20 Takedown Twenty (13 page)

Morelli’s face went blank for a moment. “Seriously?” he finally said.

“It was one of those random encounters,” I told him.

“I can’t stand here talking anymore,” Lula said. “My eyes are burning. I got to de-fish myself.”

I told Morelli I’d talk to him later, and Lula and I chugged off across town to T.J. Maxx on South Broad Street. After five minutes we pretty much had the store to ourselves. Lula went with a silver sequined tank top and a short fuchsia handkerchief skirt that looked like it should be worn by the Sugar Plum Fairy. I stuck with my fish jeans and T-shirt since I was going to have to find money for a new muffler.

I dropped Lula off at the office and drove to my parents’ house. I could throw my clothes in the washer, mooch lunch, and grill Grandma on the dead women all at the same time. And hopefully it would go okay and my mother wouldn’t be dragging the ironing board out when I left.

“Look who’s here,” Grandma said, opening the front door for me. “What a good surprise, but holy cow you smell like dead fish.”

“Occupational hazard,” I said. “Is my father here?”

“No. He’s out with the cab. It’s just me and your mother.”

I stripped down to my undies and handed my jeans and T-shirt to Grandma. “I’m going upstairs to take a shower. Throw these in the washing machine for me.”

I washed my hair twice and stood under the shower until the water turned cold.

“I left clothes for you on the bed in the spare room,” Grandma yelled through the door. “Lucky I had some new underwear.”

I toweled off and went in search of the clothes. There are three small bedrooms on the second floor of my parents’ house. One for my mom and dad. Grandma Mazur slept in what used to be my sister’s room. And the third used to be mine. It was left intact for a number of years after I moved out, but gradually it changed into the spare room and my things migrated to my apartment.

Grandma had laid out a bright yellow thong and matching yellow sports bra with the tags still attached. The mental picture of Grandma in the underwear wasn’t good, but I liked that she felt comfortable buying it and wearing it. She was a little shorter than me, and our flesh was arranged differently, but the thong and the bra fit just fine. The lavender and white silky running suit she left for me was a whole other matter. Good enough to get me through lunch, but I was praying my own clothes would be dry before I was ready to leave the house.

My mother had the table set by the time I came down. “I have tomato soup and lunch meat for a sandwich,” she said. “Or I can make you a grilled cheese.”

“Tomato soup and grilled cheese would be great,” I said.

“Me too,” Grandma said. “I want extra cheese.”

I sat at the table across from Grandma. “I need some help with the women who were murdered. When I discovered they all played Bingo I thought that might be the common interest
that would lead me to the murderer, but I couldn’t single out a suspect at either game. There has to be something else the women had in common that they would come into contact with the murderer.”

“I didn’t know Melvina,” Grandma said. “I knew Bitsy Muddle, Lois Fratelli, and Rose Walchek. Poor Rose is going to be laid out tomorrow. I had to cancel a date so I could go. I heard you could see the cord marks on Rose’s neck. I hope they don’t get too covered up. I wouldn’t mind seeing something like that.”

“That’s gruesome,” my mother said.

“Maybe,” Grandma said, “but I got a natural scientific curiosity about those things. I bet I could have been one of them forensic people like on television.”

“Tell me about Rose,” I said to Grandma. “How well did you know her?”

“I guess I knew her pretty well,” Grandma said. “I saw her at Bingo, and I saw her at the beauty salon. And I saw her at the funeral parlor too. She liked to go to the afternoon viewings, because they weren’t so crowded.”

“Did she have a man friend?”

“She was seeing Barry Farver for a while, but he died. That’s the problem with dating the old geezers. That’s why I always say if you’re going to invest in a man you got to go young.”

“Gordon Krutch doesn’t look all that young.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty old, but he’s got a car. And Madelyn Krick went out with him, and she said he’s hot.”

My mother was at the stove, frying the grilled cheese. She wasn’t facing me, but I could feel her eyes rolling around in her head.

“Did she play cards? Did she belong to a book club? Did she take tap dancing lessons?” I asked Grandma.

“She liked the Jumble. She always had one of them Jumble books when she was at the beauty salon.”

“I knew Rose,” my mother said, bringing the sandwiches to the table. “She liked to cook. She went to all the cooking demonstrations at the kitchen store next to the liquor store.”

