Plum Lucky

  “Grandma wants to eat at the mall.”

  “I guess that’s okay, but don’t let her eat from that Chinese place. It always gives her the runs.”

  I put my phone back into my pocket. “North Trenton,” I said to Diesel. “Delvina’s been seen at the deli on Cherry Street.”

  “Never underestimate the value of gossip,” Diesel said. “Let’s roll before it gets dark.”

  “What about the horse food?” Snuggy asked.

  “We’ll stop at Cluck-​in-​a-​Bucket,” Diesel said.

  “Doug doesn’t eat burgers,” Snuggy said. “Horses are vegetarians.”

  “Whatever,” Diesel said. “We’ll stop at a supermarket and get him a head of lettuce. Just get him into the RV.”

  Snuggy rolled the RV slowly down Cherry Street. Doug was in the aisle between the dinette table and the couch, looking out the big front window, eating an apple. It was his fourth apple, and half the apple fell out of his mouth while he chewed. Turns out it’s hard to eat an apple efficiently without opposable thumbs. We’d been driving a grid pattern through north Trenton, and this was our second pass down Cherry.

  Diesel was perched on the seat next to Snuggy. “You’d better not be blowing smoke up my skirt with this horse “ Diesel said to Snuggy.

  Doug reached forward and bit Diesel on the shoulder. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to leave a dent and apple slobber on Diesel’s shirt.

  “This is the reason I don’t carry a gun,” Diesel said. “It’d be satisfying to shoot him, but I’d probably regret it... eventually.”

  Snuggy turned off Cherry, drove a couple blocks, and stopped in the middle of the road. “Doug says the neighborhood didn’t look like this. He said the house was by itself.”

  “Was it in the woods? In the middle of a field?” I asked.

  “No. It was just by itself,” Snuggy said. “And it was noisy. He could hear cars all night long.”

  “Route 1,” I said to Diesel. “The house was at the end of a street that backed up to Route 1.”

  The sun was setting, and I could see a rosy glow in the sky in front of us.

  “Pretty sunset,” I said.

  “That’s not a sunset,” Diesel said. “The sun is behind us. That’s a fire.”

  A cop car raced past us, and I heard sirens in the distance.

  Snuggy moved to the side of the road to allow a fire truck to get through.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Diesel said. “Follow the truck.”

  Snuggy eased the RV down the street and parked a block from the fire. Cop cars and fire trucks were angled in front of the burning house. The house was at the end of a cul-​de-​sac. The lot was large. There was a two-​car garage attached to the house. The garage doors were open and whatever was in the garage was on fire. Firemen were running hoses and shouting instructions to each other. There were large trees to the side and behind the house. The rumble of the fire trucks drowned out all other noise, but I knew on a quieter night you could hear the Route 1 traffic from here.

  Diesel was on his feet. “Stay here,” he said. “I’m going to look around.”

  “No way,” I said. I’m coming with you.”

  “Every cop and fireman in the county knows you,” Diesel said. “Morelli will get a phone call, and we’ll have the police involved in this.”

  “Maybe the police should be involved.”

  “Let me scope it out before we jump to conclusions. I’ll be right back.”

  I sat on the couch and dialed Delvina. My hands were shaking, and I had to dial twice to get the right number. Delvina didn’t answer.

  My next call was to Connie. “Are you at the office or has this been forwarded?” I asked her.

  “I’m still here. I’m trying to clear out some backed-​up paperwork.”

  “I need you to run an address for me.”

  Moments later, she was back on the line. “The house is owned by Mickey Wallens, Delvina’s wheelman.”

  I disconnected and clamped my teeth down into my lower lip. Snuggy and Doug were silent, watching out the front window with me. The three of us barely breathing. Diesel appeared from behind a fire truck and jogged back to the RV.

  “It looks like the fire was started in a second-​floor bathroom. The firefighters haven’t determined if anyone was in the house, but I think the house was empty. One of the garage bays was empty. There was a horse trailer in the other. The horse trailer is toast.”

  “Now what?” Snuggy asked.

  “Take us back to Stephanie’s apartment,” Diesel said.

  “Drive by the car wash on the way,” I told him. “I want to get my car.”

  Snuggy parked the RV in his spot by the Dumpster, and I parked one row up, making sure I could drive straight out. I got out of my car and tried Delvina one more time. The phone rang twice and he answered. “Sonovabitch,” he said.

  “I want to talk to my grandmother.”

  “She’s in the trunk. Don’t worry about her. She’s got a quilt and a pillow, and she’s curled up next to the spare tire. It’s a big trunk.”

  “She’s old. That’s awful!”

