“He's flown the coop,” Lula said. “I bet he's in Mexico laughing his ass off, figuring we're out here doing the two-step through a bunch of bullshit garages.”
“What about the dead on the bathroom floor theory?”
Lula was wearing a hot-pink down ski jacket and white fakefur knee-high boots. She pulled the jacket collar up around her neck and glanced up at Mo's second-story back porch. “We would of found his car. And if he was dead he would of started to smell by now.”
That's what I thought, too.
“Course, he could have locked himself in the ice cream freezer,” Lula said. “Then he wouldn't smell on account of he'd be frozen. Probably that didn't t happen though because Mo would have had to take the ice cream out before he could fit himself in, and we already looked in the store window, and we didn't see a lot of ice cream cartons sitting around melting themselves into next year. Of course, Mo could have eaten all the ice cream first.”
Mo's garage was wood and shingle with an old-fashioned double wood door that swung open on hinges and had been left ajar. The garage accessed from the alley, but it had a side door toward the rear that led to a short cement sidewalk running to the back of the store.
The interior of the garage was dark and musty, the walls lined with boxes of Tastee Straws, napkins, cleanser, Drygas, Del Monte fruit cup, Hershey's syrup and 10W40 motor oil. Newspapers were stacked in the corner, awaiting recycling.
Mo was a popular person and presumably a trusting soul, but leaving his garage doors open when his garage was filled with store supplies seemed like an excessive burden on human nature. Possibilities were that he left in a hurry and was too distracted to think about the door. Or perhaps he wasn't planning to return. Or maybe he'd been forced to leave, and his abductors had other things on their minds besides garage doors.
Of all the possibilities I liked the last one the least.
I pulled a flashlight out of my pocketbook and gave it to Lula with instructions to search the garage for a house key.
“I'm like a bloodhound on a scent when it comes to house keys,” Lula said. “Don't you worry about that house key. It's as good as found.”
Mrs. Steeger glared at us from the window next door. I smiled and waved, and she stepped back. Most likely en route to the telephone to call the cops on me again.
There was a small yard stuck between the store and the garage, and there were no signs of recreational use of the yard. No swing sets, grills, rusting lawn chairs. Only the sidewalk broke the scrubby grass and hard-packed dirt. I followed the sidewalk to the store's back entry and looked in the trash cans lining the brick wall. All cans were full, garbage neatly bagged in plastic sacks. Some empty cardboard cartons had been stacked beside the garbage cans. I toed through the area around the cans and the boxes, looking for some sign of a hidden key. I found nothing. I felt over the doorjamb on the back door that led to the candy store. I walked up the stairs and ran my hand under the railing on the small back porch. I knocked on the door one more time and looked in the window.
Lula emerged from the garage and crossed the yard. She climbed the stairs and proudly handed me a key.
“Am I good, or what?” she said.
Stephanie Plum 3 - Three To Get Deadly
2
I plunged the key into the Yale lock on Mo's door, and the door opened.
“Mo?” I yelled.
No answer.
Lula and I looked around. No cops. No kids. No nosy neighbors. Our eyes met, and we silently slid into the apartment. I did a fast walk-through, noting that Mo wasn't dead in the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen or living room. There was food in the refrigerator and clothes in his bedroom closet.
The apartment was clean and tidy. He didn't have an answering machine, so I couldn't snoop on his messages. I riffled through drawers but didn't find an address book. There were no hastily scribbled notes left lying around, detailing plane reservations or hotel accommodations. No brochures advertising Disney World.
I was about to trip downstairs and search the store when Carl Costanza appeared on the back porch. Carl was one of my favorite cops. We'd done communion together, among other things.
“I should have known,” Carl said, standing flat-footed, gravity pulling hard on his gun and utility belt. “I should have known when the call came in that it would be you.”
“I gotta go,” Lula said, easing past Carl, tiptoeing down the stairs. “I can see you two want to have a conversation. Wouldn't want to be an interference.”
“Lula,” I shouted, “don't you dare leave without me!”
Lula was already rounding the corner of the building. “I might even be coming down with a cold, and I wouldn't want to pass that on to you-all.”
“Well,” Carl said, “want to tell me about this?”
“You mean about Lula and me being in Uncle Mo's apartment?”
Carl grimaced. “You're going to make up some ridiculous story, aren't you?”
“Mo's FTA. I came here looking for him, and his door was wide open. Must have been the wind.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then Lula and I got worried. What if Mo was injured? Like maybe he'd fallen in the bathroom and hit his head and was unconscious.”
Carl held his hands up. “Stop. I don't want to hear any more. Are you finished with your search?”
“Yes.”
“Did you find Mo unconscious on the bathroom floor?”
