Look Alive Twenty-Five Read online

  “And?”

  “And fill it. I’m going flat-out, and Raymond’s up to his tits in fries.”

  I looked at the list on the counter. Ten sandwiches, four fries, six sides of slaw, two mac and cheese, one rice pudding, and two pieces of apple pie.

  “Move over,” Lula said. “I’m all about this.” She took a red flowered scarf out of her purse and wrapped it around her hair bandanna style. “Where’s my hat? I need my hat.”

  I gave her one of the hats and took a step back.

  “You get to be the sous chef,” Lula said, taking the list from me. “Put your hat on and get me a loaf of bread. It says here we gotta start with a number seven. What the heck is a number seven?”

  “I thought you had the menu memorized.”

  “I only memorized the ones I wanted to eat. Some fool don’t know better than to order a number seven. Maybe we should do him a favor and give him a number twelve.”

  “The menu says a number seven is turkey and Swiss on whole grain.”

  “Three ounces of turkey and two slices of Swiss,” Stretch said. “The turkey is pre-measured. Mustard on the Swiss side and mayo on the turkey. Every sandwich gets two deli pickles.”

  “Boy, they got this to a science,” Lula said. “Everything’s in these bins. All I need is the bread. Who eats multigrain, anyway? Multigrain don’t melt in your mouth like white bread.”

  I gave Lula the bread and she slathered mustard on one and mayo on the other. She added the turkey and Swiss and shook her head.

  “This isn’t a Lula sandwich,” she said. “I can’t be proud sending out a sandwich like this.” She added Tabasco and two strips of bacon. “This person is gonna thank me. I’m giving them a superior culinary experience.”

  She sliced the sandwich in half, and I put it in one of the plastic containers with two pickles.

  “You gotta move faster,” Stretch said. “Pickup’s waiting.”

  “You gotta chill,” Lula said. “I’m making gastrointestinal history. You can’t rush this artistic shit.”

  We slapped together nine more sandwiches, got the sides put together and boxed up the pie. Dalia bagged everything and took it all to the pickup counter.

  “I need pie,” Lula said. “I got a pie craving.”

  “What about the sandwiches you wanted?”

  “I ate a lot of the fixings while we were doing the takeout order, but I didn’t get any pie.”

  Connie called on my cellphone. “I’m at the courthouse, and there’s no Annie Gurky. Did you get a receipt for her?”

  “No,” I said. “I was in a rush to get back to the deli, so I told the cop at the desk to give you the receipt.”

  “He’s saying you didn’t make it clear that she needed to be held.”

  “She was cuffed!”

  “He might not have noticed. Anyway, responsibility is in a gray zone right now, so see if you can find her. She probably called Uber and is back in her house.”

  I looked out at the dining area. The lunch trade seemed to be winding down. Half of the booths were empty.

  “I’m taking off for a while,” I said to Stretch. “Things to do.” Like tell Vinnie he should hire a new manager.

  “You need to be back here at five o’clock,” Stretch said. “It gets nuts when the rush hour trains roll in.”

  “And do not go out the back door,” Raymond said.

  “My car is parked in the back,” I said.

  “No, no, no,” he said. “Do not ever park there. We call that the Domain of the Death Dumpster. That is where managers go to disappear.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, “but I’m going to chance it this one time.”

  Raymond handed me a meat cleaver. “Take this with you. You must protect yourself.”

  “She don’t need that,” Lula said. “I’m packing a loaded Glock. And I’m taking a pie as backup.”

  “Good luck,” Raymond said. “Keep your eyes open. I hope you return. We will soil ourselves trying to get through the evening covers without an extra hand.”

  Lula pulled a pumpkin pie from the fridge, grabbed a fork, and followed me out. She stopped in the middle of the small lot and looked around.

  “So, this is where it happens,” she said. “I guess it’s like poof and no more manager. Just a shoe left behind. Maybe it’s aliens beaming up managers. That would be the most logical explanation. I could see that happening.”

  “Why would aliens leave a shoe behind?”

  “It could be a thoughtful gesture so his family knew he was taken by aliens. Or maybe when you get beamed up your shoe falls off. It could be a side effect of beaming up. If you don’t mind I’m not standing too close to you in case you suddenly get beamed up.”

  I allowed myself a grimace and a single eye roll, and I got into my Nova. Lula buckled up next to me and forked into the pie.

  “Annie Gurky wandered away from the police station,” I said to Lula. “Connie is canvassing the area around the municipal building, and I’m going to go back to Annie’s house.”

  “It would be bad if someone finds one of her shoes,” Lula said. “That would mean the aliens were looking to diversify in their beaming.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LULA WAS HALFWAY through the pie when I pulled into Annie’s apartment complex. I parked in one of the guest spaces allotted to her unit, left Lula in the car, and went to Annie’s door. I rang the bell three times. No answer. I looked in her front windows. No sign that she was inside. Her car was parked in the lot. I went back to my car and called Annie’s cellphone.

  She answered on the second ring.

  “Hey,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Stephanie Plum.”

  “Well, then, I’m at the police station.”

  “I know you aren’t at the police station. I hear noise in the background. Omigod, are you at the airport?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You are. I just heard them announce a flight to Miami.”

