14 Fearless Fourteen (21 page)

“I think he's got one too many holes in his
forehead.”

“Yeah,” Spanner said. “I noticed that. I also noticed he reminds
me a lot of the dead guy in Morelli's basement.”

“Because of the hole in his head?”

“Mmm. And because you found him.”

“It's getting old.”

“I bet,” Spanner said.

I repeated my mostly true story for Spanner. The ME slipped past
us, followed by two paramedics and a forensic
photographer.

“Do you have anything else you want to share?” Spanner
asked.

I shook my head. “No. Do you think that's Stanley Zero on the
floor?”

Spanner moved into the doorway. “Hey, Gazarra, you have a
tentative ID?”

“Looks like Stanley Zero. We got a driver's license here. He
matches the photo, except for the hole in his head.”

I WAS shocked to find Lula still in the lot.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her.

“Waiting for you.”

“It's been over an hour and you're still here.”

“I have stuff to ask you. I want to know about the honeymoon.
I'm thinking Paris or Tahiti.”

“Can you afford that?”

“Don't the groom pay?”

“Can Tank afford that?”

“He better,” Lula said. “I don't come cheap.”

“I thought the groom planned the honeymoon.”

“That was in the Dark Ages. And besides, Tank's busy. He don't
got a lot of time for that stuff. He's gotta watch Ranger's
ass.”

“If it was me, I'd go to Paris,” I told her. “Better shopping,
and it's a shorter plane ride. Italy would be good, too, if you're
interested in handbags and shoes.”

“I never thought of Italy, but that's a good idea. I could
always use a new handbag.”

“Why do you want to get married?” I asked Lula.

“I don't know. It just sort of popped into my head. And then one
thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was at the lawyer
drawing up my prenup. I guess it was one of those snowball things.
You don't think I'm rushing into it, do you? I could postpone it to
July, but I got a good deal on the hall for the reception. I'd have
to give the hall up. And the fireworks wouldn't be the same. This
way, I get the jump on July Fourth.” Lula cranked her car
over.

“Where we going now?”

“Back to Morelli's house. I should make sure Zook is
okay.”

Everything looked status quo at Morelli's. It was early
afternoon, but there was no activity. The crime scene tape was in
place. No gawkers present. Lula pulled to the curb, took the key
out of the ignition, and there was a sound like a grenade getting
launched, and then thud, something hit the passenger-side
door.

“What the bejeezus was that?” Lula yelled. “Incoming! We're
under attack. Call SWAT. No, wait a minute. I hate those SWAT
guys.”

Mooner waved at me from Morelli's small front porch. “Sorry,” he
said. “My bad.”

I got out and examined the car door. There was a dent in it, and
something was splattered from one end to the other. I cautiously
touched it with my finger.

“Potato?” I asked Mooner.

“Yep. Yukon Gold.”

Lula was around the car and next to me, and there was a
frightening amount of white showing in her eyes. The whole eyeball
was about the size of a tennis ball. “My baby!” she yelled. “My
Firebird! Who did this? Who made this mess on my Firebird?” The big
eyes narrowed, her face scrunched up, and she took a closer look,
her nose just about touching the potato splatter. “Is this a dent?
This better not be a dent I'm seeing.”

“I didn't recognize you,” Mooner said. “Good thing I was all out
of Russet. Russet is, like, atomic.”

Zook and Gary were standing behind Mooner.

“We've been guarding the house,” Zook said. “Mooner is so cool.
He knows all about homegrown security. He knows how to make potato
cannons.”

Mooner tapped the top of his head. “No grass growing
here.”

“What's a potato cannon?” Lula wanted to know.

“All you need is PVC pipe and hairspray and a lighter,” Zook
said. “And you can shoot anything out of it. You can shoot eggs and
apples and tomatoes.”

“See, that's the thing about a potato cannon,” Mooner said. “You
can stuff anything into it. You could shoot monkey shit out of a
potato cannon. All you gotta do is find a monkey.”

“I know where there's a monkey,” Lula said.

“Whoa,” Mooner said. “Far out. You want to go get some
shit?”

Great. Just what I need. Mooner shooting monkey shit at passing
motorists.

“Its illegal to shoot monkey shit on a Sunday,” I told him.
“Have you had lunch?”

Zook was grinning. “We didn't eat lunch. We launched
lunch.”

“I got a deductable, and I don't know if I'm covered for
potatoes,” Lula said, her eyes still narrowed.

I was having a hard time getting worked up over the dent in
Lulas Firebird. I had bigger fish to fry. I had a pinky toe in
Morelli's freezer. And tomorrow I'd have two toes if I didn't hang
a scarf in the upstairs window.

