Janet Evanovich - Explosive Eighteen

“I was hoping for a better story than that,” Lula said. “But I guess you could still be pregnant.”

“It’s not likely,” I told her.

“Yeah, but you never know. There could be a chance,” Lula said.

I cut my eyes to my mother to see if she was going to faint again. She had her hand wrapped around the almost-empty whiskey bottle, she was smiling, and her eyes were unfocused.

“She’s shit-faced,” Grandma said. “You should take the bottle away from her before she takes another header into the olive loaf.”

I pried the bottle out of my mother’s hand and returned it to the cupboard.

“Did you by any chance tell Morelli where I was staying in Hawaii?” I asked Grandma.

“Yeah, he called just before you came home. I guess he thought you were in a different hotel, so we told him about the new one. He said he was going to surprise you, and we figured you were spending the last couple days together.”

Okay, so that mystery was solved. I finished my sandwich, dropped Annie’s bottle into my bag, and stood.

“I have to keep moving,” I said to Grandma. “Let me know if you hear anything about anything. I’ve got my RAV back, so I’m leaving the Buick here.”

Lula and I buckled ourselves into the RAV, and Lula looked through my files.

“We need a capture to break the cycle,” Lula said. “We gotta get the juju turned around. Especially if you’re pregnant.”

“I’m not pregnant .”

“Yeah, but you said that about being married.”

“And I wasn’t married.”

Lula held fast. “You were sort of married.”

Good grief.

“Anyways, I’m voting we go looking for Magpie,” Lula said, “because we could snag him for sure if we could just find him.”

Donald Grezbek, better known as Magpie, was wanted for burglary. He’d been caught on tape breaking into a flea-market stall at the fairgrounds and making off with about $700 worth of gold chains. It wasn’t his first arrest. Usually, it was shoplifting. Magpie took things that caught his eye. He loved things that were glittery or shiny. After he got his treasures, he had no clue what to do with them. Mostly, he wore them until someone found him and confiscated the loot.

Magpie lived hand to mouth out of a beat-up Crown Vic. And that was the problem. He had no job, no permanent address, no relatives, no friends. No favorite parking place. He preferred to squat on seldom-used roads. Once in a while, he was known to set up housekeeping in a cemetery.

“He could be anywhere,” I said. “I wouldn’t know where to begin looking.”

“We could rent a helicopter and try to spot him from the air,” Lula said.

“The helicopter would cost more than I’d make from the capture.”

“It’s not always about money,” Lula said.

“It is if you don’t have any.”

My cell phone rang, and the display showed an unfamiliar Jersey number.

“I’m looking for Stephanie Plum,” a woman said. “I need to talk to her about Richard Crick.”

“You’re not another FBI agent, are you?” I said. “I’m up to my armpits in FBI agents.”

“I was Ritchy’s fiancée.”

“Jeez,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss. I didn’t know he had a fiancée.”

“I need to talk to you. You must have been one of the last people to see him.”

“I was sitting next to him on the plane, but I slept through most of the flight.”

“You’re in Trenton, right? I am, too. I’d really appreciate it if I could meet you someplace.”

“There’s a coffee shop on Hamilton, next to the hospital,” I said.

“Thanks. I’m not far from there.”

“What was that about?” Lula looked over at me when I disconnected.

“That was Richard Crick’s fiancée. How does everyone find me? The real FBI guys I get, because they have resources. But what about everyone else? They know I was sitting next to Crick. They know where I live. They know my cell phone number.”

“It’s the electronic age,” Lula said. “We aren’t the only ones got search programs. And then there’s the whole social network. ’Course, you wouldn’t know about that since you’re in the Stone Age. You don’t even tweet.”

I put the RAV in gear. “Do you tweet?” I asked Lula.

“Hell, yeah. I’m a big tweeter.”

I drove to the coffee shop and parked. Connie was back in the window. No Vinnie. Lula and I went inside and pulled chairs up to Connie’s table.

“Do we have an office?” I asked Connie.

“Yeah, Vinnie signed the papers. He wanted to come back here and punch out DeAngelo, but I told him he had to stay and wait for the furniture-rental truck. With any luck, by the time the furniture’s delivered, DeAngelo will have gone home for the day.”

“What all furniture did you rent?” Lula asked. “You got a big ol’ comfy couch, right? And one of them flat-screen televisions.”

“I got two cheap desks and six folding chairs. I’m counting on this being short-term.”

A woman walked into the coffee shop, looked around, and came over to the table.

“Is one of you Stephanie Plum?” she asked.

I raised my hand.

“I’m Brenda Schwartz, Ritchy’s fiancée. I just talked to you on the phone. Could we go outside?”

She was about 5′5″ and excessively curvy. She had a lot of overprocessed blond hair piled on top of her head in a messy upsweep. Her makeup was close to drag queen. She was wearing platform heels, a tight black skirt, and a red scoop-neck sweater that showed a lot of boob enhanced with spray-on tan. Hard to tell exactly what was under the makeup, but I was guessing she was in her forties.

I followed her out, and she immediately lit up. She sucked the smoke in all the way down to her toes and blew it out her nose.

“This cigarette tastes like ass,” she said.

I wasn’t sure what ass tasted like, but she looked like she would know, so I was willing to take her word for it.

She took another hit. “I’m trying to get off menthol, and it’s a real bitch. I swear, I’m just inches away from trying one of those electronic things.”

“You wanted to see me about Richard Crick?”

“Yeah. Poor Ritchy. It’s so sad.” She squinted at me through the smoke haze. “The worst part is he was bringing me a picture. He said it was a special present for me, but they didn’t find it when they dug him out of the garbage can. So I was wondering if you knew anything about it, because it would be real sentimental for me. It would help with the pain of losing Ritchy.”

“What kind of picture are we talking about?”

“A picture of a person.”

“Man or woman?”

“This is sort of embarrassing, but poor Ritchy didn’t say.”

“And it’s important, why?”

“Because Ritchy took the photo. And it was, like, his last wish that I have it. And now he’s dead.” She sniffed and contorted her face like she might cry. “I just want something to remember Ritchy. Something he did for me, you know?”

“Ritchy must have been a sweet guy.”

“Yeah, and he liked photography. He was always taking pictures.”

“I’d love to help you out,” I said, “but I don’t have the photograph.”

“Maybe you have it stuffed somewhere, and you don’t even know it. Like, have you emptied all your suitcases and bags?”

“Yes. I don’t have it.”

“Okay, here’s the thing. Ritchy called me from LAX, and he said he might have misplaced the photo, and he was sitting next to you, and he was pretty sure he might have accidentally put it in your bag.”

“Why didn’t Ritchy just get back on the plane?”

“He wasn’t feeling good. And then he was… you know, dead.”