To the Nines

  “I appreciate the effort,” I said, sinking onto his couch. “But I hate when you put yourself in danger to protect me.”

  Bob climbed up next to me, leaving no room for Morelli. Bob had a piece of dog biscuit stuck to his head.

  “How does he always get food stuck to him?” I asked Morelli.

  “I don't know,” Morelli said. “It's a Bob mystery. I think stuff falls out of his mouth and he rolls in it, but I'm not sure.”

  “About Gilman ...” I said.

  “I can't talk about Gilman. It's police business.”

  “This isn't one of those James Bond things where you sleep with Gilman to get information out of her, is it?”

  Morelli slouched into a chair and clicked the television on. “No. This is one of those Trenton cop things where we threaten and bribe Gilman to get information out of her.” He found a ball game, adjusted the sound, and turned to me. “So are you sleeping with me tonight?”

  “Yes. But I have a headache.” I closed my eyes and tried to relax. “Omigosh!” I said, my eyes popping open. “I forgot to tell you. I have an email from Howie's killer and it links the killing and the flowers.”

  Morelli was long gone by the time I dragged myself out of bed. I shuffled into the bathroom, took a shower, dressed in jeans and T-​shirt, and found my way to the kitchen. I got coffee brewing and put a couple slices of bread in the toaster while I drank my orange juice and checked my email. I suspected there would be a message from the killer. I wasn't disappointed. Now the hunter is the hunted, the email read. How does it feel? Does it excite you? Are you prepared to die? Bob was sitting beside me, waiting for bread crumbs to fall out of my mouth.

  “I'm not excited,” I told Bob. “I'm scared.” The words echoed in the kitchen and made my breath catch in my chest. I didn't like the way the words sounded and decided not to say them out loud again. I decided to give denial another chance. Some thoughts are best kept silent. That's not to say I was going to ignore being scared. I was going to try very, very hard to be very, very careful.

  I signed off and called Morelli and told him about the latest email. Then I called Lula and asked her to pick me up. I wanted to go back to TriBro and my car was still parked in my apartment building lot. I needed a ride. And I needed a partner. I wasn't going to stay inside, hiding in a closet, but in all honesty I didn't want to go out alone.

  Ten minutes later, Lula rolled to a stop in front of Morelli's house. Lula drove a big ol' red Firebird that had a sound system that could shake the fillings loose in your teeth. The front door to Joe's house was closed and locked and I was in the kitchen in the back of the house . . . and I knew Lula had arrived because Shady s bass was giving me heart arrhythmia.

  “You don't look so good,” Lula said when I got into the car. “You got big bags under your eyes. And your eyes are all bloodshot. You must have really had a good time last night to look this bad this morning.”

  “I was shot with a tranquilizer dart last night and I had a killer hangover from it until about four this morning.”

  “Get out! What were you doing getting shot with a tranquilizer dart?”

  “I wasn't doing anything. I was walking from my car to my apartment building and someone shot me in the back.”

  “Get out! Did you find out who did it?”

  “No. The police are investigating.”

  “I bet it was Joyce Earnhardt. Joyce would do something like that, trying to even the score for all the times we zapped her with the stun gun and you let Bob poop on her front lawn.”

  Joyce Earnhardt. I'd forgotten about Joyce Earnhardt. She'd be a prime contender, too, except for the Howie shooting. Joyce wasn't a killer.

  I went to school with Joyce and she'd made my life a misery. Joyce publicized secrets. When she didn't have a secret she fabricated stories and started rumors. I wasn't the only one singled out, but I was a favorite target. A while back, Vinnie hired Joyce to do some apprehension work and once again Joyce and I crossed paths.

  “I don't think it's Joyce,” I told Lula. “I think the tranq incident is related to the Howie shooting.”

  “Get out!”

  If Lula said get out one more time I was going to choke her until her tongue turned blue and fell out of her head.

  “And you're probably in danger when you hang with me,” I told Lula. “I'd understand if you wanted to bail.”

  “Are you shitting me? Danger's my middle name.”

  Stephanie Plum 9 - To The Nines

  Chapter Seven

  We were out of Joe's neighborhood and moving across town. Lula had Eminem cranked up. He was rapping about trailer park girls and how they go round the outside, and I was wondering what the heck that meant. I'm a white girl from Trenton. I don't know these things. I need a rap cheat sheet.

