22 Tricky Twenty-Two (17 page)

“It wasn’t my fault,” I said.

Ranger cut his eyes to Pooka getting loaded into the cop car. “Looks like you made a good apprehension.”

“It was my mom. She took Stanley Pooka down like a junkyard dog on a piece of rancid meat.”

Ranger grinned at my mom. “Never underestimate maternal rage.”

Another Trenton PD car drove up. Eddie Gazarra was behind the wheel, and Morelli was riding shotgun. Morelli got out and walked over to us.

“I thought you were taking the day off,” I said to him.

“I heard this called in and I didn’t want to get cut out of the bust. Was anyone in that mess back there when it caught fire?”

“Not that I know. Someone could have been in the back of the van, but I didn’t see anyone.”

“From what I’m piecing together, you saw Pooka and followed him here. Somehow both vehicles caught fire. It looks like he got out and ran and you chased him down and beat the crap out of him.”

“He fell when he was running,” I said.

“It was on account of his nuts were loose,” Lula said.

Morelli looked at Lula and then he looked at me. “There’s no way in hell I’m putting that in my report.”

“You have a thing about nuts lately,” I said to Lula.

“I like nuts,” Grandma said. “I like cashews.”

I looked down at Morelli’s feet. “You’re wearing two different shoes.”

“I was in a hurry to get out of the house.”

“Pooka threw a jar at us. It was filled with fleas and it smashed on the 300 block of Oak Street,” I said to Morelli. “You might want to have it exterminated or something.”

“I’ll call it in,” Morelli said.

“Now that we blew something up and captured the dirtbag I could use some ice cream,” Grandma said. “We didn’t get to have dessert.”

“Good thinking, Granny,” Lula said.

We all turned and looked back at the twisted, charred disaster that used to be a van and a car.

“Uh-oh,” Lula said.

Ranger handed me the keys to his SUV. “I’ll have someone come get me. Tank and I need to stay and make funeral arrangements for the Macan anyway.”

I drove Ranger’s SUV back to Cluck-in-a-Bucket. We all got ice cream sundaes and took them to the booth by the window.

“Good thing I took my purse when I got out of the Macan,” Grandma said. “We couldn’t have bought these sundaes otherwise.”

My mother, Lula, and I had exited fast and left our purses behind. Tomorrow I’d be going to get a replacement driver’s license and a new messenger bag.

“I understand why you do your job,” my mother said to me. “There’s a sense of accomplishment when you take down someone bad. It’s like being a police officer or being in the Army or being a mother. You have a responsibility to protect and keep order, and you do whatever it takes to get that done.” My mother spooned into her ice cream. “I got a real rush out of it, too. I liked hitting him.”

“Yeah, we could see that,” Lula said. “You were a wild woman.”

“I have my moments,” my mother said.

I dropped my mother and grandmother off, and I was heading for home when I spotted Lula’s red Firebird in my rearview mirror. I pulled over and stopped and she ran up to me.

“I saw him,” Lula said. “I saw the lawnmower guy. He’s cutting grass on Lime Street. I was going across town to get a new driver’s license and there he was plain as day. You should go get him. It’ll be easy.”

Lime Street wasn’t far away. Five minutes tops. Jesus Sanchez wasn’t a big ticket bond, but his capture would pay for a new messenger bag. I turned around and took Liberty Street to Lime with Lula following me.

I parked when I saw Sanchez, and Lula parked behind me. I searched through Ranger’s stash of weapons and helped myself to cuffs and a stun gun. Lula got out of the Firebird and crossed the street with me. Sanchez didn’t see us or hear us. He was busy cutting grass. I walked directly behind, reached around, and clamped a bracelet on him. He looked at the bracelet and jumped away from the mower.

“He’s gonna run,” Lula said.

I saw the panic in his eyes and knew she was right. He turned from me and Lula tackled him. I got the second cuff on him, and as soon as Lula rolled off I pulled him up to his feet.

“Who owns the lawnmower?” I asked him.

“The lady in the house.”

We left the lawnmower by the lady’s front door and loaded Sanchez into the backseat of the SUV.

“I can handle it from here,” I said to Lula.

“That’s good,” Lula said. “I can continue on then and get my driver’s license and a new purse.”

“The DMV is on the other side of town.”

“I don’t go to the DMV. Nobody does that anymore. I go to Otis Brown in the projects. I don’t have to stand in line and it only costs five bucks.”

“You get a fake driver’s license?”

“Yeah, but it’s a good fake. You can’t tell the difference. And I can put a flattering picture on it. And on top of that he always has a good selection of handbags in the trunk of his car. It’s one-stop shopping.”

An hour later I was back at the office trading in my body receipt for Sanchez, getting a check for the capture in return.

“How did it go with Gobbles?” I asked Connie. “Was Vinnie able to get him released?”

“It wasn’t necessary. Charges were dropped against Gobbles. Insufficient evidence. Mintner’s injury wasn’t consistent with getting hit with a baseball bat. Plus, it’s not like Mintner is here to testify against Gobbles.”

