Smokin' Seventeen (13 page)

“You need to move into a new neighborhood.”

“Yeah, but I got real cheap rent.”

“I bet.”

“And my apartment got a big closet.”

“It also hasn’t got a kitchen.”

“A girl’s gotta have priorities,” Lula said. “I happen to be a stylish person. And I have my whole professional wardrobe from my previous vocation.”

“I used to be a stylish person. And now I’m wearing granny panties.”

“First off, you never been a stylish person. You don’t own a bustier or a single thing in leopard. And second you be out of those panties in no time. You just need to give your lady parts a rest.”

TWENTY-TWO

MERLIN’S CAR WAS PARKED
in the lot to his apartment building.

“We got some good news, and we got some bad news, and it’s all the same news,” Lula said. “Looks like Merlin’s home. Now what?”

“We go talk to him.”

“Say what?”

I cut the engine and grabbed my shoulder bag. “We aren’t having any luck wrestling him to the ground, so I thought I’d talk to him.”

I crossed the lot with Lula trailing after me. We took the stairs to Merlin’s apartment, and I knocked on the door.

Merlin answered on the second knock. He was naked again, and he had a boner.

Lula checked Merlin out. “Must be that time of day.”

“I was hoping we could talk,” I said to Merlin.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

He gestured to his wanger. “I don’t suppose you could help me out with this.”

“No,” I said. “Not even a little.”

He looked at Lula. “How about you?”

“I don’t do that no more,” Lula said. “I gotta be in love now. In the meantime I’d appreciate it if you’d put it away on account of it’s distracting waving around like that.”

Merlin looked down at himself. “It kind of has a mind of its own.”

“Well take it into the bathroom and talk to it,” Lula said. “It’s not like we got all day.”

Merlin sighed and shuffled off to the bathroom.

“Sometimes it’s good to have an ex-hooker for a partner,” I said to Lula.

“You bet your ass. How are the panties working for you? You feel any twinges lookin’ at Merlin’s big boy?”

“No. Did you?”

“I felt something, but I’m not sure what it was. It’s kinda like lookin’ at a train wreck. Horrible but fascinating all at the same time.”

There was a lot of grunting coming from the bathroom. “Oh yeah,” Merlin said, behind the closed door. “Give it to me.
Do it. Do it.”
Slap!
“Do it again, bitch.”
Slap
! And then more grunting.
“Unh, unh, unh.”

I shifted foot to foot and gripped my purse strap. “I’m feeling uncomfortable.”

“Yeah,” Lula said. “I can’t tell if he’s whackin’ off or he needs more fiber in his diet.”

“That’s it. I’m out of here.” I whirled around and bolted for the door. “I’ll talk to him on the phone. I’ll send him an email.”

We hustled out of the building, rammed ourselves into the Escort, and I laid rubber out of the lot.

“I either need something to eat, or I’ve gotta take a shower,” Lula said. “That wasn’t an uplifting experience.”

• • •

I made an emergency run at a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru. We got twelve doughnuts divided up into two bags, so we wouldn’t fight over them, and we sat in the parking lot, and we ate our doughnuts.

“Okay, I feel better,” Lula said.

“Me, too, except I might throw up.”

“You’re out of shape. You don’t eat enough doughnuts. I feel fine because I’m in condition. I could put just about anything in my body, and it only says
oh boy, here we go again.
”

A text message from Dave buzzed onto my phone. DID YOU GET MY SURPRISE? MORE TO COME.

Oh joy.

“Bad news?” Lula asked.

“I think Dave is turning into a stalker.” If it wasn’t for Juki Beck and the note I would have thought Dave was a more serious problem. As it was, he got back-burnered as a minor irritation. I powered my window down to get some air. “I’ve been thinking about Boris Belmen.”

“The bear guy?”

“He can’t remember shooting the bartender. And he said it wasn’t his gun. He didn’t know where the gun came from.”

“This is our problem, why?”

“The only way I could get Belmen to show up for court was to promise I’d take care of the bear if he got convicted.”

“People in your apartment building aren’t gonna be happy about you having a bear. Probably you could shave him and dress him up in clothes except you might get arrested when he drops his pants to poop in the parking lot.”

“If I could prove Belmen didn’t shoot the bartender I’d be off the hook.”

“Proving people innocent isn’t our specialty,” Lula said.

