“Oh yeah. I forgot. You look so normal.”
“Did Francine Nowicki pay you with another twenty?”
“Yep. I got it right here.” He took it out of his shirt pocket. “And I did what you said. I only gave her a couple pieces of fruit. Too bad, too, because I could have made a real killing. She had a lot of money on her. She took out a roll of twenties big enough to choke a horse.”
I took the twenty from him and looked at it. It had the scratch mark in the corner.
Bernie was on tiptoe, trying to see the bill. “What's with the interest in the twenty. It marked or something?”
“No. Just checking to see if it's real.”
“Well? Is it?”
“Yep.” Real counterfeit.
“We need to go now,” I said. “Thanks for calling me.”
“My pleasure.” He was gaping at Sally again. “It's been a real treat to meet you,” he said. “I don't suppose I could have your autograph.”
Sally took the black marking pen out of Bernie's shirt pocket and wrote “Best wishes from Sally Sweet” on Bernie's bald dome.
“There you go, dude,” Sally said.
“Oh man,” Bernie said, looking like he'd burst with happiness. “Oh man! This is so great.”
“You do that a lot?” I asked Sally.
“Yeah, but usually when I do head writing I have to write a lot smaller.”
“Hmm.”
I wandered over to the cookie aisle to pick out some lunch, and I wondered if Morelli was still watching the 7-Eleven. I could save him a lot of trouble. I was pretty sure Maxine's mother had been the one to pass the phony twenties. It was her neighborhood store. And she didn't seem shy about floating the bad bills. The upside to telling Morelli about Francine Nowicki passing another bogus twenty dollars was that he'd probably abandon the store and watch Francine for me. The flip side was that if anything went down I couldn't trust him to include me. And if he brought Maxine in, and I wasn't along for the ride, neither Vinnie nor I would get our money.
Sally and I settled on a box of Fig Newtons and a couple of sodas. We went through checkout and ate in the car.
“So, lay this marriage gig on me,” Sally said. “I always thought Morelli was just nailing you.”
“We're not married. And he's not nailing me.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Okay, so he used to be nailing me. Well, actually, he only nailed me for a very short time. And it wasn't nailing. Nailing sounds like body piercing. What we had was . . . uh, consensual sex.”
“Consensual sex is excellent.”
I nodded in agreement and popped another Fig Newton into my mouth.
“I guess you got a thing going for Morelli though, huh?”
“I don't know. There's something there. I just can't figure out what it is.”
We chewed Fig Newtons and thought about that for a while.
“You know what I don't get?” Sally said. “I don't understand why everyone was working so hard to throw us off the trail five days ago, and now old lady Nowicki is back in her house. We walked right up to her, and she didn't care.”
He was right. Obviously something had changed. And my fear was that Maxine was good-bye. If Maxine was safely on her way to a new life, Mrs. Nowicki could afford to take more chances. And so could Margie. I hadn't stopped at Margie's house, but I was sure she was there, packing her valuables, explaining to her cat why Mommy was going to be gone for a long, long time. Probably paying the cat-sitting neighbor off in bad twenties.
But of course she wasn't ready to leave yet. She had a doctor's appointment. And so did Francine. Good thing for me, because I'd be hard-pressed to do surveillance. I wasn't exactly the FBI. I didn't have any of their cool surveillance equipment. For that matter, I didn't even have a car. A silver Porsche, a '53 Buick, and a red Firebird weren't gonna cut it as primo stealth vehicles. I was going to have to find a car that would go unnoticed, so I could sit in front of the Nowicki house tomorrow.
* * * * *
“NO!” MORELLI SAID. “You can't borrow my pickup. You're death on cars.”
“I am not death on cars!”
“Last time you used my car it got blown up! Remember that?”
“Well, if you're going to hold that against me . . .”
“And what about your pickup? And your CRX? Blown up!”
“Technically, the CRX caught fire.”
Morelli scrunched his eyes closed and smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Unh!”
It was a little after four. Sally was watching television in the living room, and Morelli and I were in the kitchen. Morelli'd just gotten in, and he looked like he'd had another one of those days. Probably I should have waited for a better time to ask him about the truck, but I had to be at my mother's in an hour for dinner. Maybe I should try a different approach. I ran my fingertip across his sweat-soaked T-shirt and leaned very close. “You look . . . hot.”
“Honey, I'm about as hot as a man can get.”
“I might be able to do something about that.”
His eyes narrowed. “Let me get this straight. Are you offering sex for the use of my truck?”
“Well, no, not exactly.”
“Then what are you offering?”
