The door with the names opened to a mini lobby with two couches and a coffee table and a modern receptionist desk, all done in pastels. California meets Trenton. The woman behind the desk was upscale help. Very sleek. Pastel dress. Ann Taylor from head to toe.
“Yes,” she said. “Can I help you?”
“I'd like to speak to Richard Orr.” Just in case the office was too swanky for a guy named Dickie. “Tell him Stephanie is here.”
The woman relayed the message and directed me to Dickie's office. The door was open and Dickie stood at his desk when Lula and I appeared on his threshold.
His expression was mildly quizzical . . . which I knew as being expression number seven. Dickie used to practice expressions in front of the mirror. How's this? he'd ask me. Do I look sincere? Do I look appalled? Do I look surprised?
The office was a respectable size with a double window. A realtor would say it was “nicely appointed.” Which meant that Dickie had gone with baronial rather than L.A. Law. The carpet was a red Oriental. The desk was heavy mahogany antique. The two client chairs were burgundy leather with brass studs. Ultra masculine. The only thing missing was a wolfhound and some hunting trophies. The perfect office for a guy with a big stupid dick.
“This is Lula,” I said by way of introduction, approaching the desk. “Lula and I work together.”
Dickie inclined his head. “Lula.”
“Hunh,” Lula said.
“I have a few questions about Mo,” I said to Dickie. “For instance, when is he going to turn himself in?”
“That hasn't been determined.”
“When it has been determined, I'd like to be informed. I'm working for Vinnie now, and Mo is in violation of his bond agreement.”
“Of course,” Dickie said. Which meant when cows fly.
I sat in one of his chairs and slouched back. “I understand Mo is talking to the police. I'd like to know what he's got to trade.”
“That would be privileged information,” Dickie said.
From the corner of my eye I could see Lula morphing into Rhino Woman.
“I hate secrets,” Lula said.
Dickie looked over at Lula, and then he looked back at me. “You're kidding, right?”
I smiled. “About Mo's deal . . .”
“I'm not talking about Mo's deal. And you're going to have to excuse me. I have a meeting in five minutes, and I need to prepare.”
“How about if I shoot him?” Lula said. “Bet if I shoot him in the foot he tells us everything.”
“Not here,” I said. “Too many people.”
Lula stuck her lower lip out in a pout. “You probably don't want me to beat the crap out of him either.”
“Maybe later,” I said.
Lula leaned a hand on Dickie's desk. “There's things I can do to a man. You'd probably throw up if I told you about them.”
Dickie recoiled from Lula. “This is a joke, right?” He turned to me. “You hire her from Rent-a-thug?”
“Rent-a-thug?” Lula said, eyes big and round. “Excuse me, you little dog turd. I'm a bounty hunter in training. I'm not no rent-a-thug. And I'm not no joke either. You're the joke. You know the saying . . . go fuck yourself? I could make that a possibility for you.”
I was back on my feet, and I was smiling because Dickie had gone pale under his tanning-salon tan. “I guess we should go now,” I said. “This probably isn't a good place to discuss business. Maybe we can get together another time and share information,” I said to Dickie.
Dickie's expression was tight. Not one I'd seen him practice. “Are you threatening me?”
“Hell no,” Lula said. “Do we look like the kind of women who'd threaten a man? I don't think so. I don't think I'm the sort of woman looks like she'd threaten some pimple-ass motherfucker like you.”
I'm not sure what I'd expected to accomplish by meeting with Dickie, but I felt like I'd gotten my money's worth.
When we were alone in the elevator I turned to Lula. “I think that went well.”
“Felt good to me,” she said. “We got any more parties to go to?”
“Nope.”
“Good deal. I got plans for the rest of the afternoon.”
I scooped my car keys out of my pocket. “Have fun. And thanks for riding shotgun.”
“See you later,” she said.
I drove one block and stopped for a light. The Nissan went into the backfire and stall routine. Stay calm, I told myself. Elevated blood pressure can lead to stroke. My aunt Eleanor'd had a stroke, and it wasn't fun. She called everybody Tootsie and colored her hair with her lipstick.
I restarted the pickup and raced the engine. When the light changed I leaped forward on another backfire. KAPOW! I pulled Morelli's card from my pocket and read the address. Mr. Fix It was on Eighteenth Street, just past the button factory.
“I'm giving you one last chance,” I said to the pickup. “Either you shape up, or I'm taking you to Bucky Seidler.”
A half a block later it stalled out again. I took it as a sign and made a U-turn. Morelli regularly lied to me, but never about a mechanic. Morelli took his mechanics seriously. I'd give Bucky one shot. If that didn't work, I was going to drive the car off a bridge.