I’d hate to list our specialties. Wreck cars, eat doughnuts, create mayhem.

I pulled Belmen’s file out of my bag and read through the police report. “The shooting took place at Bumpers Bar and Grill on Broad.”

“I’ve been there,” Lula said. “That’s a real nice bar. They
got crab cake sliders and about seven hundred kinds of beer. I was there once with Tank when we were seeing each other.”

I drove the length of Stark and turned onto Broad. Bumpers was a couple blocks down, set into an area of mostly office buildings. I parked half a block away, and Lula and I got out of the car. Something compelled me to look across the street, and standing there, staring at me, was the ghost of Jimmy Alpha.

Alpha was the manager of a boxer named Benito Ramirez. I’d killed Alpha in self-defense a bunch of years ago. I was a novice bounty hunter, way over my head in bad guys, and in a moment of sheer terror and blind panic I’d managed to shoot Alpha before he shot me.

And now here he was glaring at me from across the street. He made a sign with his fingers to his eyes, letting me know he saw me and recognized me. And then he walked away and disappeared around the corner.

“Did you see him?” I asked Lula.

“Who?”

“It was a man who looked like Jimmy Alpha.”

“You killed Alpha.”

“I did. But this man looked like him.”

TWENTY-THREE

“THEY SAY EVERYBODY
got a double somewhere,” Lula said. “You just saw a double of Jimmy Alpha. Or maybe you got some kind of stress syndrome, and you hallucinated a repeat of a traumatic moment.”

Here’s what I knew … I needed to keep it together. I was having a bad day, and I had to do some deep breathing and move forward. One thing at a time.

Right now we were checking on the Boris Belmen shooting.

We walked the half block to Bumpers, pushed through the heavy oak doors, and made our way past booths and tables to the bar. I hitched myself up onto a stool.

“Where was the bartender shot?” Lula asked me.

“In the leg.”

We both leaned over the bar and looked at the bartender.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re trying to see if I’m the one who got shot.”

He was too tan, in his twenties, and blond. He had a tribal tattoo on his wrist and a gold chain around his neck.

“You look healthy,” I said.

“Jeff is the one who got shot. He usually works nights, but he has the week off. Can’t hustle with his leg throbbing.”

“How did it happen? I heard it was some drunk.”

“That’s what they tell me. I wasn’t here.”

“Do you know anyone who
was
here?”

“Melanie. She was waiting tables. What’s with the questions? Are you cops?”

“Honestly,” Lula said. “Do we look like cops? You ever see a cop in shoes like this? These are genuine Louboutin.”

I looked down at Lula’s shoes. I was with her when she bought them out of the back of Squiggy Biggy’s van two days after an eighteen-wheeler got hijacked on its way to Saks.

“These are hot shoes,” Lula said.

This was true.

“I’m a bond enforcement agent,” I told the bartender. “I’m conducting an investigation on behalf of the accused and his dependent.”

Lula raised her eyebrows. “He got a dependent?”

“Bruce,” I told her.

“Oh yeah. I almost forgot.”

“Melanie’s taking a break,” the bartender said. “She’s out back.”

Lula and I walked around the side of the building and found Melanie sitting on a beer keg, smoking. The first delicious rush of nicotine was behind her, and she was mechanically working her way through the remainder of her cigarette.

I introduced myself and asked if she had witnessed the shooting.

“I was there,” she said, “but I didn’t see how it happened. I was waiting on a couple in a booth, and I heard the gun go off. And then I heard Jeff yelling how he was shot. And at first I was panicked, you know? I mean it could have been some loon looking to wipe out a room.”

“Did you see anyone holding a gun?”

“No. By the time I looked around Jeff had fainted and was laid out behind the bar. And there was this guy in a red shirt looking shell-shocked, standing in front of the bar.”

“Anyone else around?”

“No. It was closing time, and the place was just about empty. The people in the booth called 911, and I went to see if I could help Jeff.”

“And the guy in the red shirt?”

“It was like he was glued to the floor. His eyes were big, and his mouth was open, and he was hanging on to a barstool.”

“Was he drunk?”

“Let’s just say if he was the one who got shot he wouldn’t be feeling any pain. When Jeff came around, he said the guy in the red shirt shot him.” Melanie took one last drag on her
cigarette, dropped it onto the blacktop, and ground it out with her shoe. “I gotta get back to work.”

