Turbo Twenty-Three (Stephanie Plum #23)(39)

I rushed into my apartment at ten o’clock. I said good morning to Rex, gave him fresh water, and filled his cup with hamster food. I changed into clean clothes and was back in my junker car twenty minutes later.

Stan Ducker was waiting for me when I screeched to a stop at the loading dock. He was suited up and standing by his Jolly truck.

“They told me I had to take you with me,” he said. “Like my life isn’t bad enough.”

“Sorry,” I said. “This wasn’t my idea.”

“You need to get dressed. I’ve got an extra wig and suit for you. You can put it all on over your clothes.”

“Nobody said anything about getting dressed.”

“This is the Jolly truck. If you ride in it you gotta look like a Jolly Bogart clown. I’m not supposed to give rides to down-on-their-luck bimbos.”

“Are you implying I’m a down-on-my-luck bimbo?”

“Let’s just say you don’t look like the queen of England.” He hooked his thumb toward his truck. “The suit and wig are on the seat. We need to get moving. The nasty little brats are out there waiting for their Booger Bars.”

Jeez Louise. If this was how he started his day, what was he going to be like at the end of it?

I stepped into the clown costume and tugged the wig on. “Okay,” I said. “I’m ready to roll.”

“Not yet,” he said, handing me a can of red greasepaint. “You gotta do the nose.”

I smeared the stuff all over my nose and thought I was beginning to understand why Ducker was so grumpy. If being a clown wasn’t your lifelong ambition, this wasn’t the job for you.

We chugged out of the parking lot and headed for north Trenton.

“I heard about Gus,” I said. “People are saying he was deliberately locked in the freezer, and it looks like another murder.”

“I don’t know about that, but I always worried about it happening to me. There was an emergency call box in there, but it broke and was never fixed. That’s the way it is in this plant. Bogart cheaps out on everything. Him and his jolly, jolly, jolly crap. Everything has to look all sunshine and roses for the morons who snarf up his ice cream, but it’s not so jolly inside this fucking clown costume.”

“You really need to find a different job.”

Ducker turned onto Oak Street. “Not now, sweetie pie,” he said. “It’s finally getting to be fun. Bogart has to jolly his way through two murders. Jolly, jolly, jolly my ass.”

“Why do you suppose someone would want to murder Gus? He seemed like an okay guy.”

“Maybe the killer is just some nutcase. Gets his jollies from freezing people.” Ducker smiled. “Did you catch that? Gets his jollies?”

“I would expect you to be more upset.”

“My happy disposition is chemically enhanced.”

“I’m seeing a lot of that at the plant. Seriously, do you think the two murders are drug related?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.” He pushed a button on the dash, and the Jolly Bogart song blasted out of the loudspeakers. “Showtime,” Ducker said.

We crawled along, stopping when people appeared. The drill was that Jolly would spring out of the truck, put on his happy face, and conduct business. He’d get back into the truck and mutter something about the dumb little fuckers. After an hour of this his mood had turned even more sullen.

“What time is it?” he asked me.

“It’s almost one o’clock.”

“Damn! We’re behind schedule. Hang on.”

Ducker stomped on the gas. The truck chirped its tires and shot forward. He blew through a stop sign, took a corner on two wheels, and raced down Central Avenue.

“What’s going on? Where are we going?” I shouted at him.

“The soccer games are over at one o’clock. Whoever gets the parking place by the gate gets to sell all the ice cream. The only other parking place is half a block away, and no one goes there.”

“Is it critical that you sell all your ice cream?”

“Yes! If I sell it all early I get to go home early. I don’t have to finish out the route.”

He turned onto the street that ran along the playing fields, and his face got as red as his nose when he saw the Mo Morris truck parked by the gate.

“Sonnovabitch! That sonnovabitch!” he yelled. “He knows that’s my spot. I hate that sonnovabitch.”

Ducker drove past the Mo truck and gave the driver the finger, then wheeled around and parked nose to nose with him.

“You’re in my spot!” Ducker yelled. “Get out of my spot.”

“I got here first,” the Mo driver said. “It’s my spot today.”

Ducker reached under his seat, hauled out a big semiautomatic, and pointed it at the driver. “You want to play Mister Tough Guy?”

The Mo driver went pale, backed his truck out of the parking space, and drove away. Ducker returned the gun to its hidey-hole under his seat and got out to sell ice cream.

So I’m thinking that now I might have three suspects. Ducker was a raving lunatic. He was also in the right spot at the right time. I had his employment record, but I didn’t have any of his financials. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at him.