“According to Julie, Mintner was obsessed with closing Zeta and created the incident to use as one more strike against the fraternity.”

“I was curious so I did some digging,” Connie said. “Mintner had a record of dirty tricks against Zeta. In his own way he was just as crazy as Pooka. I guess some of his craziness was justified. I found a newspaper article from a couple years ago about a scandal at Kiltman. Faculty wives had been going to parties at Zeta, and two of the wives ended up getting pregnant by a Zeta. Both Zetas involved were underage so there was a big legal mess. The women were able to avoid jail time but both of them were eventually divorced. One of those women was Ginger Mintner, Mintner’s wife.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah. I heard you took down Pooka today.”

“Actually it was my mother who took him down.”

Connie grinned. “Lula told me. She called a couple minutes ago. She was calling from her home phone because Otis couldn’t get her new phone activated until tomorrow.”

“Do you know Otis?”

“Everyone knows Otis.”

I WAS STIFF
and sore when I woke up. It was eight o’clock Wednesday morning. The sun was shining. Crazy Pooka was locked away. All I had to worry about was bubonic plague. I didn’t have a fever. No swollen lymph nodes. All positive signs. I looked out my bedroom window into the parking lot. More happy news. Ranger’s SUV was still there. I was on a roll. The dumpster forklift hadn’t carted it away. It didn’t look like it was full of geese. It had all its tires.

I limped into the kitchen and put a frozen waffle into the toaster. I started coffee brewing and I made a mental list of things I needed to do. Get a driver’s license, buy a phone and a messenger bag, replace stun gun, handcuffs, and pepper spray, find more Pilates pants, check on Becker.

I called Connie and told her I was taking a day off to organize myself. She said she’d gotten a call from Susan Gower saying that Becker was looking good and going home with his parents today. That was a relief. I was happy for him and even happier for myself. If his fingers and toes hadn’t fallen off yet maybe I’d get to keep mine awhile longer.

I spent three hours in line, waiting to get a replacement driver’s license. I would have cut out after two hours and gone to Otis but I didn’t know where to find him and I didn’t have a phone so I couldn’t call anybody. By five o’clock I’d gotten the license, bought a new messenger bag and four pairs of black Pilates pants, and had my new phone activated. I’d swapped out my jeans for one of the Pilates pants, and my knee was feeling much better.

It was close to six when I finally drove into my apartment building’s parking lot and saw Morelli’s green SUV with Morelli lounging against it. He looked over and smiled when he saw me.

“I’ve been calling you all day,” he said.

“I didn’t have a phone. It burned up in the Porsche. I just got a new one, and I had to get a new number.”

He pulled me close and kissed me. Lots of tongue and some groping in broad daylight in my parking lot. His hand moved over the stretchy Pilates pants, feeling up my ass.

“No underwear,” he said.

“Jeez Louise! We’re in the parking lot. I can see Mr. Zajak hanging out of his window.”

“Don’t care. What’s with the no underwear?”

“They’re Pilates pants. You’re not supposed to wear underwear with them.”

“I like it.”

“I can tell. Holy cow, Morelli.”

“Let’s get married. Do you want to get married?”

“Omigod,” I said. “You’re going to die. You only have two days left.”

“Do I look like a man who’s going to die?”

“No. You look really healthy. Maybe too healthy.”

“So what do you think? Do you want to go upstairs and consummate our impending marriage, or would you rather go to dinner?”

“What kind of dinner? The diner? Pino’s? The Grille?”

“Anywhere you want.”

“I’ll take the Grille. I should change into something nicer.”

“Cupcake, those pants aren’t coming off until I take them off.”

“Okay, then, I guess I’m ready to go. Your car or mine?”

“We’ll take my car. Your cars have a twenty-four-hour expiration date.”

The Grille is a relatively new restaurant on Hamilton. Previously too expensive for me, but apparently Morelli wasn’t watching his budget tonight. It’s cozy inside with dark brick walls and polished wood floors. White linen tablecloths and candles on the tables. Morelli ordered a steak and baked potato and a glass of red wine. I did the same.

“It looks like your stomach is feeling better,” I said.

“Yeah, I’ll tell you about that later. I have lots of other news for you. Stanley Pooka hasn’t stopped talking since we took him into custody. Some of it is nonsensical babbling, but a lot of it is good. As you know, his research was rejected for funding, and he was passed over for tenure. I think he didn’t have a good grip on things before that and that helped push him over the edge. He talked a lot about his obligation to cleanse the ground Kiltman was built on. He said the amulet told him to contaminate it with plague.”

“Did the amulet tell him to shoot Getz?”

“No. He thought of that all by himself. Getz went into the cellar to check on some extermination work and he went nuts over the fireworks. At that point in time Pooka didn’t have any other place to work. His apartment was filled with flea cages. So he shot Getz.”

“Makes sense to me,” I said. “What about Linken?”

“Basically the same thing. Linken was at Zeta the day of the Getz viewing to discuss a fraternity scholarship program. Someone mentioned the flea problem in the cellar, and Linken wanted to check on it. Pooka was incensed because he was forced to walk across campus and let Linken into the cellar. Linken took one look at the fireworks and threatened to bring endangerment charges against Pooka.”

