14 Fearless Fourteen (16 page)

“How did you get here?” I asked her.

“I drove the Buick.”

“You're not supposed to drive,” I told her.

“I'm old. I've got rights,” she said.

That could be true, but Grandma Mazur was the worst driver ever.
She knew only one speed. Foot to the floor.

“I'll drive Grandma home,” I said to Morelli.

I dropped Grandma off at the door and locked the Buick up in my
father's garage. Morelli was waiting curb-side in the SUV when I
got to the front of my parents' house. I slid onto the passenger
seat and looked over at him. He was only wearing the
boxers.

“I thought you might have changed your mind about the SUV,”
Morelli said.

I checked out his underwear, which was imprinted with pictures
of bunnies.

“Where did you get those shorts?” I asked.

“Wal-Mart. They came in a pack.”

I blew out a sigh. Morelli was irresistible in his bunny boxers.
“I haven't changed my mind about the SUV, but I've changed my mind
about your bedroom.”

Morelli is at his best on a Saturday morning. His body
temperature is a little higher and his blood pressure is a little
lower than on a Monday. Everything about him is a little softer, a
little more sensual. He was at the kitchen table in faded navy
sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt that had the sleeves cut
short. I suspected he was commando under the sweatpants. He'd
showered, but he hadn't shaved, and he looked like he could give a
dead woman an orgasm.

He glanced up from his paper and smiled at me.
“Shazam.”

I smiled back at him. It had been a multiple shazam
morning.

I sipped my coffee. “What's going on today?”

“I'm getting someone to demo the basement floor. And I'm going
door-to-door looking for Dom. I think you're right. He's
nearby.”

It was a little after eight, and Zook was still sleeping. Mooner
and Gary hadn't yet appeared on Morelli's front doorstep. The sound
of car doors slamming shut and people talking carried in from
Morelli's backyard.

“Its Saturday morning,” Morelli said. “Don't these people take a
day off?”

I peeked out the window. “Brenda is in the yard with the film
crew.”

Morelli took his coffee to the door and stepped
out.

“Hell-o!” Brenda said, eyeballing Morelli. “You are hot. Hold me
back!”

Morelli turned and looked at me. “Is she for
real?”

“Yes. And you want to keep arm's distance, or she'll give you a
pat-down.”

“You're trespassing on private property,” Morelli said. “And
you've ignored the crime scene tape.”

“We didn't ignore it,” the cameraman said. “We got a real good
shot of it.”

Brenda was in another black leather outfit. She was wearing
four-inch spike-heeled shoes, and her hair and her face and her
chest were blue. She had a handheld mic, and she was having a hard
time navigating because her heels were sinking into the freshly dug
dirt. She climbed onto a dirt mound and looked down into the hole.
The cameraman focused on Brenda.

“Here we are at Aunt Rose's house,” Brenda said to the camera.
“And as you can see, digging for the stolen money has already
begun.”

“Excuse me,” Morelli said. “You're going to have to
leave.”

Brenda stumbled over to Morelli with the mic. “Are you by any
chance the handsome owner of the property-”

“That's it,” Morelli said. “I've had enough.”

He set his coffee cup on the stoop, reached over the railing,
grabbed the garden hose, and turned it on Brenda and the
cameraman.

Brenda hit high C at the first blast of water. “Eeeeeee!” she
shrieked.

“Dammit, shit, sonovabitch!”

The dirt instantly turned to mud, and Brenda lost her footing
and went down.

The sound guy rushed in to help, and he went down,
too.

“Maybe you want to turn the hose off,” I said to
Morelli.

Brenda had one shoe on and one shoe in her hand. “What is your
problem?” she yelled at Morelli. “Do you know who I am? I'm Brenda.
I'm doing the news here, and the news is sacred, for cripe's sake.
You can't turn the hose on the news, you moron!”

Morelli shut the water off and retrieved his coffee cup. “This
is going to be another one of those days,” he said.

We backed into the house, closed and locked the door, and pulled
all the shades down.

Morelli stood in the middle of his kitchen. “I hate this,” he
said. “I hate bringing this shit into my home.”

“We need to find Dom.”

Morelli nodded agreement. “I'm going to change my clothes and
canvass the neighborhood.”

“We'll split it in half.”