Fifteen minutes later I was chugging down Eighteenth Street, in a part of industrial Trenton that had left prosperity behind. Bucky's garage was a two-bay cinder block structure that sat like an island in a sea of cars. New cars, old cars, smashed cars, rusted cars, cars that had signed on for the vital organ donor program. The bay doors were open. A man in jeans and thermal undershirt stood under a car on the lift in the first bay. He looked out at me as I gasped to a stop on the macadam apron. He wiped his hands on a rag and walked over. He had a butch haircut and a keg of beer hanging over his belt. I hadn't seen him in a while, but I was pretty sure it was Bucky. He looked like the sort of person who'd set rats loose on a bunch of women.
He peered in the window at me. “Stephanie Plum,” he said, smiling. “Haven't seen you since high school.”
“I'm surprised you recognized me.”
“The orange hair threw me for a minute, but then I remembered you from the picture in the paper from when you burned down the funeral home.”
“I didn't burn down the funeral home. It was a misprint.”
“Too bad,” Bucky said. “I thought it was cool. Sounds like you got a car problem.”
“It keeps stalling. Joe Morelli suggested I come here. He said you're a good mechanic.”
“He gave you a pretty good recommendation, too. Read it on the bathroom wall of Mario's Sub Shop over ten years ago, and I can still remember every word of it.”
“I have Mace in my shoulder bag.”
“Mostly what I care about is MasterCard.”
I sighed. “I've got that too.”
“Well,” Bucky said, “then let's do business.”
I gave him the Nissan's medical history.
Bucky had me run the engine while he looked under the hood.
“Okay,” he said. “Been here, done this.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Sure.”
“How long? How much?”
“Depends on parts.”
I'd heard this before.
He jerked his thumb at a bunch of junks lined up against a chain-link fence. “You could pick out one of those to use as a loaner if you want. I got a classic Buick that's a beauty. A fifty-three.”
“NO!”
Rex was running on his wheel when I walked through the door. I'd stopped at the supermarket and gotten healthy food for Rex and me. Fruit, low-fat cottage cheese, potatoes and some of those already washed and peeled thumb-sized carrots in a bag. I said howdy to Rex and gave him a grape. My message light was blinking, so I hit the button and listened while I unpacked the groceries.
Ranger called to say he'd heard about Mo and the lawyer, and that it didn't change my job. It's simple, Ranger said. You get hired to find a man and that's what you do.
Mes
sage number two was from Bucky Seidler. “I was able to get the part I needed,” Bucky said into the machine. “I'll put it in first thing in the morning. You can pick your car up anytime after ten.”
I bit into my lower lip. Lord, I hoped it wasn't another carburetor.
The last call started out with a lot of noise. People talking, and the sort of clatter you hear at an arcade. Then a man came on the line. “I'm watching you, Stephanie,” the man said. “I'm watching you have lunch with your cop boyfriend. I was watching you last night, too. Watching you diddle on the kitchen floor. Good to see you decided to do something else besides harassing upstanding citizens. You keep concentrating on banging Morelli and maybe you'll live to be an old lady.”
I stared at the machine, unable to breathe. My chest was impossibly tight, and my ears were ringing. I leaned against the refrigerator and closed my eyes. Imagine you're at the ocean, I thought. Hear the surf. Breathe with the surf, Stephanie.
When I got my heart rate under control, I rewound the tape and popped it out of the recorder. I took a blank from the junk drawer next to the refrigerator and slid it into the machine. It was a few minutes after five. I called Morelli to make sure he was home.
“ 'Lo,” Morelli said.
“You going to be there for a while?”
“Yeah. I just got in.”
“Don't go away. I have something you need to hear. I'll be right over.”
I dropped the tape into my shoulder bag, grabbed my jacket and locked up behind myself. I got down to the first floor and froze at the door. What if they were out there? Waiting for me. Spying on me. I took a few steps back and exhaled. This wasn't t good. It was okay to be afraid, but not okay to let it restrict my life. I moved away from the glass panes and checked my shoulder bag. I had the .38, and it was loaded. My cell phone was charged. My stun gun was charged. I transferred the pepper spray to my jacket pocket. Not good enough. I took the spray out of my pocket and held it in my left hand. Car keys in my right.
I paced in the lobby for a few beats to get the fear under control. When I felt strong, I turned and walked out the door and across the lot to my car. I never broke stride. Never turned my head right or left. But I was listening. I was on the balls of my feet, and I was ready to act if I had to.