“That’s right,” Grandma said. “I forgot about that. Your mother and I go to some of them. They’re real good. You should go with us next time.”

I bit into my sandwich. “Are there men in the audience?”

“The times we were there it was almost half men,” Grandma said. “The demonstrations are early Saturday morning, and it’s a good location between the liquor store and the supermarket.”

“Did any of the other victims attend the cooking demonstrations?”

“We don’t go every week,” Grandma said. “Bitsy was there once when they were doing crêpes Suzette. Bitsy liked her booze.”

“What about Lois?” I asked. “Did she go to the cooking demonstrations?”

“I never saw her there,” Grandma said. “But I saw her in the liquor store that was next to it. It’s an excellent liquor store. Your mother and me get all our hooch there.”

“Anything else about Lois?”

“She lived a block from here, but we didn’t see her much,” Grandma said. “Sometimes we’d see her at mass.”

I finished my soup and sandwich and took my clothes out of the washing machine. They still smelled like fish, so I ran them through a second time and dumped in some bleach.

“I have to get back to work,” I said. “I’ll stop by later for my clothes.”

“Come for dinner,” my mother said. “I’m making stuffed shells, and there’s chocolate cake for dessert.”

“Sounds good.” Hard to pass up stuffed shells and chocolate cake.

I rumbled off to my apartment, changed my clothes, and turned my laptop on. I plugged the four murdered women into a basic search program and printed out a page on each of them. Address, credit history, litigation, relatives, work history. Mostly I cared about the addresses and the relatives. I was sure I was duplicating police efforts, but Ranger wanted me to snoop, so I was snooping.

Melvina had lived in a garden apartment in Hamilton Township. She’d had a couple low-limit credit cards. No work history. No litigation. Besides her son, Ruppert, there was a daughter who lived in Chicago. Melvina had survived her husband and her two siblings.

Lois Fratelli had lived in the Burg. I knew the house. It was small and tidy. Single family. She’d had several credit cards. No litigation. She’d worked as office manager for the family
plumbing business for thirty-two years. Nothing recent. She was survived by about a hundred and forty Fratellis, all of them living in the Burg.

Rose Walchek had a similar profile. Widowed. Lived in a small row house on Stanton Street. Worked at the button factory for fifteen years. Nothing recent. No children.

Bitsy Muddle had lived in a small retirement complex behind the strip mall containing the supermarket and liquor store. She’d worked as a bank teller for twenty-seven years, she’d operated a boxing machine at a sanitary products plant for eleven years, and she’d been a cashier at WalMart for five years. She’d never married.

I found none of this information inspiring. Truth is, I wasn’t exactly an ace detective. I mostly found people through dumb luck and perseverance. Catching them was an even sketchier experience.

I looked out my living room window at the parking lot and didn’t see any thugs lurking in shadows, or sitting behind the wheel of their big black cars, so I shoved the printouts into my messenger bag and headed out.

Lula was sitting at Connie’s desk when I walked in. Connie was missing in action.

“Vinnie’s at his Perverts Anonymous meeting,” Lula said, “so Connie had to go downtown to write bond on some idiot.”

“Do we know the idiot?”

Lula shook her head. “It’s a new idiot.”

“Did anything exciting happen while I was gone?”

“You mean like Sunny coming here and turning himself in?”

“Did he do that?”

“No.”

“Too bad. I hate to say it out loud, but I’m spooked over Sunny. I kept waking up last night, thinking I was falling. Getting pitched off a bridge is freaking scary. And it wasn’t any fun being locked in the trunk of the car, either.”

“I hear you. Personally, I think those guys have been watching too much violence on television. They been seeing too many reruns of
The Sopranos
. Their behavior is disturbing. I’m even thinking twice about going over to check on Kevin. I haven’t given him any lettuce today. ’Course I’m not sure he was the one eating the lettuce anyways. It might have just been the homeless fool. I mean, who eats lettuce like that? He didn’t have no Thousand Island dressing or nothing.”

“I’ve been thinking maybe I should talk to Joe’s mother about Uncle Sunny.”

“What? Are you nuts? She doesn’t like you to begin with. And she’s probably got Bella there. She’ll send her out after you like a junkyard dog.”

