Benny was happy to have me visit. I was on the hunt for kidnappers and killers, and it would have been easier if everyone was rude.

  “Here’s to us,” Barbara said, and we clinked glasses.

  “And here’s to Edna,” Jeanine said. “Let’s hope she’s okay and returns to us soon.”

&nb
sp; “Oh God,” Barbara said. “Do I have to drink to that?”

  “Mom!” Jeanine said.

  “Okay, okay,” Barbara said. “Here’s to Edna.”

  I took a slice of the Parmesan. “This is really good,” I said. “Did you get this at Giovichinni’s?”

  “Of course,” Barbara said. “You don’t find hard cheese like that at the supermarket.”

  “It’s nice that you live next door to each other and you can get together like this,” I said. “Does Bernie work late a lot?”

  “No. It’s that they got a big order for precast and some machine broke down. Bernie wanted to stay with the mechanic who was working on the machine. These guys get time and a half for overtime. The Cement Plant looks like a big business, but the profit margin is slim. I guess it gets eaten up fast with time-and-a-half paychecks.”

  “It’s disgraceful that you and Bernard should have to worry about those things,” Barbara said. “Your father should have put money aside for you. And now even in death the money will go to other places.”

  “Bernie and I don’t need Daddy’s money,” Jeanine said. “We’re doing okay.”

  Barbara chugged half a glass of wine. “The whole La-Z-Boy thing is bizarre anyway. A bunch of old men sitting around in recliners in a nudie club. Ick!”

  Here was the opening for my speech! I’d seen it done in Sherlock Holmes movies, and it always worked. Let the guilty person think you knew all about them, so they’d make a hasty move and screw up.

  “I talked to Benny today,” I said. “He’s in the hospital waiting to get stented.”

  Jeanine went wide-eyed. “You talked to Benny? Isn’t he a kidnapping suspect? What did he say?”

  “He was angry that the La-Z-Boys didn’t kidnap Grandma sooner. They dragged their feet on it, and now someone else has her and is essentially ransoming her to them.”

  Barbara gave a bark of laughter. “I love it.”

  “So, do you know who has her?” Jeanine asked.

  “Yeah, I think I do,” I said. “Benny didn’t tell me any names, but I’m pretty sure I have it figured out.”