  Annie disconnected.

  I banged my head against the steering wheel and told Lula that Annie was at the airport.

  “She’s sneaky,” Lula said. “You gotta respect that.”

  “I’m going back to the office,” I said. “I want to talk to Vinnie.”

  “You aren’t going to quit the deli job, are you? That would be a big mistake. Huge mistake. We got a future with sandwiches. I could see people traveling for hours just to get one of our sandwiches. We could be up there with the Amazon guy and the Facebook guy except with sandwiches. I’m thinking about taking out patents on my sandwich creations. You know that last sandwich that we made where we started to run out of stuff so we put in whatever was left?”

  “The sandwich with the green sliced turkey?”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking about getting a patent on that one and calling it the Garbage Truck.”

  I thought it might be more accurately called the Salmonella Special.

  I left the apartment complex, drove to the office, and parked.

  “The place looks closed up,” Lula said.

  We got out and went to the door. Locked. No lights on inside. I called Connie.

  “Where are you?” I asked her.

  “I’m still at the courthouse. Did you find Annie Gurky?”

  “No. I’m at the office and it’s locked. Where’s Vinnie?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Try his cellphone.”

  I called Vinnie’s cellphone and home phone. No answer on either.

  “This is fate stepping in,” Lula said. “Fate doesn’t want you to quit the deli.”

  I was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking fate was a load of baloney, when Morelli cruised down the street. He hooked an illegal U-turn and pul
led in behind my car.

  It was September and Jersey was still feeling like summer. Morelli was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled. His hair was curling over his ears and down the back of his neck, and he had a five o’clock shadow a couple hours early. He smiled at me, and my doodah got happy.

  “I was just about to call you,” he said. “Are you up for burgers tonight?”

  Morelli and I don’t live together, but I keep a change of clothes and a toothbrush at his house. Burgers would be good. What followed would be even better.

  “Burgers sound okay, but I might be late,” I said. “I’m helping out at the Red River Deli.”

  “Yeah, she’s the new manager,” Lula said. “And I’m the assistant manager.”

  Morelli wrapped his hand around my arm and pulled me to the side of the building.

  “I suppose you want to have a private conversation,” Lula yelled after us. “I’ll just wait in the car, being that I’m tired from eating all that pie anyways.”

  “Are you serious?” Morelli asked me. “Manager?”

  “The agency was awarded the deli on a bond foreclosure. Harry’s decided to keep it, and he asked me to be manager.”

  “Do you know why he’s decided to keep it?” Morelli asked. “It’s because no one will buy it. It’s known as the Demon Deli. Sometimes it’s called the Death Deli. And on special occasions it’s the Deli of Doom or the One-Shoe Horror.”

  “I hadn’t heard it called any of those names.”

  “Do you know about the managers? Three managers have disappeared in two weeks. Always leaving a shoe behind. No other clue. Not a shred of evidence. They just went through the back door and evaporated.”

  “Is it your case?”

  “Jimmy Krut pulled it but I’m the secondary. I came in when the third manager disappeared.”

  “I didn’t know about the disappearances when I took the job this morning. I found out when I got to the deli.”

  “It hasn’t received a lot of publicity. The first manager who disappeared had been manager for six years. Elroy Ruiz. Entire family was in Mexico. He sent most of his money home. He went out to smoke some weed at eight-fifteen on a Monday night and never came back. They said it wasn’t the first time Elroy took off for a while. No one thought anything about it until Wednesday. Didn’t get reported to the police until Friday.”

  “What about the shoe? Didn’t they think it was odd that his shoe was left in the parking lot?”

  Morelli grinned. “Everyone thought he was on a good buzz.”

  “And the second manager?”

  “Kenny Brown. Twenty-six years old. Ten years of restaurant experience. Started washing dishes when he was sixteen. Lived with his mother. Straight arrow except for his coke habit.”

  “The drug?”

  “The drink. Was on the job for a week. Took a bag of garbage out to the dumpster around nine o’clock and never came back. Everyone assumed he’d left for the night. One of the cooks found Brown’s car still parked in the lot the next day. Brown’s shoe was next to it. The third manager, Ryan Meier, lasted two days. The little fry cook freaked when he went out to look for the manager and tripped over the shoe in the dark.”

  “Is this happening anyplace else?”

  “No. Just at Red River Deli. And just to managers . . . so far.”

  “Jeez.”

  “Yup,” Morelli said. “That about sums it up. Tell me you’re not going back there.”

  “I was going to quit but Vinnie isn’t in the office.”

  “Send him a text message.”

  I typed the message into my phone. As of this instant I quit my job as manager of Red River Deli.

  “I’ll throw the burgers on the grill at six o’clock,” Morelli said.

  I returned to my car and buckled myself in.

  “Did you see him?” Lula asked. “It was the hot guy in black. Wulf. He was in a shiny black 4×4 pickup with oversized tires and bug eyes on the cab. He drove right past us and turned at the corner.”

  “I wasn’t paying attention to the traffic,” I said. “I was talking to Morelli.”

  “How’d that go?” Lula asked.