Morelli smiled down at me. “Nice offer, Cupcake, but you're
blue. You'll scare the crap out of everyone.”

“I forgot.”

“Stay here with Zook. Keep people out of my yard. Get me some
estimates on jackhammer rentals.”

Morelli went upstairs, and I crept to the window and looked out.
No Brenda. No cameraman. No film crew van. I went to the front of
the house. No one was there, either. Good deal.

Bob was sleeping in a patch of sun in the living room. He was
still spray-painted. He didn't seem to care. While I was standing,
looking out the window, Lula's red Firebird slid to a stop in front
of Morelli's house. Lula hoisted herself out of the car and marched
to Morelli's front door.

“Hey,” I said, opening the door to her. “What's
up?”

“I need you to help me with my prenup. I got a lawyer
appointment this afternoon, and I gotta have this
ready.”

“I don't know anything about prenups.”

“You just gotta help me make out my list. I'm supposed to list
all my assets. And then Tank lists all his assets. And we got what
we got.”

“So Tank is doing this, too?”

“I left a message on his phone. I said if you got anything you
want to keep, you better list it out or I could get it in case of
divorce. Not that I intend to get a divorce, but I guess you never
know, right?”

“Right.”

“Do you think Tank and me would ever get
divorced?”

“I'm still struggling with you and Tank getting
married.”

“Hunh,” Lula said. “Anyways, I got this list. You want to hear
it?” Sure.

“I got a television, a DVD player, a cable box.” Lula cut her
eyes to me. “I hate those cable fuckers.”

“Everybody hates them.”

“I got my Firebird, my Glock, a fur coat that's almost mink, a
clock radio, a whip.”

“Wait a minute. You have a whip?”

“Don't everyone?”

“I don't have a whip.”

“Hunh.”

“What do you do with the whip? What does it look like? Is it one
of those long black ones like Zorro uses?”

“No,” Lula said. “It's the kind a jockey uses. It's for bad
boys.”

“Eeuw.”

“Okay, if you're gonna be squeamish about it, I'll skip over my
collection of professional experience enhancement tools. I never
used the whip anyway. It went with a Halloween
outfit.”

Morelli came down the stairs in jeans and running shoes, and a
sweatshirt over a T-shirt.

“What's up?” he said to Lula. “I see you're a member of the Blue
Girl Group.”

“Blue isn't my best color,” Lula said.

Morelli grabbed me and kissed me and went off to do his cop
thing.

“He looks like he got some last night,” Lula said. “Where's he
going?”

“He thinks Dom is somewhere in the neighborhood. He's going to
look around.”

“How come you're not helping him?”

“I'm blue.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. I'm starting to get used to
it.”

“And someone has to stay here with Zook. I don't want to leave
him in the house alone.”

“I could baby-sit him,” Lula said. “I'm taking the morning to
put my prenup in order. I could just as well do it
here.”

“I'd really like to go back to my apartment and check on Rex and
get some clothes.”

“Go for it,” Lula said.

I ran upstairs and knocked on Zook's door.

“Yeah?” he said. A moment later, he was at the door, looking
almost awake.

“I have to go back to my apartment for an hour or so. Morelli is
working, so Lula is going to stay here with you.”

“No way! She scares the crap out of me.”

“You'll be fine as long as you don't tell her she's fat. And you
might want to avoid mentioning the blue dye.”

“I'm not going out of my room.”

“That would be okay, too.”

I grabbed my purse and ran downstairs. “Don't let anyone dig in
the yard,” I told Lula. “Morelli takes it personally. And Zook is a
good kid, but it would be great if he didn't paint
anything.”

“I'm on it. You can count on me. Do you think I should list
shoes in the prenup?”

“Do you and Tank wear the same size?”

“No.”

“Then probably your shoes are safe.”

My apartment isn't that far from Morelli's house. Too far to
walk but fast to drive. I parked the Zook car, bypassed the
elevator for the stairs, and let myself into my apartment. I tapped
on Rex's cage, and he peeked out at me. I dropped a baby carrot and
a piece of cheese into his food dish and gave him fresh water. I
stuffed clean jeans and a couple shirts into a tote bag. I didn't
need much. Just enough to get me through a couple more days while
we straightened out the Zook arrangements.