  I was checking the rearview mirror now. I didn't want a second dart between the shoulder blades. It was time to be vigilant. I had no indication that the creep who was stalking me knew I was living with Joe. And I was riding in Lula's car. So maybe today would be uneventful.

  We hit Route 1 and I noticed there was a cooler on the backseat. “Are you still on the diet?” I asked. “Is the cooler filled with vegetables?”

  “Hell no. That was a bogus diet. You could waste away and die on that diet. I'm on a new diet. This here's the all-​protein diet that I'm on. I'm going to be a supermodel in no time on this diet. All I have to do is stay away from the carbs. Carbohydrates are the enemy. I can eat all the meat and eggs and cheese I want, but I can't eat any bread or starch or any of that shit. Like, I can have a burger but I can't eat the roll. And I can only eat the cheese and grease on the pizza. Can't eat the crust.”

  “How about doughnuts?”

  “Doughnuts are gonna be a problem. Don't think there's anything I can eat on a doughnut.”

  “So what's in the cooler?”

  “Meat. I got ribs and rotisserie chicken and a pound of crispy bacon. I can eat meat until I grow a tail and moo. This is the best diet. I can eat things on this diet that I haven't been able to eat in years.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like bacon.”

  “You always eat bacon.”

  “Yeah, but I feel guilty. It's the guilt that puts the weight on.”

  Lula turned into the industrial park and wound around some until she came to TriBro.

  “Now what?” she asked. “You want me to go on in with you? Or you want me to stay here and guard the chicken?”

  “Guard the chicken?”

  “Okay, so I'm gonna eat the chicken. That's the good part of this diet. You eat all the time. You could shove pork roast and leg of lamb down your throat all day long and it's okay. Long as you don't have biscuits with it. I had a steak for breakfast. A whole steak. And then I had a couple eggs. Is that a diet, or what?”

  “Sounds a little screwy.”

  “That's what I thought at first, but I bought a book that explains it all and now I can see where it makes sense.”

  “Keep your eyes open while you're guarding the chicken. I shouldn't be more than a half hour. Call me on my cell if you see anyone suspicious in the lot.”

  “You mean like someone setting up a dart gun?”

  “Yeah. That would be worth a phone call.”

  I'd gotten in touch with Andrew first thing this morning, before leaving the house. I told him I needed some information and he said he'd be happy to help. Andrew, the people person. Hopefully I could get to him without crossing paths with Bart. I hated to admit it, but I was afraid of Bart.

  I did a brisk walk across the lot to the building entrance and hurried through the large glass door. The woman at the desk smiled and waved me through to Andrews office. I thanked her on a whoosh of expelled air. I'd just had two bad parking lot experiences and many of my body functions, like breathing, now stopped when I set foot on parking lot pavement.

  Andrew stood and smiled when I entered his office. “You didn't say much on the phone. How's the Singh search going?”


  “We're making progress. I'm looking for a woman named Susan. I was hoping you could check through your employee list and pull out the Susans.”

  “Susan is a pretty common name. What's the connection to Singh?”

  “It's vague. She's just a name that turned up and I thought I should check it through.”

  Andrew turned to his computer, typed in a series of commands, and the screen filled with the employee database. Then it executed a search for all Susans.

  “We employ eight Susans,” he finally said. “When I set the age at forty or below, I'm left with five Susans. I'll give you a printout and you can talk to them if you want. All are married. None work in Singh's department, but he would have had a chance to mingle with the general population during breaks and at lunch. We're a relatively small company. Everyone knows everyone else.”

  Clyde appeared in the open doorway. He was wearing a faded Star Trek T-​shirt and new black jeans that were pooled around his ankles. Scruffy sneakers peaked out from under the jeans. He had a can of Dr Pepper in one hand and a bag of Cheez Doodles in the other. He had a Betty Boop tattoo on his chunky left arm.

  “Hey, Stephanie Plum,” Clyde said. “I was taking a break and I heard you were here. What's up? Anything exciting going on? Did you find Samuel Singh?”

  “I haven't found Singh, but I'm working on it.” My eyes strayed to Betty Boop.

  Clyde grinned and looked down at Betty. “It's a fake. I got it last night. I'm too chicken to get a real one.”

  “Stephanie has a list of people she'd like to talk to,” Andrew said. “Do you have time to take her around?”

  “You bet. Sure I do. Is this part of the investigation? How do you want me to act? Should I be casual?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You should be casual.”

  Clyde reminded me a lot of Bob with the unruly hair and goofy enthusiasm.