“So Pooka shot him.”

“Yeah.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier just to move the fireworks operation?”

“Pooka started moving some of it. From what we can tell from the incinerated van, he had some firecrackers and blasting powder in the back. The thing is, I think Pooka was finding it easy to shoot people.
Bang!
Problem solved. He wasn’t all that logical by the time he shot Linken. His mental health wasn’t helped by the fact that he was injecting himself with a concoction that hasn’t been completely analyzed. It contained blood and a hallucinogen and God knows what else. It was supposed to make him immune to the plague.”

“Oh boy.”

“He said he shot Mintner because Mintner was nosy. He caught Mintner trying to break into the cellar, chased him outside, and shot him.”

“No one noticed?”

Morelli gave a small head shake. “We’ve interviewed a lot of people and no one noticed. It was like that sort of thing happens all the time at Zeta parties. There was a band playing and everyone was drinking and no one noticed.”

“The band was pretty good,” I said.

“Yeah, I know the band, but the drummer is no Brian Dunne.”

“That’s what Lula said!”

“Anyway, we found Pooka’s gun, and it all checks out.”

“That’s great. You’ve solved your murders.”

“The best part is coming up. Pooka had been obsessed with Unit 731 for a long time. Especially the use of plague as a military weapon. If you search back through his papers and computer history, it’s all there. He also had a history with a third-rate biotech lab in Maryland. He’d worked there off and on while he was in grad school, and he knew they kept some unsavory and illegal things in their freezers. Things like a couple rats that were supposedly infected with plague.”

“Why would they keep those rats in their freezer?”

“I guess initially the rats were sent to them for testing, but through sloppy housekeeping the rats were misplaced or something. Anyway, time passed, the rats were never tested, and they stayed in the freezer. Pooka knew about them, and one day he went in and dropped them into his raincoat pocket and walked off with them. If he’d looked into it a little more he would have found that the reason the rats weren’t tested was because no plague had been found in the area where they were trapped.”

“There’s no plague?”

“Looks that way. At least not in Trenton.”

I choked back the rush of emotion. I had my hands clasped tight in my lap, and my teeth sunk into my lower lip. I didn’t want to burst into tears in the restaurant. I was half-afraid that once I got started crying I wouldn’t be able to stop. It didn’t matter that I was crying because I was so happy. I wasn’t an attractive crier. My nose would run and my face would get blotchy and people would stare.

“Jeez,” I said, pausing a beat to get my voice under control. “I’m really relieved.”

Morelli nodded. His eyes were dark and serious, and his voice was soft. “Me, too,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I thought the hospital called you.”

We clinked our glasses in a silent toast, and we both chugged our wine. The waiter rushed over and refilled our glasses.

“Okay, so there’s no plague,” I said. “How could Pooka make a mistake like that? Didn’t he do any of his own testing?”

“By the time Pooka went to get the rats he was not in a good place.”

“He seemed odd, but he didn’t seem insane when I first met him.”

“People said that about Jeffrey Dahmer. Remember him? He was the guy who worked in a candy factory and kept decapitated heads in his freezer.”

“Like Blatzo.”

“Blatzo didn’t work in a candy factory,” Morelli said. “Even if there had been plague in the rats or in the fleas Pooka was breeding, the blood cocktail he was feeding the fleas probably would have killed the bacilli. He thought he was breeding super fleas but the lab tests suggest he was doing the opposite. None of the fleas that were found and tested were infected.”

“I’m not going to suffer the agony of the plague.”

I said it with a smile. I couldn’t stop smiling.

“So what about you?” I asked Morelli.

“Xanthan gum.”

“Excuse me?”

“I can’t digest xanthan gum. I thought I had cancer. My doctor thought I had Crohn’s disease. My Sicilian grandmother said I was cursed. I’ve been through a month of testing. I’ve been on a restrictive diet. And it turns out the restrictive diet was the worst thing. I was eating tons of gluten-free bread, and it all contains xanthan gum. So I was getting worse instead of better.”

“How did the colonoscopy turn out?”

“The colonoscopy was the best thing that happened to me. Not only am I perfect inside, but I haven’t had any xanthan gum in three days and I feel great.”

“How did you find out about the xanthan gum?”

“I was working with an allergist along with a bunch of other doctors and the allergy panel just came back.”

“You’re allergic to xanthan gum.”

Morelli cut into his steak. “Actually it’s a sensitivity, but it acts like an allergy. I can eat meat and drink wine. I just have to read labels and stay away from food additives. And it’s not stress. It’s not my job, and it’s not you.” Morelli sat back and grinned at me. “I’m cured. So do you want to get married?”

“I don’t know. Do you have a ring?”

“No. Do I
need
a ring?”

“My mom will expect to see a ring.”

“Since I don’t have a ring maybe we can get engaged to get engaged.”

“What would that involve?”

“It would involve getting you out of those Pilates pants. Unless you’d like to stay for dessert.”

“I guess I could skip dessert.”

Morelli looked around and caught the waiter’s eye. “Check!”