Seven Up

  “Where were you guys?” I said. “ I lost you.”

  Morelli shook his head in disgust. “That's so sad. You have powdered sugar on your shirt.”

  “Must have fallen from the sky.”

  “Pathetic,” Morelli said.

  We passed Benny and Ziggy in the hall when we returned.

  “Looks like you were out jogging,” Ziggy said. “That's very healthy. More people should do that.”

  Morelli put a hand to Ziggy's chest to detain him. “What are you doing here?”

  “We came to see Ms. Plum, but no one was home.”

  “Well, here she is. Don't you want to talk to her?”

  “Sure,” Ziggy said. “Did you like the jelly?”

  “The jelly is great. Thanks.”

  “You didn't break into her apartment just now, did you?” Morelli asked.

  “We wouldn't do a thing like that,” Benny said. “We got too much respect for her. Right, Ziggy?”

  “Yeah, that's right,” Ziggy said. “But I could if I wanted to. I still got the touch.”

  “Have you had a chance to talk to your wife?” I asked Benny. “Is she in Richmond?”

  “I talked to her last night. And she's in Norfolk. She said things are as good as can be expected. I'm sure you understand this has been upsetting for all concerned.”

  “A tragedy. No other news from Richmond?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  Benny and Ziggy trotted off to the elevator, and Morelli and I followed Bob into the kitchen.

  “They were in here, weren't they?” Morelli said

  “Yeah. Looking for the heart. Benny's wife is making his life a living hell until the heart is returned.”

  Morelli measured out a cup of food for Bob. Bob inhaled it and looked for more.

  “Sorry, fella,” Morelli said. “That's what happens when you get fat.”

  I sucked my stomach in, feeling guilty about the danish. Compared to Morelli I was a cow. Morelli had washboard abs. Morelli could actually do sit-ups. Lots of them. In my mind's eye I could do sit-ups, too. In real life, sit-ups ran a close second to the joy of jogging.

  Stephanie Plum 7 - Seven Up

  12

  EDDIE DECHOOCH HAD Grandma stashed someplace. Probably not in the Burg because I would have heard something by now. Somewhere in the Trenton area. Both phone-in locations were local.

  Joe had promised not to file a report, but I knew he'd work undercover. He'd ask questions and he'd have cops out there looking a lot harder for Eddie DeChooch. Connie and Vinnie and Lula were tapping their sources, too. I didn't expect anything to come of it. Eddie DeChooch was working alone. He might visit with Father Carolli once in a while. And he might be drawn to the occasional wake. But he was out there alone. I was convinced no one knew his lair. With the possible exception of Mary Maggie Mason.

  For whatever reason, two days ago, DeChooch had come to call on Mary Maggie.

  I picked Lula up at the office, and we motored off to Mary Maggie's condo building. It was midmorning and traffic was light. Clouds were coagulating overhead. Rain was expected later today. No one in Jersey gave a rat's ass. It was Thursday. Let it rain. In Jersey we cared about weekend weather.

  The Low Rider rumbled in the underground garage, the vibrations bouncing off the cement ceiling and floor. We didn't see the white Cadillac, but the MMM-YUM silver Porsche was occupying its usual slot. I parked the Harley two lanes over.

  Lula and I looked at each other. We didn't want to go upstairs.

  “I feel funny about talking to Mary Maggie,” I said. “That mud thing wasn't exactly a moment of shining glory for one.”

  “It was all her fault. She started it.”

  “I could have done better, but I was caught by surprise,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Lula said. “I could tell that by the way you kept yelling help. I just hope she doesn't want to sue me for a broken back or something.”

  We got to Mary Maggie's door and we both turned quiet. I took a deep breath and rang the bell. Mary Maggie opened her door, and the instant she saw us she tried to slam the door closed. Bounty hunter rule number two—if a door opens, get your boot in there fast.

  “Now what?” Mary Maggie said, struggling to get my boot out of the way.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “You've already talked to me.”

  “I need to talk to you again. Eddie DeChooch kidnapped my grandmother.”

  Mary Maggie stopped struggling and looked out at me. “Are you serious?”

  “I have something he wants. And now he has someone I want.”

  “I don't know what to say. I'm sorry.”

  “I was hoping you could help me find her.”

  Mary Maggie opened her door and Lula and I invited ourselves in. I didn't think I'd find Grandma tucked away in a closet, but I had to look anyway. The apartment was nice but not that large. Open floor plan living room and dining room and kitchen. One bedroom. Bath and a half. It was tastefully furnished with classic pieces. Soft colors. Grays and beiges. And of course there were books everywhere.