“Everyone inside,” I said. “You stay out here too long, and some
new griefer will take over.”

“We're not playing Minionfire anymore,” Zook said. “We're in
charge of homegrown security now. We got weapons to make and posts
to man. We're keeping the integrity of the crime scene. We're
protecting the house.”

“Yeah, but what about the back?” Lula asked. “You can't see the
back from here.”

“Dude, she's right,” Mooner said. “Man your potato cannon.
Secure the yard!”

Mooner, Zook, and Gary ran inside. Lula and I followed at a
slightly slower pace.

“You got a loony bin,” Lula said to me.

Mooner was already at the living room window when we walked into
the room. He was holding a two-foot section of white PVC pipe that
had a smaller pipe glued toward the base.

“Lieutenant Zook,” he said into a two-way attached to his shirt.
“Are you in position?”

“Yessir, Captain,” Zook answered from the
kitchen.

“Munitions Expert Gary, are you ready?”

“Yessir,” Gary said.

Gary was in the dining room, halfway between Mooner and Zook. He
was wearing a utility belt that carried a can of hairspray and a
grill lighter. And he was holding a basket of potatoes. Tucked into
the potato basket was a large bag of M&Ms and a large order of
fast-food fries still in the cardboard container.

“What's with the M&Ms and the fries?” Lula wanted to
know.

“It's in case we need a shotgun.”

“Makes sense,” Lula said. And she turned and looked at me and
made the crazy signal with her finger going around alongside her
head.

Zook's voice whispered over the two-way. “I got a bandit at two
o'clock. I need a partial baked.”

Gary ran into the kitchen and handed Zook a potato. Zook dropped
it into his PVC pipe and rammed it down. Gary sprayed hairspray
into the pipe and jumped back. Zook pointed the spud gun out the
door and phoonf! Zook got knocked on his ass from the kick, and the
potato rocketed out of the pipe and caught the digger in the back
of his leg. The guy went down like a house of cards and rolled
around yelping. He got up and half limped, half ran out of the
yard.

I was dumbstruck. I didn't know whether to burst out laughing or
be truly horrified.

Zook got to his feet. “We only use raw potatoes on cars and
stuff. We use half-baked on poachers. It leaves a good bruise, but
it isn't lethal. We tried using eggs, but the gun kept
misfiring.”

I called Morelli and got his voice mail. “Just checking in,” I
said. “And by the way, no reason to get alarmed, but do you have
personal liability insurance tacked on to your
homeowners?”

Lula had her head stuck in the refrigerator. “Where's the fried
chicken? You gotta have fried chicken on Sunday.”

“I want to talk to Stanley Zero's almost-ex-wife,” I said to
Lula. “We can stop at Cluck-in-a-Bucket on the way.”

“Why do you want to talk to his ex?”

“I had good luck with Dom's ex. I thought it wouldn't hurt to
try Zero's.”

Lula looked at Gary, standing in the dining room. “You think we
should leave the homegrown idiots alone?”

I was between a rock and a hard place. I didn't trust the three
potato heads to make the right decision on anything, but I was
panicked over Lorettas fingers and toes.

“You stay here,” I said to Lula. “I'll have a little
conversation with Zero's wife, and I'll stop at Cluck-in-a-Bucket
on the way home.”

“You aren't going to be long, are you? I don't have a lot of
patience when it comes to fried chicken.”

“An hour, tops.”

“Okay,” Lula said. “I guess I could last. I want a large bucket
of extra spicy, extra crispy fried chicken. I want a order of
biscuits with gravy and some coleslaw.”

“I thought you were trying to lose weight.”

“Yeah, but I don't want to waste away to nothing. And anyway,
everyone knows you don't gain weight on Sunday. Sunday's a free
day.”

Lisa Zero lived in a nice little house in Hamilton Township. The
nine-year-old answered the door and Lisa immediately showed up
behind him. She was wearing makeup and a skirt, and I guessed she'd
gone to church this morning. She was a couple inches shorter than
me and a couple pounds heavier. Her eyes were red, as if she'd been
crying. I supposed she'd heard about Stanley.

I introduced myself and apologized for being blue and for
intruding.

“It's okay,” she said. “Let's step outside. I don't want the
kids to hear. I haven't told them yet. Stanley was an asshole, but
he was still their father.”

“Did you know he was involved in the bank
robbery?”

