To the Nines

  “Yeah, but not random, right?”

  “Probably not random.”

  Valerie was scraping at the leftover smudges of whipped cream. “So that would be okay. Nobody's perfect.”

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Good talk. I'll pass this on to Mom.”

  “It isn't as if I'm anti-​marriage,” Valerie said, eyeing the grease and drippings left in the roasting pan.

  I backed out of the kitchen and ran into my mom.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Valerie's thinking about it. And the good news is ... she's not anti-​marriage.”

  Streetlights were on when I cruised into my parking lot. A dog barked in a nearby neighborhood of single-​family homes, and I thought of Boo. Mrs. Apusenja told Ranger and me that she'd tacked lost dog signs up at local businesses and at street corners. The signs had a photo of the dog and offered a small reward, but there'd been no takers.

  Tomorrow I'd track down Howie. It was my Spidey Sense again. I had a feeling Howie was important. Singh had been trying to call him. It had to mean something, right?

  I let myself into my apartment and said howdy to Rex. I checked my phone messages. Three in all.

  The first was from Joe. “Hey, cupcake.” That was it. That was the whole message.

  The second was from Ranger. “Yo.” Ranger made Joe look like a chatterbox.

  The third was a hang-​up.

  I ambled into the living room, slouched onto the couch, and grabbed for the remote. A splash of color caught my eye from across the room. The color was coming from a vase of red roses and white carnations, sitting on an end table. The flowers hadn't been there this morning. A white envelope was propped against the vase.

  My first thought was that someone had broken into my apartment. Ranger and Morelli did this on a regular basis, but they'd never left me flowers, and I was pretty certain they hadn't left them this time, either. I did a quick backtrack to the kitchen with my heart beating way too hard and too fast in my chest. I took my gun out of the brown bear cookie jar and started creeping through my apartment. There were only two rooms left unseen. Bedroom and bath. I looked into the bathroom. No creepy deranged killers lurking behind the shower curtain. None on the toilet. The bedroom was also monster free.

  I shoved the gun under the waistband of my jeans and returned to the flowers. There was a message printed on the outside of the white envelope. Tag. You're it. I had no idea what this meant. I opened the envelope and removed three photos. It took a moment for the images to register. I clapped a hand to my mouth when I figured it out. They were pictures of a gunshot victim. A woman. Shot between the eyes. The photos were close-​ups that were too tight in to reveal the woman's identity. One photo showed part of an eyebrow and an open sightless eye. The other two recorded the destruction to the back of her head, the exit point.

  I dropped the photos, ran to the phone, and dialed Joe.

  “Someone broke into my apartment,” I said. “And they left me flowers and some ph-​ph-​photos. Should I call the police?”

  “Honey, I am the police.”

  “So I'm covered. Okay, just checking.”

  “Do you want me to come over?”

  “Yes. Drive fast.”

  Stephanie Plum 9 - To The Nines

  Chapter Four

  Morelli stood hands on hips, starring at the flowers on the table and the photos still spread out on the floor. “It's like you have a sign on your door welcoming nuts and stalkers to walk in. Everyone breaks into your apartment. I've never seen anything like it. You have three top-​of-​the-​line locks on your door and it doesn't deter anyone.” He glanced over at me. “Your door was locked, right?”

  “Yes. It was locked.” Yeesh. “Do you think this is serious?”

  Morelli looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. “Someone broke into your apartment and left you gunshot pictures. Don't you think it's serious?”

  “I'm completely freaked out, but I was really hoping you'd tell me I was overreacting. I was going for the outside chance that you'd think this was someone's idea of a joke.”

  “I hate this,” Morelli said. “Why can't I have a girlfriend who has normal problems . . . like breaking a fingernail or missing a period or falling in love with a lesbian?”

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now I call this in and get a couple guys out here to collect evidence and maybe look for prints. Do you have any idea what this is about?”

  “No idea at all. Not a clue. Nothing.”

  The phone rang and I went to the kitchen to answer it.

  “I definitely think it might work between Ranger and me,” Valerie said. “You're pals with him. You could fix me up.”

  “Valerie, you're nine months pregnant. This isn't a good time for a fix-​up.”

  “You think I should wait until after I deliver?”

  “I think you should wait until never.”

  Valerie did a big sigh and disconnected.

  Ranger on a fix-​up date. Can you see this?

  “You're smiling,” Morelli said.

  “Valerie wants to get fixed up with Ranger.”

