18 Explosive Eighteen (8 page)

“You should make a decision,” Annie said. “I’m sure in your heart you know your true love. Just go with your heart.”

It wasn’t that easy. My heart was confused. My brain didn’t want either of the men in my life. And my hooha wanted both of them!

“I could make a potion up for you that would simplify everything,” Annie said.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’d rather not get involved with potions.”

“They’re perfectly safe,” Annie said. “We’re very high tech in our potion making now. I’m even a member of the APMA. American Potion Makers Association.”

“Maybe I should take up making potions,” Grandma said. “I’ve been thinking about coming out of retirement. Potions might be a good business to get into. How do you join that APMA?”

“You can join online,” Annie said. “Just go to their website.”

“Is it just love potions?” Grandma wanted to know.

“Or can you make al kinds of potions?”

“I specialize in love potions,” Annie said. “But potions can solve a wide range of issues.”

“I’l have to think about it,” Grandma said. “I want to have a good specialty.”

• • •

By the time Grandma and I got dropped off at my parents’ house, it was after five o’clock, and I could smel chicken frying al the way out to the street. My original intention had been to zip into the house, get the key to the Buick, and track down Buggy. Now that I was smel ing my mom’s fried chicken, I was having second thoughts. I could stay for dinner and go after Buggy later. In fact, the heck with capturing Buggy today. Better to go after him tomorrow with a ful y charged stun gun.

Grandma hustled into the house and went straight to the kitchen. “We found Stephanie at the mal ,” she said to my mother. “She’s going to have dinner with us.”

My mother was at the stove, turning pieces of chicken in her big fry pan. “I’m trying a new recipe. I found it in a magazine. And there’s mashed potatoes and green beans. And before I forget, there were two men here looking for you. They said they were FBI.”

My heart stopped beating for a moment. “Did they give their names?”

“One was named Lancer and the other was Slasher,” my mother said. “They seemed nice. Very polite. I told them I didn’t know where you were, and they went away.”

“What’s that about?” Grandma asked. “Are you tracking down some famous criminal? I bet it’s someone on the Ten Most Wanted list.”

“It’s a misunderstanding,” I said. “If there was someone in the area on the Ten Most Wanted list, Ranger would get that job, not me. I’l catch up with them tomorrow.”

I set the table and wandered into the living room to say hel o to my dad.

“Look at this,” he said, gesturing to the television.

“There’s more on that guy who got stuffed into the garbage can. They’re saying now they think he was drugged before he was snuffed and stuffed into the can. It’s not official or anything, but that’s what a security guard said. And I guess there’s a woman involved.”

“A woman?”

“They’re referring to her as a person of interest.

You know what that means. The kiss of death. The person of interest is always the kil er.” I hated to think that was true, since I might be the person of interest.

My grandmother joined us. “Are you talking about the garbage can kil er? I heard the dead guy was a doctor in the army, and he might have been a spy when he was over there in Afghanistan.” She sucked on her dentures. “That spying catches up to you. One minute you’re a spy, and next thing, you’re dead in a garbage can. Unless you’re James Bond. Nothing stops him. He’s bal s to the wal .”

My father hunkered deeper into his chair and turned the volume up on the television.

“Shut the television off!” my mother yel ed from the dining room. “It’s too loud, and dinner’s ready.” I took my seat at the table, and my phone rang.

“I’m at the junkyard,” Morel i said. “The dog found a body, but we haven’t been able to view it. We haven’t got a big enough can opener.”

“Only one body?”

“So far. The dog’s stil working. Where are you?”

“I’m having dinner at my parents’ house. My mom made fried chicken.”

“Oh man, that’s cruel. I love your mom’s fried chicken.”

“I’l bring some back to my apartment for you.”

“This could take a while,” Morel i said.

“Whatever.”

“Who was that?” Grandma asked when I hung up.

“Was that Ranger?”

“No. It was Morel i.”

