Twisted Twenty-Six (Stephanie Plum 26) Read online

  “When do you find out about the money?”

  “The lawyer said he would schedule a meeting for sometime next week.”

  “I guess that’s pretty exciting.”

  “You bet,” Grandma said. “I’ve never been rich before.”

  My mother was ironing, taking all this in. Periodically she would sigh and roll her eyes.

  “How long have you been ironing that same shirt?” I asked her.

  “Not long enough,” she said. “It’s got a wrinkle.”

  “It didn’t have any wrinkles when she started,” Grandma said. “Maybe we should all break for lunch.”

  “Just give me a couple minutes,” my mother said. “I need to finish this.”

  The back door banged open and two men barged in. They were wearing balaclavas and holding guns.

  “Don’t nobody move,” the taller of the gunmen said.

  The other grabbed Grandma and yanked her out of her chair. I jumped to my feet, reached for Grandma, and the tall guy squeezed off a shot that came as such a shock to all of us, including the gunman, that everyone froze for a beat. I felt searing heat rip through my arm and realized he’d tagged me.

  My mother’s face contorted, and she produced a sound that rocked the kitchen and was somewhere between enraged mother bear and crazed hyena. She charged the man who shot me and swung the iron wide, ripping the cord out of the wall socket and smacking him square in the face with the iron. He crashed to the floor and didn’t move.

  The man holding Grandma said “Holy Jesus,” released Grandma, and ran out of the house. I ran after him, he fired a shot at me, and I ducked back into the kitchen. When I peeked out a second time he was gone. I ran to the front door and looked out, catching a glimpse of a silver car racing down the street.

  I returned to the kitchen, where Grandma and my mother were standing at a distance, staring at the guy who was motionless, toes up, on the floor. My mother was still holding the iron.

  “Do you think he’s dead?” Grandma asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not getting close enough to find out.”

  I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and punched in Morelli’s number.

  “Someone tried to kidnap Grandma,” I said, “but my mother clocked him with her iron and we’re not sure if he’s dead.” I realized blood was dripping off my elbow onto the floor, so I added that I’d been shot.

  I hung up and wrapped a kitchen towel around my arm. The wound was throbbing, and I was feeling wobble-legged, so I sat down at the little table. I was joined by my mother and Grandma.

  “Are you okay?” Grandma asked me. “Maybe you should lay down until the medics get here.”

  “I don’t think it’s terrible,” I said. “I wasn’t shot in any vital organs.”

  My mother had ice in a plastic baggie. “Try this on it. I don’t know what to do for a gunshot wound.”

  She handed me the ice and put the iron on the table. We all watched the man on the floor. If he moved at all I was going to take the iron off the table and hit him again.

  In minutes there were sirens and flashing lights and the house was filled with cops and paramedics.

  “What must the neighbors think?” my mother said. “We have cars burning up and shootings. If this keeps up, we’ll have to sell the house and move where people don’t know about us.”

  “You worry too much,” Grandma said. “It’s not like we’re the only ones with emergencies. Herbert Kuntz goes into cardiac arrest at least twice a month, and the whole street lights up with flashing lights.”

  A paramedic had my shirtsleeve cut off and was working at the wound site. Sweat was beading on my forehead from the pain, but I was focused on the team of people tending to the guy on the floor. From the amount of activity, I assumed he was alive.

  Morelli walked into the kitchen and shook his head at me. Not happy.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  “You were worried and you love me?” I asked.

  He kissed the top of my head. “Yeah. How bad is it?”

  “It’s not bad,” the medic said. “Looks like the bullet passed through the upper arm without hitting the bone. My guess is there was minimum muscle involved. I’ve got the bleeding under control, but she needs to go to the ER and get stitched up.”

  Morelli looked down at the iron, still on the table. “Your mom really took him out with the iron?”

  “Yep. She was awesome. Totally terrifying.”

  Morelli cracked a smile. “Nice.”