  “I honestly don't know where he is,” Mary Maggie said. “He asked to borrow my car. He's done it before. When the owner of the club asks to borrow something it's a good idea to loan it to him. And besides, he's a nice old man. After you were here I went to his nephew and told him I wanted my car back. Eddie was bringing it back when you and your friend ambushed him in my garage. I haven't heard from him since.”

  The bad news was that I believed her. The good news was that Ronald DeChooch communicates with his uncle.

  “Sorry about your shoe,” Mary Maggie said to Lula. “We looked for it, but we couldn't find it.”

  “Hunh,” Lula said.

  Lula and I didn't talk until we got to the garage.

  “What do you think?” Lula asked.

  “I think we need to visit Ronald DeChooch.”

  I cranked the bike over, Lula climbed on, and we tore through the garage like judgment day and headed for Ace Pavers.

  “We're pretty lucky we got good jobs,” Lula said when I pulled up to Ronald DeChooch's brick office building. “We could be working at a place like this, smelling tar all day, always having chunks of black stuff stuck to the bottom of our shoes.”

  I got off the bike and removed my helmet. The smell of hot asphalt lay heavy in the air, and beyond the locked gate the blackened rollers and pitch trucks gave off shimmering waves of heat. There were no men in sight, but clearly the equipment had just come off a job.

  “We're going to be professional but assertive,” I said to Lula.

  “You mean we're not taking any crap from that roody-poo jabroni Ronald DeChooch.”

  “You've been watching wrestling again,” I said to Lula.

  “I've got it on tape so I can do reruns of The Rock,” Lula said.

  Lula and I puffed ourselves up and marched in without knocking. We weren't going to be put off by a bunch of card-playing jerks. We were going to get answers. We were going to get respect.

  We barreled through the small entrance hall and again without knocking went straight to the inside office. We whipped the doors open and came face-to-face with Ronald DeChooch playing hide-the-salami with the clerical help. Actually it wasn't face-to-face because DeChooch had his back to us. More correctly, he had his big hairy ass to us because he was doing the poor woman doggy-style. His pants were around his ankles and the woman was bent over the card table, holding on for all she was worth.

  There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Lula started laughing.

  “You should think about having your ass waxed,” Lula said to DeChooch. “That is one ugly butt.”

  “Christ,” DeChooch said, pulling his pants up. “A man can't even have relations in his own office.”

  The woman jumped up and adjusted her skirt and tried to stuff her boobs back into her bra. She scuttled away, looking mortally embarrassed, with her panties in her hand. I hoped she was being well compensated. r />
  “Now what?” DeChooch said. “You have something special in mind, or you just come to see a show?”

  “Your uncle kidnapped my grandmother.”

  “What?”

  “He took her yesterday. He wants to ransom her for the heart.”

  The surprise in his eyes ratcheted up a notch. “You know about the heart?”

  Lula and I exchanged glances.

  “I . . . um, have the heart,” I said.

  “Jesus Christ. How the fuck did you get the heart?”

  “It don't matter how she got it,” Lula said.

  “Right,” I said. “What matters is that we get this all settled. First off, I want my grandmother back home. And then I want Mooner and Dougie.”

  “Your grandmother I might be able to arrange,” Ronald said. “I don't know where my Uncle Eddie's hiding out, but I talk to him once in a while. He's got a cell phone. Those other two are something different. I don't know anything about them. So far as I can tell nobody knows anything about them.”

  “Eddie is supposed to call me tonight at seven. I don't want anything to go wrong. I'm going to give him the heart, and I want my grandmother back. If anything bad happens to my grandmother or she doesn't get swapped for the heart tonight, it's going to be ugly.”

  “I hear you.”

  Lula and I left. We closed two doors behind us, straddled the Harley, and took off. Two blocks later I had to pull over because we were laughing so hard I was afraid we were going to fall off the bike.

  “That was the best,” Lula said. “You want to get a man to pay attention, you just get him with his pants down.”

  “I've never seen anyone doing it before!” I said to Lula. My face was flaming under the laughter. “I've never even looked in a mirror.”

  “You never want to look in a mirror,” Lula said. “Men love mirrors. They look at themselves doing the deed and they see Rex the Wonder Horse. Women look at themselves and think they need to renew their membership at the gym.”

  I was trying to get myself under control when my mother called on my cell phone.

  “There's something funny going on,” my mother said. “Where's your grandmother? Why hasn't she come home?”

  “She'll be home tonight.”

  “You said that last night. Who is this man she's with? I don't like this one bit. What will people say?”

  “Don't worry. Grandma's being very discreet. She just had this thing to do.” I didn't know what else to say so I made some crackling staticky sounds. “Uh-oh,” I yelled, “I'm breaking up. I have to go.”

