To the Nines

  Morelli's eyes softened and he ran a fingertip along my jaw line. “Are you sure you're okay?”

  “Yeah. I'm okay.” And I was . . . sort of. My hands had stopped shaking and the pain in my chest was subsiding. But I knew that somewhere hiding in my head were sad thoughts of Howie. The sadness would creep forward and I would cram it back into crevices thick with brain gunk. I'm a firm believer in the value of denial. Anger, passion, and fear spill out of me in real time. Sadness I save until the edge dulls. Someday three months from now I'll stroll down the cereal aisle of a supermarket and burst into tears for Howie, a man I didn't even know, for crissake. I'll stand in front of the cereal boxes and blow my nose and blink the tears out of my eyes so no one realizes I'm an emotional idiot. I mean, what about Howie's life? What was it like? Then I'll think about Howie's death and I'll go hollow inside. And then I'll go to the freezer section and get a tub of coffee-​flavored Haagen-​Dazs ice cream and eat it all.

  Morelli turned the engine over and chugged out of the lot. “I'll take you back to the office so you can get your car. I have paperwork to do at the station. If I'm not home by five-​thirty, go to dinner without me. I'll catch up with you as soon as I can.”

  Lula and Connie weren't looking happy when I got to the office.

  “We only have a couple days left before everyone finds out Singh's skipped,” Connie said. “Vinnie's freaking. He's locked in his office with a bottle of gin and the real estate section from the Scottsdale paper.”

  “I don't need this cranky shit he's pulling, either,” Lula said. “I had a bad day. I didn't lose any weight and the guy we wanted to talk to got dead. And every time I think about poor ol' Howie I get hungry on account of I'm a comfort eater. I relieve my stress with comfort food.”

  “You've eaten everything but the desk,” Connie said. “It'd be cheaper to get you addicted to drugs.”

  Vinnie stuck his head out his office door. “You get one crappy lead and he gets himself killed,” Vinnie yelled at me. “What's with that?” And he pulled his head back into his office and slammed the door shut.

  “See, that's what I mean,” Lula said. “Makes me want some macaroni and cheese.”

  Vinnie stuck his head out of his office again. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to say that. I meant to say. . . uh, I'm glad you're not hurt.”

  We all went silent, thinking about how awful it actually had been. And how it could have been worse.

  “The world s a crazy place,” Lula finally said.

  I needed to get out and do something to take my mind off Howie. My car keys were lying on Connie's desk. I pocketed the keys and gave my shoulder bag a hitch up. “I'm heading out to talk to the Apusenjas. Nonnie should be getting home from work soon.”

  “I'll go with you,” Lula said. “I'm not letting you go out alone.”

  Nonnie was home when I arrived. She answered the door on my second knock and peered out at me, first surprised, then cautiously happy. “Did you find him?” she asked. “Did you find Boo?”

  “I haven't found him, but I have something I'd like to run by you. Did Samuel ever mention a man named Howie?”

  “No. I've never heard him speak of Howie.”

  “Samuel was on the computer all the time. Did you ever get a chance to see what he was doing? Did he get mail? Do you think he might have gotten email from Howie?”

  “I saw a mail from work one time. Samuel was at the kitchen table. He sometimes preferred to sit there because his room was small. I came to the kitchen for a glass of tea and I passed behind him. He was typing a letter to someone named Susan. The letter was nothing, really. It only said thank you for the help. Samuel said it was work related. That is the only time I have seen any of his computer mails.”

  “Did he ever get mail from the post office?”

  “He received a few letters from his parents in India. My mother would know more of that. She collects the mail. Would you like to talk to my mother?”

  “No!”

  “Who is that?” Mrs. Apusenja called from the hall.

  Lula and I put our heads down and took a deep breath.

  “It is two women from the bonds agency,” Nonnie said.

  Mrs. Apusenja rumbled to the door and elbowed Nonnie aside. “What do you want? Have you found Samuel?”

  “I had a couple questions to ask Nonnie,” I said.

  “Where is the man named Ranger?” Mrs. Apusenja said. “I can tell you are just his worthless assistant. And who is this fat woman with you?”

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “There was a time when I would have kicked your nasty ass for calling me fat, but I'm on a diet to be a supermodel and I'm above all that now.”

  “Such language,” Mrs. Apusenja said. “Just as I would expect from sluts.”

  “Hey, watch who you're calling a slut,” Lula said. “You're starting to get on my nerves.”

  “Get off my porch,” Mrs. Apusenja said. And she shoved Lula.

  “Hunh,” Lula said. And she gave Mrs. Apusenja a shot to the shoulder that rocked her back on her heels.

