Janet Evanovich: Sizzling Sixteen

“Do you mind if I take a look for myself?” I asked her.

“No. Go right ahead. I’d get him up for you, but I haven’t got the time. He’s a wonderful man. He can play bingo with the best of them, but he’s slow as molasses in the morning. Bedroom’s in the back.”

I moved past Dolly to the back of the house and the master bedroom, pushing cats out of my way as I walked. I could see Lula from the corner of my eye, shooing cats away, holding her nose.

Lula and I inched into the room and looked at Dirk.

“Uh-oh,” Lula said.

I bit into my lower lip. “How long has Dirk been sleeping like this?” I yelled to Dolly.

“Since last night. He went to bed early. Said he had indigestion.”

I hauled my cell phone out of my bag and called 911. “We need an officer at 401 Stanley Street,” I said. “And an EMT truck, hold the siren.”

“Is there something wrong?” Dolly asked.

“I’m really sorry, but I’m pretty sure Dirk’s dead,” I told her.

Dolly took a close look at him and poked him. “Yep, he’s dead all right. Damn. This is the third husband that’s died on me in the past year. I’ve got to start marrying younger men. Good thing I didn’t take his name. The red tape is awful.” She smoothed a wisp of hair down on McCurdle’s head. “He was fun,” she said. “I’ll miss him on Mondays and Tuesdays.”

Lula sneezed. “Damn cats. I gotta get out of here. I’m allergic to just about everything in this house… cats and dead people, and pretty soon it’s gonna be filled with cops.”

Dolly looked at her watch. “I should probably cancel my service appointment.”

“You might want to do that,” Lula said. “But if we hurry things along, you could make lunch.”

“We should go out and wait for the police,” Dolly said. “They can never find this house. I don’t know why. It’s the house with the gnome, for goodness sakes.”

“Guess you’re getting good at this,” Lula said.

“The husband before Dirk died five months ago, he should rest in peace. And before that was George.”

We all meandered out of the house and stood blinking in the late morning sun.

A cop car angled to a stop behind my Jeep and Carl Costanza and Big Dog got out. Carl and I did Communion together, and he was friends with Morelli.

Carl looked at me and smiled. “I bet this is going to be good,” he said.

“I have a dead FTA in there,” I told him.

“Did you kill him?”

“No. Looks to me like natural causes, but what do I know. Dolly said he just never woke up.”

Carl pulled on rubber gloves.

“Gonna need more than that in there,” Lula said. “There’s cats.” And she sneezed and farted. “S’cuse me,” she said.

An EMT truck turned the corner and Big Dog flagged it down.

“I’ll stop at the station later today for my paperwork,” I said to Carl.

“Don’t rush. I have to get mine done first.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to Dolly.

“Thank you,” she said. “It was nice meeting you.”

Lula and I got into the Jeep, and I found my way back to Greenwood.

“That was a downer,” I said to Lula.

“Yeah,” she said. “It was anti climactic after waiting all this time to see the bigamist.”

“I can’t figure out if I’m more depressed that Dirk died or that Dolly didn’t know he was dead.”

“I take a philosophical view on these things, since I’m a observer of human nature,” Lula said. “I figure you gotta have the right attitude about this stuff. Take Dolly, for instance. Dolly was gonna try to keep her lunch date, which is a good thing, because life gotta go on. And even though he was dead, Dirk sort of looked like he was smiling.”

“He did look like he died smiling.”

“See, it’s all part of the circle of life,” Lula said. “And pretty soon, we’ll be dead, too, only you’ll go first because you’re older than me.”

“Do you have any doughnuts left? I need a doughnut.”

“I ate them all, but we can stop at the bakery again. They had some red velvet cupcakes that I’m pretty sure were made with beet juice. Either that or red dye #13.”

I hooked a left into the bakery lot and bought myself a doughnut with white icing and colorful sprinkles. “This is a happy doughnut,” I said to Lula.

“Fuckin’ A,” Lula said. “But then I never saw a sad doughnut.”

I ate my doughnut and felt much better, so I drove down Greenwood to Hamilton, past the office, and on to the government buildings on the river. It was lunchtime, and I was guessing Mickey Gritch would be hanging out, looking to run some numbers.

“Oh boy,” Lula said when I pulled into the 7-Eleven lot on Marble Street. “You’re not gonna do what I think you’re gonna do, are you?”

“I’m going to talk to Mickey Gritch.”

I spotted his car, parked to the side of the lot. No other cars around it. It was early. Lunch hours hadn’t kicked in yet. I pulled up beside him, and his tinted window rolled down.

Mickey Gritch had white-blond hair cut in a sixties Beatle mop style. He had little pig eyes that were always behind shades, a big pasty potato head, and a body gone soft. He was in his late forties, and he was living proof that anyone could be successful at crime in Trenton if he truly worked at it.

“What?” Mickey Gritch asked me.

“I want to talk to you about Vinnie.”

“What about him?”

“No one wants to fork up the money.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Gritch said. “He’s a turd. Don’t get me wrong. I like Vinnie. We’ve done business for a lot of years. But he’s still a turd.”

“Maybe we can make a deal?”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t kill him, and he can get some kind of a payment plan.”

“Listen, if it was me, that would be okay. But it’s not me. I don’t have anything to do with it anymore. This is Bobby Sunflower’s deal, and it’s more complicated than you know.”

“Complicated how?”

“Just complicated. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. There’s bad people involved. Badder than Bobby Sunflower.” He leaned out a little. “Is that Lula? Hey, momma.”

“Don’t you hey momma me,” Lula said. “I’ll be out of a job if they off Vinnie, and then what? I got bills to pay. I got a standard of living.”

“I got a job for you,” Gritch said.

“Hunh,” Lula said. “I don’t do that no more, you little runt-ass Polish sausage.”

The tinted window rolled up on Gritch’s Mercedes. I put the Jeep in gear and drove out of the lot.

“THINGS ARE GOING good today,” Lula said. “We haven’t been shot at or nothin’. Have you got the bottle with you?”

“No. I left it at home.”

“Imagine if you had the bottle.”

“I’ve got Chopper’s file in my bag,” I said to Lula. “Pull it out and read me his address. I think he’s off South Broad.”

“I’m not sure I want to go after someone named Chopper,” Lula said. “Suppose he got his name chopping off fingers and toes. I don’t want to lose none of mine. I couldn’t wear peep-toe shoes. It would limit my fashion potential.”

“Does it say anything in his file about fingers or toes?”

Lula paged through the file. “No. His real name is Mortimer Gonzolez, but it says everyone calls him Chopper. And it says he got a pet named Mr. Jingles, and you want to be careful about Mr. Jingles. I hope it’s not a cat. It sounds like a cat name. Just thinking about it makes my eyes itch.”

“Has he got priors?”

“Yeah, lots of them. All like this. All for dealin’ drugs. Don’t see no assault with a deadly weapon in here. Looks to me like he’s a businessman. Middle management.”