Janet Evanovich - Takedown Twenty

“I try not to think about it.”

“How’d you come to find Uncle Sunny?”

“Grandma found him. And that’s another thing I don’t want to think about.”

I parked in front of the wine shop, and Lula and I took the stairs to the second floor. Grandma had the door open when we reached the landing.

“I was looking out the window, and I saw you park,” she said. “Snazzy new car. I bet it belongs to Ranger.”

We stepped into the apartment and closed and locked the door behind us. Sunny was stretched out on the floor, covered by a white sheet.

“Is that what I think it is sticking up like a tent pole?” Lula asked.

“It won’t go down,” Grandma said. “I even tried bending it. I was gonna try smashing it with a fry pan, but it seemed disrespectful of the dead.”

“Yeah, the dead don’t like that,” Lula said. “How’d he get in this condition?”

“Well, we started out at the movies,” Grandma said, “and then we came here to his bachelor pad for some action.”

Lula and I looked around the bachelor pad. Red velvet couch. White sheepskin rug. King-size bed with a red satin bedspread. Disco ball. A pole that wasn’t intended to be used by firemen.

“I was stripped down to my new lavender thong, doing some real kinky things on the pole,” Grandma said, “and he was singing Sinatra songs, and all of a sudden his eyes rolled back in his head, and crash he’s dead.”

“He had a bad heart,” I told Grandma.

Grandma nodded. “I probably should have gone easy on him instead of using all my hot dance moves in the beginning.”

“I know some working women who would kill for this setup,” Lula said.

“He was a real swinger,” Grandma said. “He even has champagne in the refrigerator.”

“Too bad he had to croak on you,” Lula said.

“Tell me about it. I finally think I’ve got a live one, and he turns out to be another dead one.”

“How could you go out on a date with him?” I asked Grandma. “He was wanted for murder. And you knew I was after him.”

“You gave up on being after him,” Grandma said. “You quit being a bounty hunter. And it’s not like he was ever convicted of murder.”

“Granny’s got a point,” Lula said. “Everyone’s innocent until proven guilty.”

“I ran into him at the bakery yesterday,” Grandma said, “and one thing led to another, and we emailed, and before I knew it I said I’d go to the movies with him. I didn’t see any harm in going to a movie with him, but then our hormones took over, and now here he is dead as a doorknob.”

“What about Rita?” Lula said. “Rita expected Sunny to marry her.”

“He told me all about her,” Grandma said. “He kept her around for appearances. He didn’t really like her. And she wouldn’t play Bingo with him. I brought my laptop so we could play Bingo if we wanted.”

Lula looked down at Sunny. “What are we gonna do with him? We gonna drag his behind down the stairs, out to the car, and take him for a ride to the pokey so Vinnie gets his money back?”

“Yep,” I said. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Okay, maybe it was slightly unethical, but Sunny was dead. It didn’t matter to him, but it would matter a lot to me. I’d be able to put gas in the car so I could go to the personal products plant to apply for a job.

I lifted the sheet and looked at him. He was fully dressed in a three-button knit shirt and slacks. This would make things a lot easier.

“I guess you were the only one in your undies,” Lula said to Grandma.

“He was crooning, and I was stripping,” Grandma said. “I would rather have had some disco, but I made do with Sinatra.”

We pulled Sunny up and got him into a chair. He didn’t look too bad. A little pale, but his eyes were open, and he looked sort of alert.

“We’ll get him by the armpits,” I said to Lula. “That way if someone sees us take him out it’ll look like he’s still sort of alive.”

I looked down at his feet. He was wearing red socks but no shoes. “Where are his shoes?”

“He kicked them off over by the bed,” Grandma said.

I went to the bed to get his shoes, and I almost stepped on a brand-new package of Venetian blind cord that was on the floor, next to the nightstand. I felt my eyes go wide, and my heart skipped a couple beats. “Holy shit.”

“Now what?” Lula asked.

I held the package of cord up. “Venetian blind cord.”

“He said that was in case we wanted to play spanky spanky or bad boys and good girls ,” Grandma said.

“The Dumpster killer strangled all the women with Venetian blind cord,” I told Grandma.

“I didn’t know that,” Grandma said. “They didn’t say anything about that on television.”

Lula looked over at Sunny. “Do you think he’s the killer? It wouldn’t be much of a stretch for him, being that he probably kills people all the time business-wise.”

“Hard to believe,” Grandma said. “He’s so gallant. And look how cute he is in his red socks.”

The bachelor pad was a floor-through efficiency consisting of one large loft-type room and bath. Windows looked out at the street and also at the alley. A shadow passed by an alley-side window.

“It’s Kevin!” Lula said. “I bet he knows I’m here. I’ll be right back.”

And she ran out the rear door and down the rear stairs.

“Now what?” Grandma asked.

“Now we get Sunny to the car without her. I’m not waiting.”

“Are you going to put his shoes on him?”

Dead people aren’t on my favorite-things list. I could drag Sunny’s body down the stairs if I really had to, but putting shoes on him was at a whole other creep level.

“Do you think it’s necessary?” I asked Grandma.

“Maybe not. It’s not like we have to worry about his feet getting cold.”

The lock tumbled on the front door, the door opened, and Shorty and Moe stepped in.

“What the heck?” Moe said.

I was holding the Venetian blind cord in my hand, Sunny was looking a little droopy in the chair, and Grandma did a little finger wave to Moe.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Moe said to me.

It was starting to fall into place. I had a bad feeling Moe and Shorty were here to pick up Grandma’s dead body and prepare it for a Dumpster burial.

“We were just leaving,” I told Moe. “Grandma needed a ride home.”

“Oh yeah? What have you got in your hand?”

I looked at the cord. “Sex toy?”

Moe slid a glance at Sunny. “What’s wrong with Sunny? He doesn’t look good.”

“He’s dead,” Grandma said.

Shorty took a closer look. “Hey!” he yelled at Sunny. No reaction. Shorty poked him. Still no reaction. “Yep, he’s dead all right,” Shorty said.

Moe was looking disgusted. “Perfect. We come to do a simple cleanup, and we end up with this.”

“Don’t let us stop you,” I said, grabbing Grandma’s hand, yanking her toward the front door. “We’ll be on our way.”

“You’ll be going nowhere,” Moe said, pointing his gun at me. “You know too much. You’ve been trouble from the start. Always sticking your nose in where it don’t belong. And nothing ever goes right with you. Everyone else dies when we drop them off the bridge, but not you. You have to have some hotshot Batman rescue you.”

“I might have made it on my own,” I said.

“You would have dropped like a rock to the bottom of the river without him,” Moe said.

“What are we going to do with Sunny?” Shorty asked.

“Sunny can wait,” Moe said. “We need to take care of these two first.”

“Are you gonna pop them here?”

“No. It’ll make a mess, and I don’t feel like cleaning up a mess. I told Liz I’d be home to watch a movie tonight. She downloaded something with that DiCaprio weenie in it.”