20 Takedown Twenty (8 page)

I handed Connie the body receipt for Ziggy and she wrote a check out to me for the recovery.

“That looks like pizza money,” Lula said. “If you don’t get too many extra toppings you could get a soda with it.”

“I have information on the latest Dumpster murder,” Connie said. “Definitely strangled. And her bank account was cleaned out the day before.”

“It’s terrible that these old ladies are getting murdered,” Lula said. “It gives me the creepy-crawlies.”

Vinnie’s door was open, and his office was empty.

“Where’s Vinnie?” I asked Connie.

“The ponies are running.”

“I thought Lucille signed him up with Gamblers Anonymous.”

“He said his G.A. group is meeting at the track. Field trip.”

“If Lucille’s daddy finds out, he’ll field trip Vinnie to the landfill,” Lula said.

A text message buzzed on my phone. It was from Ranger.
Catch up with you after Bingo
.

Oh boy.

“Is something wrong?” Lula asked. “You just got that look.”

“What look?” I asked her.

“Your
Oh boy
look.”

“It was a message from Ranger reminding me about Bingo.”

“Oh boy,” Lula said.

I dropped my check into my messenger bag. “There’s not a lot left of the afternoon. I’m going to take my broken finger home.”

“That’s a good idea,” Lula said. “You could take a nap to get ready for
Bingo
. Do you want a ride to the Senior Center? I could come pick you up.”

“Sure.”

I detoured to the supermarket on the way home and filled my shopping cart. Milk, eggs, bread, cereal, pickles, a variety of disposable aluminum pans, crackers, cheese, Marshmallow Fluff, olives, cracker crumbs, butter, ice cream, aluminum foil, garbage bags, paper napkins, canola oil, orange juice, potato chips, bags of frozen vegetables, ketchup, frozen chicken cutlets all breaded and ready for the oven, a
Cooking Light
magazine, several home decorator magazines, and a frozen banana cream pie. Am I a domestic goddess, or what?

I lugged everything up to my apartment, called Morelli, and invited him to dinner.

“Sure,” Morelli said. “What do you want me to bring? Pizza? Chinese? Wings?”

“You don’t have to bring anything,” I said. “I’m cooking.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Cooking?” he asked.

“Yes. Cooking. Jeez, you’d think I never cooked.”

“Cupcake, you only own one pot.”

“I have to be at Bingo at seven, so we have to eat at five o’clock.”

“Can’t wait,” Morelli said.

I hung up, opened the bag of chips, and gave one to Rex. “He has no confidence in me,” I said to Rex. “Just because a girl doesn’t have a toaster doesn’t mean she can’t cook, right?”

I pushed the clutter to one end of my dining room table and laid out two place settings. I stepped back, looked at the table, and made a mental note to buy two place mats, just in case I decided to ever do this again.

I took a shower with my broken finger encased in a plastic sandwich bag. Under the white gauze wrapping, the finger was swollen and throbbing. I felt like a wimp since there wasn’t even any bone sticking out, but the finger didn’t feel great. I dried off and applied a new super-sized adhesive bandage to my skinned knee. The knee would heal, but my jeans would never be the same.

It had been a long time since I’d used the oven, but I figured out how to turn it on. Just like riding a bike, I thought. You never forget. Call me Chef Stephanie. According to the box, the cutlets would take fifteen minutes. No need to even
defrost the little suckers before roasting. So I had the oven going and the meal all planned out, now all I had to do was wait for Morelli and hope he’d bring something to drink, since I’d run out of money before I could get to the liquor store.

He showed up precisely at five with his big shaggy dog, Bob, who rushed in and galloped around my little apartment, returning to the kitchen with his tongue hanging out. I gave him a bowl of water, he slopped it all over the floor, and then he flopped down in my living room to take a nap.

Morelli put a six-pack of beer and a bottle of red wine on my kitchen counter. “Pick your poison,” he said.

“I’m going with the wine. It’s more romantic.”

“That sounds hopeful. Are we getting romantic?”

“Maybe. Did you bring drugs?” I held my finger up for him to take a look. “Broken.”

“Compound fracture?” he asked.

“No.”

“Hardly worth worrying about.”

“It hurts!”

Morelli grinned. “Did you invite me over here to score drugs off me?”

“Not originally. I thought I might want to be more domestic, but now that you’re here I’m thinking drugs could be the way to go.”

“Why do you want to be more domestic?”

“I don’t know. It just came over me.”

“Is it that time of the month?”

“No!”

“Lucky me,” Morelli said.

I checked out the wine. Screw cap. The greatest invention since fire. I poured out two glasses and toasted the screw cap. Not easy to do with two fingers taped together and in a metal splint. I dumped the box of cutlets onto one of my new disposable broiler pans and shoved them into the hot oven.

“Easy-peasy,” I said to Morelli. “They’ll be perfect in fifteen minutes. The box wouldn’t lie.”

“I’m getting turned on by all this domesticity,” Morelli said.

This wasn’t an impressive admission. Morelli got turned on by lint.

I took the bag of vegetables out of the freezer and tossed them into my microwave. I figured I’d just cook the crap out of them until the chicken was done. I topped off my wine, and minutes later there was an explosion.

Morelli and I instinctively dropped to the ground.

“What the heck?” I yelled. “What was that?”

Morelli was on his back, laughing. “I think you exploded the vegetables!”

We got to our feet and looked in at the massacre inside the microwave.

Morelli was still grinning. “It’s like a crime scene.”

