Janet Evanovich - Notorious Nineteen

“Yeah, but I’ll have to pay extra.”

I have no willpower. If Lula stops for nachos, I’ll get them too. Or even worse, I’ll get a couple hotdogs.

“My treat,” I said.

“That’s different then. Here we go to Giovichinni.”

Giovichinni’s Deli and Meat Market is just down the street from the bonds office. My family has shopped there for as long as I can remember, and it ranks on a par with the funeral home and the beauty salon for dishing dirt. Lula parked at the curb and we went straight to the deli counter. I got a salad with grilled chicken, and Lula got a salad with barbecued pork, extra bacon, blue cheese, and a side of macaroni and cheese.

“I’m glad you suggested a healthy salad,” she said, moving to check out. “This is just what I needed.”

I made a large effort not to grimace. Her salad was a heart attack in a takeout carton. And it looked fabulously delicious. I was going to have a hard time not ripping it out of her hands.

“What’s new?” I said to Gina Giovichinni when I got to the register.

“Annette Biel is preggers. We’re starting a pool for birth weight and if it looks like her husband or Reggie Mangello.”

“She’s been seeing Reggie Mangello?”

“He did some drywall for them nine months ago when they fixed up their cellar.”

“Anything else? Anything about Geoffrey Cubbin?”

“The guy who ran off with the old people’s money? Nope. Haven’t heard anything worth repeating.”

“I’m looking for him. Let me know if you hear something.”

We took our salads back to the office, along with a Greek salad for Connie. Nothing for Vinnie. He’d be out having a nooner with a duck or getting a good whacking from Madam Zaretsky.

“I checked the cabs,” Connie said, digging into her salad. “No one had a pickup at or near the hospital the night Cubbin disappeared.”

“He didn’t drive himself,” I said. “His car was in his garage. And he couldn’t walk far in his condition. So he had to have help.”

“True,” Connie said. “Or someone could have snatched him.”

“I can almost believe a post-op patient could manage to get himself to the elevator and not get noticed. I’m having a hard time seeing someone kidnap a patient and get him out the door.”

“Maybe he went out the window,” Lula said. “And then he got collected.”

“He was on the fourth floor,” I said. “That’s a long way down.”

Lula shoveled in barbecued pork. “Yeah, he would have had to be encouraged. And it would have made a good thump . If he landed on cement his head would’ve cracked open like Humpty Dumpty, but I’m pretty sure there’s grass all around the hospital. So no point poking around, looking for brains.”

It was a gruesome possibility, and it didn’t make total sense, but it was as good as any theory I had. “If you wanted to kill Cubbin, wouldn’t it be easier to do it after he left the hospital?” I asked Lula and Connie.

“Maybe it was some old lady who was already in the hospital for being so old,” Lula said.

I speared a tomato chunk. “If she was that old she couldn’t get him to the window and shove him out.”

“How about that old lady who was playing cards,” Lula said. “If she was in the hospital, she could have shoved him out. She had rage going for her. We should check to see if she was in the hospital.”

“Have you looked at his relatives?” I asked Connie.

“His parents are deceased. One sister, married, living in Des Moines. A brother in the Denver area.”

“Any recent credit card or bank activity?”

“None.”

I finished my salad. It was okay, but Lula’s looked a lot better.

“No way,” Lula said, inching away from me. “Don’t be looking at my salad like that. You made your choice. You got your plain ass grilled chicken. Not my fault you got no imagination.”

I slouched back onto the couch. “I don’t know where to go from here with Cubbin. I could do surveillance on his house, but I don’t think he’s going back there. Instinct tells me he’s either dead or in Tierra del Fuego. And I can’t access him in either of those places.”

“I have a couple more skips that came in today,” Connie said. “And you still have Melvin Barrel at large. Why don’t you clean up the small stuff while you wait for something to break loose on Cubbin?”

I took the new files from her and skimmed through the paperwork. “Brody Logan. Took a hammer to a police car and turned it into scrap metal.”

“I like it,” Lula said. “Why’d he do it?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“We could find him and ask him,” Lula said. “Where’s he live?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“He’s homeless,” Connie said. “Usually hangs around Third Street and Freemont. Sleeps under the bridge abutment with a bunch of other homeless people.”

My eyebrows lifted a quarter of an inch. “Vinnie bonded out a homeless person? How will the guy pay for his bond?”

“Apparently he has some sort of religious artifact that’s worth a lot of money, and he used it as collateral.”

“Why is he homeless if he has this thing worth money?”

Connie shrugged and did a palms-up. “Don’t know.”

The other FTA was Dottie Luchek. She’d been arrested for solicitation at the KitKat Bar, and hadn’t shown for court. “This has to be wrong,” I said to Connie. “This woman looks like an apple dumpling. And she gives her age as fifty-two.”

“A ’ho can come in any size,” Lula said. “There’s nothing wrong in a ’ho looking like a apple dumpling, and being of a certain age.” She leaned over my shoulder and looked at the photo. “That don’t look like a ’ho,” she said. “I never seen a ’ho look like that. And I’ve seen a lot of different kinds of ’ho. I wasn’t even the same ’ho every day. I had a whole ’ho wardrobe. I had schoolgirl ’ho, and nasty ’ho, and nun ’ho. But I never had this ’ho. This ’ho looks like she just baked her own bread this morning. If some actress played this ’ho, it’d have to be Doris Day.”

I shoved the two new files into my messenger bag and hung the bag on my shoulder. “Gotta go. People to see. Things to do.”

“I’ll go with you,” Lula said. “Which one of these losers you gonna see first?”

“Dottie Luchek. She’s in Hamilton Township.”

SIX

DOTTIE LIVED INa neighborhood of small single-family houses with backyards large enough for a swing set, a Weber grill, and a picnic table. The yards were fenced for dogs and kids. Landscaping wasn’t lush, but it was neat. We parked on the street and walked to her door.

A pleasantly plump woman who was clearly Dottie answered our knock. “Yes?” she asked.

I introduced myself and gave her my card. “You missed your court date,” I told her. “We need to take you downtown to reschedule.”

“Thank you. That’s very nice of you,” she said, “but I’ve decided not to go to court.”

“Hah!” Lula said. “Good one.”

“I appreciate your point of view,” I said to Dottie, “and you don’t have to go to court, but you do have to reschedule.”

“Why?”

“Because,” I said.

Because that’s how I got paid. And because once she walked into the municipal building she’d be rearrested and she’d need a new bond to get released.

We were standing at her open front door and could see some of the house behind her. It was modestly furnished. It was neat and clean. And it looked homey, just like Dottie.

“It looks like you got a comfortable home here,” Lula said to Dottie. “How come you were hookin’?”

“I thought about it a lot,” Dottie said, “and it seemed like a good career choice. My husband, George, passed two years ago, and suddenly there was no money coming in. I tried to get a job, but I didn’t have any luck at it. And then I remembered how George always told me I was good in bed. So prostitution seemed like the logical choice. It was that or lose the house.”