  “How’s the guy on the floor doing?” I asked Morelli. “Do you recognize him?”

  Morelli stepped over to where the gunman was still sprawled and spoke to one of the uniforms standing watch. A stretcher was rolled in, and the gunman was loaded onto it. Morelli came back to me.

  “I don’t recognize him,” Morelli said, “but then it’s hard to really see what he looks like with the big iron imprint on his face. He didn’t have any ID on him. The only thing in his pocket was a packet of what appears to be cocaine.”

  Lula swung into the room. “What’s going on? What did I miss? I couldn’t get a hair appointment so I came for lunch.” She spied the guy on the stretcher. “Holy crap! What happened to him?”

  “He tried to kidnap Grandma, so my mother took him out with her iron,” I said.

  Lula turned to my mom. “Way to go, Mrs. P.!” She did a high five and a down low with her. “Is he dead?”

  “Not yet,” Grandma said.

  “Good thing,” Lula said. “If California found out a guy got killed with an iron, they’d ban them, and all those movie stars would be wrinkled all the time.”

  The medic attending me packed up. “We need to get Stephanie out to the truck,” he said to Morelli.

  I glanced over at Grandma and my mother. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “As soon as they get this guy out of here, we’re hitting the bottle,” Grandma said.

  My mother nodded. “Then we’re going to pull on some gloves and scrub the floor.”

  “I’ll stay and help,” Lula said. “I need to hear all the details.”

  It was close to six o’clock by the time I was released from the hospital. I was numbed up, stitched up, and hydrated. Morelli had waited with me, going between my bed and the gunman’s bed in the ER.

  “I told your mom we were bringing pizza for dinner,” he said. “I thought you would want to check up on her and Grandma.”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  We stopped at Pino’s. Morelli ran in and came out with a bunch of pizza boxes.

  “That’s a lot of pizza,” I said.

  “Some of it is for the Rangeman guys parked in front of your parents’ house. We decided you would come home with me, and Ranger would leave a patrol to watch over your family.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’m starving, but I’m exhausted. I can barely think.”

  “It’s the adrenaline letdown,” Morelli said. “You just need pizza.”

  My mother, Grandma, and my dad were lined up on the couch, watching the news on TV. They were slack-faced and glassy-eyed. My dad had his baseball bat resting beside the couch.

  We ate at the dining room table. Nobody said anything. Finally, Grandma broke the silence.

  “There’s bingo tonight,” she said. “It’s at the firehouse. Margie Pratt said she’d pick me up.”

  My father’s mouth dropped open and a piece of pizza fell out. “Jeez Louise,” he said. “Why don’t you just stand in the middle of the street and let a car hit you. Get it over with so I can stop carrying this baseball bat around with me.”

  “What my father is saying, is that maybe going to bingo tonight isn’t such a good idea,” I said.

  Grandma gnawed on a pizza crust. “There’s nothing on television that I want to see, and Marvina is calling numbers at the firehouse. It’s always good when Marvina calls.”

  “I can’t go with you,” I said. “The local is wearing off and my arm is starting to throb again
.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll be with Margie. She’s a crack shot. We go to the rifle range together sometimes.”

  This was a surprise to me. “You go to the rifle range?”

  “Sure. Thursdays are for the ladies,” Grandma said. “That’s when we go.”

  “I thought you went to the hair salon on Thursdays,” my mother said to Grandma.

  “I get my hair done first, and then Margie and I go shoot a hundred rounds,” Grandma said. “I wouldn’t be telling you this, but pretty soon I imagine I’ll have my own house and lots of money for ammo, and I’ll be able to shoot every day if I want.”

  My mother made the sign of the cross, drained her iced tea glass, and cut a fast look to the kitchen. Undoubtedly wondering if anyone would notice if she got more iced tea.

  “I’m running low on energy,” I said. “I’m going home with Morelli, and I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow. In the meantime, Ranger has a car out front. It’ll stay with you all night. If Grandma goes to bingo, the car will go with her. Lock your doors. If there’s a problem, call me.”

