Джанет Иванович - Twisted Twenty-Six

“Travis Wisneski?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “So, what?”

I introduced myself and told him he needed to get rescheduled for court.

“How about you kiss my ass,” he said. “And then how about you and your fat friend go away and leave me and my old lady alone.”

“Excuse me?” Lula said, leaning forward, in Wisneski’s face. “Fat? Did you just refer to me as fat?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re fat.”

Lula sucker punched him in the face, kneed him in his jollies, and he fell to the floor like a sack of sand.

“I’m a big, beautiful lady,” Lula said. “I got class and style and all that shit. Don’t you ever forget it.”

Wisneski was bleeding from his nose and curled into a fetal position. I cuffed him, and Lula and I dragged him out of his house.

“He’s gonna bleed all over your car,” Lula said. “And on top of that he looks like he could be diseased, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times not to punch the FTA in the face. They always bleed like this.”

“I know,” Lula said. “I wasn’t thinking. I got carried away.” She looked back at Travis’s insignificant other. “Could we get a towel here? We got a bleeder.”

The woman took a drag on her cigarette, stepped inside the house, and closed and locked the door.

“Don’t think she’s gonna be any help,” Lula said.

We stood over Travis for a couple minutes, and the bleeding eventually slowed to a trickle. I got two pairs of disposable gloves from a box in the trunk of my car, and we pulled them on.

“Where do you want him?” Lula asked. “My vote is to put him in the trunk, but that’s just me.”

“We can’t put him in the trunk. We only put dead guys in the trunk.”

Lula grabbed the back of his shirt, I went for his feet, and he kicked out at me. He narrowed his eyes and growled.

“I hate when they growl,” Lula said. “Freaks me out. It’s like we got rabies in front of us.”

I pulled my stun gun out of my pocket and tagged Travis on his arm. His eyes glazed over, and his entire body went flaccid. We wrestled him into the back of my car, and I took off for the police station.

“He smells bad back there,” Lula said. “I think he pooped himself.”

CHAPTER THREE

CONNIE WAS AT HER DESK, touching up her nail polish, when we walked into the office twenty minutes later.

“We’re hot today,” Lula told Connie. “It’s not even lunchtime, and we got both our FTAs. We got body receipts and everything.”

Connie leaned forward and sniffed. “What’s that smell?”

“Travis had an accident after Stephanie stunned him,” Lula said. “And he didn’t even smell that good before the accident. I guess we picked up some of the stench.”

“I’m done,” I said to Connie. “I’m going home. I’m going to take a shower and review my options.”

“One of your options should be magenta extensions,” Lula said. “My girl Lateesha at the Royale Hair Salon can give you some with little sparkle stars in them. And you could get your nails done to match.”

—

I stripped in my kitchen, shoved my clothes into a trash bag, and closed the bag with a twisty tie. I apologized to Rex for the smell and padded into the bathroom. I showered and shampooed my hair . . . twice.

You can tell the level of my insecurity by the amount of eye makeup I put on. I hide behind mascara. Today was a double application. No doubt compensating for my lack of magenta extensions. Not to mention that the clean clothes I put on were almost exact replicas of the clothes that were bagged in the kitchen.

“Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie,” I said. “How did you get so boring?” I feared the answer was that I’d always been a little boring . . . and now I was moving into the loser category.

I called Morelli and asked him if he thought I was a loser.

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

“Not yet? What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I was distracted. I’m at a crime scene. Some guy got electrocuted and sort of exploded. We’re trying to find all the pieces. It would be great if you could walk Bob for me. This could take a while.”

“Sure.”

I disconnected and called Ranger. He’d been my mentor when I started working for Vinnie. He’s former Special Forces and has moved up the food chain from bounty hunter to owner of Rangeman, an elite security firm. He’s about the same height as Morelli, and Morelli is a smidgen over six feet tall. Morelli’s coloring is classic Mediterranean, and Ranger’s is Latino. There’s a little more bulk to Ranger’s muscle, but it’s hidden behind perfectly tailored clothes. The clothes are always black. It’s easy to lose Ranger in deep shadow.

“Do you think I’m a loser?” I asked Ranger.

“Babe,” Ranger said. And he hung up.

Hard to tell exactly what Babe meant in this instance, but it didn’t do anything to elevate my mood. I grabbed a can of spray deodorizer from under my sink, added the clothes bag from the kitchen to my already full laundry basket, and headed out. I’d left the windows open on my car, hoping it would air. As an added precaution I sprayed the deodorizer around the entire inside. I put the laundry basket in the trunk, and let the spray settle for a couple minutes before I got behind the wheel.

I drove with the windows open, and by the time I parked in front of my parents’ house, my shoulder-length hair had frizzed out into a giant puffball.

I pulled my hair into a ponytail, secured it with an elastic scrunchy, and retrieved my laundry basket. Grandma met me at the front door.

“How’s Mom feeling?” I asked. “Is her back any better?”

“She’s in the kitchen. Says she feels fine. Just gets a twinge now and then.”

My father was in front of the television in the living room, eating a sandwich off a tray table. He drives a cab part-time, but mostly I think he fibs about working and goes to his lodge to play cards and watch television.

I skirted around my father, careful not to get between him and the television, and took my laundry to my mom.

“I’m getting lunch together,” she said. “Can you stay?”

“Sure.”

“We’re a little late with lunch because I got delayed at the bakery,” Grandma said. “I went to get fresh rolls, and everyone wanted to talk about the viewing and how it’s a shame I was widowed so soon.” Grandma brought the rolls to the table. “I had no idea I’d be such a celebrity.”

My mother was at the refrigerator, pulling out food for lunch. Egg salad, coleslaw, half a meatloaf. She looked over at me and cocked her head at Grandma. “She put on makeup and wore the queen’s dress to go shopping.”

“I always try to look nice,” Grandma said. “And besides, I even got asked for my autograph.”

My mother set the food on the table. “Marjorie Jean asked you to sign the receipt for the credit card.”

“I saw how she was looking at it,” Grandma said. “Like she was thinking of getting a copy to keep for herself.”

I set my basket and messenger bag on the floor. “If your back is still bothering you, I can do my own laundry,” I said.

“I’m okay, and a deal is a deal,” she said. “I hope you have something to be ironed. I need to iron.”

Ironing is my mom’s safe place. When Grandma and I burned down the funeral home my mom ironed the same shirt for four hours.

I made a meatloaf sandwich and helped myself to coleslaw. “The clothes in the plastic bag might be a little smelly,” I said to my mom. “I had to stun a guy this morning, and he had an accident.”

“What kind of accident?” Grandma asked. “Did he hurt himself?”