Takedown Twenty: A Stephanie Plum Novel Read online

  “Yeah, but I got this lettuce for Kevin, and I don’t want it to wilt.”

  “I think we should let things chill out in that neighborhood. Put Kevin’s lettuce in the fridge and we’ll take it over tomorrow.”

  “That don’t work for me,” Lula said.

  “How about this, you can risk your life by going back to Sunny’s turf to feed Kevin, and I’ll pick up Ziggy.”

  “That don’t work either,” Lula said. “You shouldn’t be driving with your injury.”

  I looked at my finger. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “It’s gonna be a big deal when everyone thinks you’re flippin’ them the bird and you get to be a victim of road rage,” Lula said. “You’re lucky you don’t get shot driving with that finger sticking up like that. I’ll make a deal. We do a real fast drive down Fifteenth Street, I leave Kevin’s lettuce sitting out for him, and then we go snatch Ziggy.”

  Twenty minutes later Lula and I turned onto Fifteenth Street. She drove four blocks and tossed the lettuce onto the sidewalk at the corner of Fifteenth and Freeman.

  “I got a plan,” Lula said. “The lettuce is bait. I figure if I keep leaving lettuce here Kevin’s gonna hang around the lettuce, and then I can trap him. I haven’t got all the details worked out yet, but I’m thinking I could use a big net.”

  “He’s huge!”

  “Yeah, I’d need to get up real high and drop it over him. Like from a helicopter. Or you know what would be really good? Spider-Man. You know how he shoots those webs out from his fingers? He could wrap webs around Kevin.”

  “So all you have to do is get in touch with Spider-Man?”

  “It’s a shame he don’t live here, right?”

  “It’s a shame he doesn’t live anywhere.”

  “Ranger’s pretty close,” Lula said, “except he can’t do the web throwing thing, and so far as I know he don’t wear spandex.”

  Lula cut through downtown and turned onto State Street. The hardware store and Ginty’s Bar were on the outermost perimeter of the Burg. Ginty’s was a dark hole-in-the-wall-type dive that drew regulars from the shantytown row houses that lined Post Street, and ran parallel with State. Ziggy owned one of the row houses, but he lived in Ginty’s.

  Lula parked in the small lot the bar shared with the hardware store, and we got out and walked to the bar’s front door.

  “How many times have we pulled Ziggy out of here?” Lula asked. “Must be a dozen. I swear I think he just likes to ride in my Firebird.”

  We stepped into the bar and took a moment to allow our eyes to adjust to the dark. The air was cold and damp, and the room smelled whiskey-soaked. There were three small round tables near the door, empty at this time of day. The highly polished mahogany bar stretched the length of the back of the room. Ziggy was one of three men at the bar.

  “If he smells bad I’m putting him in the trunk,” Lula said. “Last time we took him in I had to have my car detailed.”

  Ziggy was a fifty-six-year-old white male who was on a disability pension from the government and was working hard at destroying his liver. There was no Mrs. Ziggy, and no Rover or Kitty Ziggy. Just Ziggy in all his pickled glory.

  The bartender waved to us and said something to Ziggy. Ziggy swiveled on his barstool and saluted us with his empty beer glass.

  “Ladies,” Ziggy said. “Long time no see.”

  “Are you ready to go for a ride?” I asked him.

  “Barkeep,” Ziggy said. “One for the road.”

  The bartender set a fresh beer in front of Ziggy, Ziggy chugged it, and fell off his barstool.

  “You have this strange effect on men,” Lula said to me. “They’re always passing out on you. Guys get stuck with darts, and run into walls, and fall off barstools.”

  I hooked my hands under Ziggy’s armpits. “Help me get him outside.”

  “I’ll help you get him outside,” Lula said, “but he’s not going in my car. He just wet hisself.”

  We carted Ziggy outside, and I called a cab.

  “I can’t keep from thinking about Spider-Man,” Lula said. “God made cats and dogs and cows and humans, but he only made superheroes in comic books. What the heck was he thinking?”

  “I guess he was counting on us to do the job.”

