Tricky Twenty-Two: A Stephanie Plum Novel Read online

  TWO

  MY COUSIN VINNIE owns the bail bonds office, but his wife’s father, Harry the Hammer, owns Vinnie. Vinnie writes most of the bonds, plays the ponies, likes to get whipped once in a while by dark-skinned young men, and in general is a boil on the backside of my family tree.

  Connie Rosolli occupies the guard dog desk outside Vinnie’s private office. She keeps the office running, occasionally writes bonds, and makes sure no one kills Vinnie during office hours. She’s in her midthirties, is longtime divorced, and looks like a short, Italian, bigger-boobed Cher.

  “Whoa,” Connie said when I dragged myself into the office Monday morning. “You look like you got hit by a train. You have black circles under your eyes and a big pimple on your chin.”

  “I broke up with Morelli last night.” I put my finger to the pimple. It felt like Mount Rainier. “I think this is a candy pimple. I went through a lot of Snickers last night. And then I had a bag of Oreos for breakfast.”

  Lula was on the couch. “Oreos don’t work for breakfast,” Lula said. “You need something like a Almond Joy so you get the protein in the nut. You eat Oreos and you just get Oreo poop.”

  Lula was wearing ankle boots with studs and five-inch spike heels, a black spandex skirt that barely covered her butt, a poison green tank top that was stretched to its limit over her big boobs, and a sparkly, fluffy, pink angora cardigan. Every time she moved, some of the angora floated off the sweater and swirled in the air.

  “So what’s the deal with Morelli?” Lula asked. “He’s a hottie. You sure you want to break up with him?”

  “He broke up with me. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It was before the pimple though, right?” Lula asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, then, we can rule that out.”

  The door to Vinnie’s inner office banged open and Vinnie stuck his head out.

  “What’s going on out here?” Vinnie said. “I’m not paying you to stand around flapping your lips.” He leaned forward and squinted at me. “What the hell is that thing on your chin?”

  “It’s a pimple,” Lula said. “She got some stress in her life.”

  “Cripes,” Vinnie said. “It’s a freakin’ nightmare. It looks like Vesuvius is gonna erupt.” And he pulled back into his office, closed and locked his door.

  “I had a new FTA come in late yesterday afternoon,” Connie said. “A kid who didn’t show for his court date. I made some phone calls, and he’s definitely in the wind.” She handed the file over to me. “Ken Globovic, aka Gobbles. Twenty-one years old. College guy. Breaking and entering and aggravated assault.”

  Lula looked over my shoulder as I paged through the file.

  “It says here this moron attacked the dean of students,” Lula said. “I imagine this cut his college career short. I’m no college graduate, but I know you’re not supposed to try to kill the dean of students.”

  I looked at his picture. Sandy blond hair, fair skin, a little pudgy. Kind of cute in an albino chipmunk sort of way.

  “He don’t look like no killer,” Lula said. “He looks like he wears Winnie-the-Pooh jammies to bed at night.”

  “He’s a Zeta,” Connie said. “So you might want to start at the Zeta house.”

  “Zeta house. That sounds like a nice place,” Lula said.

  “It’s either the best or the worst fraternity on campus, depending on your point of view. The Zeta house is better known as the zoo,” Connie said. “Draw your own conclusions. And Ken Globovic holds the title of the Supreme Exalted Zookeeper. Last month the Zetas dumped a load of Alka-Seltzer into a rival fraternity’s water system and all their toilets exploded. They said it was a chemistry experiment and inspired by the movie Animal House.”

  “I bet they got a A on that one,” Lula said. “I would have given them a A.”

  I shoved the file into my messenger bag. “Anything else come in?”

  “No, but Billy Brown is still out there, and he’s a medium bond. It would be good to get that money back.”