  Now Morelli was smiling. “I like it. Wear body armor when you tell Ranger.” Morelli opened the refrigerator, took out a piece of leftover pizza, and ate it cold. “I think it would be smart to get you out of this apartment. I don't know what this is about, but I'm not comfortable ignoring it.”

  “And I would go where?”

  “You'd go home with me, cupcake. And there'd be benefits.”

  “Such as?”

  “I'd warm up your pizza.”

  Morelli lived in a two-​story row house he inherited from his Aunt Rose It was about a half mile from my parents' house with an almost identical floor plan. Rooms were stacked one behind the other . . . living room, dining room, kitchen. There were three bedrooms and a bath upstairs. Morelli had added a half bath downstairs. He was slowly claiming the house as his own. The wood floors were all newly sanded and varnished, but Aunt Roses filmy old-​fashioned curtains remained. I liked the mix and in an odd way would be sorry to see the house turn over entirely to Joe. There was something comforting about the curtains enduring beyond Aunt Rose. A tombstone is okay, but curtains are so much more personal.

  We stood on the small front porch and Morelli cautioned me as he unlocked his door. “Brace yourself,” he said. “Bob hasn't seen you in a couple days. I don't want you knocked on your ass in front of the neighbors.”

  Bob was a big scruffy red-​haired dog that Morelli and I shared. Technically I suppose it was Morelli's dog. Bob had originally come to live with me, but in the end had chosen Morelli. One of those guy things, I guess.

  Morelli opened the door and Bob bounded out, catching me at chest level. What Bob lacked in manners he made up for in enthusiasm. I hugged him to me and gave him some big loud kisses. Bob endured this for a beat and then turned tail and hurled himself back inside, galloping from one end of the house to the other with ears flapping and tongue flopping.

  A half hour later I was all settled in with my car parked at the curb behind Morelli s truck, my clothes in the guest room closet, and Rex's hamster cage sitting on Morelli's kitchen counter.

  “I bet you're tired,” Morelli said, flipping the lights off in the kitchen. “I bet you can't wait to get into bed.”

  I gave him a sideways look.

  He slung an arm around my shoulders and steered me in the direction of the stairs. “I bet you're so tired you don't even want to bother getting into pajamas. In fact, you might need some help getting out of all these clothes.”

  “And you're volunteering for the job?”

  He kissed me at the nape of my neck. “Am I a good guy, or what?”

  I woke up in a tangle of sheets and nothing else. Sunlight was streaming through Morelli's bedroom window and I could hear the shower running in the bathroom. Bob was at the foot of the bed, watching me with big brown Bob eyes, probably trying to decide if I was food.
Depending on Bob's mood, food could be most anything ... a chair, dirt, shoes, a cardboard box, a box of prunes, a table leg, a leg of lamb. Some foods sat better with Bob than others. You didn't want to be too close after he ate a box of prunes.

  I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-​shirt and trudged downstairs, hair uncombed, following the smell of coffee brewing. A note on the counter told me Bob had been fed and walked. Morelli was better at this cohabitation stuff than I was. Morelli was invigorated by sex. An orgasm for Morelli was like taking a vitamin pill. The more orgasms he had, the sharper he got. I'm the opposite. For me, an orgasm is like a shot of Valium. A night with Morelli and the next morning I'm a big contented cow.

  I was coffee mug in hand, debating the merits of toast versus cereal, when Morelli's doorbell rang. I scuffed to the door with Bob close on my heels and I opened the door to Morelli's mother and grandmother.

  The Morelli men are all charming and handsome. And with the exception of Joe, they're all worthless drunks and womanizers. They die in barroom fights, kill themselves in car crashes, and explode their livers. The Morelli women hold the family together, ruling with an iron hand, spotting a fib a mile away. Joe's mother was a revered and respected pillar of the community. Joe's Grandma Bella sent a chill down the spine and into the heart of all who crossed her path.

  “Ah-​hah!” Grandma Bella said. “I knew it. I knew they were living together in sin. I had a vision. It came to me last night.”

  Two doors down Mrs. Friolli stuck her head out her front door so she didn't miss anything. I was guessing Grandma Bella's vision came to her last night after Mrs. Friolli called her.

  “How nice to see you,” I said to the women. “What a nice surprise.” I turned and shrieked up the stairs. “Joe! Get down here!”

  It was always a shock to stand next to Mrs. Morelli and realize she was only five foot, four inches in her chunky two-​inch-​heeled shoes. She was a dominant and fearful force in a room. Her snapping black eyes could spot a speck of dust at twenty paces. She was a fierce guardian of her family and sat at the head of the table of the large Morelli tribe. She'd been widowed a lot of years and had never shown any interest in trying marriage a second time. Once around with a Morelli man was more than enough for most women.

