Hardcore Twenty-Four (Stephanie Plum #24)(3)

“I don’t suppose you’d want to help me look for Ethel.”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

“I’ll be at your house in ten minutes.”

? ? ?

The sun was low in the sky when Morelli and I got to the dirt road leading to Simon’s double-wide. Morelli drove at a crawl, and we peered out, looking for Ethel in the scrubby front yards of the locals. The road was about two miles long, partially wooded and partially cleared by squatters living in shacks, trailers, patched-together bungalows, and an occasional yurt. Abandoned cars served as chicken coops and guesthouses. Simon’s place was at the end of the road.

Morelli parked in what served as Simon’s driveway, and we got out and stood, hands on hips, taking it all in.

“Now what?” Morelli asked.

“I guess we should start with the double-wide. Maybe you could peek inside to see if Ethel came home.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“Why me?”

“You’re the big, strong cop. You’ve got a gun and muscles and stuff.”

“What about you?”

“I’m the cupcake.”

Morelli crossed the yard and looked inside the mobile home. “Whoa!”

“Raccoons?” I asked him.

Morelli backed out. “Cats. Everywhere. I swear there must be a hundred of them. And they don’t look friendly. I think they’re eating rats.”

“So Ethel wasn’t in there?”

“Just the cats and the rats.”

“The cats must have gotten into the freezer. Simon kept a bag of frozen rats in case he couldn’t find roadkill.”

“More likely it was the raccoons that opened the freezer.”

“Ethel can’t have gone far,” I said. “She doesn’t move fast. Last I saw her she was halfway up the big oak tree on the edge of the property. Maybe you could track her. You could use your Boy Scout skills.”

“I was never a Boy Scout,” Morelli said. “I was the scourge of the neighborhood.”

This was true. Morelli and his brothers bullied Boy Scouts and romanced Girl Scouts. Mothers all over Trenton warned their kids to stay far away from the Morelli boys. Not that the kids paid any attention. The Morelli boys were irresistible charmers.

“Huey, Dewey, and Louie were Junior Woodchucks,” I said. “I always thought that was odd since they were actually ducks.”

Morelli stared at me for a long moment. Probably wondering what the heck I was talking about since he’d only read superhero comics when he was a kid.

“She’s a big fat snake,” I said. “She has to have left some sort of trail.”

“Suppose we find her. Then what?”

“I stopped at Giovichinni’s before I came to your house, and I bought a couple packages of hot dogs. We can use them to lure Ethel back to Simon’s double-wide.”

That didn’t exactly work when Simon tried it, but I couldn’t come up with anything better. We crossed the yard and found some matted-down scrub grass that might have been a snake trail. We followed it into a patch of woods and pretended we knew what we were doing. The sun was setting, and it was increasingly dark in the woods. I had the flashlight app working on my cellphone, but visibility wasn’t perfect, and I was terrified that I might inadvertently trip over Ethel.

“I can see light shining through the trees in front of us,” Morelli said. “We must have crossed through the woods to Simon’s neighbor’s. I’m voting to bag the snake search for tonight.”

“That would be my vote too. I’m not crazy about running into Ethel in the dark.”

We continued out of the woods and stood staring at the run-down ranch house in front of us. It was about the size of a double-wide and looked like it was held together with duct tape and Elmer’s glue. The rusted-out pickup truck in the front yard had double gun racks across the back window.

“Maybe we should ask if they’ve seen Ethel since we’re here,” I said to Morelli.

“Not a good idea. If they’ve seen her I can guarantee they’re having her for dinner. If they haven’t seen her, they’ll comb the woods with their dogs until they find her.”

“Okay then, how about if we creep up on them and peek in their kitchen window so we can see if they have the slow cooker going?”

“No. Another bad idea. The mayor frowns on cops moonlighting as peeping toms.”

“Understood. So you stay here, and I’m going to take a quick look.”

“No!”

Too late. I was halfway across the yard doing a tippy-toe jog. I got as far as the junker truck, and dogs started barking inside the house. The front door opened, and a man looked out. I held my breath and stood statue still. I was in shadow, behind the truck, and I was pretty sure he couldn’t see me. The door slammed shut, and I could hear the man yelling at the dogs. The dogs kept barking, the door opened again, and the dogs charged out. Three of them. They were running straight for me, and I had a double fear. The first was that they would tear me to shreds. The second was that Morelli would shoot them.

I had one of the packages of wieners in my sweatshirt pocket. I tore the package open with my teeth and threw the hot dogs at the lead dog. He snapped up a wiener, and it turned into a feeding frenzy when the other dogs reached him and the remaining food.