  “Good. He’s grilling burgers tonight, and I texted Vinnie that I quit.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe this is a good thing. Maybe Vinnie will make me manager. It could get me a raise.”

  “You aren’t afraid you’ll disappear?”

  “I have it figured out. I won’t go near the parking lot. I’ll always go out the front door.”

  “What about the garbage?”

  “I’ll send it out with Stretch. He doesn’t have to worry on account of he’s a cook. And I’ll be the manager, so I can assign him garbage detail. Only problem is we have to find Vinnie, so we can make the job switch. Of course, you quit in a text message, so I guess I could text him that I’m taking over as manager.”

  I slipped Wayne Kulicki’s file out of my bag. “I need to find this guy.”

  “If you’re hard up for money now that you’re not a manager, I might hire you as a waitress or dishwasher or something.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Are you coming with me or are you going back to the deli?”

  “I’ll ride with you so long as I get back to the deli by five o’clock.”

  Wayne Kulicki was renting a small one-bedroom row house on the fringe of Chambersburg. He’d been a trust officer with a local bank prior to going bonkers and destroying the Eat and Go. He was currently unemployed.

  I drove one block down Hamilton Avenue, turned into the Burg, and wound around the maze of streets that led to the row houses. Kulicki’s house was third from the corner and not in great shape. The paint was peeling off the clapboard, and one of his two front windows was cracked.

  I parked in front of the house, and Connie called.

  “Where are you?” Connie asked.

  “I’m in front of Wayne Kulicki’s house. Where are you?”

  “I’m in the parking lot behind the office. Vinnie’s car is here. And his shoe.”

  “Is Vinnie’s foot in the shoe?”

  “No.”

  “Is Vinnie in the office?”

  “No.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, I’m not kidding,” Connie said. “I called his cell, and there’s no answer. I called his wife, and she hasn’t seen him since this morning.”

  “Is there any sign of struggle? Blood?”

  “No. None of that. Just the shoe.”

  “This is too bizarre. Are you sure Vinnie isn’t hanging out somewhere watching you, laughing his ass off?”

  “I don’t hear any laughing,” Connie said. “Do you think I should call the police? It’s not like I could definitely say I’m looking at a crime scene. And suppose I’m being punked, and I’m too stupid to know it?”

  “Do you know Jimmy Krut?”

  “Yes. I went to school with him,” Connie said.

  “Give him a call. He’s the primary on the deli disappearances.”

  I disconnected and told Lula about the shoe.

  “That’s not fitting the profile,” Lula said. “That’s changing the modus operandi. Someone’s got a lot of nerve doing that. I was counting on being able to go out the front door. And Vinnie isn’t even the deli manager. Of course, he’s the bonds office manager so maybe that’s got a relationship there.”

  “Do you still want to be manager of the deli?”

  “Hell no. Those space aliens got a manager fixation.”

  I was having a hard time believing that Vinnie had gotten beamed up, chopped up, or otherwise abducted. It was too weird. I needed more proof than a shoe. I needed a video, a bloody handprint, a text message. I needed something confirming that a disaster had occurred. I mean, anybody could los
e a shoe, right? And how do we know it wasn’t planted by Vinnie so he could go off and get spanked by Madam Zaretsky?

  “So, what are we going to do now?” Lula asked.

  “We’re going to see if Wayne Kulicki is home.”

  I knocked on his door, and he answered on the second knock.

  “What?” he said.

  He was fifty-six years old, five foot ten, balding, and soft around the middle. He was wearing a stained T-shirt and boxer shorts, and he was holding a gun.

  “Whoa,” Lula said. “That’s no way to answer a door. Where’s your manners? You don’t say ‘What?’ in that tone. You say ‘Hello’ and you smile on account of there’s two ladies on your doorstep. And besides, what’s with the gun?”

  “I’m thinking of killing myself.”

  “If I was you I’d change my shirt first. You don’t want to clock out with a stained T-shirt,” Lula said.

  “I represent Vincent Plum Bail Bonds,” I said to Kulicki. “You missed your court date and need to come with us to reschedule.”

  “I can’t go now. I have an important decision to make.”

  “Maybe we can help you,” Lula said. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Killing myself.”

  “There’s lots of decisions associated with that,” Lula said. “I assume you’re gonna shoot yourself in the head.”

  “Yeah,” Kulicki said.

  “Well, your head will most likely explode and make a big mess when you shoot yourself, so best to do it in the bathroom or kitchen. And then are you going to leave a note? And you’ll probably poop your pants so you gotta decide if boxers are the best choice or do you want to be wearing something more sturdy?”

  “Mostly I was just thinking if I should do it,” Kulicki said.

  “I’d advise against it,” Lula said. “It’s not something you can change your mind on after you do it. And suppose the bullet doesn’t go in exactly right and you turn yourself into an unsightly vegetable?”

  Kulicki nodded. “That’s a concern.”

  “You bet your ass,” Lula said. “Why do you want to kill yourself?”

  “To begin with, I’m going to jail.”

  “It might not be so bad,” Lula said. “I know lots of people in jail, and they’re doing okay. Besides, you could get off with community service or something. You don’t know for sure if you’ll get jail time.”