Three to Get Deadly

  I started with the top bureau drawer and sure enough, there was the key ring consigned to its own compartment in a removable wooden jewelry tray. I pocketed the key ring, closed the drawer and was about to leave when the stack of movie magazines caught my eye. Premiere, Entertainment Weekly, Soap Opera Digest, Juggs. Whoa! Juggs? Not the sort of reading material one would expect to find in a gay man's bedroom.

  I wedged the flashlight under my armpit, sank to the floor and flipped through the first half of Juggs. Appalling. I flipped through the second half. Equally appalling and fascinatingly disgusting. The next magazine in the stack had a naked man on the cover. He was wearing a black mask and black socks and his Mr. Happy hung almost to his knees. He looked like he'd been sired by Thunder the Wonder Horse. I was tempted to look inside, but the pages were stuck together, so I moved on. I found a couple magazines that I'd never heard of that were devoted primarily to amateurish snapshots of people in various stages of undress, in a variety of embarrassing poses labeled “Mary and Frank from Sioux City” and “Rebecca Sue in Her Kitchen.” There were some more Entertainment Weeklys, and on the bottom of the pile there were a couple photographic catalogues, which reminded me that I'd found a couple unopened boxes of film in the fridge.

  And this reminded me that I was supposed to be conducting an illegal search, not comparing anatomical features with women wearing crotchless panties and spiked dog collars.

  I neatened everything up and crept out of the room, out of the apartment, thinking that Uncle Mo was a very weird guy.

  There were two keys on the ring. I tried one of the keys on the back door to the store and struck out. I tried the second key and had to squelch a nervous giggle when the door clicked open. There'd been a part of me that hadn't wanted the keys to work. Probably it was the smart part. The part that knew I wouldn't look good in prison clothes.

  The door opened to a narrow hall. Three doors ran off the hall, and the hall opened to the store. I could look the length of the hall and the length of the store, through the front plate-glass window, and see lights shining in the house across the street. This meant they could also see lights shining in the store, so I would have to be careful how I used my flashlight. I gave the hall and the store a quick flick of the beam to make sure I was alone. I opened the first door to my right and discovered stairs leading to a basement.

  I called, “Hello, anybody down there?”

  No one answered, so I closed the door. Hollering into the dark was about as brave as I was going to get on the cellar investigation.

  The second door was a lavatory. The third door was a broom closet. I cut the light and took a moment to allow my eyes to adjust. It had probably been two or three years since I'd been in the store, but I knew it well, and I knew nothing had changed. Nothing ever changed at Uncle Mo's.

  A counter ran front to rear. The back half of the counter was luncheonette style with five stationary stools. Behind this part of the counter Mo had a small cooktop, a plastic cooler of lemonade, a four-spigot soda dispenser, two milkshake shakers, an ice cream cone dispenser and two hotplates for brewing coffee. The front half of the counter consisted of a display case for tubs of ice cream and another display case devoted to candy.

  I prowled around, not sure what I was looking for, but pretty sure I hadn't found it. Nothing seemed out of place. Mo had neatened up before he left. There were no dirty dishes or spoons in the sink. No indication that Mo had been disrupted or left in a rush.

  I opened the cash drawer. Empty. Not a nickel. I hadn't found any money in the apartment either.

  A shadow cut into the ambient light filtering through the front window, and I crouched low behind the counter. The shadow passed, and I wasted no time scuttling to the back of the store. I held up in the hallway, listening.

  Footsteps sounded on the cement walkway. I stopped breathing and watched the doorknob turn. The door didn't open. The door was locked. I heard the rasp of a key and stood rooted to the floor in dumbstruck panic. If it was anyone other than Mo I was in very deep shit.

  I quietly took two steps back, listening carefully. The key wasn't working. Maybe it wasn't working because it wasn't a key! Maybe someone else was trying to break into Uncle Mo's!

  Damn. What were the chances of two people breaking into Mo's at the same time? I shook my head in disgust. Crime was getting out of hand in Trenton.

  I slipped into the bathroom, silently closed the door and held my breath. I heard the tumbler click and the back door swing open. Two footsteps. Someone was standing in the hall, getting used to the dark.

  Go for the cash drawer and get this over with, I thought. Take all the friggin' ice cream. Have a party.

  Shoes scuffed on the wood floor, and a door opened next to me. This would be the door to the cellar. It was held open long enough for someone to look down into the darkness and then was quietly closed. Whoever was in Mo's store was doing the exact same thing I'd done, and I knew with sickening certainty my door would be opened next. There was no way for me to lock the door, and no window to use for escape.

  I had my flashlight in one hand and defense spray in the other. I had a gun in my pocketbook, but I knew from past experience I'd be slow to use it. And besides, I wasn't sure I'd remembered to load the gun. Better to go with the defense spray. I was willing to gas almost anyone.

  I heard a hand grasp the bathroom doorknob and in the next instant the door to the bathroom was yanked open. I pressed my thumb against the flashlight's switch, catching angry black eyes in my beam. The plan had been to temporarily blind the intruder, make identification and decide how to act.

