Hot Six

  Morgan got bundled into the mom-van, and the van rocketed off.

  Lula and I sat in shocked silence, not sure what to do.

  Joyce was yelling and waving her arms. Finally she kicked the flat tire, got into her SUV, and, I assume, made a phone call.

  “That worked out pretty good,” Lula finally said.

  I backed up half a block without lights, turned the corner, and drove away. “Where do you think they picked us up?”

  “Must have been at my house,” Lula said. “They probably didn't want to make a move when there were two of us. And then they got real lucky when Joyce got that flat.”

  “They're not going to think they're so lucky when they find out they've got Morgan the Horse.”

  DOUGIE AND MOONER were playing Monopoly when I got back to Dougie's house. “I thought you worked at Shop & Bag,” I said to Mooner. “Why aren't you ever working?”

  “I lucked out and got laid off, dude. I'm telling you, this is a great country. Where else could a dude get paid for not working?”

  I went into the kitchen and dialed Morelli. “I'm at Mooner's house,” I told him. “I just had another weird night.”

  “Yeah, well, it isn't over yet. Your mother's called over here four times in the last hour. You'd better phone home.”

  “What's wrong?”

  “Your grandmother went out on a date, and she isn't back yet, and your mother's losing it.”

  Stephanie Plum 6 - Hot Six

  15

  MY MOTHER ANSWERED on the first ring. “It's midnight,” she said, “and your grandmother isn't home. She's out with that turtle man.”

  “Myron Landowsky?”

  “They were supposed to go to dinner. That was at five o'clock. Where could they be? I've called his apartment and there's no answer. I've called all the hospitals—”

  “Mom, they're adults. They could be doing lots of stuff. When Grandma was living with me I never knew where she was.”

  “She's running wild!” my mother said. “Do you know what I found in her room? Condoms! What does she want with condoms?”

  “Maybe she makes balloon animals out of them.”

  “Other women have mothers who get sick and go to nursing homes or die in their beds. Not me. I have a mother who wears spandex. What did I do to deserve this?”

  “You should go to bed and stop worrying about Grandma.”

  “I'm not going to bed until that woman comes home. We're going to have a talk. And your father is here, too.”

  Oh great. There'll be a big scene, and Grandma will be back, living in my apartment.

  “Tell Daddy he can go to bed. I'll come over and sit up with you.” Anything to keep Grandma from moving back in with me.

  I called Joe and told him I might be over later, but he shouldn't wait up. Then I reborrowed the Cherokee and drove to my parents' house.

  My mother and I were sleeping on the couch when Grandma came in at two o'clock.

  “Where were you?” my mother hollered at her. “We were worried sick.”

  “I had a night of sin,” Grandma said. “Boy, that Myron is some kisser. I think he might even have got an erection, except it was hard to tell what with the way he hikes his pants up.”

  My mother made the sign of the cross, and I looked in my purse for some Rolaids.

  “Well, I gotta go to bed,” Grandma said. “I'm pooped. And I got another driving test tomorrow.”

  WHEN I WOKE up I was stretched out on the couch with a quilt over me. The house was filled with the smell of coffee cooking and bacon frying, and my mother was banging pots around in the kitchen.

  “Well, at least you're not ironing,” I said. When my mother got out the ironing, we knew there was big trouble brewing.

  She slammed a lid on the stockpot and looked at me. “Where's your underwear?”

  “I got caught in the rain, and I borrowed dry clothes from Dougie Kruper, only he didn't have any underwear. I would have gone home to change, but there are these two guys who want to chop off one of my fingers, and I was afraid they were at my apartment waiting for me.”

  “Well, thank God,” she said. “I was afraid you left your bra in Morelli's car.”

  “We don't do it in his car. We do it in his bed.”

  My mother had the big butcher knife in her hand. “I'm going to kill myself.”

  “You can't fool me,” I said, helping myself to coffee. “You'd never kill yourself in the middle of making soup.”

  Grandma trotted into the kitchen. She was wearing makeup, and her hair was pink.

  “Omigod,” my mother said. “What next?”

  “What do you think of this hair color?” Grandma asked me. “I got one of them rinses at the drugstore. You just shampoo it in.”

  “It's pink,” I said.

  “Yeah, that's what I thought, too. It said on the label that it'd be Jezebel Red.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “I gotta get a move on. Louise will be here any minute. I got the first appointment for my driving test. Hope you don't mind I asked Louise to take me. I didn't know you were going to be here.”

  “No sweat,” I said. “Knock yourself out.”

  I made myself some toast and finished my coffee. I heard the toilet flush overhead and knew my father would be down momentarily. My mother looked like she was thinking about ironing.

  “Well,” I said, jumping up from my seat. “Things to do. Places to go.”

