Fortune and Glory (Stephanie Plum #27)(66)

I shook my head. “They were new.”

We returned to the car and Lula drove out of the neighborhood. “Now what?” she asked.

“The Mole Hole,” I said.

Potts started humming, caught himself, and stopped.

“Isn’t that like walking into the hornets’ nest?” Lula asked.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what it is.”

“Okay,” Lula said. “I’m in.”

“Me, too,” Potts said.



* * *




There were only a handful of vehicles in the Mole Hole parking lot and none of them was a blue pickup, a white Taurus, a black Escalade, or a Mercedes sports car. It was midafternoon and the dining area was empty when we walked in. The bar was half full and a rhythm-challenged woman was on the pole.

I went to the bar and the bartender came over.

“You again,” he said.

I nodded. “Nice to see you, too. Guess who I’m looking for?”

“Someone alive?”

“Yes.”

“That eliminates a bunch of people.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“I know where he isn’t. He isn’t here.”

“Suppose I wanted to talk to him. Where would I find him?”

“I’m a bartender. I don’t know these things. Are you going to order, or what?”

“Is anyone in the back room?”

“No. They’re all out extorting money and killing people.”

“Do you know when they’ll stop by?”

“When they get hungry.”

I returned to Lula and Potts, and Morelli called.

“Someone just dumped two bodies behind the bail bonds office,” he said. “One of them has a broken leg. I thought you might want to take a look at this.”

“Are they dead?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to look.”

“Let me state this another way. I’m the principal on this and I suspect you have information I would want.”

“Why would you suspect that?”

“You called a hit-and-run in this morning for two men, one of them having a broken leg. One of these men has a broken leg plus tire tracks on his trousers.”

Crap.

“I’m out with Lula. I’m about a half hour away.”

“I’m not going anywhere. This is going to take a while. I’m waiting for the photographer and the medical examiner.”

“I need to go to a crime scene,” I said to Lula. “Take me back to the Buick.”



* * *




Potts and I transferred over to the Buick and waved adios to Lula. I dropped Potts off at his parents’ house and drove to the bail bonds office. Morelli was standing inside the yellow tape when I got there. He motioned me over, and I ducked under the tape.

“Sorry I had to make you do this,” he said. “I need the backstory. They aren’t carrying any ID.”

Both men were on their backs, sprawled at awkward angles. Shot once in the head and once in the chest. From the lack of blood at the scene I was guessing they were shot somewhere else, and then probably pitched off the pickup.

“They tried to kidnap me this morning when I came out of my apartment building,” I said. “They said Shine wanted to talk to me. I declined the invitation, they chased me around the neighborhood, and finally they pinned me down when I tried to return to my parking lot. The guy in the suit is named Sanchez. I don’t know any more than that. He got off a shot at me, a car came out of nowhere and ran him over, and then ran the other guy over. The car sped off and I went to my apartment and called 911. I was looking out the window, talking to dispatch, when a blue pickup drove into the lot, scooped both guys up, and drove away with them.”

The medical examiner arrived, and Morelli and I moved away from the taped-off area.

“This is a classic Shine hit,” Morelli said. “Once in the head and once in the chest. If we can retrieve a bullet, I’m guessing it’ll match the one we recovered from the dead hooker you found. Alice Smuther. Schmidt interviewed her neighbor across the hall. He said Shine was living with Smuther for a short time. He heard them arguing and he assumed Shine moved out. He didn’t see Smuther after that.”

“Why would Shine kill her?”

“I can only speculate, but possibly Shine killed Smuther for the same reason he killed these two. Shine has a reputation for getting rid of loose ends. Dead men tell no tales. They can’t give you up to cop a plea bargain. In the case here, if he hadn’t killed them, they would be getting medical attention. I’m taking a wild guess, but you probably have Connie calling around to find them. And after you had a heart-to-heart with them you would have turned them over to us, right?”

“Right.”

“And one more wild guess,” Morelli said. “You know the driver of the hit-and-run car.”

“It wasn’t Ranger.”

“And?”

“It was moving fast. All I can tell you is that it was black, and it was small. Not an SUV.”

“That narrows it down,” Morelli said.

I left Morelli, walked around the block to the front of the building where my car was parked, and I called Connie.