  The error in the plan was in assuming blindness led to paralysis.

  Less than a millisecond after hitting the flashlight on button, I felt myself fly through the air and slam against the back wall of the lavatory. There was a red flash, fireworks exploded in my brain and then everything went black.

  My next memory was of struggling to regain consciousness, struggling to open my eyes, struggling to place my surroundings.

  It was dark. Night. I put my hand to my face. My face was sticky. A black stain spread from under my cheek. I dumbly stared at the stain. Blood, I thought. Car crash. No, that wasn't right. Then I remembered. I was at Mo's. I was on my side in the little lavatory, my body impossibly twisted around the toilet, my head under the small sink.

  It was very quiet. I didn't t move. I listened to the silence and waited for my head to clear. I ran my tongue over my teeth. No teeth were broken. I gingerly touched my nose. My nose seemed okay.

  The blood had to be coming from somewhere. I was lying in a pool of it.

  I pushed up to hands and knees and saw the source of the blood. A body lying facedown in the narrow hallway. Light from an alley streetlight carried through the store's open back door, enabling me to recognize the man on the floor.

  It was the guy who'd pitched me against the wall.

  I crept forward and took a closer look, seeing the hole in the back of the man's shirt where the bullet had entered, and a similar hole in the back of his head. The wall to my right had been sprayed with blood and brain and the left half of the dead man's face. His right eye was intact, wide and unseeing. The mouth was open, as if he'd been mildly surprised.

  The sound that carved up from my throat was part scream, part gag as I floundered away from the body, arms windmilling out, searching for a handhold where none existed. I sat down hard on the floor, back to the wall, unable to think, breathing hard, only aware that time was passing. I swallowed back bile and closed my eyes, and a thought snaked into the horror. The thought was of hope . . . that this wasn't so bad, so final. That the man could be saved. That a miracle would happen.

  I opened my eyes and all hope vanished. The man on the floor was beyond a medical miracle. I had brain gunk and bone fragments stuck to my jeans. My assailant had been murdered, and I'd missed it. Unconscious in the bathroom. The idea was ludicrous.

  And the killer. Dear God, where was the killer? My hea
rt gave a painful contraction. For all I knew he was hidden in shadow, watching me struggle. My shoulder bag was on the floor, under the sink. I reached inside and found my gun. The gun wasn't loaded. Dammit, I was such a screwup.

  I rose to a crouch and looked through the open back door. The yard was partially illuminated, as was the hallway. I was cold in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. I was bathed in sweat, shivering with fear. I wiped my hands on my jeans. Go for the door, I thought, then run for Ferris Street.

  I clenched my teeth and took off, stumbling over the obstructing body. I burst through the door and sprinted the length of the building and across the street. I ran to shadow and held up, gasping for air, searching the neighborhood for movement or for the glint of a gun or belt buckle.

  A siren sounded in the distance, and at the end of the street I caught the flash of cop lights. Someone had called the police. A second blue-and-white turned the corner at Lindal. The two cars angled into the curb in front of the store. The uniforms got out and trained a flashlight beam into Mo's front window. I didn't recognize either of the uniforms.

  I had myself backed into a corner between stoop and porch, two houses down. I kept my eye on the road and rummaged in my pocketbook, looking for my cell phone. I found the phone and dialed Morelli. Personal feelings aside, Morelli was a very good cop. I wanted him to be first homicide on the scene.

  It was well after midnight when Morelli brought me home. He parked his Toyota in my lot and escorted me into the building. He punched the elevator button and stood silently beside me. Neither of us had spoken a word since we'd left the station. We were both too weary for anything other than the most necessary conversation.

  I'd given an on-scene report to Morelli and was ordered to go to St. Francis Hospital to have my head examined, inside and out. I was told I had a concussion and a lump. My scalp was intact. After the hospital, I went home to shower and change my clothes and was brought to the station in a blue-and-white for further questioning. I'd done my best to recall details accurately, with the exception of a small memory lapse concerning the key to Mo's apartment and store and how those two doors happened to swing open for me. No need to burden the police with things that didn't matter. Especially if it might give them the wrong idea about unlawful entry. And then, there was the matter of my gun, which happened to no longer be in my pocketbook by the time I got to the police station. Wouldn't want to confuse the issue with that either. Or to be embarrassed by the fact that I'd forgotten to load the miserable thing.

  When I closed my eyes I saw the intruder. Heavy-lidded black eyes, dark skin, long dreadlocks, mustache and goatee. A big man. Taller than me. And he'd been strong. And quick. What else? He was dead. Very dead. Shot in the back at close range with a .45.

  The motive for the shooting was unknown. Also unknown was why I'd been spared.

  Mrs. Bartle, across from Mo's store, had called the police. First, to report seeing a suspicious light through the storefront window, and then a second time when she heard gunshot.

  Morelli and I stepped out of the elevator and walked the short distance down the hall to my apartment. I unlocked my door, stepped inside and flipped the light switch. Rex paused on his wheel and blinked at us.