  “You mean us personally? Because I’m a big woman, but I couldn’t stop no speeding train single-handed.”

  “I was talking about human beings in general.”

  “Probably we’re in a lot of trouble on that one, since most of the men I know can’t even keep their pants up, much less save the world.”

  I waved the approaching cab to the curb and loaded Ziggy into the backseat.

  “Follow us to the police station,” I said to Lula. “I’ll need a ride after I drop him off.”

  The driver looked over the seatback at Ziggy. “He isn’t dead, is he?”

  “He’s sleeping.”

  I handed Connie the body receipt for Ziggy and she wrote a check out to me for the recovery.

  “That looks like pizza money,” Lula said. “If you don’t get too many extra toppings you could get a soda with it.”

  “I have information on the latest Dumpster murder,” Connie said. “Definitely strangled. And her bank account was cleaned out the day before.”

  “It’s terrible that these old ladies are getting murdered,” Lula said. “It gives me the creepy-crawlies.”

  Vinnie’s door was open, and his office was empty.

  “Where’s Vinnie?” I asked Connie.

  “The ponies are running.”

  “I thought Lucille signed him up with Gamblers Anonymous.”

  “He said his G.A. group is meeting at the track. Field trip.”

  “If Lucille’s daddy finds out, he’ll field trip Vinnie to the landfill,” Lula said.

  A text message buzzed on my phone. It was from Ranger. Catch up with you after Bingo.

  Oh boy.

  “Is something wrong?” Lula asked. “You just got that look.”

  “What look?” I asked her.

  “Your Oh boy look.”

  “It was a message from Ranger reminding me about Bingo.”

  “Oh boy,” Lula said.

  I dropped my check into my messenger bag. “There’s not a lot left of the afternoon. I’m going to take my broken finger home.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Lula said. “You could take a nap to get ready for Bingo. Do you want a ride to the Senior Center? I could come pick you up.”

  “Sure.”

  I detoured to the supermarket on the way home and filled my shopping cart. Milk, eggs, bread, cereal, pickles, a variety of disposable aluminum pans, crackers, cheese, Marshmallow Fluff, olives, cracker crumbs, butter, ice cream, aluminum foil, garbage bags, paper napkins, canola oil, orange juice, potato chips, bags of frozen vegetables, ketchup, frozen chicken cutlets all breaded and ready for the oven, a Cooking Light magazine, several home decorator magazines, and a frozen banana cream pie. Am I a domestic goddess, or what?

  I lugged everything up to my apartment, called Morelli, and invited him to dinner.

  “Sure,” Morelli said. “What do you want me to bring? Pizza? Chinese? Wings?”

  “You don’t have to bring anything,” I said. “I’m cooking.”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “Cooking?” he asked.

  “Yes. Cooking. Jeez, you’d think I never cooked.”

  “Cupcake, you only own one pot.”

  “I have to be at Bingo at seven, so we have to eat at five o’clock.”

  “Can’t wait,” Morelli said.

  I hung up, opened the bag of chips, and gave one to Rex. “He has no confidence in me,” I said to Rex. “Just because a girl doesn’t have a toaster doesn’t mean she can’t cook, right?”

  I pushed the clutter to one end of my dining room table and laid out two place settings. I stepped back, looked at the table, and made a mental note to buy two place mats, just in case I decided to ever
do this again.

  I took a shower with my broken finger encased in a plastic sandwich bag. Under the white gauze wrapping, the finger was swollen and throbbing. I felt like a wimp since there wasn’t even any bone sticking out, but the finger didn’t feel great. I dried off and applied a new super-sized adhesive bandage to my skinned knee. The knee would heal, but my jeans would never be the same.

  It had been a long time since I’d used the oven, but I figured out how to turn it on. Just like riding a bike, I thought. You never forget. Call me Chef Stephanie. According to the box, the cutlets would take fifteen minutes. No need to even defrost the little suckers before roasting. So I had the oven going and the meal all planned out, now all I had to do was wait for Morelli and hope he’d bring something to drink, since I’d run out of money before I could get to the liquor store.