“It’s hard to keep up with it al ,” Grandma said. “I don’t know how you do it. You’re married, and then you’re not married, and then you’re saving chicken for Morel i.”

I couldn’t keep up with it, either. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.

“You need Annie to help you,” Grandma said.

“She’s real smart. She’s fixing up everyone at bowling. She even had a man in mind for me, but I told her he was too old. I don’t want some flabby, wrinkled codger to take care of. I want a young stud with a nice firm behind.”

My mother refil ed her wineglass and my father put his fork down and hit his head on the table.
BANG,
BANG, BANG, BANG
.

“Go for it,” I said to Grandma.

“I’m not so old,” Grandma said. “There’s parts of me don’t sit as high as they used to, but I’ve got some miles left.”

My father pantomimed stabbing himself in the eye with his fork.

Okay, so my family’s a little dysfunctional. It’s not like they’re dangerous. At least we al sit down and have dinner together. Plus, by Jersey standards, we’re pretty much normal.

NINE

MY FATHER WAS SETTLED IN, watching sitcom reruns, when I left. My mother and grandmother were at the smal kitchen table enjoying a ritual glass of port, celebrating the return of order and cleanliness in the kitchen. And I departed in the powder blue and white ’53 Buick that was kept in the garage for emergencies. Sitting on the seat beside me was a doggy bag that included fried chicken, soft little dinner rol s from the bakery, a jar of pickled beets, half a homemade apple pie, and a bottle of red table wine. The wine had been sent along, I’m sure, with the hopes that I might have a romantic evening with Morel i and make a grandchild. So much the better if I got married first.

I drove past the Bugkowski house out of morbid curiosity to see if my car was there. Not only wasn’t the car parked at the curb, but the house was dark.

No one home. Probably, Big Buggy took his parents for a drive in his new RAV4.

Twenty minutes later, I rol ed into the lot to my apartment building and did another car check. No RAV4. No black Lincoln Town Car. No green SUV

that belonged to Morel i. No megabucks shiny black Ranger car. I found a space close to the building’s back door, parked, and locked up. I took the elevator to the second floor, walked down the hal , and listened at my door. Al was quiet. I let myself in, kicked the door closed, and a swarthy guy with lots of curly black hair jumped out of the kitchen at me.

He was holding a huge knife, and his dark eyes were narrowed.

“I want photograph,” he said. “Give it to me, or I kil you big-time. I make you very painful.” I grabbed the bottle of wine from the doggy bag, hit the guy in the face with it as hard as I could, his eyes rol ed back, and he crashed to the floor. I’d acted total y on instinct and was as surprised as he was that he got knocked out. I put a hand to the wal to steady myself and took a couple deep breaths. It felt icky to have the guy in my apartment, so I cuffed him and dragged him into the hal . I returned to my apartment and closed and locked the door in case there was a partner lurking somewhere.

I retrieved my Smith & Wesson from the cookie jar and walked through my apartment looking in closets and under the bed, finding dust bunnies but no more swarthy guys. I went back to the kitchen and cal ed Bil Berger.

“There was a nasty-looking guy in my apartment when I came home just now,” I told him. “He had a big knife, and he said he’d kil me if I didn’t give him the photograph.”

“And?” Berger asked.

“I hit him in the face with a bottle of table wine and knocked him out.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in the hal .”

There was a beat of silence. “What’s he doing in the hal ?”

“I didn’t want him in my apartment, so I dragged him into the hal .”

More silence. Probably, Berger wasn’t believing any of this.

“Did you check for ID?” he final y asked.

Damn! “No. Hold on, and I’l go look.” I opened the door, and the hal was empty. No swarthy guy.

“He’s gone,” I said to Berger.

“Problem solved,” Berger said. And he hung up.