  “I just washed some grapes. Take some home,” my mother said. “And there's ham in the refrigerator for a sandwich.”

  I DIDN'T SEE Habib or Mitchell when I pulled into my lot, but I had the Glock in hand, just in case. I parked illegally, next to the back entrance, leaving as little space as possible between me and the door, and went directly to my apartment, taking the stairs. When I got there I realized I didn't have a key, and Joe had locked the door when he left.

  Because I was the only one in the entire universe who couldn't open my door without a key, I got the spare from my neighbor Mrs. Karwatt.

  “Isn't this a nice day?” she asked. “It feels just like spring.”

  “I guess everything's been pretty quiet here this morning,” I said. “No loud noises or strange men out here in the hall?”

  “Not that I've noticed.” She looked down at my gun. “What a nice Glock. My sister carries a Glock, and she just loves it. I was thinking about trading in my forty-five, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. My dead husband gave it to me for our first anniversary. Rest his soul.”

  “What a romantic.”

  “Of course, I could always use a second gun.”

  I nodded my head in agreement. “You can never have too many guns.”

  I said good-bye to Mrs. Karwatt and let myself into my apartment. I went room by room, checking closets, looking under the bed and behind the shower curtain to make sure I was alone. Morelli had been right—the apartment was a wreck, but not too many things looked destroyed. My visitors hadn't taken the time to slash upholstery or put their foot into the television screen.

  I took a shower and got dressed in clean jeans and a T-shirt. I put some gel in my hair and worked with the big roller brush so I had a lot of loose curls and looked like a cross between Jersey Girl and Baywatch Bimbo. I felt dwarfed by the volume of hair, so I added extra mascara to my lashes to balance things out.

  I spent some time straightening the apartment, but then I started to get nervous that I was a sitting duck. Not just for Habib and Mitchell, but for Ranger as well. It was past my nine o'clock deadline.

  I called Morelli at the office.

  “Did your grandmother ever come home?” he asked.

  “Yes. And it wasn't pretty. I need to talk to you. How about meeting me for early lunch at Pino's?”

  After I hung up with Morelli I called into the office to see if Lula knew anything about Morgan.

  “He's fine,” Lula said. “But I don't think those guys Habib and Mitchell are gonna get their Christmas bonus.”

  I call
ed Dougie and told him I was going to keep the Cherokee for a little longer.

  “Keep it forever,” he said.

  By the time I got to Pino's, Morelli was already at a table, working on breadsticks.

  “I'll make a deal with you,” I said, shrugging out of my denim jacket. “If you tell me what's going on between you and Ranger, I'll let you keep Bob.”

  “Oh boy,” Morelli said. “How can I pass that up?”

  “I have an idea about this Ramos business,” I said. “But it's pretty far out. I've been thinking about it for three or four days now.”

  Morelli grinned. “Woman's intuition?”

  I smiled, too, because as it's turned out, intuition is the big gun in my arsenal. I can't shoot, I can't run all that fast, and the only karate I know is from Bruce Lee movies. But I have good intuition. Truth is, most of the time I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but if I follow my instincts things usually work out okay. “How was Homer Ramos identified?” I asked Morelli. “Dental records?”

  “He was identified by jewelry and circumstance. There were no dental records. They mysteriously disappeared.”

  “I've been thinking—maybe it wasn't Homer Ramos who got shot. No one in his family seems upset that he's dead. Even if a father thinks his son is rotten to the core, I find it hard to believe there's no emotion at his death. And then I went snooping and discovered someone was living in Hannibal's guest room. Someone the exact size of Homer Ramos. I think Homer was hiding out in Hannibal's town house, and then Macaroni got clipped and Homer ran.”

  Morelli paused while the waitress brought us our pizza. “This is what we know. Or at least, what we think we know. Homer was the bagman for Stolle's new drug operation. This whole thing sat real bad with the boys in north Jersey and New York, and people started choosing sides.”

  “Drug war.”

  "More than that. If a member of the Ramos family was going to deal drugs, then north Jersey was going to deal guns. And nobody was happy about any of this because it meant boundaries would have to be redrawn. Everyone was feeling nervous. So nervous that it became known a contract was out on Homer Ramos.

  “What we think but can't prove is that you're right—Homer Ramos isn't dead. Ranger suspected it right from the beginning, and you reinforced the theory when you told him you saw Ulysses in the doorway of the shore house. Ulysses never left Brazil. We think some other poor schnook got toasted in that building, and Homer's squirreled away someplace, waiting to get moved out of the country.”

  “And you think he's at the shore now.”

  “It seemed logical, but I don't know anymore. We have no reason to go in and search. Ranger went in but couldn't find anything.”

  “What about the gym bag? That was filled with Stolle's money, right?”