  Billy Brown, now known far and wide as Billy Bacon, made national news when he greased himself up with bacon fat and broke into a multimillion-dollar home by sliding down the chimney. He set the alarm off on his way out and was attacked by a bacon-loving pack of dogs before he was able to get to his car. When the police rescued him they found $10,000 in jewelry and $5,000 in cash stuffed into his various pockets. Vinnie was dumb enough to bond him out, and no one’s seen Billy Bacon since.

  “I’ll keep my eyes open,” I said. “I’ll do another drive through his neighborhood.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Lula said. “As I remember he lived on K Street, and they got a deli that makes excellent egg salad. They put chopped-up olives in it and use lots of mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is the secret to a good egg salad. And you never can go wrong with olives. We could time our investigation so that it coincides with lunch. And before we go anywhere you might want to put some concealer on that pimple, so people don’t go screaming in horror and run away when they see you up close.”

  •••

  We took Lula’s car because she drives a red Firebird that’s in pristine condition while my car, which I’m pretty sure used to be a Ford Something, is a rust bucket.

  “We’re going to Kiltman College, right?” Lula asked. “You know what they call it? They call it Clitman. I mean, who’d wanna go to a school they call Clitman? If I had my choice I’d go to Rider. That’s a better name for a school. I mean I’m all in favor of acknowledgin’ ladies’ special parts, but I don’t want it on my diploma, if you see what I’m saying.”

  I was in favor of acknowledging special parts too, but I didn’t want to talk about them. I was raised Catholic, and talking about special parts with Lula made my stomach feel a little icky. Truth is, I had a hard time with the blind-faith part of Catholicism, but I was very good at holding on to Catholic guilt.

  “I’d rather not talk about the you-know-what,” I said to Lula.

  “Boy, there’s lots you don’t want to talk about today. You don’t want to talk about why you got dumped neither. I’m guessing it was a surprise. When did this happen? Last night? Maybe it’s on account of you’re sexually repressed.”

  “I’m not sexually repressed.”

  “You don’t want to talk about any of your special parts even though they’ve been brought into the mainstream lately. Ladies’ special parts are big news now.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m sexually repressed.”

  “It don’t mean nothing good, neither. So when did he dump you? Did he dump you after you did the deed? ’Cause that’s never a good sign. That could mean there was something lacking in your performance.”

  I was thinking it was a good thing I’d left my gun at home in my cookie jar because if I had it with me I might shoot Lula.

  “On the other hand, he could have asked for something unreasonable,” Lula said. “If that’s the case then good riddance is what I say. Like I don’t do none of that butt stuff no more.”

  “Good God.”

  “Exactly. It’s against human nature. I have my standards. And, okay, so some playful spanking is allowed, but, honey, you better not leave a welt. You leave a welt on my booty, and you’ll have Firebird tire treads on your ass.”

  “I don’t want to know any of this,” I said to Lula.

  “Well, I’m just sayin’. I keep my skin silky soft with lanolin, and I don’t want no welts. What’s the world coming to when a girl allows for welts on her booty?”

  •••

  Kiltman College sits on the northwestern edge of Trenton. It’s a medium-sized school known for academic excellence in the sciences, turning a blind eye toward fraternity debauchery, and for having the youngest Jeopardy! champion, wunderkind and biology prodigy Avi Attar, enrolled in its undergraduate honors program.

  Lula drove through the campus and parked in front of the Zeta house. It was a large two-story building with peeling white paint and a ragged
couch on the patchy front lawn. There was a sign over the door that originally said “Zeta” but the Z had mostly flaked off so it now read “eta.” The door had been propped open with a folding chair, and the smell of stale beer rushed out the open door.

  “These Zeta people need a air freshener,” Lula said.

  Two guys were slouched on a couch in a common area, watching SpongeBob on a big flat-screen television. I introduced myself and told them I was looking for Ken Globovic.

  “Don’t know him,” the one guy said.

  “He belongs to this fraternity,” I told him.

  “Hunh,” the guy said. “Imagine that.” He elbowed the guy next to him. “Hey, Iggy, do you know someone named Ken Globovic?”

  “Nuh-unh,” Iggy said.

