Janet Evanovich - Smokin Seventeen

Ranger closed the file. “What’s your plan for the day?”

“I thought I’d do my bounty hunter thing.”

“You know where to find me if you want to do your vordo thing.”

The hideous truth was I wanted to do my vordo thing at this very moment. I wanted to do it bad. I had memories of Ranger in bed, his voice a whisper against my ear, the small of his back slick with sweat, his silky brown hair falling across his forehead when he took control and moved over me. The only thing stopping me from closing his office door and straddling him as he sat in his chair was the knowledge that we were out of raincoats.

He read my thoughts, and it dragged another smile out of him. “Babe.”

“Vordo is a bitch,” I told him.

• • •

I passed by the office on my way home. Mooner’s bus was still there, plus a couple cop cars, the M.E.’s truck, the state crime scene van, a satellite truck from Fox News, Morelli’s SUV, and Vinnie’s Caddie. I thought it best not to stop since I was wearing yesterday’s clothes, coming from the wrong direction, and even though I’d taken a shower I worried that I smelled like sex, or at the very least like Ranger, since I’d used his shower gel. Okay, so I have an agreement with Morelli and technically I didn’t do anything wrong. And last night was all his crazy grandmother’s fault. That didn’t mean it was a good idea to stand next to him reeking of Ranger first thing in the morning. If the situation was reversed and I knew for sure he was doing Terry Gilman, I might be inclined to pry her heart out of her chest with a butter knife. I assumed Morelli had similar issues with Ranger.

I swung into the lot to my apartment building and parked. The plan was to make a fast pit stop, turn myself into a brand-new Stephanie, and head back out to the crime scene. I hustled to the lobby and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor. I burst into the hall and saw that a gold foil gift bag had been placed in front of my door. There was a red apron inside the bag and a card.

LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU WEAR THIS. OTHER CLOTHES WOULD BE OPTIONAL. DAVE.

Good grief. I took the bag to the trash shoot and tossed it.

Forty minutes later I was back on the road. Rex had been fed, I’d re-showered and dressed in clean clothes, I’d checked my phone for messages, and I’d checked my email. I’d had sixteen junk emails advertising male enhancement drugs. This was like trying to sell sand in a desert, because my males needed no further enhancement.

I also had three messages from my mother asking if I had heard from Dave Brewer, that he was such a nice young man who came from a wonderful family. Clearly my mother had given up on Morelli as a source for future grandchildren. Ranger had never been in contention. Dave Brewer was up at bat.

I reached the bonds office lot and saw that everyone was still in place, plus Connie’s car had been added to the mix. I parked and crossed to where Connie and Vinnie were standing, looking not too happy.

“Someone dumped another body,” Connie said. “A young woman this time.”

“Anyone recognize her?”

“Juki Beck,” Vinnie said. “I wrote bond for her once, a couple years ago. Shoplifting. At the rate we’re going I’ll have to call in an exorcist before the union lets me build on this lot.”

“I need to download mail,” Connie said. “Does the bus still smell like bear?”

“No,” Vinnie said. “It smells like Mooner.”

I handed Connie my key. “You can use my apartment. Just don’t let Vinnie in.”

“Nice way to treat your relative,” Vinnie said. “You know, I gave you this job, and I could take it away.”

“You didn’t give me the job,” I said. “I blackmailed you into hiring me. And you’re not going to take it away, because you can’t find anyone else stupid enough to work for you.”

“Not true,” Vinnie said. “There are a lot of stupid assholes out there. And where the hell’s my bear? Why aren’t you tracking down my bear?”

“It’s on my list.”

Connie went to her car, Vinnie went back to the bus, and Morelli broke away from the knot of cops and forensic techs and walked over to me.

“This guy’s pushing his luck,” Morelli said.

“Vinnie said he was able to ID the woman.”

“Yeah. Vinnie and half the cops on the force. She got around.”

“Did she have a connection to Dugan?”

“Nothing apparent. She waited tables at Binkey’s Ale House. Divorced. No kids. Twenty-six years old.”

“Maybe this was a different killer.”

“Cause of death is the same. Dugan, Lucarelli, and Beck all had their necks broken. Dugan and Lucarelli were decomposed enough not to show a lot of detail. Beck had severe rope burns on her neck. Probably choked unconscious and then had her neck snapped.”

I felt a wave of nausea slide through my stomach.

“This guy is strong,” Morelli said. “It’s not that easy to choke someone, and Dugan and Lucarelli were big guys.”

I looked to the back of the property where Juki Beck had been pulled from the car. I know him, I thought. This monster. This serial killer. He’s moving among us, looking normal. He’s a shoe salesman, or a cop, or a gas station attendant.

“Why did he bring her here?” I asked Morelli. “I know the lot is shielded by Mooner’s bus, but it still seems risky.”

“This is the ugly part,” Morelli said.

“How could it possibly get uglier?”

“There was a note pinned to her shirt. It said For Stephanie. ”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s all it said. Two words. For Stephanie. ”

I WAS ON MY BACK,looking up at Morelli through cobwebs, and my first thought was that the 7-Eleven victim had exacted revenge on me, and I’d been stun gunned. The cobwebs cleared, and I discounted stun gunning.

“What happened?” I asked Morelli.

“You fainted.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I agree, but if someone sent me a dead woman I might faint, too.” He was down on one knee, bending over me. “Are you ready to get up?”

“I need a moment.”

“Don’t take too long. People will think I’m proposing.”

I slowly got to my feet. “Why me?”

“I don’t know. Have you been getting threatening letters or phone calls?”

“The only one threatening me is your grandmother.”

“Ranger had cameras working and apparently captured the drop. I haven’t seen the video yet, but I’m told the killer was covered head to toe. The interesting thing is he delivered the victim here in her own car.”

“Have you found the car?”

“Not yet. And if we don’t it’ll be following the pattern because we never found Dugan’s car or Lucarelli’s car. Disappeared without a trace.” He kissed me on the forehead. “I have to get back to the station. I want to see the video, and I’m going to run some names through the system. See if I can connect someone to you and Dugan. There are only a handful of people who know about this note, so keep it to yourself.”

“Ranger?”

“You can tell Ranger.”

Lula was standing by the bus, waiting for me. She was dressed in poison green spandex pants, five-inch leopard stilettos, a low-cut scoop neck stretchy lemon yellow shirt, and she’d had her hair done up in braids that made her look like she was wearing a giant spider on her head.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Another body. This one wasn’t buried. Just deposited.”

“We have a sick individual here. He’s killing too many people. He might even be over the legal limit for Trenton.”

For the sake of keeping the note secret I was trying to look calm, but I was actually very rattled. In a back corner of my mind there’d been a nagging thought that Vinnie or the bonds office might have been involved somehow. It never occurred to me that I was the connection. And pinning a note on a dead woman and addressing it to me as if it were a gift tag was hideously disgusting and beyond frightening.