I took one last look at myself in my bathroom mirror. I wanted
to believe that the blue was fading, but truth is, it wasn't. I was
hideously blue. I was like Dom... conspicuous. A bunch of people
were looking for Dom, and Dom didn't want to be found. And Dom
didn't have the luxury of taking off for Rio. Dom had to hang
close. Dom had his own agenda.

So let's step into Dom's shoes. I'm ultra-recognizable, and I'm
confined to a small area. How would I move around? In disguise or
at night. Second problem, I have no money. So either I mooch from
someone I trust or else I hold up a convenience store. I'm going to
guess he's mooching.

I called Connie. “Would you run a personal history on Dom for
me?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Where was he living when he was sent to prison?”

“That's easy. He owned a house on Vine Street. When he was
sentenced, his wife divorced him and got the house. So far as I
know, she's still living there and has remarried.”

I got the house number from Connie and hung up. I'd forgotten
about the ex-wife. This was great. Ex-wives loved ratting on their
ex-husbands.

The Vine Street house was a small single-family cape with a
detached single-car garage. It had a green Subaru sitting in the
driveway.

I parked and knocked on the front door. A woman answered and
gasped when she saw me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I know I'm blue. I had an accident with some
dye.”

“I know who you are,” she said. “You're Stephanie Plum. There
was a piece on you on the late news last night. They said you were
involved in the robbery treasure hunt, and you and Brenda got
sprayed with blue dye. Do you really know Brenda?”

“Yes.”

“What's she like?”

“She's like Brenda. Could I ask you some questions about
Dom?”

“Sure, but I don't know much about him anymore. I haven't seen
him since he got out.”

“I'm interested in the guys he used to hang
with.”

“Mostly they were from his old neighborhood. Victor Raguzzo,
Benny Stoli, Jelly Kantner. And the guy who was shot. Allen
Gratelli. Allen and Dom worked together.”

“Did you think any of those guys pulled the job with
him?”

“I could see Allen doing it. Victor, Benny, and Jelly,
no.”

“Dom's hiding out somewhere. Do you have any
ideas?”

“He's not with his mom?”

“No.”

“Jelly would be dumb enough to take him in. Or maybe he's still
seeing Peggy Bargaloski. That's why I divorced him. I found out he
was spending a lot of time at Peggy's house.”

I gave her my card and told her to call me if she saw
Dom.

I drove around the corner, pulled to the curb, and got addresses
from Connie.

Jelly was living in a second-floor apartment two blocks from
Dom's mother's house. Peggy was in Cleveland.

I wanted to do a drive-by on Jelly's house, but I was too
obvious in the Zook car. There was a car wash minutes away on the
corner of Hammond and Baker, but I didn't want to put up with the
car wash crew and their comments on my blueness. I know that's
chickenshit of me. What can I say? I'm blue, and I'm feeling
fragile.

I drove back to Morelli's house, thinking I'd check on Lula and
trade my Zookmobile for Morelli's SUV. I let myself into the house
and couldn't find anyone. Mooner's laptop was on the coffee table
beside Zook's, but there was no Mooner or Zook. I walked to the
back of the house and looked out. Mooner and Zook were digging in
the backyard with Bob. Lula was standing guard with her gun drawn.
A small crowd had formed on the perimeter of the crime scene tape.
Gary was sitting on the stoop, watching.

“What the heck is this?” I asked Lula.

“We figured it wouldn't hurt to look. There's still some
undisturbed ground here. And if we find it, we'll share it with
Morelli.”

“Are you insane? If you find it, you'll hand it over to the
authorities! You're looking for stolen money.”

“Hunh,” Lula said. “You sure got a stick up your ass. When did
you get so play-by-the-book?”

“I've always been play-by-the-book. You're the one who doesn't
play by the book.”

“Well, I knew it was one of us.”

“Anyway, I don't think the money is buried in the
backyard.”

“Me, either,” Gary said. “I'm not seeing anything. I told them
it was a waste of time, but no one would listen.”

“Yeah, but you might be a nut,” Lula said.

“Hey,” I yelled at Zook and Mooner. “Stop digging. The money
isn't in the backyard.”

A murmur went up from the people pressed against the crime scene
tape. Two of them had shovels.