I didn't know what I was offering. I'd intended this to be sort of playful, but Morelli wasn't playing.
“I need a beer,” Morelli said. “I've had a really long day, and it's going to be even longer. I have to relieve Grossman in an hour.”
“Anything new turn up on Kuntz's car?”
“Nothing. ”
“Anything happen at the Seven-Eleven?”
“Nothing.” He pulled on his beer. “How was your day?”
“Slow. Not a lot going on.”
“Who you want to watch?”
“Mrs. Nowicki. She moved back into her house. I went in to talk to her, and she was packing.”
“Doesn't mean she's going to take you to Maxine,” Morelli said.
I shrugged. “It's all I've got.”
“No, it's not,” Morelli said. “You're sitting on something.”
I raised an eyebrow. It said, Oh yeah?
Morelli chucked the empty beer bottle into the recycling bin. “This better not have to do with the counterfeiting case I'm on. I'd hate to think you were withholding evidence.”
“Who me?”
He took a step closer and pinned me to the counter. “So, how bad do you want my truck?”
“Pretty bad.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth. “How bad?”
“Not that bad.”
Morelli gave a disgusted sigh and backed off. “Women.”
Sally was watching MTV, singing along with the groups, doing his head-banger thing.
“Jesus,” Morelli said, looking into the living room, “it's a wonder he doesn't shake something loose.”
* * * * *
“I CAN'T loan you my car,” my father said. “It's gotta go in to get serviced tomorrow. I got an appointment. What's wrong with the Buick you're driving?”
“The Buick is no good for surveillance,” I said. “People stare at it.”
We were at the table, and my mother was serving out stuffed cabbage. Plop, onto my plate, four cabbage rolls. I opened the button on my shorts and reached for my fork.
“I need a new car,” I said. “Where's my insurance money?”
“You need a steady job,” my mother said. “Something that pays benefits. You're not getting any younger, you know. How long can you go chasing hoodlums all over Trenton? If you had a steady job you could finance a car.”
“Most of the time my job is steady. I just got stuck with a lemon of a case here.”
“You live from hand to mouth.”
What could I say; she was right.
“I could get you a job driving a school bus,” my father said, digging into his dinner. “I know the guy does the hiring. You make good money driving a school bus.”
“One of them daytime shows did a thing on school bus drivers,” Grandma said. “And two of the drivers got bleeding hemorrhoids on account of the seats weren't any good.”
My eye had started to twitch again. I put my finger to it to make it stop.
“What's wrong with your eye?” my mother asked. “Do you have that twitch back?”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Grandma said. “One of your friends came looking for you today. I said you were out working, and she gave me a note for you.”
“Mary Lou?”
“No, not Mary Lou. Someone I didn't know. Real pretty. Must have been one of those makeup ladies at the mall, because she was wearing a ton of makeup.”
“Not Joyce!”
“No. I'm telling you it was someone I didn't know. The note's in the kitchen. I left it on the counter by the phone.”
I pushed away from the table and went to get the note. It was in a small, sealed envelope. “STEPHANIE” had been printed in neat block letters on the face of the envelope. It looked like an invitation to a shower or a birthday party. I opened the envelope and put a hand to the counter to steady myself. The message was simple. “DIE BITCH.” And in smaller script it said when I least suspected it he'd make his move. It was written on a recipe card.
What was even more disturbing than the message in the note was the fact that Sugar had waltzed right into my parents' house and handed the envelope to Grandma.
I returned to the table and wolfed down three cabbage rolls. I didn't know how to handle this. I needed to warn my family, but I didn't want to scare them half to death.
“Well?” Grandma said. “What's in the note? Looked like an invitation.”
“That was someone I know from work,” I said. “Actually, she's not a nice person, so if you ever see her again, don't let her in the house. In fact, don't even open the door to her.”
“Ommigod,” my mother said. “Another lunatic. Tell me she doesn't want to shoot you.”
“Actually . . .”
My mother made the sign of the cross. “Holy Mary, mother of God.”
“Don't get going with the Holy Mary stuff,” I said to my mother. “It's not that bad.”
“So what should I do if I see her again?” Grandma asked. “You want me to put a hole in her?”
“No! I just don't want you to invite her in for tea!”
My father helped himself to more cabbage rolls. “Next time put in less rice,” he said.
“Frank,” my mother said, “are you listening to this?”
My father picked up his head. “What?”
My mother smacked herself on the forehead.
Sally had been bent over his plate, shoveling in cabbage rolls like there was no tomorrow. He paused and looked at me, and I could hear the gears grinding in his brain. Pretty girl. Lots of makeup. Note. Bad person. “Uh oh,” Sally said.