  He showed up precisely at five with his big shaggy dog, Bob, who rushed in and galloped around my little apartment, returning to the kitchen with his tongue hanging out. I gave him a bowl of water, he slopped it all over the floor, and then he flopped down in my living room to take a nap.

  Morelli put a six-pack of beer and a bottle of red wine on my kitchen counter. “Pick your poison,” he said.

  “I’m going with the wine. It’s more romantic.”

  “That sounds hopeful. Are we getting romantic?”

  “Maybe. Did you bring drugs?” I held my finger up for him to take a look. “Broken.”

  “Compound fracture?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Hardly worth worrying about.”

  “It hurts!”

  Morelli grinned. “Did you invite me over here to score drugs off me?”

  “Not originally. I thought I might want to be more domestic, but now that you’re here I’m thinking drugs could be the way to go.”

  “Why do you want to be more domestic?”

  “I don’t know. It just came over me.”

  “Is it that time of the month?”

  “No!”

  “Lucky me,” Morelli said.

  I checked out the wine. Screw cap. The greatest invention since fire. I poured out two glasses and toasted the screw cap. Not easy to do with two fingers taped together and in a metal splint. I dumped the box of cutlets onto one of my new disposable broiler pans and shoved them into the hot oven.

  “Easy-peasy,” I said to Morelli. “They’ll be perfect in fifteen minutes. The box wouldn’t lie.”

  “I’m getting turned on by all this domesticity,” Morelli said.

  This wasn’t an impressive admission. Morelli got turned on by lint.

  I took the bag of vegetables out of the freezer and tossed them into my microwave. I figured I’d just cook the crap out of them until the chicken was done. I topped off my wine, and minutes later there was an explosion.

  Morelli and I instinctively dropped to the ground.

  “What the heck?” I yelled. “What was that?”

  Morelli was on his back, laughing. “I think you exploded the vegetables!”

  We got to our feet and looked in at the massacre inside the microwave.

  Morelli was still grinning. “It’s like a crime scene.”

  “It’s not funny.” A tear leaked out of my eye. “I’m a big stupid failure!”

  Morelli wrapped an arm around me and hugged me into him. “They were just vegetables,” he said. “Vegetables are way overrated.”

  “I can’t do anything right.”

  “Not true. You excel at many things.”

  “Such as?”

  “You give a damn good happy-ending massage.”

  “That’s it? Sex? That’s my field of expertise?”

  “It beats being able to cook a vegetable.”

  I did an eye roll so severe I almost lost my balance. “I want to be able to do both.”

  Morelli took another bag of vegetables out of my freezer and read the instructions. “Pierce the bag before microwaving.”

  “I didn’t do that.” I swiped at my nose. “I’m too dumb to even read directions.”

  “Anything else go wrong today?”

  “I broke my finger.”

  “Besides that.”

  “I ripped my jeans when I fell down the stairs. Your grandmother said I was going to hell. A couple guys shot at me. I apprehended Ziggy Radiewski, and he peed himself.”

  “So it was a normal day,” Morelli said.

  I gave up a sigh.

  “And you’re going to Bingo tonight?”

  I nodded. “That’s why I need the drugs.”

  Morelli took the chicken out of the oven. “The chicken looks good. What else do you have to eat?”

  “Potatoes in the form of chips.”

  “Works for me,” Morelli said.

  We ate the chicken and chips, and Bob came over and pushed against me.

  “Don’t feed him,” Morelli said. “He’s getting fat. I fed him before we got here.”

  “Tell me about the latest Dumpster victim.”

  “Not much to tell. She fit the profile. Seventy-six years old. Lived alone. Withdrew money from her bank account one day and dead the next. She was strangled and wrapped in a sheet. The details were consistent with the other victims.”

  “Do you know what was used to strangle her?”

  “A Venetian blind cord. Just like always.”

  “You’d have to be pretty strong to strangle someone.”

  “Not necessarily. The women selected were frail,” Morelli said. “And two of them had blunt force trauma to the back of their heads. They were knocked out and then strangled.”

  “Anything else?”

  “We haven’t made it public, but they all had a single sunflower somewhere in their home. Melvina had it in a jelly jar in her kitchen. Lois had one in a vase on her dining room table.”