  My mother gave me a thumbs-up and winked at me. It was the first time I’d ever seen her wink. I didn’t know she could wink. I guess if you drink enough iced tea anything is possible.

  I looked around the table. Morelli was pushed back in his chair and smiling. Grandma was on her phone checking her messages. My father helped himself to another piece of pizza. We were the All-American Family.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT. No phone calls from Grandma, Ranger, my mom. No requests for sex at three A.M. from Morelli. My arm ached, but not horribly. Life was good. The sun was shining, and Morelli was standing at bedside, dressed in jeans and a checked button-down shirt.

  “What’s with this?” I said. “Why aren’t you at work?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Wow, this is serious.”

  “Yeah, it scares the hell out of me,” Morelli said. “How are you feeling?”

  “My arm is sore, but overall I feel good.” I rolled out of bed and went in search of clothes. “It’s hard to get my mind off Grandma. Yesterday was scary.”

  “We’ve identified the gunman as Marcus Velez. He’s been picked up on a couple vagrancy charges. Tried to rob a convenience store a couple months ago and failed miserably. Was given two weeks in the workhouse. Just got out.”

  “Do we know who hired him?”

  “No. He was too out of it to talk last night. Loopy from drugs and a concussion. He’s still at St. Francis. I’ll drop in on him when I leave here.”

  “Let me know how it goes.”

  “What’s your plan for the day?”

  “I’m going to read over Connie’s La-Z-Boys files one more time, and then I’m going to try to find the weakest link. I’m thinking Velez isn’t associated with the Boys. They have their own men, and those men wouldn’t have a rap sheet like Velez.”

  “Yeah, he’s cheap labor. Someone picked him off a street corner and gave him a gun.”

  Morelli left, and I settled in with coffee and a frozen waffle. After an hour and a half of reading I decided to target Julius Roman. He wasn’t a weak link, but he had a predictable pattern of behavior. Every weekday at precisely 11:45 A.M. he would leave the Mole Hole and walk three blocks to New Town Deli. He did this rain or shine. A small table toward the back of the deli was reserved for him. On rare occasions someone would join him, but usually he ate alone. He had chicken soup and a sourdough roll. He left without paying. We knew all this because Connie’s cousin owned the deli. It was a small world.

  I rinsed out my coffee mug, told Bob to be a good boy, and walked to my parents’ house. I waved to the Rangeman guys and let myself in through the front door. My father’s chair was empty. My mom and Grandma were in the kitchen.

  “The front door was unlocked,” I said. “I told you to lock your doors.”

  “We don’t have to lock the front door,” Grandma said. “We got the Rangeman guys watching it.”

  I tried the back door. It was unlocked.

  “Must have forgot that one,” Grandma said.

  I locked the door and hiked my bag higher on my shoulder. “I can’t stay,” I said. “I’m on my way to work, and I needed to pick up the car.”

  “I guess your arm’s not too bad if you’re going to work,” Grandma said.

  “It’s manageable. What are your plans for today?”

  “I haven’t got much plans,” Grandma said. “We got laundry going, and after that we’re making meatballs for dinner. Crystal Buzick is at Stiva’s tonight. There won’t be much of a crowd, but I’m interested to see how they covered up the big mole she had on her chin. It was all lumpy and it stuck out something awful and it had hairs growing out of it. It’s going to take some skill to make that look good.”

  I slid my mother a look that said don’t even think about sending me with Grandma to see the lumpy mole.

  Lula and Connie were outside the office, staring up at the roof. I parked and went to stand next to them.

  “What are we looking at?” I asked.

  “Richie Meister,” Connie said. “We aren’t sure how he got up there, but it looks like he doesn’t know how to get down.”

  “Hey, Richie!” I yelled.

  A head with shaggy brown hair popped over the side of the building. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t get Humpty-Dumpty down again,”

  Richie said. “Richie’s been snarfing magic mushrooms,” Lula said.