  “We think when word got back to Hannibal that his little brother was about to start a crime wave, he ordered Homer to stop all activity outside the family business and have no further contact with Stolle. Then Hannibal asked Ranger to transport Stolle's money and tell Stolle he was no longer protected by the Ramos name. Problem is, when Stolle opened the suitcase it was filled with newsprint.”

  “Didn't Ranger check on the contents before he accepted it?”

  “The suitcase was locked when it was turned over to Ranger. That was the way Hannibal Ramos had arranged it.”

  “He set Ranger up?”

  “Yeah, but probably only for the fire and execution. I guess he figured Homer had gone too far this time, and promising to be a good boy and stop selling drugs wasn't going to get the contract removed. So Hannibal arranged to have Homer look dead. Ranger makes a good scapegoat because he doesn't belong to anyone. No reason for any retaliation if Ranger's the killer.”

  “So who has the money? Hannibal?”

  “Hannibal set Ranger up to take the fall for the murder, but it's hard to believe he intended to cheat Stolle. He wanted Stolle pacified, not pissed off.” Morelli helped himself to another piece of pizza. “I think it sounds like a stunt Homer would pull. He probably switched bags in the car on the way to the office.”

  Oh boy. “I don't suppose you know what kind of car he was driving?”

  “Silver Porsche. Cynthia Lotte's car.”

  I guess that could explain Cynthia's death.

  “What was that face you just made?” Morelli asked.

  “It was a guilt grimace. I sort of helped Cynthia steal that car back from Homer.”

  I told Morelli about Cynthia walking in on Lula and me, and how Cynthia wanted her car back, and how that entailed getting the dead guy out of it. When I was done Morelli just sat there, looking dazed.

  “You know, when you're a cop you get to a point where you think you've heard it all,” he finally said. “You think there's nothing left that could surprise you. And then you come along, and it's a whole new ball game.”

  I selected another piece of pizza and thought the conversation was probably going to deteriorate now.

  “Probably I don't have to point out that you destroyed a crime scene,” Morelli said.

  Yep. I was right. It was definitely deteriorating.

  “And probably I don't have to point out that you withheld evidence in a homicide investigation.”

  I nodded affirmative.

  “Jesus Christ on a crutch, what the hell were you thinking?” he yelled.

  Everyone turned and looked at us.

  “It wasn't like I could stop her,” I said. “So it seemed like the expedient thing to do was to help her.”

  “You could have left. You could have walked away. You didn't have to help! I thought you just picked him up off the cement floor. I didn't know you dragged him out of a car, for crissake!”

  People were staring again.

  “They're going to find your prints all over that car,” Morelli said.

  “Lula and I wore gloves.” Lucy and Ethel get clever.

  “It used to be I didn't want to get married because I didn't want you sitting home worrying about me. Now I don't want to get married because I don't know if I can handle the stress of being married to you.”

  “This would never have happened if you or Ranger had confided in me. First I get asked to help in the investigation, and then I get shoved aside. This is all your fault.”

  Morelli narrowed his eyes.

  “Well, maybe not all your fault.”

  “I have to get back to work,” Morelli said, calling for the check. “Promise me you'll go home and stay there. Promise me you'll go home and lock your door and not leave until this gets settled. Alexander is scheduled to fly back to Greece tomorrow. We think that means Homer is leaving tonight, and we think we know how he's going to do it.”

  “By boat.”

  “Yeah. There's a container ship sailing out of Newark, headed for Greece. And Homer is a weak link. If we can bring him in on a homicide there's a chance he'll plea-bargain and give us Alexander and Stolle.”

  “Gee, I kind of like Alexander.”

  Now Morelli grimaced.

  “Okay,” I said, “I'll go home and stay there. Yeesh.”

  I didn't have anything to do that afternoon, anyway. And I couldn't get excited about giving Habib and Mitchell another crack at kidnapping me and chopping off my fingers, one by one. Locking myself into my apartment was actually appealing. I could clean up some more, and watch some junky television, and take a nap.

  “I have your shoulder bag at my house,” Morelli said. “I didn't think to bring it to work with me. Do you need a key to your apartment?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  He took a key off his key ring and gave it to me.

  THE LOT T O my building was relatively empty. At this time of day the seniors were either off shopping or making maximum use of the Medicare system, which was fine by me because it got me a good parking space. There were no strange cars in the lot. And as far as I could tell, no one was lurking in the bushes. I parked close to the door and got the Glock out of my jacket pocket. I quickly went i
nto the building and took the stairs. The second-floor hall was empty and quiet. My door was locked. Both good signs. I unlocked my door with the Glock still in hand and stepped into the foyer. The apartment looked just as I'd left it. I closed the door behind me but didn't slide the bolt, in case I had to make a fast exit. Then I went room to room, making sure all was secure.