  “Cute,” Lula said. “How about I sit on you and see if that helps your memory?”

  “Haw,” Iggy said. “You gonna lap dance me, momma?”

  “No,” Lula said. “I’m gonna squash you like a bug. And before I squash you, I’m gonna let Stephanie here punch you in the face.”

  I tried to look threatening, but honestly I wasn’t real big on punching people in the face. I bitch-slapped Joyce Barnhardt once. And I’d kicked a man in the knee last week, but he was armed, and he deserved to get kicked.

  Iggy looked up at me. “What’s that thing on your face? Is that a pimple?”

  “I’ve been under some stress lately,” I said.

  “I can identify,” Iggy said. “You want a beer?”

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  Four more guys wandered over.

  “These ladies are looking for someone named Ken Globovic,” Iggy said. “Any of you know him?”

  “Who?”

  “Not me.”

  “Nope.”

  “So you won’t mind if I poke around the house,” I said.

  “Poke all you want,” Iggy said. “The Zetas have nothing to hide.”

  “Yeah,” one of them said. “We’re happy to show you everything we got. You want to see what we got now?”

  Lula leaned in. “You want to see what I got?”

  They all thought about it for a beat, and shook their heads no.

  “Globovic listed the Zeta house as his address,” I said. “Someone want to show me his room?”

  They shuffled around and shrugged their shoulders.

  “Guess we gotta go room by room then,” Lula said. “Just to make it official we might bring Stephanie’s ex-boyfriend with us. He’s a cop and you might have to worry about him finding some illegal weed and stuff.”

  “Not necessary,” Iggy said, coming off the couch. “Follow me.”

  Iggy led the way, Lula and I followed, and the remaining five guys followed Lula and me. We walked out of the room, up a wide winding staircase, and down a long hallway. There was a guy standing at attention in front of an open door. He was wearing a dress.

  “Sirs,” he said as we passed.

  “He’s a pledge,” Iggy said to Lula and me.

  “Why’s he wearing a dress?” Lula asked.

  “It part of our gender sensitivity training,” Iggy said.

  “Yeah, but I might be offended by that because the color is all wrong for him and that dress got some wrinkles in it,” Lula said.

  “Someone get a paddle and give that pledge a whack for having wrinkles in his dress,” Iggy said.

  A guy peeled off the pack, and a moment later we heard whack!

  “Ow!”

  “He’s gonna have a welt,” Lula said. “He should have ironed his dress.”

  I cut my eyes to her. “He would have been fine if you hadn’t said something.”

  “Well, I just noticed, is all. You think I should tell him about lanolin?”

  “No!”

  Iggy stopped in front of a room and motioned us in. “Nobody home here,” Iggy said.

  I methodically went through the room, looking in drawers, the closet, under the bed. Some of Globovic’s books and clothes were strewn about the room, but the toiletries had been removed from the bathroom. There wasn’t a smartphone lying out. No computer or tablet. It was clear Globovic wasn’t staying here, but I didn’t find a forwarding address.

  “I don’t suppose anyone wants to tell me where I can find Globovic, or Gobbles, if that’s what you call him.”

  No one came forward.

  THREE

  WE LEFT THE Zeta house and got back into the Firebird.

  “That was a big waste of time,” Lula said. “And they were all fibbing about not knowing where Gobbles is hiding out. I figure he’s in the cellar.”

  I had the same thought, but I didn’t want to go into the Zeta house cellar. I was afraid it would be a dungeon where they kept the cross-dressing pledges. Or even worse, it could be filled with spiders.

  “There’s a story here,” I said to Lula. “This guy has no priors. He’s a good student. I didn’t see anything weird in his room. His fraternity brothers obviously like him, because they’re protecting him. His family hired a good lawyer for him, but he chose to disappear and not show up for court.”