“I suspected. Not at the time, but the last couple years he
started drinking too much and he'd say things. I guess you're after
the money. I shook my head. ”No. I'm looking for the fourth
partner.“ ”I'm afraid I can't help you there. Stanley never said
anything about the partners. He only talked about the money. How
when Dom got out, they could put it all together, and they'd all be
rich.“ ”Put it all together?“ ”Yeah, I don't know what he meant by
that, but I got the feeling there was a map or something. Or maybe
a bank account in all their names. Like they each had a piece of a
puzzle. I didn't figure I'd ever see it, so I didn't pay close
attention. He'd drink, and then he'd get real talky, and then he'd
get mean.“ ”I'm sorry.“ ”It's okay. I got the house, and we're
moving ahead with our lives.“ ”Do you know a guy named Allen
Gratelli?“ ”No.“ ”But you knew Dom.“ ”Not really. I only knew him
from the newspaper articles when he robbed the bank, and then when
Stanley started talking about him.“ ”You must have been surprised
to learn Stanley was mixed up in a bank robbery.“ ”Stanley was
always mixed up in something. He was always looking for easy money.
One time, he held up a convenience store and stole lottery
tickets.

Hello. Like they couldn't figure that one out if he won?“ I gave
Lisa Zero my card and told her to call if she thought of anything
helpful. I wound my way through her subdivision, hit Klockner, and
drove on autopilot to Cluck-in-a-Bucket. I parked in the lot, under
the big rotating chicken. I stuffed a couple twenties into my jeans
pocket and got out of the Zook car. Cluck-in-a-Bucket is a zoo on
Sunday It's the lunch of choice for the lazy, the fat, the
salt-starved, the emotionally injured, the families on budgets, the
cholesterol-deprived, and the remaining ten percent of the
population who just want a piece of chicken. The tables and booths
were filled and there were lines in front of all the registers at
the counter. Clucky Chicken was making balloon chickens for the
kids and handing out coupons for Clucky Apple Pies. I went to the
end of a line and zoned out. No one seemed to notice I was blue. I
was thinking about Lisa Zero and her comment about the puzzle
pieces. Suppose Dom was the one who hid the money, and to make sure
it was still intact when he got out of prison, he didn't tell his
partners the exact location. But maybe it was a concern that Dom
might not make it through his term, so each partner got a piece of
the treasure map. No. That didn't work. They could put their pieces
together any time they wanted and cut Dom out. Okay, suppose a
fifth person, like Aunt Rose, hid the money? And then she gave each
of the partners a piece of the map. I shuffled forward in the
chicken line, still thinking about the map. The fifth-person theory
didn't totally hold up, either. The partners were ruthless. They
were killing one another off and mutilating Loretta. They would
have gotten the money location out of Rose. I absentmindedly looked
around as I took another step forward. Two people in front of me.
Three lined up behind. There were five registers working. I was in
the line farthest from the door. I looked over and saw a stocky guy
push in. Big head, balding, curly black hair. Unibrow. Looked like
he slept in his clothes. Dom. I had nothing on me to help subdue
him. Stun gun, pepper spray, cuffs were in my purse in the car. He
was bigger and meaner than me, and I had no legal reason to
apprehend. I moved out of line, keeping my eye on him, trying to be
invisible. My plan was to work my way around to the door and try to
follow him when he left. Dom was rumbling around, looking for the
shortest line. My line moved forward, Dom elbowed his way over and
spotted me. Our eyes locked for a moment, and Dom whirled around
and shoved his way to the door. His effort was misconstrued as
line-breaking, and this was an unfortunate thing, since
line-breaking doesn't go down well in Jersey. ”Asshole,“ some woman
said, giving him a hard shot to the kidney. Dom instinctively
turned on her and coldcocked her with a punch to the forehead. The
woman went down to the ground and the rest was pandemonium. I dove
for Dom and missed him by inches. Mothers were grabbing for their
children and dropping food. Clucky Chicken was in the mix, waving
his wings, trying to keep his footing. I slid on mashed potatoes
and took Clucky down with me. A pack of people piled on top of us.
”I hate this lousy job,“ Clucky said, kicking people off him. ”This
is the third time this has happened this month.“ I was on hands and
knees, and I saw Brenda and her crew at the door. Brenda had a mic
in her hand and the camera guy was filming. ”This is Brenda
reporting from Cluck-in-a-Bucket,“ Brenda said. ”Bringing you a
live update on the latest developments in the hunt for the missing
nine million dollars. We're here to interview Stephanie Plum.“ I
dragged myself to my feet and picked mashed potatoes out of my
hair. I was drenched with soda and covered with gravy. I looked
around, but I didn't see Dom. ”So,“ Brenda said, pointing the mic
at me, ”are you making any progress at locating the money?“ ”How
did you find me?“ I asked her. ”We were driving by and saw the Zook
car in the parking lot.“ Great. The Zook car. ”No comment,“ I said,
easing my way past the film crew. ”Jeez,“ Brenda said. ”Give me a
break here. I'm trying to get something going.