“I'm going to have to eat and run,” I said to my mother. “I have to work tonight.”
“There's chocolate chip cookies for desert.”
I laid my napkin on the table. “I'll put them in a bag.”
My mother jumped to her feet. “I'll do it.”
We had labor laws in the burg. Mothers do brown bags. That's it. No exceptions. All over the country people were looking for ways to get out of work. In the burg, housewives militantly guarded their responsibilities. Even working mothers refused to relinquish the assembling of lunch or leftovers. And while other family members might from time to time be recruited to mop the kitchen floor, do the laundry, polish the furniture, no one performed the task to housewife standards.
I took the cookie bag and ushered Sally out of the house. It was early, and we really didn't need to leave, but I didn't think I'd hold up to the grilling. There was no good way to tell my mother I was being stalked by a homicidal drag queen.
My mother and grandmother were at the door, watching us get in the car. They stood backs straight, hands clasped. Lips pressed tight together. Good Hungarian women. My mother wondering where she went wrong, wondering why I was riding around with a man wearing rhinestone earrings. My grandmother wishing she was with us.
“I have a key,” I called to them. “So, it probably would be a good idea to lock up.”
“Yeah,” Sally added, “and don't stand in front of any open windows.”
My mother did another sign of the cross.
I started the car. “We need to end this,” I told Sally. “I'm fed up with being scared, worrying that Sugar's going to jump out at me and set my hair on fire.”
“I talked to all the guys in the band, and no one's heard from him.”
I drove toward Chambers. Truth is, I'd abdicated dealing with Sugar. “Tell me about Sugar,” I said. “Tell me the stuff you told the police.”
"We were roommates for about six months, but I don't know a whole lot about him. His family's in Ohio. They couldn't deal with the gay thing, so Sugar split. I've been with the band for about a year, but in the beginning I mostly hung with the guys from Howling Dog.
“About six months ago Sugar had this knock-down, drag-out fight with his boyfriend, John. John moved out, and I moved in. Only I wasn't like John, you know. I was like just a roommate.”
“Sugar didn't think so.”
"Guess not. Man, this is a real piece of shit, on account of we were like the perfect roommates. Sugar's a neat freak. Always cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. And I'm like, not into that, so it was cool. I mean, man, we didn't fight over who got to do the fucking vacuuming. And he's real good with the girl shit. He knows all about foundation and blush and the best hair spray. You should have seen me before I moved in with him. I was like a fucking barbarian. I mean, I've like lived with a couple chicks, but I never paid any attention to how they got the fucking eyeliner on. This girl shit is complicated.
“Sugar knew all about it. He even helped me pick out clothes. That was the one thing we did together. Shop. He was a fucking shopping fool. Sometimes he'd bring clothes home for me. Like I wouldn't even have to go with him.”
So now I understood the shorts with the ass hanging out.
“He was in drag when he gave the note to Grandma,” I said. “It takes special equipment to look like a woman, and it's unlikely Sugar had time to take anything out of the apartment. So either he has a second apartment or else he bought new.”
“Probably bought new,” Sally said. “Sugar makes lots of money. Five times what I'm making. Some of the things you need to get in New York, but that's not a real problem.”
“Too bad he torched the apartment. We might have been able to find something there.”
“And the police have the diary.”
Common sense told me to give this over to Joe, but when I ran through the benefits they didn't add up. The department was already motivated to find Sugar. They were probably already putting out the maximum effort. What we needed here was talent from a different direction. What we needed was Ranger.
I called his private number, his pager, and finally connected on his car phone.
“Help,” I said.
“No kidding.”
I filled him in on recent harrowing events.
“Bummer,” Ranger said.
“Yeah, so what do you think I should do?”
“Increase his discomfort. Invade his space and do whatever makes him crazy.”
“In other words, set myself up as a target.”
“Unless you know where he lives. Then we go there and take him down. But I figure you don't know where he lives.”
I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Ranger's black BMW slide to the curb behind me about half a block away.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“I was in the neighborhood. Saw you turn onto Chambers. Is that guy wearing rhinestones?”
“Yep.”
“Nice touch.”
“Okay, we'll go to Sugar's favorite hangouts. See what we can stir up.”
“I'm in the wind, babe.”
Whateve
r the hell that meant.
* * * * *
“I HAVE IT ALL mapped out,” Sally said, pulling into a small parking lot next to a downtown restaurant. “This is the first stop.”
I looked at the sign on the side of the building. DANTE'S INFERNO. Like, oh boy.