Hard Eight (11 page)

“And we’re going to sit here until we figure this out? This sounds like it could take a long time. I don’t know if I’m prepared to sit here for a long time. I mean, what about food? And I have to go to the bathroom. I had a super-size soda before I picked you up. You didn’t say anything about a long time.”

I gave Lula the squinty eye.

“Well, I gotta go,” Lula said. “I can’t help it. I gotta wee.”

“Okay, how about this. We passed a mall on the way in. How about if I drop you at the mall, and then I take the car and do the surveillance.”

Half an hour later, I was back at the curb, alone, snooping on Dotty. The drizzle had turned to rain and lights were on in some of the houses. Dotty’s house was dark. A blue Honda Civic rolled past me and pulled into Dotty’s driveway. A woman got out and unbuckled two kids from kiddie seats in the back. The woman was shrouded in a hooded raincoat, but I caught a look at her face in the gloom, and I was certain it was Dotty. Or, to be more precise, I was certain it wasn’t Evelyn. The kids were young. Maybe two and seven. Not that I’m an expert on kids. My entire kid knowledge is based on my two nieces.

The little family entered the house and lights went on. I put the Trans Am into gear and inched my way up until I was directly across from the Rheinholds’. I could clearly see Dotty now. She had the raincoat off, and she was moving around. The living room was in the front of the house. A television was switched on in the living room. A door opened off the living room, and the room beyond was obviously the kitchen. Dotty was traveling back and forth across the doorway, from refrigerator to table. No other adult appeared. Dotty made no move to draw the living room curtains.

The kids were in bed and their bedroom lights were out by 9:00. At 9:15 Dotty got a phone call. At 9:30 Dotty was still on the phone, and I left to pick Lula up at the mall. A block and a half from Dotty’s house, a sleek black car slid by me, traveling in the opposite direction. I caught a glimpse of the driver. Jeanne Ellen Burrows. I almost took the curb and ran across a lawn.

Lula was waiting at the mall entrance when I got there.

“Get in!” I yelled. “I have to get back to Dotty’s house.
I passed Jeanne Ellen Burrows when I was leaving the neighborhood.”

“What about Evelyn and Annie?”

“No sign of them.”

The house was dark when we returned. The car was in the driveway. Jeanne Ellen was nowhere to be found.

“You sure it was Jeanne Ellen?” Lula asked.

“Positive. All the hair stood up on my arm, and I got an ice-cream headache.”

“Yep. That would be Jeanne Ellen.”

Lula dropped me at the door to my apartment building. “Anytime you want to do surveillance, you just let me know,” Lula said. “Surveillance is one of my favorite things.”

Rex was in his wheel when I came into the kitchen. He stopped running and looked at me, eyes bright.

“Good news, big guy,” I said. “I stopped at the store on the way home and got supper.”

I dumped the contents of the bag on the counter. Seven Tastykakes. Two Butterscotch Krimpets, a Coconut Junior, two Peanut Butter KandyKakes, Creme-filled Cupcakes, and a Chocolate Junior. Life doesn’t get much better than this. Tastykakes are just another of the many advantages of living in Jersey. They’re made in Philly and shipped to Trenton in all their fresh squishiness. I read once that 439,000 Butterscotch Krimpets are baked every day. And not a heck of a lot of them find their way to New Hampshire. All that snow and scenery and what good does it do you without Tastykakes?

I ate the Coconut Junior, a Butterscotch Krimpet, and a KandyKake. Rex had part of the Butterscotch Krimpet.

Things haven’t been going too great for me lately. In the past week I’ve lost three pairs of handcuffs, a car, and I’ve had a bag of snakes delivered to my door. On the other hand, things aren’t
all
bad. In fact, things could be a lot worse. I could be living in New Hampshire, where I would be forced to mail order Tastykakes.

It was close to twelve when I crawled into bed. The rain had stopped and the moon was shining between the broken cloud cover. My curtains were drawn, and my room was dark.

An old-fashioned fire escape attached to my bedroom window. The fire escape was good for catching a cool breeze on a hot night. It could be used to dry clothes, quarantine house plants with aphids, and chill beer when the weather turned cold. Unfortunately, it was also a place where bad things happened. Benito Ramirez had been shot to death on my fire escape. As it happens, it isn’t easy to climb up my fire escape, but it isn’t impossible, either.

