Janet Evanovich - Takedown Twenty

“That’s gruesome,” my mother said.

“Maybe,” Grandma said, “but I got a natural scientific curiosity about those things. I bet I could have been one of them forensic people like on television.”

“Tell me about Rose,” I said to Grandma. “How well did you know her?”

“I guess I knew her pretty well,” Grandma said. “I saw her at Bingo, and I saw her at the beauty salon. And I saw her at the funeral parlor too. She liked to go to the afternoon viewings, because they weren’t so crowded.”

“Did she have a man friend?”

“She was seeing Barry Farver for a while, but he died. That’s the problem with dating the old geezers. That’s why I always say if you’re going to invest in a man you got to go young.”

“Gordon Krutch doesn’t look all that young.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty old, but he’s got a car. And Madelyn Krick went out with him, and she said he’s hot.”

My mother was at the stove, frying the grilled cheese. She wasn’t facing me, but I could feel her eyes rolling around in her head.

“Did she play cards? Did she belong to a book club? Did she take tap dancing lessons?” I asked Grandma.

“She liked the Jumble. She always had one of them Jumble books when she was at the beauty salon.”

“I knew Rose,” my mother said, bringing the sandwiches to the table. “She liked to cook. She went to all the cooking demonstrations at the kitchen store next to the liquor store.”

“That’s right,” Grandma said. “I forgot about that. Your mother and I go to some of them. They’re real good. You should go with us next time.”

I bit into my sandwich. “Are there men in the audience?”

“The times we were there it was almost half men,” Grandma said. “The demonstrations are early Saturday morning, and it’s a good location between the liquor store and the supermarket.”

“Did any of the other victims attend the cooking demonstrations?”

“We don’t go every week,” Grandma said. “Bitsy was there once when they were doing crêpes Suzette. Bitsy liked her booze.”

“What about Lois?” I asked. “Did she go to the cooking demonstrations?”

“I never saw her there,” Grandma said. “But I saw her in the liquor store that was next to it. It’s an excellent liquor store. Your mother and me get all our hooch there.”

“Anything else about Lois?”

“She lived a block from here, but we didn’t see her much,” Grandma said. “Sometimes we’d see her at mass.”

I finished my soup and sandwich and took my clothes out of the washing machine. They still smelled like fish, so I ran them through a second time and dumped in some bleach.

“I have to get back to work,” I said. “I’ll stop by later for my clothes.”

“Come for dinner,” my mother said. “I’m making stuffed shells, and there’s chocolate cake for dessert.”

“Sounds good.” Hard to pass up stuffed shells and chocolate cake.

I rumbled off to my apartment, changed my clothes, and turned my laptop on. I plugged the four murdered women into a basic search program and printed out a page on each of them. Address, credit history, litigation, relatives, work history. Mostly I cared about the addresses and the relatives. I was sure I was duplicating police efforts, but Ranger wanted me to snoop, so I was snooping.

Melvina had lived in a garden apartment in Hamilton Township. She’d had a couple low-limit credit cards. No work history. No litigation. Besides her son, Ruppert, there was a daughter who lived in Chicago. Melvina had survived her husband and her two siblings.

Lois Fratelli had lived in the Burg. I knew the house. It was small and tidy. Single family. She’d had several credit cards. No litigation. She’d worked as office manager for the family plumbing business for thirty-two years. Nothing recent. She was survived by about a hundred and forty Fratellis, all of them living in the Burg.

Rose Walchek had a similar profile. Widowed. Lived in a small row house on Stanton Street. Worked at the button factory for fifteen years. Nothing recent. No children.

Bitsy Muddle had lived in a small retirement complex behind the strip mall containing the supermarket and liquor store. She’d worked as a bank teller for twenty-seven years, she’d operated a boxing machine at a sanitary products plant for eleven years, and she’d been a cashier at WalMart for five years. She’d never married.

I found none of this information inspiring. Truth is, I wasn’t exactly an ace detective. I mostly found people through dumb luck and perseverance. Catching them was an even sketchier experience.

I looked out my living room window at the parking lot and didn’t see any thugs lurking in shadows, or sitting behind the wheel of their big black cars, so I shoved the printouts into my messenger bag and headed out.

Lula was sitting at Connie’s desk when I walked in. Connie was missing in action.

“Vinnie’s at his Perverts Anonymous meeting,” Lula said, “so Connie had to go downtown to write bond on some idiot.”

“Do we know the idiot?”

Lula shook her head. “It’s a new idiot.”

“Did anything exciting happen while I was gone?”

“You mean like Sunny coming here and turning himself in?”

“Did he do that?”

“No.”

“Too bad. I hate to say it out loud, but I’m spooked over Sunny. I kept waking up last night, thinking I was falling. Getting pitched off a bridge is freaking scary. And it wasn’t any fun being locked in the trunk of the car, either.”

“I hear you. Personally, I think those guys have been watching too much violence on television. They been seeing too many reruns of The Sopranos . Their behavior is disturbing. I’m even thinking twice about going over to check on Kevin. I haven’t given him any lettuce today. ’Course I’m not sure he was the one eating the lettuce anyways. It might have just been the homeless fool. I mean, who eats lettuce like that? He didn’t have no Thousand Island dressing or nothing.”

“I’ve been thinking maybe I should talk to Joe’s mother about Uncle Sunny.”

“What? Are you nuts? She doesn’t like you to begin with. And she’s probably got Bella there. She’ll send her out after you like a junkyard dog.”

“Sunny kills people. How can they not understand that?”

“They probably think he only kills bad people. Like people who don’t pay their protection money.”

“That’s wrong.”

“Yeah, but that’s your standards. You should live in my neighborhood. People get killed if they’re wearing the wrong deodorant. Only thing good I can say is people in my ’hood don’t drop people off a bridge. You know you’re gonna get knifed or shot in my neighborhood.”

“That must make you rest a lot easier.”

“At least I don’t have to worry about my hair looking like crap when I meet my maker.”

I dropped the body receipt for Mary Treetrunk on Connie’s desk. “Make sure Connie sees this. I’m going to do a drive-around and check out the dead women’s neighborhoods. And then I’m going to my parents’ house for dinner.”

“No Bingo tonight?”

“I’m taking a night off from Bingo.”

I was taking a night off from Bingo because I was going to get Ranger to help me snag Uncle Sunny.

THIRTEEN

BY THE TIME I got to my parents’ house I had a raging headache from riding around in my mufflerless car.

“I knew you were here,” Grandma said, opening the front door for me. “We could hear you coming a mile away.”

“I’m going to have to borrow Uncle Sandor’s car until I get mine fixed,” I said. “I can’t take the noise.”

“No problem. It’s in the garage. It’s all filled up with gas and ready to go.”