Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich(14)

I stepped outside and called Morelli.

“What happened at Rangeman last night?” I asked him.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been briefed on it, but it must be serious because the building is sealed and the feds are in charge. And Gardi is in St. Francis in isolation with a security guard in front of his door.”

“Ranger said it wasn’t anthrax.”

“Ranger should know.”

“Anything new on the two murders? Did Buster ever turn up?”

“Buster came home at ten o’clock. He said he’d been in Atlantic City all day. One of those package deals with a bus trip included. He went with his girlfriend. It checked out.”

“How did Jimmy get into his apartment?”

“Jimmy had a key. Buster gave it to him years ago when he first bought the building. He said they were using the apartment like a storeroom, but I’m guessing it was used to house the girls they imported.”

“Did you find the murder weapon?”

“No. Not yet.”

I’ve seen enough violent death to know that Bernie hadn’t been dead long and that he’d been killed in the bedroom. So it bothered me that the police couldn’t find the gun and that Poletti didn’t have it on him when he rushed out of the apartment. Of course he might have killed Bernie earlier, left the apartment, and then returned without the gun for some reason. Still, it felt off.

“Have you talked to the remaining poker players?”

“Kreider questioned Silvio Pepper. He said Pepper was nervous. We can’t find Ron Siglowski. Kreider interviewed his neighbors and got nothing. Ditto his relatives.”

“I get that Pepper is nervous. I’d be nervous too. Poletti is cleaning house. Most likely Siglowski is already dead, and just hasn’t turned up yet. That leaves Pepper and Briggs.”

“Is Briggs still hiding out in your apartment?”

“Yes. And it’s not fun.”

“Maybe we should tie him to a parking meter downtown and see if Poletti takes the bait.”

“Tempting, but I can’t see Poletti being that stupid.”

“I have to run,” Morelli said. “Let me know if you come up with something better than the parking meter.”

I went back inside and asked Connie to run checks on Silvio Pepper and Ron Siglowski. Five minutes later I had more information than I needed on both men. I had photos, ages, street addresses, second-grade spelling scores, sock sizes, cheese preferences, and colonoscopy reports.

“First up is Silvio Pepper,” I said to Lula. “Do you want to ride shotgun?”

“Is short stuff going?”

I looked at Connie.

“Yeah,” Connie said, “he’s going.”

“I guess I’ll go anyway,” Lula said. “If someone takes a potshot at him, I don’t want to miss it.”

Silvio Pepper lived in a small two-story house on the northern edge of the Burg. He was sixty-three years old, married, and the owner of a long-haul trucking company with offices on Broad Street.

I took Hamilton Avenue to Broad Street and turned left. Pepper Trucking was a relatively small operation several blocks down Broad. The single-story redbrick building had a small parking lot attached to it. Not big enough for an eighteen-wheeler, so the trucks were obviously kept elsewhere. I parked in the lot and told Lula and Briggs to wait in the car.

“Why do I have to wait in the car?” Lula asked. “Waiting in the car is boring.”

“I don’t want to drag everyone in there with me,” I said. “Two people are partners. Three people make a parade.”

“So why can’t we leave Briggs here? We can crack a window for him.”

“Jeez,” Briggs said. “What do I look like, a golden retriever?”

“I want Poletti, and Briggs is my bait. I don’t want to come back and find Briggs gunned down or missing and Poletti long gone.”

“I guess I could see that,” Lula said, “but how do you expect me to pull off this Briggs rescue?”

“I guess you could shoot Poletti in a nonvital area.”

“Like his knee?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’m cool with that,” Lula said.

I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder, crossed the lot, and pushed my way through the front door of Pepper Trucking. The woman at the front desk was in her forties and looked overworked, overfed, and underpaid.

“I’d like to talk to Silvio,” I told her.

Looking like she could care less, she punched a button on her multiline phone.

“There’s a woman here to see you,” she said. She rolled her eyes and looked over at me. “Who are you?”

“Stephanie Plum.”

“Stephanie Plum,” she repeated into the phone. She hung up and looked down the hall. “Second door on the right.”

Silvio looked like his photo but more wrinkled.

“You’re the bounty hunter, right?” he said. “I know you from around. I guess you’re looking for Jimmy.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, but I know where he should be. He should be in the nuthouse. He was always this smart guy. Businessman. Good poker player. Okay, maybe he had a weakness for the ladies, but who doesn’t? And so he made some bad business decisions, but hey, that’s no reason to go off the deep end and kill people.”