I was laying in the dark, debating the merits of the Coconut Junior over the Butterscotch Krimpet, when I heard scraping sounds beyond the closed bedroom curtains. Someone was on my fire escape. I felt a shot of adrenaline burn into my heart and flash into my gut. I jumped out of bed, ran into the kitchen, and called the police. Then I took the gun out of the cookie jar. No bullets.
Damn.
Think, Stephanie—where did you put the bullets? There used to be some in the sugar bowl. Not anymore. The sugar bowl was empty. I rummaged through the junk drawer and came up with four bullets.
I shoved them into my Smith & Wesson five-shot .38 and ran back into my bedroom.

I stood in the dark and listened. No more scraping sounds. My heart was pounding, and the gun was shaking in my hand. Get a grip, I told myself. It was probably a bird. An owl. They fly at night, right? Silly Stephanie, freaked out by an owl.

I crept to the window and listened again. Silence. I opened the curtain a fraction of an inch and peeked out.

Yikes!

There was a huge guy on my fire escape. I only saw him for an instant, but he looked like Benito Ramirez. How could that be? Ramirez was dead.

There was a lot of noise, and I realized I’d fired all four rounds through my window, into the guy on my fire escape.

Rats! This isn’t a good thing. First off, I might have killed someone. I
hate
when that happens. Second, I haven’t a clue if the guy had a gun, and the law frowns on shooting unarmed people. The law isn’t even all that fond of citizens shooting
armed
people. Even worse, my window was trashed.

I ripped the curtain aside, and pressed my nose to the window pane. No one out there. I looked more closely and saw that I’d blasted a life-size cardboard cutout. It was laying flat on the fire escape and there were a bunch of holes in it.

I was standing there dumbfounded, breathing heavy with the gun still in my hand, when I heard the police siren whining in the distance. Good going, Stephanie. The one time I call the police, and it turns out to be an embarrassing false alarm. An evil prank. Like the snakes.

So who would do something like this? Someone who knew about Ramirez getting killed on my fire escape. I gave up a sigh. The entire state knew about Ramirez. It was in all the papers. Okay, someone who had access to a life-size cutout. There had been a lot of the cutouts floating around when Ramirez was fighting. Not many of them floating around now. One person came to mind. Eddie Abruzzi.

A blue-and-white pulled into my parking lot, lights flashing, and a uniform got out.

I opened my window and leaned out. “False alarm,” I yelled down. “Nobody here. It must have been a bird.”

He looked up at me. “A bird?”

“I think it was an owl. A real big owl. Sorry you got called out.”

He waved, got back into the car, and drove off.

I closed and locked the window, but it was an empty gesture since a lot of the glass was missing. I ran into the kitchen and ate the Chocolate Junior.

I was half-asleep, contemplating the nutritional value of a Creme-filled Cupcake for breakfast, when there was a knock at my door.

It was Tank, Ranger’s right-hand man. “Your car turned up at a chop shop,” he said. He handed my bag over to me. “This was on the floor in the back.”

“And my car?”

“In your parking lot.” He gave me my keys. “The car’s fine except for a chain attached to the tow. We didn’t know what the chain was all about.”

I closed and locked the door after Tank, stumbled into
the kitchen, and ate the package of cupcakes. I told myself it was okay to eat the cupcakes because it was a celebration. I had my car back. Calories don’t count if they’re connected to a celebration. Everyone knows this.

Coffee would taste good, but it seemed like a lot of work this morning. I had to change the filter, add the coffee and water, and push the button. Not to mention, if I had coffee I might wake up, and I didn’t think I was ready to face the day. Better to go back to bed.

I’d just crawled into bed when the doorbell rang again. I put the pillow over my head and closed my eyes. The doorbell kept ringing. “Go away,” I yelled. “Nobody’s home!” Now there was knocking. And more ringing. I threw the pillow off and heaved myself out of bed. I stomped to the door, wrenched it open, and glared out. “What?”

It was Kloughn. “It’s Saturday,” he said. “I brought doughnuts. I always have doughnuts on Saturday morning.” He looked more closely. “Did I wake you up? Boy, you don’t look all that good when you wake up, do you? No wonder you’re not married. Do you always sleep in sweats? How’d you get your hair to stick out like that?”

“How’d you like to have your nose broken a second time?” I asked.

