Janet Evanovich - Explosive Eighteen

“Jeez.”

“Shit happens,” Brenda said. “So where’s the photograph?”

“Don’t know. Don’t have it.”

Her lips compressed. “You want money, right? How much?”

“I don’t want money. I don’t have the stupid photograph.”

Brenda stuck her hand into her hobo bag and pulled out a little silver gun. “I want the photograph. We all know you have it. So get smart and hand it over.”

I looked down at the gun. “Is that real?”

“You bet it’s real. It’s pretty, right? And it’s light. I bet you carry some piece of shit like a Glock or a Smith and Wesson. Those guns ruin your whole look. You get a neck spasm, right?”

“Yeah, I have a Smith and Wesson.”

“They’re dinosaurs.”

“Who are you?”

“Boy, you don’t listen. I already told you. I’m Brenda Schwartz. And I want the photograph.”

“Shooting me isn’t going to get it.”

“I could shoot you in the knee for starters. Just so you know I’m serious. It hurts a lot to get shot in the knee.”

Lula swung through the coffee shop door and came over to us. “Is that a gun?”

“Oh, for Crissake, who’s this?” Brenda said.

“I’m Lula. Who the heck are you?”

“This is a private conversation,” Brenda said.

“Yeah, but I want to take a look at your little peashooter. It’s kinda cute.”

“It’s a gun, ” Brenda said.

Lula pulled her Glock out of her bag and aimed it at Brenda. “Bitch, this is a gun. It could put a hole in you big enough to drive a truck through.”

“Honestly,” Brenda said, “this is just so boring.” And she huffed off to her car and drove away.

“She was kinda snippy, being I just wanted to see her gun,” Lula said.

Snippy was the least of it. She was a perfect addition to my growing collection of homicidal misfits.

“She’s in mourning,” I told Lula. “Thanks for stepping in.”

“She didn’t look like she was in mourning,” Lula said. “And she didn’t look like no doctor’s fiancée.”

Lula and I returned to Connie, and I called Bill Berger.

“I’ve got a third party interested in the photograph,” I told him. “Do you care?”

“Who’ve you got?” Berger asked.

“Brenda Schwartz. Says she was Crick’s fiancée. Blond, five foot five, in her forties. Carries a little bitty gun.”

“As far as we know, Crick didn’t have a fiancée.”

I ended the call with Berger and turned to Connie. “Can you find her?”

“Brenda Schwartz is a fairly common name,” Connie said. “Do you have an address? Did you get her license plate number?”

“The first part was ‘POP,’ and I didn’t get the rest. She was driving one of those cars that looks like a toaster.”

“It was a Scion,” Lula said.

Connie plugged the information into a search program and started working her way through it. I got a black-and-white cookie and a Frappuccino, and came back to the table.

“I think I’ve got her,” Connie said. “Brenda Schwartz. Age forty-four. Hairdresser, working at The Hair Barn in Princeton. Divorced from Bernard Schwartz, Harry Zimmer, Herbert Luckert. One child. Jason. Looks like he’s twenty-one now. Most current address is West Windsor. Renting. No litigation against her. Picked up for possession of a controlled substance five years ago. Got a slap on the wrist. There’s more personal information. I’ll print it for you later. I haven’t got a printer here.”

I wrote down Brenda’s address, ate my cookie, and sipped my drink, wondering what I should do about the photograph mess. Probably, I should tell Ranger, but he might kill everyone, and that wouldn’t help his karma issue. I glanced out the big front window and realized my car was gone.

“Damn! Shit! Sonovabitch!” I said.

“That’s a lot of swearin’,” Lula said.

“He took my car again.”

Everyone turned and looked out the window.

“Yep, it sure looks gone,” Lula said.

I called the Rangeman control room. “Where’s my car?” I asked the tech who answered.

“It’s on Hamilton. Looks like it just parked at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.”

I stood at my seat. “Let’s roll,” I said to Lula. “He’s at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.”

“WHAM!” Lula said. “Turn me loose on him.”

“I have two guys I’d like you to run through the system for me,” I said to Connie. “Mortimer Lancelot and Sylvester Larder.” I wrote the Town Car’s license plate number on a napkin. “And I’d love to know who owns the car.”

Five minutes later, we were in the Cluck-in-a-Bucket lot, and Lula was idling behind my RAV. We could see Buggy inside, standing in line at the counter.

“Now what?” Lula said. “You got any ideas how we’re gonna do this? Maybe we should go to the packing plant and borrow a cattle prod.”

“I just want my car. At this point, I don’t care if Buggy stays in the wind forever.”

“Yeah, but how are you gonna keep him from taking it again if you don’t get him locked up?”

“I’ll trade the RAV in. I give up. I can’t get the key away from him, so I’ll get another car.”

“Wow, that’s smart thinking.”

“I’m probably done working for the day,” I said to Lula. “I’ll call if anything changes.”

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON by the time I swapped out the RAV for a four-door Chevy Colorado pickup. I don’t usually buy trucks, but the price was right, and I didn’t have a lot of choices. Apparently, a couple kids had been driving it, smoking weed, and the seat had caught fire. There wasn’t much mechanical damage, but the interior was trashed. New seats had been installed, but the smell of seriously smoked cannabis remained.

I’d removed the Rangeman tracking device from the RAV undercarriage, slipped it into the Chevy’s glove box, and called the vehicle change in to the control room. I called Morelli to tell him about the change, but he wasn’t picking up his cell. Probably, the electromagnet at the junkyard was interfering. Or maybe he saw the call was from me, and he threw his phone into the Delaware River.

I was in a bad place with Morelli. Technically, I hadn’t done anything wrong, since I wasn’t in a committed relationship with him. That fact didn’t stop my stomach from frequently turning queasy, because I had an ongoing relationship with two men I really cared about. And it was obvious Morelli was the more vulnerable of the two. Ranger accepted the limitations, took full advantage when he had the opportunity, and rolled with the rest. Morelli was capable of none of that. Morelli’s temper and libido ran in the red zone. And the truth is, while Morelli was sometimes more difficult to live with, I preferred the transparency of his emotions.

My dilemma was that I wanted Morelli to know Ranger had come to Hawaii on legitimate business, but I was afraid the conversation would lead to an ugly discussion about sleeping arrangements. And it was becoming obvious Morelli didn’t want to have that discussion any more than I did.

I drove my truck off the lot and headed for Hamilton Township. If there was anything that could partially push thoughts of Morelli aside, it was thoughts of Joyce Barnhardt.

Barnhardt was unfinished business. I’d hated her in grade school and high school, and I’d found her naked and woman-on-top on my brand-new husband on my brand-new dining room table. In the end, it had turned out she’d done me a favor, because the man was a philandering jerk. Still, her behavior hadn’t gotten better after that, so I really shouldn’t care if she was dead or alive, but it turns out I did care. Go figure.

I cruised through Joyce’s neighborhood, which was empty as usual. I idled in front of her town house. No sign of life inside. I left Mercado Mews and returned to the Burg.