  Grandma Bella was half a head shorter than Joe's mom, but no less fearsome. She kept her white hair pulled into a bun, tied at the nape of her narrow chicken neck. She wore somber black dresses and sensible shoes. And some people believed she had the ability to cast a spell. Grown men scurried for cover when she turned her pale old woman's eye on them or pointed her boney finger in their direction.

  “This is a temporary arrangement,” I told Mrs. Morelli and Bella. “I had to leave my apartment for a couple days and Joe was nice enough to let me stay here.”

  “Hah!” Bella said, “I know your type. You take advantage of my grandson s good nature and the next thing you know, you've seduced him and you're pregnant. I know these things. I see them in my visions.”

  Jeez. I hoped these visions weren't too graphic. I didn't like the idea of being naked and woman-​on-​top in Bella's home movies.

  “It's not like that,” I said. “I'm not going to get pregnant.”

  I felt Joe move in behind me.

  “What's up?” Joe asked his mother and grandmother.

  “I had a vision,” Bella said. “I knew she was here.”

  “Lucky me,” Joe said. And he ruffled my hair.

  “I see babies,” Bella said. “Mark my words, this one is pregnant.”

  “That would be nice,” Joe said, “but I don't think so. You're getting your visions confused. Stephanie's sister is pregnant. Right kitchen, wrong pot.”

  My breath stuck in my chest. Did he say it would be nice if I was pregnant?

  When Joe left for work I ran a computer check on McDonald's franchises in the area. I started dialing the numbers that turned up, asking for Howie, and I got a hit on the third McDonalds. Yes, I was told, a guy named Howie worked there. He would be in at ten.

  It was early so I packed off in my happy yellow car and I checked in at the office before cutting across town to look for Howie.

  “Anything happening?” I asked Connie.

  “Vinnie's at the pokey, writing bail. Lula hasn't come in yet.”

  “Yes she has,” Lula said, bustling through the door, big tote bag on her shoulder, take-​out coffee in one hand, brown grocery bag in the other. "I had to stop at the store on account of I need special food. There's a new man in my life and I've decided I'm too much woman for him, so I'm losing some weight. I'm gonna turn myself into a supermodel. I'm gonna lose about a hundred pounds.

  “It'll be easy because I joined FatBusters last night. I got everything I need to lose weight now. I got a notebook to write in every time I eat something. And I got a FatBusters book that tells me how to do it all. Every single food's got a number assigned to it. All you gotta do is add up those numbers and make sure you don't go over your limit. Like my limit is twenty-​nine.”

  Lula set the bag on the floor, plopped herself down on the couch, and took out a small notepad. “Okay, here I go,” she said. “This here's my first entry in my notebook. This here's the beginning of a new way of life.”

  Connie and I exchanged glances.

  “Oh boy,” Connie said.

  “I know I've tried diets in the past and they haven't worked out, but this is different,” Lula said. “This one's realistic. That's what they say in the pamphlet. It's not like that last diet where all I could eat was bananas.” She paged through her FatBusters book. “Let's see how I'm doing. No points for coffee.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You never get plain coffee. I bet that's a caramel mochaccino you're drinking. I bet that's at least four points.”

  Lula narrowed her eyes at me. “It says here coffee's got no points and that's what I'm writing. I'm not getting involved with all that detail bullshit.”

  “You have anything else for breakfast?” Connie asked.

  “I had a egg. Let's see what an egg's gonna cost me. Two points.”

  I looked over her shoulder at the book. “Did you cook that egg yourself? Or did you get it on one of those fast-​food breakfast sandwiches with sausage and cheese?”

  “It was on a sausage and cheese sandwich. But I didn't eat it all.”

  “How much didn't you eat?”

  Lula flapped her arms. “Okay, I ate it all.”

  “That's got to be at least ten points.”

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “Well, I still got a lot of points left for the rest of the day. I got nineteen points left.”

  “What's in the grocery bag?”

  “Vegetables. You don't get any points for vegetables, so you can eat as much as you want.”

  “I didn't know you were a big vegetable eater,” Connie said.

  “I like beans when you put them in a pan with some bacon. And I like broccoli. . . except it's got to have cheese sauce on it.”

  “Bacon and cheese sauce might up your points,” Connie said.

  “Yeah, I'm gonna have to wean myself off the bacon and cheese sauce if I want to get to supermodel weight.”

  “I'm heading out to look for a guy named Howie. Supposedly he and Singh were buddies,” I said to Connie. “Anything new come in that I should know about?”