I'd chosen a green Mazda as a loaner. It was rusted and dented and reeked of cigarettes, but its performance couldn't be faulted. I checked the interior, stuck the key in the lock, opened the door and slid behind the wheel. I locked the door, immediately cranked the engine over and rolled out of the lot.
No one followed that I could tell, and once I got onto St. James there were too many headlights to distinguish a tail. I had my shoulder bag on the seat alongside me and my pepper spray in my lap. To keep my spirits up I sang “Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” all the way to Morelli's house. I parked at the curb and checked the street. No cars. No one on foot. I locked the Mazda, marched to Morelli's front door and knocked. I guess I was still nervous because the knock came out like BAM BAM BAM instead of knock, knock, knock.
“Must have had your Wheaties today,” Morelli said when he answered the door.
I pushed past him. “You keep your doors locked?”
“Sometimes.”
“They locked now?”
Morelli reached behind him and flipped the Yale lock. “Yep.”
I went to the living room window and drew the drapes. “Pull the curtains in the dining room and kitchen.”
“What's going on?”
“Just humor me.”
I followed him into the kitchen and waited while he adjusted Venetian blinds. When he was done I took the tape out of my shoulder bag. “You have a recorder?”
There was a briefcase sitting on the kitchen table. Morelli opened the briefcase and took out a recorder. He slipped the tape into the recorder and pressed the play button.
Ranger came up first.
“Bad advice,” Morelli said.
“That's not what I want you to hear.”
The noise blasted out and then the man's voice. Morelli's face showed no expression while he listened to the message. Cop face, I thought. He ran the tape through a second time before shutting the machine off.
“Not Mickey Maglio,” he said.
“No.” A cop would know better than to have his voice recorded.
“You have any clue you were being followed?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Did you pick up a tail tonight?”
“No.”
“There's a record store, grunge shop across from the Shuman Building. It's got some video machines in it. It's a kid hangout. The call probably originated from there. I'll send someone over to ask a few questions.”
“Guess the crashing and scuffling we heard didn't come from your neighbor's dog.”
“Whoever was out there must have knocked the garbage can over trying to get a better look.”
“You don't seem very upset by this.”
There were dishes drying in a drainer on the sink. A dinner plate, a cereal bowl, a couple glasses. Morelli grabbed the dinner plate and threw it hard against the opposite wall, where it smashed into a million pieces.
“Okay,” I said. “So I was wrong.”
“You want to stay for dinner?”
“I don't think that's a good idea.”
Morelli made chicken sounds.
“Very adult,” I said. “Very attractive.”
Morelli grinned.
I paused with my hand on the door handle. “I don't suppose you want to tell me more about your conversation with Dickie.”
“No more to tell,” Morelli said.
Yeah, right.
“And don't follow me home,” I said. “I don't need a bodyguard.”
“Who said I was going to follow you home?”
“You have your car keys in your hand, and I know the body language. You look like my mother.”
The grin widened. “You sure you don't want an escort?”
“Yes, I'm sure.” The only thing worse than being scared out of my wits was having Morelli know it.
Morelli opened the door and glanced at the Mazda. “Looks like you've got one of Bucky's loaners.”
“Bucky remembered me from high school. Said you gave me quite a recommendation on the men's room wall at Mario's.”
“That was during my reckless youth,” Morelli said. “These days I'm the soul of discretion.”
It was still early, and I couldn't get excited about going home and fixing dinner for one. The alternatives were Cluck in a Bucket or mooching a meal from my parents. I was afraid I might be recognized and remembered at Cluck in a Bucket, so I opted for family.
My mother looked flustered when she came to the door. “Whose car is that?” she asked.
“It's a loaner from a garage. My car is broken again.”
“Hah!” my father said from the dining room.
“We were just sitting down,” my mother said. “Roast leg of lamb with mashed potatoes and asparagus.”
“Is that Stephanie?” Grandma Mazur hollered from the table. “Have you got your gun? I want to show it around.”
“I've got my gun, but you can't see it,” I said.
There was a man sitting next to Grandma Mazur.
“This here's Fred,” Grandma said. “He's my boyfriend.”
Fred nodded to me. “Howdy-do.”
Fred looked to be about three hundred years old. Gravity had pulled the skin from the top of his head down to his neck, and Fred had tucked it into his shirt collar.
I took my seat across from Grandma and noticed a set of false teeth neatly placed beside Fred's salad fork.
“Those are my choppers,” Fred said. “Got them for free from the VA, but they don't fit right. Can't eat with them in.”
“Had to put his lamb through the meat grinder,” Grandma said. “That's what the lump of gray stuff is on his plate.”