Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel(41)

“I know getting the best of Bella is on your bucket list.”

“You bet it is. I’m going to get her good. She’s messed with me one time too many. Remember when she called me an old slut?” Grandma whacked a carrot in half. “Well, I’m not all that old. And she bumped me on purpose with her shopping cart at the grocery store. She said I wasn’t moving fast enough. And then she tried to push in front of me in the checkout line.”

My mom came into the kitchen at the end of Grandma’s tirade.

“She’s a silly old lady,” my mother said. “You could be a good Christian and turn the other cheek.”

“I’m a plenty good Christian,” Grandma said, “but I got it on good authority that God wants me to get Bella for Him.”

My mother made the sign of the cross and wistfully looked over at the cabinet where she keeps her booze. Being a good housewife and Christian woman, she knew it was too early in the day for medicinal help from Jack Daniel’s.

“I have to get to work,” I said to Grandma. “Don’t do anything that’ll get you arrested.”

“Don’t worry,” Grandma said. “I’m going to be sneaky.”



“Wow,” Lula said when I got to the office. “Is that Ranger’s car you’re driving?”

“Yeah, it’s a loaner.”

“You must have done something real good to get that car as a loaner.”

“Sadly, no.”

“I have a new skip,” Connie said. “It just came in. Gloria Grimley. She’s in Hamilton Township.”

“What did she do?” I asked.

“She held up the bakery on Nottingham Way. Armed robbery.”

“How much did she take?”

“No money, but she cleaned out the cannoli display.”

“And she got arrested for that?” Lula said. “That’s just terrible. Obviously the woman needed a cannoli. I don’t know what this world’s coming to when you get arrested for needing a cannoli.”

I took the file, paged through it, and stopped at her picture.

Lula looked over my shoulder. “What’s that on her face in her mugshot?”

“I think it’s chocolate,” I said.

“At least she knows what she’s doing when it comes to stealing cannoli,” Lula said. “And that bakery on Nottingham was a good choice. They make excellent cannoli. And they stuff them with all kinds of shit, too. Not just the usual stuff.”

I left Ranger’s two-seater Porsche at the office and took Lula and the Buick. Gloria lived in Hamilton Township. I knew the area. Classic suburbia. Three-bedroom, two-bath ranch houses built in the sixties. Enough yard for a swing set. A driveway but no garage.

Her house was painted a cheerful yellow and white. A Honda Civic was parked in the driveway. Lula and I went to the door and rang the bell.

“This here’s a house where happy people live,” Lula said. “I can tell these things. I got a good feeling about this house. This woman probably just accidentally left her purse at home and needed to celebrate something with a pastry. I know the feeling. I’ve been there a couple times myself. ’Course I never robbed a store for a pastry, but only because I never forgot my purse.”

I rang a second time, the door opened, and a fiend from hell looked out at us. She vaguely resembled the booking photo, but her hair was way beyond bed head, she had dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, she had a huge herpes sore at the corner of her mouth, and she was wearing a pink flannel nightgown with what looked like gravy stains splotching the front of it. Her nose was running, and she had a balled-up tissue in her hand.

“What?” she asked.

“Whoa,” Lula said, backing up.

I held my ground. “Gloria Grimley?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.” And she burst into tears. “F-f-f-fine.”

“Where’s the happy people in this house?” Lula asked. “I was pretty sure this was a happy house.”

“The son of a bitch left me,” Gloria said, sniffing up some snot. “Just like that. One minute everything is roses, then he says he’s met someone else, and he’s sure she’s his soulmate. Can you believe that?”

“What about this here cheerful house?” Lula asked.

“Rented,” she said. “I’m stuck with a year’s lease.”

“Good news,” Lula said. “You’re up for armed robbery. By the time you get out of the pokey, your lease will be up.”

This got another giant sob.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any of those cannoli left,” Lula said.

“I ate them,” Gloria said. “All of them. I was depressed.”

“I saw the report, and that was a lot of cannoli,” Lula said.

Gloria looked down at her nightgown. “Tell me about it. This is the only thing that fits.”

“We need to take you downtown to get you rebooked and rebonded out,” I said to Gloria. “It would be good if you could find something else to wear.”

“Maybe you got some big-ass sweatpants or something,” Lula said.

Gloria shuffled off to her bedroom and came back minutes later in jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans were only zipped halfway.