I closed and locked the door, plugged my stun gun into a wal socket, returned the Smith & Wesson to the cookie jar, and opened the bottle of wine. Thank God it hadn’t broken, because I real y needed a drink. A Cosmo or a Margarita or a water glass fil ed with whiskey would have been even better. I brought the bottle into the living room, settled in front of the television, tuned in to the Food Network, and tried to get my heart rate under control.

Some woman was making cupcakes. Cupcakes are good, I told myself. There’s an innocence to a cupcake. A joy. I poured a second glass of wine, and I watched the woman frost the cupcakes.

Halfway through the bottle of wine, I flipped to the Travel Channel, and I don’t remember much after that.

• • •

I woke up to the sun streaming into my bedroom. I was naked, tucked under the covers, and alone. I vaguely remembered half-waking to Morel i tel ing me the chicken was al he hoped it would be.

I rol ed out of bed, wrapped myself in my robe, and padded into the kitchen. No Morel i. No chicken. No dinner rol s. No apple pie. A note was stuck to the counter by Rex’s cage.

You were asleep on the couch, so I put you to
bed and ate the chicken
.

I dialed Morel i. “How’d I get naked?” I asked him.

“That was the way I found you. You were mumbling something about being hot, and God was just going to have to deal with it.”

Good grief. “How’d it go at the junkyard?”

“We didn’t find Joyce’s body, but we found Frank Korda, the jeweler she supposedly stole the necklace from, and we found Joyce’s other shoe.”

“Was Korda dead?”

“Yeah, and then some.”

“Do you think Joyce kil ed him?”

“Personal y, I don’t, but as a cop I’d have to consider it.”

“Any leads?”

“The usual relatives and friends,” Morel i said. “It looks like someone tried to break into Joyce’s condo. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that?”

“Who, me?”

“If anyone does break in, they should be careful about withholding evidence.”

“I have a feeling the condo would be clean. And let me take a wild guess that Frank Korda was found in Joyce’s Mercedes.”

“Your guess would be right. I have to run. We’re taking the dog back to the junkyard.”

“You should bring Bob. He could hang with the cadaver dog and get some exercise. Maybe Bob could help find another body.”

“If Bob found a body, he’d eat it,” Morel i said.

I disconnected, took a shower, and got dressed in my usual girly T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. I fed Rex and gave him fresh water. He rushed out of his soup-can home, stuffed a bunch of hamster crunchies into his cheeks, and hustled back to his can. Maybe he was stil creeped out by the guy with the knife last night. Understandable, because that would make two of us.

I tossed my ful y charged stun gun into my bag and took off. First stop was the coffee shop. Connie, Lula, and Vinnie were sitting at a table in the window. I got a coffee and a cinnamon rol and joined them.

“They found Frank Korda at the junkyard,” Connie said. “It came over the police channel.” I nodded. “Morel i told me. How’s the office space search going?”

“I have it narrowed down,” Connie said. “There’s a vacant storefront a couple blocks from the police station. Or I can rent a Winnebago RV, which would be smal er than the bus, but we could park it in our usual location.”

“We’d get more business by the police station,” Vinnie said. “Let’s go with the storefront.”

“I’l pick the lease up this morning, and we can move in tomorrow,” Connie said. “It’s not pretty, but it’s usable space.”

“As long as it got good facilities,” Lula said. “I might stil have some potato salad left inside me.”

“How about the fire investigation?” Vinnie asked.

“Do they know what started it yet?”

Connie closed her laptop and stood. “They said it was suspicious, but they’re stil looking at al the little pieces they col ected.”

DeAngelo and his foreman walked into the coffee shop.

“Hey, what’s doin’ here?” DeAngelo said to Vinnie. “How come you’re not at work in your office?

Oh yeah, now I remember … it blew up.” Vinnie narrowed his eyes, said something in Italian, and flipped DeAngelo the bird.

“Better be careful,” DeAngelo said. “Your house could blow up next.”

Vinnie’s lip curled back. “Are you threatening me?”

“I don’t threaten,” DeAngelo said. “I’m more a doer.”