“No.”
“You're going home now, right?”
“Right.” Carl was a good guy, but I thought breaking into Mo's store while Carl was looking over my shoulder might be pressing my luck, so I closed Mo's door and made sure the lock clicked.
When I got out to the street, Lula and the Firebird were nowhere to be seen. I put my head down and walked to my parents' house, where I was pretty sure I could mooch a ride.
My parents lived deep in the burg in a narrow duplex that on a cold day like this would smell like chocolate pudding cooking on the stove. The effect was similar to Lorelei, singing to all those sailors, sucking them in so they'd crash on the rocks.
I walked three blocks down Ferris, and turned onto Green. The raw cold ate through my shoes and gloves and made my ears ache. I was wearing a Gore-Tex shell with a heavy fleece liner, a black turtleneck and a sweatshirt advertising my alma mater, Douglass College. I pulled the jacket hood over my head and tightened the drawstring. Very dorky, but at least my ears wouldn't crack off like icicles.
“What a nice surprise,” my mother said when she opened the door to me. “And we're having roast chicken for dinner. Lots of gravy. Just like you like it.”
“I can't stay. I have plans.”
“What plans? A date?”
“Not a date. These are work plans.”
Grandma Mazur peeked around the kitchen door. “Oh boy, you're on a case. Who is it this time?”
“No one you know,” I said. “It's something small. Really, I'm doing it as a favor to Vinnie.”
“I heard old Tom Gates got arrested for spitting in line at Social Security. Is it Tom Gates you're after?” Grandma asked.
“No. It's not Tom Gates.”
“How about that guy they were talking about in the paper today? The one who pulled that motorist through his car window by his necktie.”
“That was just a misunderstanding,” I said. “They were in dispute over a parking space.”
“Well, who then?” Grandma wanted to know.
“Moses Bedemier.”
My mother made the sign of the cross. “Holy mother of God, you're hunting down Uncle Mo.” She threw her hands into the air. “The man is a saint!”
“He's not a saint. He got arrested for carrying concealed, and then he didn't show up for a court appearance. So now I have to find him and get him rescheduled.”
“Carrying concealed,” my mother said, rolling her eyes. “What moron would arrest a good man like Mo Bedemier for carrying concealed?”
“Officer Gaspick.”
“I don't know any Officer Gaspick,” my mother said.
“He's new.”
“That's what comes of getting new cops,” Grandma said. “No telling what they might do. I bet that gun was planted on Mo. I saw a TV show the other night about how when cops want a promotion they plant drugs on people so they can arrest them. I bet that's what happened here. I bet that Officer Gaspick planted a gun on Mo. Everybody knows Mo would never do anything wrong.”
I was getting tired of hearing how Mo would never do anything wrong. In fact, I was beginning to wonder what sort of person this wonderful Uncle Mo really was. It seemed to me everyone knew him, but no one knew him.
My mother had her hands up in supplication. “How will I ever explain this? What will people say?”
“They'll say I'm doing my job,” I told my mother.
“Your job! You work for your no-good cousin. If it isn't bad enough you go around shooting people, now you're hunting down Uncle Mo as if he was a common criminal.”
“I only shot one person! And Uncle Mo is a common criminal. He broke the law.”
“Course it wasn't one of those laws we care much about,” Grandma said, weighing the crime.
“Has Mo ever been married?” I asked. “Does he have a girlfriend?”
“Of course not,” my grandmother said.
“What do you mean, of course not? What's wrong with him?”
My mother and my grandmother looked at each other. Obviously they'd never thought of it in those terms before.
“I guess he's sort of like a priest,” Grandma Mazur finally said. “Like he's married to the store.”
Oh boy. Saint Mo, the celibate candyman . . . better known as Old Penis Nose.
“Not that he doesn't know how to have a good time,” Grandma said. “I heard him tell one of those lightbulb jokes, once. Nothing blue, though. He would never say anything off-color. He's a real gentleman.”
“Do you know anything about him?” I asked. “Does he go to church? Does he belong to the VFW?”
“Well, I don't know,” Grandma said. “I just know him from the candy store.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
“Must have been a couple months ago. We stopped to buy ice cream on the way home from shopping. Remember that, Ellen?”
“It was before Christmas,” my mother said.
I made hand gestures for her to elaborate. “And?”
“There's no more,” she said. “We went in. We talked about weather. We got ice cream and left.”
“Mo looked okay?”
“He looked like he always looks,” my mother said. “Maybe a little less hair, a little more of a roll around his middle. He was wearing a white shirt that said UNCLE MO over the pocket, just like always.”
“So about the chicken?” my mother wanted to know.