  “These are all Susans,” Clyde said, looking at the list. “That's a lead, right? Some woman named Susan knows where Singh is hiding. Or maybe some woman named Susan bumped Singh off! Am I close? Am I getting warm?”

  “Its nothing that dramatic,” I told Clyde. “It was just a name that popped up as a possible friend.”

  “I know all these women,” Clyde said, leading me out of Andrews office. “I can tell you all about them. The first Susan is real nice. She has two kids and a beagle. And the beagle's always at the vet. I think her whole paycheck goes to the vet. The dog eats everything. One time he was real sick and they x-​rayed him and found out he had a stomach full of loose change. Her husband works here, too. He's in shipping. They live in Ewing. They just bought a house there. I haven't seen the house, but I think it's one of those little tract houses.”

  Clyde was right about the first Susan. She was very nice. But she only knew Singh from a distance. And the same was true for the other four Susans. And I believed them all. None of the Susans seemed like girlfriend material. None of them looked like sharpshooters or killers. They all looked like they might send roses and carnations.

  “Those are all the Susans,” Clyde said. “None of them worked out, huh? Do you have any other leads? Any clues we could work on next?”

  “Nope. That's it for now.”

  “How about lunch?”

  “Gee, sorry. I have a friend waiting for me in the parking lot.” Thank God.

  “I'm a pretty interesting guy, you know,” he said. “I have a lot going on.” His eyes got round. “You haven't seen my office yet. You have to see my office.”

  I glanced at my watch. “It's getting late ...”

  “My office is right here.” He galloped down the hall and opened the door to his office. “Look at this.”

  I followed him and stepped into his office. One wall was floor-​to-​ceiling shelves and the shelves were filled with action figures. Star Trek, professional wrestlers, GI Joe characters, Star Wars, Spawn, about two hundred Simpsons figures.

  “Is this an awesome collection, or what?” he asked.

  “It's fun.”

  “And I collect comic books, too. Mostly action comics. I have a whole stack of original Spider-​Man McFarlanes. Man, I wish I could draw like him.”

  I looked around the room. Large old wooden partner's desk with desk chair, computer with oversize LCD monitor, trash basket filled with squashed Dr Pepper cans, framed poster of Barbarella behind the desk, single chair in front of the desk, dog-​eared comics piled high on the chair seat. None of the catalogues and product samples I saw in Bart's office.

  “So,” I said, “what's your part in the business?”

  Clyde giggled. “I don't have one. Nobody trusts me to do anything. Now, on the surface that might seem a little insulting, but if you examine it more closely you see that I have a good deal. I collect a paycheck for staying out of the way! How good is that?”

  “Does it get boring? Do you have to sit here all day?”

  “Yeah, I guess sometimes it's a little boring. But everyone's nice to me and I get to do all the things I like. I can play with my action figures and read comics and play games on the computer. It isn't like I'm mentally retarded . . . it's just that I screw up a lot. The truth is, I'm not real interested in making thingamabobs.”

  “What would you like to do?”

  He shrugged. “I don't know. I guess I'd like to be Spider-​Man.”

  Too bad Clyde wasn't older. He'd be perfect for Grandma Mazur.

  Lula was sound asleep with the driver's seat tipped back when I returned to the car. I jumped in and locked my door and nudged Lula.

  “Hey,” I said. “You're supposed to be on lookout.”

  Lula sat up and stretched. “There wasn't anything to see. And I got sleepy after eating all that chicken. I ate the whole thing. I even ate the skin. I love skin. And you know how all other diets tell you not to eat the skin? Well, guess what? I'm doing the skin diet now, girlfriend.”

  “That's great. Let's get out of here.”

  “Something happen in there to make you in such a rush to take off?”

  “Just feeling antsy.”

  “Fine by me. Where we going next?”

  I didn't know. I was out of leads. Out of ideas. Out of courage. “Let's go back to the office.”

  Lula and I saw the black truck simultaneously. It was parked in front of Vinnie's office. It was a new Dodge Ram. It didn't have a speck of dust on it. It had bug lights on the cab, oversize tires, and a license plate that was probably made in someone's basement. Ranger drove a variety of cars. All of them were black. All were new. All were expensive. And all were of dubious origin. The Ram was his favorite.

  “Be still my beating heart,” Lula said. “Does my hair look okay? Am I starting to drool?”

  I wasn't nearly so excited. I suspected he was waiting for me. And I worried that it wasn't going to be a good conversation.