Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich(8)

“You can’t shoot him,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I need him to get Poletti. Anyway, you know you can’t just go around shooting people. It isn’t nice.”

“Yeah, but he insulted me.”

“You insulted me first,” Briggs said. “How’d you like to get locked in a trunk?”

“People wouldn’t want to lock me in a trunk on account of I got a pleasing personality,” Lula said.

“Maybe for a rhinoceros,” Briggs said.

I stepped in front of Briggs to keep Lula from hurling herself across the room at him. “I haven’t got time for this. I need to get Poletti. We’ll take Randy with us, and we’ll disguise him somehow. A hat or something, and he can scrunch down in the backseat.”

Ten minutes later Randy was in the backseat of my Explorer. He was wearing a platinum blond wig and large black-rimmed glasses. He looked like Andy Warhol if Andy Warhol was only three feet tall.

Lula, looking like a ’ho all dressed up for Let’s Make a Deal, was riding shotgun. And weird as it might seem, she made it look pretty good. When I’m with Lula, I always feel like she’s chocolate cake with a lot of fancy frosting and I’m more in the ballpark of a bagel.





FOUR


I TOOK STATE Street to the parking garage and idled at the entrance. There was a lot of police activity on the second level. I leaned out my window, took a ticket from the machine, and rolled into a ground-level spot.

“Stay here,” I said to Lula and Briggs. “I’ll go investigate and report back.”

I took the stairs and walked to the back of the garage, where cop cars were angle-parked and yellow crime scene tape was already in place. I spotted Joe Morelli standing inside the taped-off area. He’s part of the Crimes Against Persons unit, mostly working homicide cases, so someone was probably dead on the cement floor.

Morelli also happens to sort of be my boyfriend. He’s six feet tall and all lean muscle. He has a lot of wavy black hair, his brown eyes can be soft and sexy or hard and assessing, he’s got a dog and a toaster, and his grandmother is even crazier than mine. Today he was wearing a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, jeans, and running shoes. He had his Glock clipped to his belt, and his hands were on his hips as he stared down at the guy sprawled on the pavement.

I ducked under the crime scene tape and moved next to him. The guy on the ground was facedown in a pool of dried blood. He had a hole in the back of his head the size of a potato.

“Holy crap,” I said to Morelli, “he looks like he’s been shot with a cannon.”

“It’s the exit wound,” Morelli said. “Whoever killed him flipped him over. Half his brain is splattered on the silver Honda over there.”

A wave of nausea rolled through me, and I felt myself break out in a cold sweat.

“You’re kind of white,” Morelli said. “You’re not going to do the girl thing and faint, are you?”

“ ‘The girl thing’? Excuse me?”

Morelli grinned. “You’re such a cupcake.”

I sucked in some air and made an effort to settle my stomach. So big deal if I am a cupcake. Seemed to me it was a lot better than being a bagel.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Tommy Ritt.”

“Oh boy. He’s one of Poletti’s poker buddies.”

“And you’re after Poletti,” Morelli said.

“Yes. That’s why I’m here. Poletti owns this property. I was hoping to find him holed up here in a Winnebago.”

“Sorry, I haven’t seen any Winnebagos.” He turned his attention to me. “Mike Kelly said he saw you with Ranger last night.”

“It was business.”

Morelli continued to look at me with what I call his cop eyes. They’re hard and unwavering. An emotionless stare he uses to extract confessions from killers in the interrogation room.

“Not going to work,” I told him. “I have nothing to confess.”

That got another grin. “You know all my tricks.”

I raised an eyebrow, and his grin widened.

“Randy Briggs showed up on my doorstep this morning,” I said. “He claims Poletti tried to run him down with his Mustang and took a shot at him. And then someone shot a firebomb into his apartment.”

“I heard about the apartment. I didn’t know it belonged to Briggs. What’s his connection to Poletti?”

“He was Poletti’s accountant.”

“Ow. Not a healthy job choice. Did Briggs stop by to tell you he was on his way to Argentina?”

“Something like that. I don’t suppose you have any idea where I might find Poletti?”

“Not at the moment,” Morelli said, “but I’ll let you know if something turns up. We’ll be looking for him too. He’s a person of interest in this shooting.”

“He’s driving a tricked-out black and silver Mustang. And he’s probably packing a rocket launcher.”

Morelli ducked under the tape with me and walked me to the stairs. “Bob misses you,” he said.

Bob is Morelli’s big orange, floppy-eared, shaggy-haired dog.

“I miss him too.”

Morelli pulled me behind a van and wrapped his arms around me. “How about me? Do you miss me?”