  “Disrespectful whore,” Mrs. Apusenja said to Lula. And she slapped her.

  This was where I took two steps back.

  Lula grabbed Mrs. Apusenja by the hair and the two of them stumbled off the porch to the small front yard. There was a lot of bitch slapping and name calling and hair pulling. Nonnie was shouting for them to stop and I had my stun gun in my hand just in case it looked like Lula was going to lose.

  An old lady tottered out of the house next door and turned her garden hose on Lula and Mrs. Apusenja. Lula and Mrs. Apusenja broke apart sputtering. Mrs. Apusenja turned tail and scuttled into her house, her soaked sari leaving a trail of water behind her that looked like slug slime.

  The old lady shut the water off at the spigot on her front porch. “That was fun,” she said. And she disappeared into her house.

  Lula squished to the car and climbed in. “I could have taken her if I'd had more time,” Lula said.

  I dropped Lula off at the office and drove on autopilot to Hamilton and eased into the stream of traffic. Hamilton is full of lights and small businesses. It's a road that leads to everything and everywhere and at this time of the day it was clogged with cars going nowhere. I turned from Hamilton, cut through a couple side streets, and swung into my apartment building lot. I parked and looked up at my building and realized I'd driven myself to the wrong place. I wasn't living here these days. I was living with Morelli. I thunked my head on the steering wheel. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  I was on the third thunk when the passenger side door swung open and Ranger took the seat next to me. “You should be careful,” Ranger said. “You'll shake something loose in there.”

  “I didn't see you in the lot when I pulled in,” I said. “Were you waiting for me to come home?”

  “I followed you, babe. I picked you up a block from the office. You should check your mirrors once in a while. Could have been a bad guy on your tail.”

  “And you're a good guy?”

  Ranger smiled. “Are you parked here for any special reason? I thought you moved in with Morelli.”

  “Navigation error. My mind wasn't on my driving.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “The shooting?”

  “Yeah,” Ranger said. “And anything else I should know about.”

  I told him about the shooting and then I told him about the flowers and the photos.

  “I could keep you safer than Morelli,” Ranger said.

  I believed him. But I would also be more restricted. Ranger would lock me up in a safe house and keep a guard with me 24-7. Ranger had a small army of guys working for him who made Marine commandos look like a bunch of sissies.

  “I'm okay for now. Is there any word on the street about Bart Cone? Like does he rape and murder women?”

  “The street doesn't talk about Bart Cone. The street doesn't even know Bart Cone. The Cone brothers run a tight factory and pay th
eir bills on time. I had Tank ask around. The only interesting thing he turned up was the murder inquiry. Two months after the police dropped Bart as a suspect, Bart's wife left him. He's the nuts-​and-​bolts guy at the factory. Has an engineering degree from MIT. Smart. Serious. Private. The direct opposite of Clyde, who spends most of his day reading comic books and gets together several times a week with his friends to play Magic.”

  “Magic?”

  “It's one of those role-​playing card games.”

  “Like Dungeons and Dragons?”

  “Similar. Andrew is the people person. Manages the human resources side of the business. He's been married for ten years. Has two kids, ages seven and nine.” Rangers pager went off and he checked the readout. “Do you have any candidates for the flowers and photos?”

  “I've made my share of enemies since I've had this job. No one stands out. Bart Cone crossed my mind. The business with the murder is hard to ignore even though the charge didn't stick. And the break-​in occurred right after I was at the factory. Sort of a strange set of coincidences. If he's the nuts-​and-​bolts guy maybe he knows how to open locks.”

  “Don't go walking in the woods with him,” Ranger said. And he was gone.

  Stephanie Plum 9 - To The Nines

  Chapter Six

  I OPENED THE front door to Morelli's house and Bob exploded out at me. He knocked me to one side, took the concrete and brick stairs in a single bound, and ran up the street. He stopped and turned and ran back full speed. He got to Morelli's property line, applied the brakes, hunched, and pooped.

  Lesson number one when cohabitating with a man and a dog: Never be the first to arrive home.

  I went to the backyard, got the snow shovel from the shed, and used the shovel to flip the poop into the street. Then I sat on the stoop and waited for a car to run over the poop. Two cars drove by, but both of them avoided the poop. I gave a sigh of resignation, went into the kitchen, got a plastic baggie, scooped the poop up off the street, and threw it into the garbage. Sometimes you just can't catch a break.

  Bob looked like he still had lots of energy, so I snapped the leash on him and we took off. The sun was warm on my back and Joe's neighborhood felt comfortable. I knew a lot of the people who lived here. It was an older population consisting of parents and grandparents of kids who went to school with me. From time to time a house would turn over to the new generation and a stroller or baby swing would appear on the porch. Sometimes I'd look at the strollers and my biological clock would tick so loud in my head and my heart it would blur my vision, but more often than not there were days like today when I came home to a load of fresh poop and babies didn't seem all that alluring.