  “I’ll tell you what’s awful. She burned Mickey’s house down. She said it smelled like poop in the bathroom, so Mickey slid some matches to her under the door.”

  I could hear Mickey next to Delvina. “I was trying to be helpful.”

  “How many times I have to tell you,” Delvina said to Mickey “No guns, sharp objects, or matches to hostages.”

  “We never had a old lady hostage before,” Mickey said. “I didn’t know the rules was the same.”

  Delvina came back on the line to me. “So Sir Walter Raleigh here gives your grandma matches and she uses them to set off the smoke detector. Then somehow the curtains got caught on fire. We’re lucky we didn’t die, for crissake. Now we’re riding around like some homeless people. I gotta go. I think we’re lost.”

  Delvina disconnected.

  “Well?” Diesel said.

  “They’re lost.”

  “I know the feeling,” Diesel said. “I’m going upstairs, where I hope there’s some pizza and beer waiting for me.”

  We all walked over to the back door, and when I reached it, I realized Doug had followed us.

  “What are we going to do with Doug?” I said.

  “Doug can stay in the RV,” Diesel said.

  “Doug doesn’t want to stay in the RV,” Snuggy said. “He’s freaked out from the fire. Doug wants to stay with us.”

  “Yeah, but this is an apartment building for people,” I said.

  “Doesn’t it allow pets?”

  “Not horses!”

  “How do you know? Does it say that in your rental agreement? And anyway, you let Diesel stay here.”

  “Diesel is housebroken.”

  “So is Doug,” Snuggy said.

  Doug was standing with his head down, looking pathetic, not putting any weight on his bad leg.

  “Oh, for goodness sakes,” I said.

  Snuggy, Diesel, Doug, and I got into the elevator, and I looked at the posted weight limit.

  “How much does Doug weigh?” I asked Snuggy.

  “About thirteen hundred pounds,” Snuggy said. “Don’t anyone breathe. I’m going to push the button. We only have to go up one floor.”

  The elevator paused when it got to the second floor, and I prayed that the doors would open. I didn’t want to get caught in an elevator with a horse. The doors opened after a long moment, and we all paraded down the hall to my apartment. Flash had left a sack of grain, two buckets, two six-​packs of beer, three pizzas, and a duffel bag with Diesel’s and Snuggy’s clothes in front of my door.

  We carried everything inside and closed and locked the door.

  Snuggy poured some grain into a bucket for Doug and filled the second bucket with water. Diesel took one of the pizza boxes and a beer and settled himself in front of the television.

  Some people can’t eat when the
y’re under stress. I get hungry when I’m nervous. I eat to fill the hollow feeling in my stomach. I sat next to Diesel and wolfed down pizza. I looked at the box and saw that it was empty.

  “Are you going to eat the cardboard, too?” Diesel asked.

  “Did I eat pizza?”

  “Four pieces.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Take a deep breath,” Diesel said. He put his hands on my shoulders and kneaded. “Keep breathing,” he told me. “Try to relax. Your grandma’s going to be okay. We’re going to find her.”

  I was warming under Diesel’s touch. The heat was working its way up my neck and down my spine. It wasn’t sexual. It was sensual and soothing. I could feel myself going soft inside. I could feel my heartbeat slowing.

  “You have terrific hands,” I said to Diesel. “I always get warm when you touch me.”

  “I’ve been told it has something to do with sympathetic body chemistry and shared electrical energy. The person who told me that was full of mushrooms, but I thought it sounded cool. The other explanation is that my body temperature runs higher than normal, and I like touching you.”

  I didn’t know I’d fallen asleep until I woke up. I was snuggled against Diesel, and he was watching a basketball game. Snuggy was watching, too. He was in his new clothes, which looked exactly like his old clothes, except the wrinkles and knee bags and ketchup stains were missing. Doug was in the kitchen with the light off. Guess Doug wasn’t a Knicks fan.

  It was nine o’clock and my mother was probably pacing the floor, waiting for me to bring Grandma home. I tapped her number into my phone and imagined her jumping at the first ring.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m home.”

  “Where’s your grandmother?”

  “I sort of lost her.”

  “What?”

  “Remember how, in the beginning, she took off on a road trip? It’s a little like that. But I don’t think she’s gone too far this time.”

  “How could this happen?”

  “She’s very wily.”

  “I don’t understand. She has a nice home here. Why would she do this?”

  “I think she needs to have an adventure once in a while. And she’s overly curious.”

  “You get that from her,” my mother said. “You’re a lot like your grandmother.”

  Sort of a scary thought, but I knew it was true. Even at this moment, I had a horse in my kitchen.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to my mother. “She’s fine. I’ll find her and bring her home tomorrow.”

