Janet Evanovich - Notorious Nineteen

The lieutenant looked down at Cubbin. “I can’t give you a receipt until we identify him.”

“That could take weeks,” I said. “Maybe months.”

“I can’t wait months,” Lula said. “Somebody’s gonna have to step up to the plate and make an executive decision here. And in fact this is making me all upset and I’m gonna be sick. I have a delicate constitution and I feel my lunch coming up. It was cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and pork. It’s not gonna be good. Cabbage throw-up is the worst. Oh Lord, I’m sweatin’ now. It’s coming up any time.”

“Get her out of here!” the lieutenant said.

“No way,” Lula said. “Even though I’m sick I can’t leave until she gets the body receipt. Maybe if I stick my finger down my throat it would come up faster and I’d feel better.”

“That’s disgusting,” he said.

“It’s just nature taking its course,” Lula said. “I might even be getting diarrhea too!”

He grimaced and scribbled out a receipt. “Take it! Go! Take her with you.”

Lula and I hustled out of the station, jumped into the Buick, and took off.

“That went well,” Lula said. “I’m hungry. All that talk about cabbage and pork got me thinking about one of them Taylor Pork Roll sandwiches.”

I had one loose end to tie up. I had Susan Cubbin drinking coffee in a kitchen filled with gold bars, not knowing what to do with them. I parked and followed Lula into the office. I gave Connie my body receipt and took a chair by her desk.

“What do you know about gold?” I asked her.

“Not a whole lot. What do you want to know?”

“How much a bar is worth.”

Connie surfed around on her computer. “Gold is up today. A kilo bar would be around fifty thousand dollars.”

I was pretty sure Susan had kilo bars. I punched some numbers into the calculator on my phone and gasped at the result. Over the course of Geoffrey’s career at Cranberry Manor he’d embezzled five million dollars, converted it to gold, and the gold was now worth $6,650,000. Turned out Geoffrey Cubbin was the best thing that ever happened to the folks at Cranberry Manor.

“Gotta go,” I said to Connie and Lula.

“Are you buying gold?” Connie asked.

“No. I’m helping Susan Cubbin clean house. I’ll tell you all the details tomorrow.”

Forty minutes later I was in Susan’s kitchen.

“It’s worth more than he stole,” I told her. “Gold has risen in value since Geoffrey bought it. All you have to do is take the gold to Cranberry Manor and tell the residents it was a misunderstanding, that Geoffrey was actually making smart investments on their behalf. They’ll probably name a wing after him.”

I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it would go down like that but it was the best I could do.

Susan had sheets draped over the stacks of gold. “How am I going to get this moved? Do I need to hire an armored truck?”

“I have a friend,” I said.

I called Ranger and told him I needed to transport 133 kilos of gold.

“Now?”

“Now would be good.”

“I’ll send Tank with a couple cars. I have a client meeting in five minutes. I assume I’m not necessary.”

“You’re desirable, but in this case not necessary,” I told him.

“Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

Two Rangeman SUVs arrived, we loaded the SUVs and headed out. I led the parade in the Buick, and Susan brought up the tail in her van. We parked in front of Cranberry Manor and I told Tank to stack the gold up in the lobby.

“This is from Geoffrey,” Susan Cubbin said to the room filled with gawkers. “It was all a misunderstanding. I found a note from him, and it turns out he was investing your money in gold and now you’re all rich.”

There was stunned silence and then a cheer went up.

“It worked,” Susan said to me. “Let’s get out of here before they start asking questions.”

“We’ll need a receipt,” I said to Carol, the facility’s tour guide.

She counted the bars and wrote out a receipt. “One hundred and thirty-two bars,” she said.

I looked at Susan.

“I might have left one in the kitchen,” Susan said.

“One hundred and thirty-two bars is correct,” I said to Carol.

I stopped at Pino’s, got lasagna with meat sauce, extra bread, and tiramisu for dessert, and took it to Morelli’s house. He was on the couch, watching television with his leg propped up on the coffee table. Bob was by his side, offering sympathy, standing guard.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“It’s going good. And it’s even better now that I have you here with dinner.”

I went to the kitchen and got knives and forks and napkins and beer and brought it all back to Morelli.

“I hear Cranberry Manor had some good fortune today,” Morelli said. “Apparently a photographer and a news guy arrived shortly after you left.”

“Geoffrey had the bars buried in his backyard. Susan found a landscape plan and dug them up. When I got there she had them stacked up in her kitchen.”

“Why did she give them back?”

I shrugged. “I guess she felt bad. I think she might not have had a storybook marriage, but she cared for him. Probably she still loved him. She didn’t want to be the one to rat on him.”

“Suppose it was me,” Morelli said. “And I had gold buried in my backyard . . .”

“I’d love you even more.”

Morelli grinned. “So are you telling me that you love me? Just not as much as if I were rich?”

“Yep. That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Good to know,” Morelli said.

We ate dinner and watched television and Morelli was asleep on the couch by nine o’clock. I got him upstairs, gave him a pill, and tucked him in.

I carted Rex out to the Buick and drove to my apartment. Stars were out and the air felt warm and gentle. My apartment building looked benign and safe, dark against the night sky, lights shining from my neighbors’ windows.

I took the elevator, walked the length of the hall, and balanced the hamster tank on one knee while I opened my front door. I stepped inside and flipped on the light. Everything looked perfect. No Orin splattered on the wall. No broken window. Clean floor.

There was a bottle of champagne on my kitchen counter plus a check and a note from Ranger.

For a job well done , the note said. I’ll be around later. I need a date .