  “A calling card?”

  “Something like that.”

  I brought the banana cream pie and two forks to the table, and we dug in.

  “You even defrosted it,” Morelli said.

  “I’m no slouch when it comes to pie.”

  We finished the pie and carried our dishes into the kitchen. Morelli gave the last chunk of pie crust to Rex, gave a small piece of chicken he’d been saving to Bob, and reached out for me, pulling me flat against him. “I haven’t taken any pills today,” he said. “I have full control over my tongue.”

  “No time,” I told him. “Lula will be here any minute. Maybe we can test out your tongue after Bingo.”

  “Can’t do it after Bingo. I promised my brother I’d go to the ball game with him.” He looked at my splinted finger. “Do you really want drugs?”

  “No. I’m feeling better now that I’m full of wine and pie.”

  Morelli moved to kiss me, and the doorbell rang.

  “Don’t answer it,” he said. “Eventually she’ll go away.”

  “She won’t go away. She’ll shoot the lock off the door. I’ll have to pay for a new door.”

  “Hey!” Lula yelled. “I know you’re in there. I can hear you breathing. What are you doing?”

  I opened the door, and Lula looked past me and waved at Morelli.

  “I saw your car in the lot,” Lula said.

  “I’ll give you twenty bucks if you go away,” Morelli said to Lula.

  “I gotta take Stephanie and her granny to Bingo,” Lula told him. “I bet we win the jackpot. I feel lucky. I got my lucky undies on.”

  Morelli snapped the leash onto Bob and gave me a fast kiss. “I can’t compete with her lucky undies. I’ll try to catch you tomorrow.”

  EIGHT

  I’D BEEN TO the Senior Center before and it always smelled like eucalyptus, canned peas, and orange blossom air freshener. It was a single-story redbrick structure straddling the line between Trenton and Hamilton Township. Bingo was held in the largest of the meeting rooms. Rectangular folding tables were set out in rows that ran perpendicular to the small stage at one end. The caller sat at a little table on the stage, and
an overhead flat-screen television flashed the numbers as they were called.

  “This is a real professional setup,” Lula said, taking a seat.

  “It’s pretty good, but it’s not as good as some of the Bingo halls in Atlantic City,” Grandma said. “Some of them are all electronic. You don’t need cards or daubers or nothing.”

  I’d elected to play four cards. Grandma took twelve cards. And Lula bought thirty.

  “Are you going to be able to keep track of all those cards?” Grandma asked Lula. “That’s a lot of cards.”

  “Yeah, but the more cards you got, the more chances you got to win, right?”

  “That’s true,” Grandma said. “Do you play Bingo a lot?”

  Lula laid all her cards out in front of her. “I’m one of those intermittent players.”

  “Me too,” Grandma said. “I don’t know how these women have the time to do this every night. I got a schedule to keep. I gotta see Dancing with the Stars and America’s Got Talent. I record my shows when I have to, but it’s not like seeing them live.”

  We were sitting to the side and back of the room and I could see all the players. Most were women in their sixties and seventies. The demographic would be a lot younger when we went to Bingo at the firehouse. There were a few men mixed in with the women. I knew some of them. They were, for the most part, the core participants in the senior program. They went on the bus trips to Atlantic City, they played cards in the afternoon, they took a variety of classes that were available at the center, and they went to Bingo.

  “I got my eyes open for the killer,” Grandma said. “If I had to pick someone out in this room, it would be Willy Benson. I always thought he looked shifty.”

  “He’s ninety-three years old!”

  “Yeah, but he’s crafty. And he gets around pretty good.”

  “I know Willy,” Lula said. “He looks shifty on account of his one eye don’t look at you. It looks someplace else. You can’t malign a man for a disability.”

  “It depends where the other eye’s looking,” Grandma said.

  Marion Wenger was onstage twirling the cage containing the numbered Bingo balls. She selected one and called out B-10.

  “I know I got a B-10 somewhere,” Lula said. “Here’s one. And here’s another one. Am I off to a good start, or what?”