Kloughn pushed past me, into my apartment. “I saw the car in the parking lot. Did the police find it? Do you have my handcuffs?”

“I don’t have your handcuffs. And get out of my apartment. Go away.”

“You just need some coffee,” Kloughn said. “Where do you keep the filters? I’m always a cranky pants in the
morning, too. And then I have my coffee, and I’m a new person.”

Why me? I thought.

Kloughn got the coffee out of the refrigerator and started the machine. “I didn’t know if bounty hunters worked on Saturday,” he said. “But I thought better safe than sorry. So here I am.”

I was speechless.

The front door was still open, and there was a rap on the doorjamb behind me.

It was Morelli. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Kloughn said. “I just brought jelly doughnuts.”

Morelli gave me the once-over. “Frightening,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I had a bad night.”

“That’s what they tell me. I understand you were visited by a large bird. An owl?”

“So?”

“The owl do any damage?”

“Nothing worth mentioning.”

“I’m seeing more of you now than I did when we were living together,” Morelli said. “You aren’t doing all this stuff just to have me stop around, are you?”

“Oh Jeez, I didn’t know you two used to live together,” Kloughn said. “Hey, I’m not trying to cut in on anything. We just work together, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“So, is this the guy you’re engaged to?” Kloughn asked.

A smile twitched at the corner of Morelli’s mouth. “You’re engaged?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Morelli reached into the bag and selected a doughnut. “I don’t see a ring on your finger.”

“I
don’t
want to
talk
about it.”

Kloughn’s voice was apologetic. “She hasn’t had any coffee yet.”

Morelli took a bite of doughnut. “You think coffee will help?”

They both looked at me.

I pointed stiff-armed to the door. “
Out.
”

I slammed the door after them and slid the security bolt. I leaned against the door and closed my eyes. Morelli had looked great. T-shirt and jeans and a red flannel shirt
worn open like a jacket. And he’d smelled good, too. The scent still lingered in my foyer, mingling with jelly doughnuts. I took a deep breath and had a lust attack. The lust attack was followed by a mental head slap. I sent him away! What was I thinking? Oh yeah, now I remember. I was thinking he’d just said I was frightening.
Frightening!
I’m having a hot flash over a guy who thinks I’m frightening. On the other hand, he did stop by to see if I was okay.

I was running this through while I walked to the bathroom. I was up and awake now. Might as well get on with the day. I switched the light on and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
Eeeek!
Frightening.

I thought Saturday would be a good day to follow Dotty around. I had no real reason to think she was helping Evelyn. Only instinct. But sometimes instinct is all you need. There’s something special about childhood friendships. They might be set aside for reasons of convenience, but they’re seldom forgotten.

Mary Lou Molnar has been my best friend for as long as I can remember. Truth is, we haven’t got a whole lot in common anymore. She’s Mary Lou Stankovik now. She’s married and has a couple kids. And I’m living with a hamster. Still, if I had to tell someone a secret, it would be Mary Lou. And if I was Evelyn, I’d turn to Dotty Palowski.

It was close to ten by the time I reached South River. I cruised past Dotty’s house and parked a short distance down the street. Dotty’s car was in the driveway. A red Jeep was parked curbside. Not Evelyn’s car. Evelyn drove a nine-year-old gray Sentra. I pushed my seat back and stretched my legs. If I was a man lurking in front of a
house, I’d be suspect. Fortunately, no one paid much attention to a woman.

Dotty’s front door opened, and a man stepped out. Dotty’s two kids jumped out after him and ran around him in circles. He took them by the hand, and they all walked to the Jeep and got in.

The ex-husband on visitation day.

The Jeep pulled away and five minutes later Dotty locked the house up and got into her Honda. I followed her easily, out of the neighborhood, onto the highway. She wasn’t looking for a tail. Never picked me up in her rearview mirror.

We went straight to one of the strip malls on Route 18 and parked in front of a chain bookstore. I watched Dotty get out of her car and cross the lot to the store. She was barelegged, wearing a sundress with a sweater. I would have been cold in the outfit. The sun was shining but the air was cool. I guess Dotty had run out of patience for warm weather. She pushed through the doors and went straight for the coffee bar. I could see her through the plate glass window. She ordered a coffee and took it to a table. She sat with her back to the window and looked around. She checked her watch and sipped her coffee. She was waiting for someone.