“One last thing,” I said to her. “While all this is going down, where’s the gun if it’s not in anyone’s hand?”

“It was on the floor by Jeff.”

Lula and I walked back to my Escort, and I called Morelli.

“Do you know who has the Boris Belmen case?” I asked him. “Belmen is accused of shooting a bartender.”

“Jerry caught that one. Belmen put his bear up as a guarantee against his bond, right?”

“Right. I just spoke to the waitress on duty when the bartender got shot, and it doesn’t add up to me. The gun was found behind the bar, next to Belmen.”

“I’ll pass it on to Jerry.”

“Did you get a chance to look at the Beck video?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’ve got it up on my computer.”

“Anything jump out at you? Do you recognize the killer?”

“No and no, but I think the Frankenstein mask is a nice touch.”

“Does the guy in the video remind you of Ronald Buzick?” I asked Morelli.

There was total silence, and I imagined Morelli as looking incredulous in a horrified kind of way.

“He’s a butcher,” I told Morelli. “He’s strong. He could choke someone. And he’s used to being around dead meat.”

“The killer moved like a younger guy. Maybe an athlete.
Ronald moves like an overweight guy with hemorrhoids. And Ronald’s got his arm in a cast. He fell off a hydraulic lift and broke his arm in two places.”

“Bummer. One other thing. I could have sworn I saw Jimmy Alpha just now.”

“Alpha is dead.”

“I know, but this man looked like him. And he made a sign that he saw me. Honest to goodness, I don’t think he liked me. He looked angry.”

“If someone else said that to me after the morning you’ve just had, I’d pass it off as hysteria, but you’re not prone to hysteria. Except maybe when you see a spider.”

“Do we have plans for tonight?”

“I’m meeting with Terry tonight. I want her to look at the video, and she’s not available until six o’clock.”

I disconnected and blew out a sigh. Terry. Probably nothing. Business.

“Well?” Lula asked.

“It’s not Ronald Buzick.”

“Too bad. I was listening, and I thought you had sound reasoning. I especially was impressed with the part about the dead meat.”

I took Stark to Olden and cut across town to Hamilton. “I’m going back to my apartment to check in with Connie,” I said to Lula. “She sent me a text message that we got a new FTA.”

TWENTY-FOUR

CONNIE WAS WORKING
at my dining room table and Dave Brewer was cooking in my kitchen.

“How? What?” I said to Connie, pointing at Dave.

“He called to see if you were home, and we got to talking, and one thing led to another, and we decided to surprise you with dinner.”

“Guess Connie didn’t get the stalker memo,” Lula whispered to me.

“I’m running late,” Dave said. “I had an estimate in Ewing Township that took longer than planned. I have corn muffins baking in the oven, and I’m almost ready to put my stew together.”

“Well hell-
O
,” Lula said. “I smell bacon.”

“It’s my special recipe,” Brewer said. “I put jalapeños, bacon, and a smidgeon of cheddar in my corn muffins.”

Lula sniffed in the direction of the oven. “Yum. That’s three of my favorite food groups.”

Dave was wearing jeans and a khaki T-shirt. He had a red chef’s apron tied at the waist, and he was artfully dusted with flour. He didn’t measure up to Ranger or Morelli, but he was a decent-looking guy. Fortunately, I was wearing the granny panties. It would be bad if Bella’s spell encouraged me to get it on with Dave Brewer.

“I’m making enough for everyone,” Dave said. “It’ll be ready at six, but I can’t stay to eat. I have to get to another estimate tonight.” He glanced over to me. “But I’ll try to get back for late dessert.”

There was going to be
no
late dessert. The door would be locked and bolted. Still, I had to admit whatever he was cooking smelled pretty darn good. I watched him take chopped onion, red peppers, and mushrooms to a skillet heating on the stove. “What are you making?”

“Tex-Mex Turkey Fiesta. Plus there’s a salad in the refrigerator. This is a celebration for me. I signed a lease to rent an apartment today. This time next week I’ll have my own kitchen.”

Lula looked over his shoulder. “You know how to cook onions and everything.”

He stirred the onions in the hot oil. “It’s my hobby. It keeps me calm. When I get too crazy I cook something.”

“It’s a good hobby,” Lula said. “You got any others?”