Janet Evanovich - Smokin Seventeen

“You sound like my mother.”

“After I talked to you earlier I did some checking, and found out that Jimmy Alpha’s brother just got out of prison on an early parole. Until last month he’d been locked away on racketeering charges. I’m told there’s a strong resemblance.”

“Do you think he’d have ties to Lou Dugan?”

“I’m on it.”

“I have to go. Lula’s here with her ice cream.”

“I got an idea,” Lula said, getting into the Escort. “We should hunt down Ziggy while we got all this good juju. We’re so hot with juju right now you could probably walk up to Ziggy and he’d come without a fuss.”

“Are you sure you want to go after Ziggy without your garlic?”

“I could chance it. I’ve been carrying a cross in my pocketbook as backup.”

I motored onto Hamilton and told Lula about Jimmy Alpha’s brother.

“I should have thought of him,” Lula said. “Nick Alpha. He was a bad guy. He had his hand in lots of stuff. You didn’t ho on Stark Street without knowing Nick Alpha. He might not be happy with you for killing his baby brother.”

I turned into the Burg, meandered around, and hit Kreiner Street. The sun had set and streetlights were on. A sliver of moon hung in the sky over the housetops, and light poured from downstairs windows … with the exception of Ziggy’s house. Ziggy’s house was dark.

“He could be in there,” Lula said. “He got those black curtains closed so you can’t tell what’s going on.”

“His car isn’t parked in front of his house.”

“It could be in his garage.”

“He doesn’t have a garage,” I said.

Lula worked at her cone. She’d gotten the giant enormous size and had whittled it down to extra large. “Maybe he sold the car.”

I was parked directly across the street from Ziggy, and my gut told me Ziggy wasn’t home. Ziggy liked to step out at night. When the sun went down Ziggy went bowling, he played bingo, he did his grocery shopping.

Lula leaned forward. “Did you see that? There’s something moving alongside Ziggy’s house. Someone’s creeping along over there.”

I squinted into the darkness. “I don’t see anything.”

“On the right side of his house. He’s coming to the front. It’s Ziggy!”

Lula wrenched the door open, hurled herself out of the car, and took off. She was running flat out in her five-inch heels, and she was still holding her ice cream cone.

I saw the man stand straight when Lula charged him. He was Ziggy’s height and build, but he was lost in shadow. He turned and ran, and Lula ran after him. I grabbed the keys and ran after Lula.

Hard to believe it was Ziggy. Ziggy was seventy-two years old. He was in decent shape for his age, but this man from the shadows was really moving. They disappeared behind a house, and I followed the sound of stampeding footsteps. I heard someone shriek and grunt, and then a thud. I rounded a corner and almost fell over Lula. She was sitting on some poor guy who was facedown in a flower bed, and she was still holding her ice cream.

The guy looked up at me and mouthed help .

“Good grief,” I said to Lula. “That’s not Ziggy. Get off the poor man.”

“It used to be Ziggy,” Lula said. “I caught a look at him in the moonlight, and I saw fangs.”

“To begin with, there’s hardly any moonlight tonight.”

“Well it was some kind of light. It glinted off his fangs.”

“Is this a mugging?” the man asked. “Are you going to rob me? I don’t have any money.”

Lula rolled off, and I helped him to his feet. “Mistaken identity,” I said. “Sorry you got tackled.”

He brushed dirt off his shirt. “I can’t believe she caught me in those heels.”

“Why did you run?”

“I was searching for my cat, and I saw this big, crazy woman barreling across the road at me. Anyone would run.”

Lula narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean big woman? You think I’m fat or something?”

Even in total darkness I could see the guy go pale.

“N-n-no,” he said, taking a couple steps back.

I marched Lula back to Ziggy’s house, and we prowled around and knocked on doors. There was nothing to indicate anyone was home, and the key was gone from its hiding place. We returned to the Escort, and we sat for a while longer doing house surveillance.

Lula finished her ice cream, texted everyone she knew, and reorganized her purse. When she was done reorganizing she plugged an ear bud into her ear and dialed into music on her smartphone.

She tapped her nails on the dash and sang along. “Rox- annnnnne. ”

“Hey.”

She sang louder. “You don’t have to put on the red light.”

“HEY!”

She pulled out an earbud. “What?”

“You’re driving me nuts with the tapping and the singing. Can’t you just listen ?”

“I’m trying to occupy myself. I can’t sit here anymore. My ass is asleep, and I gotta tinkle.”

I rolled the engine over and drove Lula to her car.

“See you tomorrow,” she said. “And I’m still not convinced that wasn’t Ziggy. Vampires are known for being sneaky.”

She’d parked on Hamilton, behind Mooner’s bus. The construction trailer was no longer there. Presumably moved to improve visibility from the road and make the lot less appealing as a burial ground. I idled at the curb for a moment, staring across the scarred earth to the alley and the fence on the far side. The crime scene tape had been removed, but the chilling memory of the video remained. In my mind I could see the car drive onto the lot, and I could see the killer dump the body. It wasn’t a vision I enjoyed replaying. It sent tendrils of fear and horror curling along my spine. Three people had been murdered. And the unshakable feeling that I knew the killer burned in my chest. I put Nick Alpha in the overalls and Frankenstein mask. He was a possibility. I hit the automatic door locks and left the scene.

MORELLI AND BOBwere waiting for me when I got home.

“I finished off whatever was in the casserole dish in the refrigerator,” Morelli said. “Were you serious about Dave Brewer cooking?”

I dropped my bag on the kitchen counter and tapped on Rex’s cage by way of greeting. “Yeah. He likes to cook, and his mom doesn’t want him in her kitchen, so he mooches kitchens. He didn’t stay to eat. He just wanted to cook. I guess it relaxes him.”

“He never struck me as someone who needed to relax. From what I remember he never looked stressed. He played football like it was a walk in the park.”

“Everyone loves him. Lula, Connie, my mom, my grandmother.”

Morelli leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. Serious. “And you?”

“Not so much. His mother said he was framed in Atlanta. What do you think?”

“It’s possible. He could have taken a bullet for someone else. Or he could have been encouraged to operate in a gray area. Or he could have been fed bad information.”

“Or he could have been guilty?”

“Yeah, that, too. I checked on him. He had a good lawyer, and several people who were supposed to testify had a lastminute lapse of memory. And two other bank officials who were also accused of crimes took off for parts unknown.”

“I didn’t know any of that.”

“It wasn’t a hot ticket item with the press, but the whole deal was messy, at best.”

We wandered into the living room to watch TV and stood looking at Bob. He was sprawled on the couch, feet in the air, sound asleep.

“There’s no room for us,” I said to Morelli.

He hooked a finger into the neckline of my shirt and pulled me into the bedroom. “Guess we’ll have to find some other way to occupy our time.” He wrangled me out of my shirt and bra. He moved on to my jeans, got them to my knees and stopped. “What the hell?”