“Rain check,” I said. “I need a ride to Vinnie's. Can someone give me a ride?”
“Where's your car?” Grandma asked. “Was your car stolen again?”
“It's parked at Vinnie's. It's sort of a long story.”
My mother took her coat out of the hall closet. “I guess I can give you a ride. I need to go to the store anyway.”
The phone rang, and Grandma Mazur answered.
“Yep,” she said. “Yep. Yep. Yep.” Her face wrinkled into a frown. “I hear you,” she answered.
“Well, if that isn't something,” she said when she got off. “That was Myra Biablocki. She said she was talking to Emma Rodgers and Emma told her she heard Stephanie was on a manhunt to bring down Uncle Mo. Myra said she thought it was a sad day when a person hasn't anything better to do than to make trouble for a good man like Moses Bedemier.”
“Your cousin Maureen just got a job at the button factory” my mother said to me. “They're probably still hiring.”
“I don't want to work at the button factory. I like my job just fine.”
The phone rang again, and we all looked at each other.
“Maybe it's a wrong number,” Grandma Mazur offered.
My mother brushed past Grandma and snatched at the phone. “Yes?” Her mouth pinched into a thin line. “Moses Bedemier is not above the law,” she said. “I suggest you get the facts right before spreading gossip. And for that matter, if I were you, I'd clean my front windows before I took the time to talk on the phone.”
“Must be Eleanor, down the street,” Grandma said. “I noticed her windows, too.”
Life was simple in the burg. Sins were absolved by the Catholic Church, dirty windows were an abomination to the neighborhood, gossip greased the wheel of life and you'd better be damned careful what you said face-to-face to a woman about her daughter. No matter if it was true.
My mother got off the phone, wrapped a scarf around her head and took her pocketbook and keys off the hall table. “Are you coming with us?” she asked Grandma Mazur.
“I got some TV shows I've gotta watch,” Grandma said. “And besides, someone's got to take care of the phone calls.”
My mother shuddered. “Give me strength.”
Five minutes later she dropped me off in front of Vinnie's. “Think about the button factory” she said. “I hear they pay good. And you'd get benefits. Health insurance.”
“I'll think about it,” I said. But neither of us was paying much attention to what I said. We were both staring at the man leaning against my car.
“Isn't that Joe Morelli?” my mother asked. “I didn't know things were still friendly between you.”
“It isn't, and it never was,” I said, which was sort of a fib. Morelli and I had a history that ranged from almost friendly, to frighteningly friendly, to borderline murderous. He'd taken my virginity when I was sixteen, and at eighteen I'd tried to run him down with my father's Buick. Those two incidents pretty much reflected the tone of our ongoing relationship.
“Looks like he's waiting for you.”
I blew out some air. “Lucky me.”
Morelli was a cop now. Plainclothes. A misnomer for Morelli, because he's lean-hipped and hard-muscled, and there's nothing plain about the way he fits a pair of Levi's. He's two years older than me, five inches taller, has a paperthin scar slicing through his right eyebrow and an eagle tattooed onto his chest. The eagle is left over from a hitch in the navy. The scar is more recent.
I got out of the car and pasted a big phony smile on my mouth. “Gosh, what a terrific surprise.”
Morelli grinned. “Nice lie.”
“I can't imagine what you mean by that.”
“You've been avoiding me.”
The avoiding had been mutual. Morelli had given me the big rush back in November and then all of a sudden . . . nothing.
“I've been busy,” I said.
“So I hear.”
I gave him a raised eyebrow.
“Two suspicious conduct complaints in one day, plus breaking and entering. You must be going for some sort of personal record,” Morelli said.
“Costanza has a big mouth.”
“You were lucky it was Costanza. If it had been Gaspick you'd be calling Vinnie for bail right now.”
We were caught in a gust of wind, and we hunkered down into our jackets.
“Can I talk to you off the record?” I asked Morelli.
“Shit,” Morelli said. “I hate when you start a conversation like this.”
“There's something strange about Uncle Mo.”
“Oh boy.”
“I'm serious!”
“Okay,” Morelli said. “So what have you got?”
“A feeling.”
“If anyone else said that to me I'd walk away.”
“Mo's gone FTA on a carrying charge. It would have gotten him a fine and a slap on the hand. It doesn't make sense.”
“Life never makes sense.”
“I've been out looking for him. He's nowhere. His car is gone, but his garage door was left open. There are dry goods in the garage. Things he wouldn't want stolen. It doesn't feel right. His
store has been closed up for two days. No one knows where he is. His sister doesn't know. His neighbors don't know.”
“What did you find in his apartment?”
“Clothes in the closet. Food in the fridge.”
“Any sign of struggle?”
“None.”