Look Alive Twenty-Five (Stephanie Plum #25)(8)

Annie disconnected.

I banged my head against the steering wheel and told Lula that Annie was at the airport.

“She’s sneaky,” Lula said. “You gotta respect that.”

“I’m going back to the office,” I said. “I want to talk to Vinnie.”

“You aren’t going to quit the deli job, are you? That would be a big mistake. Huge mistake. We got a future with sandwiches. I could see people traveling for hours just to get one of our sandwiches. We could be up there with the Amazon guy and the Facebook guy except with sandwiches. I’m thinking about taking out patents on my sandwich creations. You know that last sandwich that we made where we started to run out of stuff so we put in whatever was left?”

“The sandwich with the green sliced turkey?”

“Yeah. I’m thinking about getting a patent on that one and calling it the Garbage Truck.”

I thought it might be more accurately called the Salmonella Special.

I left the apartment complex, drove to the office, and parked.

“The place looks closed up,” Lula said.

We got out and went to the door. Locked. No lights on inside. I called Connie.

“Where are you?” I asked her.

“I’m still at the courthouse. Did you find Annie Gurky?”

“No. I’m at the office and it’s locked. Where’s Vinnie?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Try his cellphone.”

I called Vinnie’s cellphone and home phone. No answer on either.

“This is fate stepping in,” Lula said. “Fate doesn’t want you to quit the deli.”

I was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking fate was a load of baloney, when Morelli cruised down the street. He hooked an illegal U-turn and pulled in behind my car.

It was September and Jersey was still feeling like summer. Morelli was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled. His hair was curling over his ears and down the back of his neck, and he had a five o’clock shadow a couple hours early. He smiled at me, and my doodah got happy.

“I was just about to call you,” he said. “Are you up for burgers tonight?”

Morelli and I don’t live together, but I keep a change of clothes and a toothbrush at his house. Burgers would be good. What followed would be even better.

“Burgers sound okay, but I might be late,” I said. “I’m helping out at the Red River Deli.”

“Yeah, she’s the new manager,” Lula said. “And I’m the assistant manager.”

Morelli wrapped his hand around my arm and pulled me to the side of the building.

“I suppose you want to have a private conversation,” Lula yelled after us. “I’ll just wait in the car, being that I’m tired from eating all that pie anyways.”

“Are you serious?” Morelli asked me. “Manager?”

“The agency was awarded the deli on a bond foreclosure. Harry’s decided to keep it, and he asked me to be manager.”

“Do you know why he’s decided to keep it?” Morelli asked. “It’s because no one will buy it. It’s known as the Demon Deli. Sometimes it’s called the Death Deli. And on special occasions it’s the Deli of Doom or the One-Shoe Horror.”

“I hadn’t heard it called any of those names.”

“Do you know about the managers? Three managers have disappeared in two weeks. Always leaving a shoe behind. No other clue. Not a shred of evidence. They just went through the back door and evaporated.”

“Is it your case?”

“Jimmy Krut pulled it but I’m the secondary. I came in when the third manager disappeared.”

“I didn’t know about the disappearances when I took the job this morning. I found out when I got to the deli.”

“It hasn’t received a lot of publicity. The first manager who disappeared had been manager for six years. Elroy Ruiz. Entire family was in Mexico. He sent most of his money home. He went out to smoke some weed at eight-fifteen on a Monday night and never came back. They said it wasn’t the first time Elroy took off for a while. No one thought anything about it until Wednesday. Didn’t get reported to the police until Friday.”

“What about the shoe? Didn’t they think it was odd that his shoe was left in the parking lot?”

Morelli grinned. “Everyone thought he was on a good buzz.”

“And the second manager?”

“Kenny Brown. Twenty-six years old. Ten years of restaurant experience. Started washing dishes when he was sixteen. Lived with his mother. Straight arrow except for his coke habit.”

“The drug?”

“The drink. Was on the job for a week. Took a bag of garbage out to the dumpster around nine o’clock and never came back. Everyone assumed he’d left for the night. One of the cooks found Brown’s car still parked in the lot the next day. Brown’s shoe was next to it. The third manager, Ryan Meier, lasted two days. The little fry cook freaked when he went out to look for the manager and tripped over the shoe in the dark.”

“Is this happening anyplace else?”

“No. Just at Red River Deli. And just to managers . . . so far.”

“Jeez.”

“Yup,” Morelli said. “That about sums it up. Tell me you’re not going back there.”