  “Yeah, but that’s typical of a amateur,” Lula said. “Everybody’s afraid to go to jail for the first time. Especially if they got freaked out over getting arrested and locked up overnight in one of them cells at the police station. And it’s not like he got friends and relatives already in jail waiting for him like most of the people in my neighborhood. In my neighborhood the only way you can afford to get dental work done is to get yourself sent to the workhouse for a couple months. So it’s not like it’s perceived as a bad thing, you see what I’m saying?”

  I read through Globovic’s file again. His parents lived about an hour away in East Brunswick. I’d get to them eventually, but I wanted to run through the local connections first.

  “Globovic was accused of attacking the dean of students,” I said to Lula, “so let’s talk to him next.”

  After ten minutes of confused driving around the Kiltman campus, Lula managed to find the administration building.

  “This school must have been built around cow paths,” Lula said, pulling into the lot and finding an empty space to park. “There’s no signs on any of the little roads, and GPS don’t know nothing.”

  The campus was mostly composed of big blocky redbrick buildings. Two or three floors for all but the science building, which looked brand-new and was five stories. The administration building was fancied up by four columns marching across the front.

  Martin Mintner, the dean of students, had an office on the second floor. A small waiting area in front of his office held four uncomfortable wooden chairs and a scarred wood coffee table with a couple dog-eared magazines on it.

  “This must be where the bad kids get sent,” Lula said.

  The door to the dean’s office was open, so I stuck my head in. “Knock, knock.”

  The man behind the desk was slightly paunchy with dark hair cut short. Receding hairline. Gray beginning to show at the temples. I guessed he was in his early fifties. He was wearing a light blue buttoned-down shirt with a gray and red repp tie. He had a cast on his left forearm.

  He looked up from his computer at me. “Yes?”

  “Dean Mintner?”

  “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I’m looking for Ken Globovic.”

  Red spots instantly appeared on Mintner’s cheeks. “What exactly is this in reference to?”

  “I work for Vincent Plum Bail Bonds,” I said. “Mr. Globovic has missed his court date, and I need to locate him.”

  “Bounty hunter?” Mintner asked.

  “Bond enforcement.”

  Mintner nodded. “Of course. He should never have been released from jail. He’s a maniac. Broke into my house and came after me with a baseball bat. Broke my arm and practically totaled my living room.”

  “Was the bat his only weapon?”

  “So far as I know,” Mintner said. “I imagine all the details are in the police report.”


  “Why did he come after you?”

  “I don’t know,” Mintner said. “Because he’s a maniac? He just burst through the door and rushed at me. I didn’t get a chance to ask him why he was trying to kill me.”

  “He must have been unhappy about something,” Lula said.

  “He’s a Zeta,” Mintner said. “They’re all troublemakers. It’s the fraternity from hell. The school has been trying to close it for years, but the Zeta alums are big contributors to the endowment.”

  “We were just there,” Lula said. “It seemed like a nice place, except for the guy in the dress getting whacked with the paddle.”

  Mintner looked like he wanted to pop a couple Xanax. “They’re all perverts,” he said. “A bunch of sickos. I’d have the house burned to the ground, but they’d only rebuild. And Globovic is the worst. He’s the ringleader. He’s the mastermind for all the depravation. Every sick toga party springs out of his sick brain.”

  “You’d never know from his picture,” Lula said. “He looks like that Winnie-the-Pooh kid, Christopher Robin.”

  “I want him found and locked up for the rest of his life,” Mintner said. “Or at least until he’s too old and decrepit to find my house.”

  “Do you have any ideas where I should start looking?” I asked him.

  “I’m sure he hasn’t gone far. He has connections here. Friends. Misguided people who want to help him. And there’s something going on at the Zeta house. Something evil. And Globovic is involved.”

  “Whoa,” Lula said. “Evil? You mean like demons and the devil?”

  Mintner looked over at me. “Who is she?”

  “That’s Lula,” I said.

  “I’m her assistant,” Lula said. “We’re like the Lone Ranger and What’s-His-Name.”

  I gave Mintner my card and told him to call me if he heard anything about Globovic.