  Lula was staring over my shoulder. “I can see clear down the street,” she said, “and there's a big black car just drove out of the lot by the paving company. And there's three men just came out the front door, and I could swear they're pointing at us.”

  I looked to see what was happening. From this distance it was impossible to see details, but one of them might have been pointing. The men got into the car and the car turned in our direction.

  “Maybe Ronald forgot to tell us something,” Lula said.

  I had a weird feeling in my chest. “He could have called.”

  “My second thought is maybe you shouldn't have told him you have the heart.”

  Shit.

  Lula and I jumped on the bike, but by now the car was only a block away and gaining.

  “Hang on,” I yelled. And we shot forward. I accelerated to the corner and took it wide. I wasn't that good on the bike yet to take chances.

  “Yow,” Lula shouted in my ear, “they're right on your ass.”

  My peripheral vision caught the car coming up on my side. We were on a two-lane street with two blocks to go to Broad. These side streets were empty, but Broad would be busy at this time of day. If I could get to Broad I could lose them. The car eased past me, put some space between us, and then angled across the road, blocking my progress. The Lincoln's doors opened, all four men jumped out, and I slid to a stop. I felt Lula's arm rest on my shoulder and from the corner of my eye I got a glimpse of her Glock.

  Everything came to a standstill.

  Finally one of the men stepped forward. “Ronnie said I should give you his card in case you need to get in touch with him. It has his cell phone number on it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the card from him. “That was smart of Ronald to think of that.”

  “Yeah. He's a smart guy.”

  Then they all piled into the car and drove away.

  Lula reset the safety on the gun. “I think I messed my pants,” she said.

  RANGER WAS IN the office when we got back.

  “Seven o'clock tonight,” I said to Ranger. “At the Silver Dollar Diner. Morelli knows about it, but he's promised no police action.”

  Ranger watched me. “Do you need me there, too?”

  “Wouldn't hurt.”

  He got to his feet. “Wear the wire. Turn it on at six-thirty.”

  “How about me?” Lula asked. “Am I invited?”

  “You're riding shotgun,” I said. “I need someone to carry the cooler.”

  THE SILVER DOLLAR Diner is in Hamilton Township, just a short distance from the Burg, and an even shorter distance from my apartment. It's open twenty-four hours a day and has a menu that would take twelve hours to recite. You can get breakfast anytime and a nice greasy grilled cheese at two in the morning. It's surrounded by all of the ugliness that makes Jersey so great. Convenience stores, branch banks, warehouse grocery stores, video stores, strip malls, and dry cleaners. And neon signs and traffic lights as far as the eye can see.

  Lula and I got there at six-thirty with the frozen heart clunking around in the Igloo cooler and my wire feeling uncomfortable and itchy under my plaid flannel shirt. We sat in a booth and ordered cheeseburgers and fries and looked out the window at the traffic streaming past.

  I tested the wire and got the confirmation phone call back from Ranger. He was out there . . . somewhere. He was watching the diner. And he was invisible. Joe was there, too. Probably they'd communicated with each other. I've watched them work jobs together in the past. There were rules that men like Joe and Ranger used to dictate their roles. Rules I'd never understand. Rules that allowed two alpha males to coexist for the common good.

  The diner was still crowded with second-shift eaters. The first-shift eaters were the seniors who came for the early-bird special. By seven it would start to thin. This wasn't Manhattan, where people ate fashionably late at eight or nine. Trenton worked hard and much of it was asleep by ten.

  My cell phone rang at seven and my heart did a little tap dance when I heard DeChooch's voice.

  “Do you have the heart with you?” he asked.

  “Yes. It's right here beside me in the cooler. How's Grandma? I want to talk to her.”

  There was some scuffling and mumbling and Grandma came on the line.

  “Howdy,” Grandma said.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I'm hunky-dory.”

  She sounded too happy. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Eddie and me might have had a couple cocktails before dinner, but don't worry . . . I'm sharp as a tack.”

  Lula was sitting across the table from me and she was smiling and shaking her head. I knew Ranger would be doing the same.

  Eddie came back on the line. “Are you ready for the instructions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know how to get to Nottingham Way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Take Nottingham to Mulberry Street and turn right onto Cherry.”

  “Wait a minute. Ronald, your nephew, lives on Cherry.”

  “Yeah. You're taking the heart to Ronald. He's gonna see it gets back to Richmond.”

  Damn. I was going to get Grandma back, but I wasn't going to get Eddie DeChooch. I'd been hoping Ranger or Joe would snag him at the drop site.

  “And what about Grandma?”

  “As soon as I get a call from Ronald I'll turn your grandmother loose.”

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