“Sunny kills people. How can they not understand that?”

“They probably think he only kills bad people. Like people who don’t pay their protection money.”

“That’s wrong.”

“Yeah, but that’s
your
standards. You should live in
my
neighborhood. People get killed if they’re wearing the wrong
deodorant. Only thing good I can say is people in my ’hood don’t drop people off a bridge. You know you’re gonna get knifed or shot in my neighborhood.”

“That must make you rest a lot easier.”

“At least I don’t have to worry about my hair looking like crap when I meet my maker.”

I dropped the body receipt for Mary Treetrunk on Connie’s desk. “Make sure Connie sees this. I’m going to do a drive-around and check out the dead women’s neighborhoods. And then I’m going to my parents’ house for dinner.”

“No Bingo tonight?”

“I’m taking a night off from Bingo.”

I was taking a night off from Bingo because I was going to get Ranger to help me snag Uncle Sunny.

BY THE TIME I got to my parents’ house I had a raging headache from riding around in my mufflerless car.

“I knew you were here,” Grandma said, opening the front door for me. “We could hear you coming a mile away.”

“I’m going to have to borrow Uncle Sandor’s car until I get mine fixed,” I said. “I can’t take the noise.”

“No problem. It’s in the garage. It’s all filled up with gas and ready to go.”

My Great Uncle Sandor handed his 1953 powder blue and white Buick Roadmaster over to my Grandma Mazur when he went into the nursing home. He’s since died, and the monster car now lives at my parents’ house, available for use as a loaner. It gets about three miles to a gallon. It drives like a refrigerator on wheels. And it does nothing for my self-esteem. On the plus side: It’s free and it’s invincible.

My father was in his chair in the living room, watching television. He’s retired from the post office and now drives a cab part-time. He has a few regulars that he drives to the train station every morning and picks up every evening, and the rest of the day he drives the cab to his lodge and plays cards with “the boys.” He used to keep a shotgun in the house for protection, but we had to get rid of it for fear he’d shoot Grandma in a gonzo moment of berserk frustration.

I passed through the dining room on my way to the kitchen and noticed that the table was set for five.

“Who’s coming to dinner?” I asked. “There’s an extra place setting.”

The doorbell chimed and Grandma scurried off to get the door.

“Stephanie,” my mother called. “Come get the shells. They’re ready to go. And there’s antipasto.”

I draped my bag over the back of a kitchen chair and reached for the antipasto platter. “Who’s coming to dinner?”

“No one special. Just someone I ran into today.”

I stopped in the middle of the kitchen. “Who?”

“Randy Berger. And don’t you dare go out the back door.”

“Randy Berger the butcher?”

“He’s not the butcher anymore. He owns the deli now. And he’s still looking for someone to take over the meat counter. It could be a good job for you. You could get a regular paycheck, and no one would shoot at you or drop you off a bridge. And Randy is single. Who knows what could happen? He could turn out to be
the one
.”

“I found
the one
. I’m almost engaged to Morelli.”

Problem was I hadn’t just found
the one
… I’d found
the two
.

Grandma came into the kitchen with Randy Berger in tow. Berger was a giant. He was 6’ 3” and built like someone who ate four double pork chops in a single sitting. He had thinning sandy blond hair and a face permanently flushed from freezer burn and peach schnapps.

“It’s real nice of you to invite me to dinner,” Randy said to my mother, handing her a large chunk of meat wrapped in white butcher’s paper. “I brought you a little something.”

“My goodness,” my mother said, reading the label. “It’s a tenderloin.”

“I just got it in,” Randy said. “It’s corn-fed, and it’s got real good marbling. I know everybody’s always talking about grass-fed beef, but if you ask me it’s shoe leather. Give me a cow that’s been shoved into a pen with a thousand other cows and forced to eat grain, and I’ll show you a darn good pot roast.”

“I guess you know a lot about meat,” Grandma said to Randy.

“It’s been my life,” Randy said. “Except now that I own the deli I have to expand my horizons.”

My mother put the meat into the fridge, and pushed everyone into the dining room.

“Frank,” she said to my father. “Come to the table. We’re ready to eat. Did you meet Randy?”

My father took his seat and looked over at Randy. “You’re the butcher.”