  Morelli casually looked into the kitchen. He moved to the living room and lit a table lamp. He sauntered into the bedroom and bath and returned to me. “Just checking,” he said.

  “What were you checking for?”

  “I suppose I was checking for the phantom assailant.”

  I collapsed into a chair. “I wasn't sure you believed me. I don't exactly have an airtight alibi.”

  “Honey, you don't have any alibi at all. The only reason I didn't book you for murder is I'm too tired to fill out the paperwork.”

  I didn't have the energy for indignation. “You know I didn't kill him.”

  “I don't know anything,” Morelli said. “What I have is opinion. And my opinion is that you didn't kill the guy with the dreads. Unfortunately, there are no facts to support that opinion.”

  Morelli was wearing boots and jeans and a heavy olive drab jacket that looked like army issue. The jacket had lots of pockets and flaps and was slightly worn at the cuffs and collar. By day Morelli looked lean and predatory, but sometimes late at night when his features were softened by exhaustion and eighteen hours of beard growth there were glimpses of a more vulnerable Morelli. I found the vulnerable Morelli to be dangerously endearing. Fortunately, the vulnerable Morelli wasn't showing its face tonight. Tonight Morelli was all tired cop.

  Morelli strolled into the kitchen, lifted the lid on my brown bear cookie jar and looked inside. “Where's your thirty-eight? It wasn't on you, and it's not in your cookie jar.”

  “It's sort of lost.” It was lost two houses down and across the street from Mo's store, neatly tucked into an azalea bush. I'd called Ranger when I'd stopped home to shower, and I'd asked him to quietly retrieve the gun for me.

  “Sort of lost,” Morelli said. “Unh.”

  I saw him out and locked the door after him. I dragged myself into the bedroom and flopped on the bed. I lay there fully clothed with all the lights blazing and finally fell asleep when I could see the sun shining through my bedroom curtains.

  At nine o'clock I opened my eyes to pounding on my apartment door. I lay there for a moment hoping the pounder would go away if I ignored him.

  “Open up. It's the police,” the pounder yelled.

  Eddie Gazarra. My second-best friend all through grade school, now a cop, married to my cousin Shirley.

  I rolled out of bed, shuffled to the door and squinted at Gazarra. “What?”

  “Jesus,” he said. “You look like hell. You look like you slept in those clothes.”

  My head was throbbing and my eyes felt like they were filled with sand. “It makes it easier in the morning,” I said. “Not a lot of fuss.”

  Gazarra shook his head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

  I looked down at the white bakery bag hanging from his chunky Polish hand. “Are there doughnuts in that bag?”

  Fuckin' A," Gazarra said.

  “Do you have coffee too?”

  He held a second bag aloft.

  “God bless you,” I said. “God bless your children and their children.”

  Gazarra got a couple plates from the kitchen, grabbed the roll of paper towels and took everything into the dining room. We divided up the doughnuts and coffee and ate in silence until all that was left was a splot of raspberry jelly on the front of Gazarra's uniform.

  “So what is this?” I finally asked. “Social call, pity party, show of faith?”

  “All of the above,” Gazarra said. “Plus a weather report, which you didn't get from me.”

  “I hope it's warm and sunny.”

  Gazarra flicked at the mess on his shirtfront with a wad of paper napkin. “There are members of the department who'd like to pin last night's homicide on you.”

  “That's crazy! I had no motive. I didn't even know that guy.”

  “Turns out his name is Ronald Anders. Arrested on the eleventh of November for possession and sale of a controlled substance and illegal possession of firearms. Failed to appear in court two weeks later. Recovery never made . . . until last night. Guess who his bondsman is?”

  “Vinnie.”

  “Yes.”

  Direct hit to the brain. No one had said anything to me about the FTA, including Morelli.

  The doughnuts were sitting heavy in my stomach. “How about Morelli? Does Morelli want to charge me?”

  Gazarra stuffed the paper coffee cups and napkins into a bag and carted it all off to the kitchen. “I don't know. I'm short on details. What I know is that you might want to get your ducks in a row just in case.”

  We faced each other at the door.

  “You're a good friend,” I said to Gazarra.

  “Yeah,” Gazarra said. “I know.”

  I closed and locked the door behind him and leaned my forehead against the doorja
mb. The backs of my eyeballs hurt and the pain radiated out to the rest of my skull. If ever there was a time for clear thought, this was it, and here I was without a clear thought in my head. I stood a few minutes longer trying to think, but no wondrous revelations, no brilliant deductions burst into my consciousness. After a while I suspected I'd been dozing.

  I was debating taking a shower when there was a loud rap on the door. I rolled my eye to the peephole and looked out. Joe Morelli.

  Shit.

  Stephanie Plum 3 - Three To Get Deadly

  5

  “Open the door,” Morelli said. “I know you're in there. I can hear you breathing.”

  I figured that was a big fat lie because I'd stopped breathing with the first rap of his knuckles.