Look Alive Twenty-Five (Stephanie Plum #25)(3)

I stuffed the new files into the deli bag, and Lula and I headed out.

“I think we should take your car,” Lula said. “I just had my baby detailed, and that neighborhood is gentrified from what it used to be but that don’t mean it’s perfect.”

Lula’s baby is a shiny, perfectly maintained red Firebird with a sound system that could shake the fillings loose from your teeth. My car is an ancient faded blue Chevy Nova. It has a lot of rust, and a while back someone rudely spray-painted pussy on it. I covered the writing with silver Rust-Oleum glitter paint that was on sale. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough paint to cover the whole car.

I got into the Nova and pulled the Gurky file out of the bag.

“We don’t have to be at the deli until ten,” I said to Lula. “We have time to do a drive-by on Annie Gurky. According to her file she lives in an apartment complex in Hamilton Township. Married with two adult children. Age seventy-two.”

“What did she shoplift?”

“A box of Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets, a family-size bag of M& M’s, a carton of Marlboros, two bags of Fritos, and a box of Twinkies. Apparently, she had them shoved into her tote bag and walked out of the store. An employee chased her across the parking lot, and she punched him in the nose.”

“Did she drive away?” Lula asked.

“No. The police report says she couldn’t remember where she parked her car. She was working her way through the box of Butterscotch Krimpets when she was arrested.”

“Well, at least she’s got good judgment when it comes to dessert. You can’t do much better than Tastykakes and Twinkies.”





CHAPTER TWO


I MADE A U-turn in front of the bonds office and drove to Hamilton Township. Gurky lived around the corner from Delio’s gas station. She was in a large, sprawling complex of two-story buildings that each housed six garden-level apartments and six second-floor apartments. Gurky was in a garden-level apartment. She answered the door with a smile. I introduced myself and explained to her that she’d missed her court date and would need to come with me to reschedule.

“I’m in the middle of breakfast,” she said. “Maybe some other time.”

Lula grinned. “Lady, you smell like you’re having a hundred-proof breakfast.”

“I like a splash of vodka in my orange juice,” Gurky said.

“This won’t take long,” I told her. “We’ll put the orange juice in the fridge, and you can finish it when you get back.”

“This is all a misunderstanding,” she said. “I wasn’t stealing anything. I just forgot to pay. And then that horrible man attacked me.”

“The one you punched in the nose?” Lula asked.

“Yes. That’s the one. The purse snatcher. He tried to rob me. He grabbed my tote bag.”

“You might have been confused on account of you had too much orange juice,” Lula said.

“I need a lot of orange juice,” Gurky said. “I have a lot of anger. I’ve been married to the same man for fifty-two years and last month he decided I wasn’t ‘doing it for him anymore,’ so he ran off with my sister. My sister! I always knew she was a slut. And he took my cat, Miss Muffy. He never even liked Miss Muffy.”

“Boy, that’s so crummy,” Lula said. “What a pig. You know what we should do? We should get Miss Muffy back. We should catnap her.”

“We’re not in the catnap business,” I said to Lula. “And you’re allergic to cats.” I looked at my watch. Time was ticking away. We had to open the deli’s doors for the cooks at ten o’clock. “We need to take you downtown to check in with the court,” I said to Gurky. “We’ll help you lock up the house.”

“I won’t have to stay in jail, will I?” Gurky asked.

“No,” I told her. “Court is in session. We’ll get you rescheduled and rebonded.”

A half hour later we buckled Gurky into the back seat of my Nova. She’d put on lipstick, changed her shoes, slurped down some more orange juice, checked her door locks fifteen times, and tried to sneak out her back door.

“This is going to be tight,” Lula said. “I don’t see how you’re going to drop her off at the courthouse and get back to the deli in time.”

“I’ll stop at the deli first, open the door and make sure everyone gets in, and then we’ll take Gurky to the courthouse.”

“Good thinking,” Lula said. “That’ll work.”

Red River Deli isn’t anywhere near a river. It’s near the train station, next to a hotel that rents rooms by the hour. The gentrification process put in streetlamps that looked like gaslights, and brick-fronted a bunch of row houses and apartment buildings that previously had looked like a slum. The row houses and apartment buildings were gutted and renovated and sold to young professionals who worked in New York and wanted to be close to the train station. Unfortunately, some of the vagrants and gangbangers who roamed the area didn’t get the gentrification memo so from time to time the area could be a little sketchy.

I parked on the street in front of the deli, and Lula and I looked over our shoulders at Annie Gurky in the back seat. Her hands were cuffed in front of her for comfort, and she was slumped over, softly snoring.