  “We should get a ladder,” I said.

  “No need for that,” Lula said. “Mrs. Capello walked by and saw him up there and called the fire department. She said they got her cat out of a tree once, so she figured they could get Richie off the roof.”

  We looked down the street toward the firehouse and saw that a hook and ladder was chugging our way. It was followed by a police car and an EMT.

  “Seems like overkill, but I guess they gotta be prepared in case he turns out to be a jumper,” Lula said. “I like that they brought the hook and ladder. Shows that they take their job seriously. This should be real entertaining.”

  The fire truck stopped in front of the office, and a bunch of guys in full gear got out and looked up at Richie. I knew one of the guys. Butch Kaharski.

  “This is the third time this month we’ve taken him off a roof,” Butch said.

  “Yo, Richie,” he yelled. “How’d you get up there?”

  “My dragon dropped me off,” Richie said.

  “Can your dragon get you down?” Butch asked.

  “He flew away. I don’t know where he went. He’s sort of a free-spirit dragon.”

  Butch turned to Connie. “Are there stairs to the roof?”

  “No.”

  “This building backs up to an alley,” Butch said. “We’ll drive the truck around and pick him off from there.”

  Everyone got back into the truck, and the truck chugged around the corner. Connie, Lula, and I went into the bonds office and had a donut. After a couple minutes there was a knock on the back door. We all went to the door and looked out at Butch.

  “There’s a dead guy back here,” he said.

  My heart skipped a beat. “Richie?”

  “No. An unknown. We found him behind the dumpster. He’s got a hole in his head. Do you want to take a look and see if you can ID him?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I’ll pass on that too,” Lula said. “I don’t like dead stuff. Especially people.”

  Connie went with Butch, looked at the dead guy, and came back to us. “I don’t know him,” she said. “I took a picture with my phone, if you want to see.”

  I looked at the picture. “It’s possible that this is one of the men who tried to kidnap Grandma. I remember his shoes. Red Air Jordans. And he’s the right size. I didn’t get to see his face.”

  I called Morelli and told him about the body behind the dumpster.

  “I�
�m already on my way,” he said. “I just got a call from the uniform who’s on the scene with you. He was at your parents’ house yesterday and remembered you talking about the red shoes.”

  We went out and watched the ladder go up and Richie get helped down.

  “This is a lot better than last time,” Butch said. “Last time he was naked, and no one wanted to bring him down. We had to draw straws.”

  “The boy’s got a problem,” Lula said. “He needs to get a different dragon.”

  We all nodded agreement.

  “I suppose you’re going to want to wait for Morelli,” Lula said. “I hope he gets here soon because I’m in a mood to go after the shoplifter.”

  “He said he was already on his way.”

  “What do you think of my hair?” she asked.

  Lula’s hair was cut short, dyed blue-black, and was totally slicked down.

  “I like it,” I said.

  “It’s one of them retro-French looks.”

  “Yep. I can see that.”

  “It’s why I’m wearing this little scarf around my neck. It’s the recommended accessory.”

  Richie was on the ground, flitting around like a butterfly, flapping his arms. The first responders were standing back, waiting for him to get tired.

  “I don’t know what he’s on,” Butch said, “but I want some.”

  Connie went into the office and came back with the donut box. There were two donuts left. She waved the box in front of Richie and immediately got his attention.

  “If you go in the truck with the medics, you can have these donuts,” Connie said.

  Richie stopped flitting and took the donut box. “Yum.”

  “We’ve got to remember to bring donuts next time we get called out to rescue a crazy,” Butch said.

  Morelli angle parked behind the fire truck and walked over to us.

  “Did Velez tell you anything?” I asked him.

  “He met a guy in a bar, they got to talking, and the guy offered him a job. One-time hit. Fifty dollars.”

  “That’s all? Fifty dollars?”

  “Velez thought it was good money.”