Janet Evanovich - Notorious Nineteen

“What about your family?” Lula asked. “You have kids?”

“Two. Marie Ellen and Joyce Louise. They’re in college. University of Wisconsin.”

“Are they home?”

Dottie shook her head. “They’re in Wisconsin. They have summer jobs there waiting tables.”

“So how’d the hookin’ go for you?” Lula asked.

“Terrible. The first man I approached was a policeman. That’s when I got arrested.”

“That’s what happens when you’re an amateur,” Lula said. “People think being a ’ho is easy, but it takes a lot of skill. You gotta keep your eyes open and be a judge of character.”

“He looked like a nice man,” Dottie said. “He was wearing a tie.”

“Probably what you need is a business manager,” Lula said. “Or as we say in the trade, a pimp.”

“Jeez Louise,” I said to Lula. “Don’t tell her that. Hasn’t she got enough problems?”

“Just trying to be helpful,” Lula said. “After all, it’s my area of expertise.” Lula looked over at Dottie. “I used to be a ’ho. I was a good one too.”

I checked my watch. “We need to move along. You can swap professional secrets in the car.”

“I’d like to talk more,” Dottie said, “but I don’t want to go back to the jail. It smelled funny.”

I was getting a bad feeling about this apprehension. I was going to have to handcuff Dottie Luchek and muscle her into the car. She’d be sobbing and begging and moaning, and someone would surely see her and call my mother to complain about me.

“Bring a can of air freshener with you,” I said. “Maybe a nice scented candle.”

“Yeah, and some hand sanitizer,” Lula said.

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Dottie said. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“Excellent thinking,” Lula said to me. “She wasn’t gonna go, and we were gonna have to drag her apple dumpling ass all the way to the car. Which would have been a shame since she seems like a nice lady.”

We were on the front porch, and I heard a cupboard door open and close from deep in the house. Another door slammed shut. I looked at my watch again. I wanted to get to the court-house before the end of the day. There was the sound of a large door rolling up, and I realized it was the garage door. “Damn!”

“She must be coming out the garage door,” Lula said. “Don’t she know this door’s still open?”

“She’s running,” I said.

I took off for the garage, and reached it just as she backed out. Her car came out fast, she laid rubber, and sped down the street.

“Hunh,” Lula said. “I didn’t see that one coming. Where do you suppose she’s going?”

“I’m guessing she won’t go far. She’ll probably park a couple blocks away and call her neighbor to find out if we’re still here.”

“So we could be sneaky, and one of us could drive away, and one of us could hide out here, since she didn’t bother to lock up her house.”

My phone rang and an unfamiliar number appeared.

“I got your granny, and I’m turning her over to the police if you don’t get her out of my sight in the next ten minutes,” the caller said.

“Who is this?”

“Randy Briggs. Who else would be calling? And you’re lucky I’m head of security here. Anyone else would have shot her.”

“What did she do?”

“What didn’t she do. Just come get her!”

“I’m on my way, but I’m in Hamilton Township. It might take more than ten minutes. And do not call my mother.”

“That don’t sound good,” Lula said. “What was that about?”

“Just drive me to the hospital.”

Twenty minutes later, as Lula idled in the Central parking lot, I ran in to retrieve Grandma. I found her handcuffed to a chair in Briggs’s office. Her wig was tipped to one side, and I’m pretty sure I saw steam coming off the top of her head.

“What’s going on?” I asked Briggs.

“She’s a menace,” he said. “She set off a fire alarm, and then I found her at a nurses’ station, trying to get into the patient database.”

“I would have done it too, if this idiot hadn’t come along,” Grandma said. “I was real close.”

“Thank you for not calling the police,” I said to Briggs.

“Don’t thank me. I didn’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I’d be a laughingstock if one of the police beat hacks heard about an arrest. The headline would be ‘Little Man Tackles Old Lady.’ Or the gold standard, ‘Short Stuff Sticks His Nose in Old Lady’s Business.’”

This didn’t evoke a good mental picture. “I agree. Not good publicity for the head of Central security. Unlock the cuffs and we’ll be out of here.”

“I’m not getting near her,” Briggs said. “She’s an animal. She ripped my shirt and went for my gun.”

“That’s a big fat lie,” Grandma said. “I don’t need your gun. I got one of my own.”

Briggs handed the key over to me, I got Grandma out of the cuffs, straightened her hair, and herded her past Briggs and out of his office. We crossed the lot, I loaded Grandma into the Firebird, and Lula took off.

“How’d it go?” Lula asked Grandma.

“I got some good stuff,” Grandma said. “And I had shrimp salad for lunch. They make a real good shrimp salad. Mitch McDoogle was there with two of his lodge buddies, and he didn’t even recognize me. It might have been on account of his cataracts, but I still had a pretty good disguise.”

“What did you find out?” Lula asked.

“I got the name of the night nurse that was checking on Cubbin. Her name’s Norma Kruger. I heard a group of nurses talking about her at lunch. And I heard her name before. She gets around, if you know what I mean. I’ve never seen her because she only works the night shift, but I think she’s a looker. Rumor is she disappears into the broom closet with some of the doctors.”

“Well, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” Lula said.

“Yeah, and I wouldn’t mind doing it,” Grandma said. “I just got trouble finding a man that don’t have a heart attack opening the condom package. They gotta make it easier to get them dang things open. It gets to be depressing. There’s paramedics that know me by name.”

“What else did you find out?” I asked Grandma.

“A couple other people disappeared like this. One was a year ago. And another was right after. I was going to get names for you, but Shorty interrupted me.”

Interesting stuff, but I didn’t actually care how many people disappeared from Central in the middle of the night. I cared about finding Cubbin. Preferably alive, because dead meant a lot of extra paperwork.

“Did anyone talk about Cubbin?” I asked Grandma. “Like where he might have gone?”

“No. They were mostly busy talking about Nurse Kruger. They said she bought her boobs. And one of the nurses at the table said she didn’t see how Kruger could afford a boob job when all her money went up her nose.”

“Honestly,” Lula said, turning in to the Burg. “A cokehead nurse. What’s this world coming to?”

“Did you go out of the house in your disguise?” I asked Grandma.

“No way. Your mother would have a cow if she saw me in this. Thanks for reminding me,” Grandma said.

She took her wig off, stuffed it into her purse, and put her sweater on over the pink tank top.

Lula looked at Grandma in the rearview mirror. “Weren’t you supposed to be at the beauty parlor? How are you gonna explain your hair? You got hat hair.”

Grandma rolled her eyes up as if she could see the top of her head. “I didn’t think of that. Maybe you should drop me off at the beauty parlor, and I’ll have Dolly do a quick set. I can walk home from there.”