  Bob and I went for a nice long walk and we were on our way home. Two people, Mrs. Herrel and Mrs. Gudge, popped out of their houses to ask if it was true that I shot someone today. Word travels fast in the Burg and its surrounding neighborhoods. Story accuracy isn't always a top priority.

  I crossed the street and saw a car pull to the curb in front of Joe's house half a block away. There were two women in the car. Joe's mother and grandmother. Damn. I'd rather face Howie's killer. I had a moment of indecision, wondering if I was spotted, if it was too late to sneak off. Joe s mother got out of the car, our eyes caught, and my fate was sealed.

  By the time Bob and I got to Joe's house, Grandma Bella was out of the car and on the sidewalk beside Joe s mother.

  “I had a vision,” Grandma Bella said.

  “I didn't shoot anyone,” I told her.

  “You were dead in my vision,” Grandma Bella said. “Cold as stone. The blood drained from your lifeless body. I saw you go into the ground.”

  My jaw went slack and the world lost focus for a moment.

  “Don't pay attention to her,” Joe's mother said. “She has these visions all the time.” Mrs. Morelli gave me a loaf of bread in its white paper bakery bag. “I came over to give Joe this bread. Its fresh baked from Italian Peoples. Joe likes it in the morning with his coffee.”

  “I saw you in the box,” Grandma Bella said. “I saw them close the lid and put you in the ground.” Bella was doing a bang-​up job of creeping me out. This wasn't a good time to tell me I was going to die. I was working hard not to get overwhelmed by the shooting, the photos, and flowers.

  “Stop that,” Joe's mother said to Bella. “You're scaring her.” “Mark my words,” Bella said, shaking her finger at me. The two women got back into the car and drove off. I took Bob and the bread into the house. I gave Bob fresh water and a bowl filled with dog crunchies. I sliced the end off the bread and ate it with strawberry jam.

  A tear slid out of my eye and rolled down my cheek. I didn't want to give in to the tear, so I wiped it away and looked in at Rex. Rex was sleeping, of course. “Hey!” I said real loud into the cage. Still no movement. I dropped a chunk of the bread and jam a couple inches away from the soup can. The soup can vibrated a little and Rex backed out. He stood blinking in the light for a moment, whiskers whirring, nose twitching. He scurried over to the bread, ate all the jam, shoved the remaining bread into his cheek pouch, and scuttled back into his soup can.

  I checked the phone machine. No messages. I opened my iBook, went online, and my screen filled with more of the penis enlargement, hot chicks with horses, get out of debt ads.

  “We can send a man to the moon, but we can't find a way to stop junk mail!” I yelled at the computer.

  I calmed myself and deleted the garbage. I was left with one piece of mail. No subject in the subject line. The body of the letter was short: Did you like my flowers? Were you impressed with my marksmanship this afternoon?

  My stomach went hot and sick and my vision got cobwebby. I put my head between my legs until the ringing stopped in my ears and I was able to breathe again.

  This was from Howie s killer. He knew my email address. Not that my email address was a secret. It was printed on my business cards. Still, the message was chilling and eerily invasive. It tied the flowers and the photos to the shooting. It was a message from a madman.

  I typed back to him. Who are you?

  Seconds later, my message was returned as undeliverable.

  I saved the email to show to Morelli and I shut down.

  “My day is in the toilet,” I told Bob. “I'm taking a shower. Don't let any maniacs in the house.” I stood up as tall as I could and I made sure my voice was steady. The bravado was partly for Bob and partly for me. Sometimes if I acted brave, I almost became a little brave. And just in case Bob fell asleep on the job, I went to the closet in Morelli s room, helped myself to his spare gun, and took it into the bathroom with me.

  Grandma Mazur was waiting at the door when I pulled up. “What do you think of my new hair?” she asked.

  It was punk rock star red and stuck out in little spikes. “I think it's fun,” I told Grandma.

  “It brings out the color of my eyes.”

  “And it's flattering to your skin tone.” Definitely drags attention away from the liver spots.

  “It's a wig,” she said. “I got it at the mall today. Me and Mabel Burlew went shopping. I just got home. I missed all the excitement when everybody thought you shot someone again.”

  Albert Kloughn came in behind me. “What about shooting someone? Do you need a lawyer? I'd give you a real good rate. Business has been a little slow. I don't know why. It's not like I'm not a good lawyer. I went to school and everything.”