  Diesel pulled himself away from the game when I disconnected. “How did that go?”

  “As well as could be expected. I would have gotten grounded if she didn’t need me to find my grandmother.”

  “I bet you got grounded a lot when you were a kid.”

  I laughed out loud, remembering. “I used to climb out the bathroom window.”

  “Was Morelli waiting for you at the bottom?”

  “No. I only had a couple isolated experiences with Morelli back then. He was one of those hit-​and-​run guys.”

  “And now?”

  “Now he’s waiting for me at the bottom.” I did some mental knuckle-​cracking. “I feel like I should be doing something. I hate sitting here knowing Grandma is locked in Delvina’s trunk.”

  My cell phone rang and for a moment the number displayed didn’t register. Then it hit me. Briggs. I’d totally forgotten about him.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Where is everybody?”

  “We’re back in Trenton. Where are you?”

  “I’m in Atlantic City. I’m on a roll. I’m shooting craps with my lucky Edna money and I can’t lose. Why’d everyone leave?” «

  “Lou Delvina kidnapped Grandma.”

  “Get out!”

  “I think it’s safe to assume you’re unemployed.”

  “Jeez. Did you get her back yet?”

  “No. We’re working on it. We need a hundred and forty thousand dollars to ransom her. How much have you won?”

  “Not that much.”

  “Keep rolling,” I said. And I disconnected.

  Stephanie Plum 13.5 - Plum Lucky

  Chapter 9

  I slapped the alarm button on my bedside clock, but the ringing continued.

  “Phone,” Diesel murmured against my ear.

  I fumbled for the phone and mumbled hello.

  “I just got off a triple shift,” Morelli said. “Gang fight in the projects. Two dead. Do you want to meet me for breakfast before I crash?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Six-​thirty.”

  “I’ve got a full house here. I think I should stay and keep my eye on things.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Diesel and Snuggy O’Connor and Doug.”

  “Snuggy O’Connor,” Morelli said. “I know that name from somewhere.”

  “He was a jockey. He’s here with Doug.”

  “And Doug is who?”

  “Doug’s a horse.”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “They’re not all in your apartment, are they?” Morelli asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Is Doug a little horse?”

  “No. Doug is a big horse. It’s complicated.”

  “It always is,” Morelli said. “I’m really tired. Probably I’m hallucinating this whole conversation. I’ll call in a day or two when I wake up.”

  Diesel was in the bed with me, fully clothed except for shoes. I’d also fallen asleep in my clothes... minus my bra. The bra was dangling from the doorknob. I didn’t want to dwell on how it got there.

  “What are you doing in my bed?” I asked Diesel.

  “You fell asleep watching television, so I carried you in here and figured you wouldn’t mind if I joined you. I don’t fit on your couch, and I’m not in love with sleeping on the floor. Did you put in for a wake-​up call?”

  “That was Morelli coming off a triple shift. Checking in.”

  I got up and peeked into the living room. No horse. No Snuggy. I went to the bedroom window and pulled the curtain aside. Snuggy and Doug were on a patch of grass at the back of my parking lot. Doug limped when he walked.

  “Doug’s leg is bothering him,” I said to Diesel. “It makes me feel sad to see him limping. I bet he was a sight when he was young and healthy.”

  “He’ll be okay,” Diesel said. “We’ll find a way to get him healed.”

  I nodded and blinked to keep from tearing up. Between

  Doug and Grandma, I had a lot of painful emotions clogging my throat.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” I said to Diesel.

  “Would you like company?”

  “No, but thanks for offering.”

  “The least I could do,” Diesel said.

  I got clean clothes, locked myself in the bathroom, and stepped into the shower. When I got out, I felt reenergized.

  “I got an idea while you were in the shower,” Diesel said. “We need money, right? Who has money sitting around? Delvina. I watched the duffel bag get carried into the car wash, and I didn’t see it come out. I’m guessing Delvina has the money in the car wash safe.”

  “And?”

  “And we steal the money from Delvina. Then we can give it back to him to get Grandma. I swear, sometimes I’m so brilliant I can hardly stand it.”

  “Only problem is, how do we steal the money without getting caught?”

  “We need a diversion.”

  “Oh boy. Been there, done that.”

  “It’s going to have to be a much better diversion. Something clever. Let me jump in the shower and change my clothes and we’ll go do some recon.”

  Snuggy, Diesel, and I sat in my car across from the car wash and watched the action. Friday was senior citizen discount day, and at eight o’clock, business was already jumping.

  “This is going to be tough,” I said to Diesel. “Too many people. We should have done
this last night, when it was dark.”

  “I didn’t think of it last night. Let’s get out and walk around. Get a different perspective. See if we can come up with an angle.”