“It’s not funny.” A tear leaked out of my eye. “I’m a big stupid failure!”

Morelli wrapped an arm around me and hugged me into
him. “They were just vegetables,” he said. “Vegetables are way overrated.”

“I can’t do anything right.”

“Not true. You excel at many things.”

“Such as?”

“You give a damn good happy-ending massage.”

“That’s it? Sex? That’s my field of expertise?”

“It beats being able to cook a vegetable.”

I did an eye roll so severe I almost lost my balance. “I want to be able to do both.”

Morelli took another bag of vegetables out of my freezer and read the instructions. “Pierce the bag before microwaving.”

“I didn’t do that.” I swiped at my nose. “I’m too dumb to even read directions.”

“Anything else go wrong today?”

“I broke my finger.”

“Besides that.”

“I ripped my jeans when I fell down the stairs. Your grandmother said I was going to hell. A couple guys shot at me. I apprehended Ziggy Radiewski, and he peed himself.”

“So it was a normal day,” Morelli said.

I gave up a sigh.

“And you’re going to Bingo tonight?”

I nodded. “That’s why I need the drugs.”

Morelli took the chicken out of the oven. “The chicken looks good. What else do you have to eat?”

“Potatoes in the form of chips.”

“Works for me,” Morelli said.

We ate the chicken and chips, and Bob came over and pushed against me.

“Don’t feed him,” Morelli said. “He’s getting fat. I fed him before we got here.”

“Tell me about the latest Dumpster victim.”

“Not much to tell. She fit the profile. Seventy-six years old. Lived alone. Withdrew money from her bank account one day and dead the next. She was strangled and wrapped in a sheet. The details were consistent with the other victims.”

“Do you know what was used to strangle her?”

“A Venetian blind cord. Just like always.”

“You’d have to be pretty strong to strangle someone.”

“Not necessarily. The women selected were frail,” Morelli said. “And two of them had blunt force trauma to the back of their heads. They were knocked out and then strangled.”

“Anything else?”

“We haven’t made it public, but they all had a single sunflower somewhere in their home. Melvina had it in a jelly jar in her kitchen. Lois had one in a vase on her dining room table.”

“A calling card?”

“Something like that.”

I brought the banana cream pie and two forks to the table, and we dug in.

“You even defrosted it,” Morelli said.

“I’m no slouch when it comes to pie.”

We finished the pie and carried our dishes into the kitchen. Morelli gave the last chunk of pie crust to Rex, gave a small
piece of chicken he’d been saving to Bob, and reached out for me, pulling me flat against him. “I haven’t taken any pills today,” he said. “I have full control over my tongue.”

“No time,” I told him. “Lula will be here any minute. Maybe we can test out your tongue after Bingo.”

“Can’t do it after Bingo. I promised my brother I’d go to the ball game with him.” He looked at my splinted finger. “Do you really want drugs?”

“No. I’m feeling better now that I’m full of wine and pie.”

Morelli moved to kiss me, and the doorbell rang.

“Don’t answer it,” he said. “Eventually she’ll go away.”

“She won’t go away. She’ll shoot the lock off the door. I’ll have to pay for a new door.”

“Hey!” Lula yelled. “I know you’re in there. I can hear you breathing. What are you doing?”

I opened the door, and Lula looked past me and waved at Morelli.

“I saw your car in the lot,” Lula said.

“I’ll give you twenty bucks if you go away,” Morelli said to Lula.

“I gotta take Stephanie and her granny to Bingo,” Lula told him. “I bet we win the jackpot. I feel lucky. I got my lucky undies on.”

Morelli snapped the leash onto Bob and gave me a fast kiss. “I can’t compete with her lucky undies. I’ll try to catch you tomorrow.”

I’D BEEN TO the Senior Center before and it always smelled like eucalyptus, canned peas, and orange blossom air freshener. It was a single-story redbrick structure straddling the line between Trenton and Hamilton Township. Bingo was held in the largest of the meeting rooms. Rectangular folding tables were set out in rows that ran perpendicular to the small stage at one end. The caller sat at a little table on the stage, and an overhead flat-screen television flashed the numbers as they were called.

“This is a real professional setup,” Lula said, taking a seat.

“It’s pretty good, but it’s not as good as some of the Bingo halls in Atlantic City,” Grandma said. “Some of them are all electronic. You don’t need cards or daubers or nothing.”

I’d elected to play four cards. Grandma took twelve cards. And Lula bought thirty.

“Are you going to be able to keep track of all those cards?” Grandma asked Lula. “That’s a lot of cards.”

“Yeah, but the more cards you got, the more chances you got to win, right?”

“That’s true,” Grandma said. “Do you play Bingo a lot?”

Lula laid all her cards out in front of her. “I’m one of those intermittent players.”

“Me too,” Grandma said. “I don’t know how these women have the time to do this every night. I got a schedule to keep. I gotta see
Dancing with the Stars
and
America’s Got Talent
. I record my shows when I have to, but it’s not like seeing them live.”

We were sitting to the side and back of the room and I could see all the players. Most were women in their sixties and seventies. The demographic would be a lot younger when we went to Bingo at the firehouse. There were a few men mixed in with the women. I knew some of them. They were, for the most part, the core participants in the senior program. They went on the bus trips to Atlantic City, they played cards in the afternoon, they took a variety of classes that were available at the center, and they went to Bingo.

“I got my eyes open for the killer,” Grandma said. “If I had to pick someone out in this room, it would be Willy Benson. I always thought he looked shifty.”

“He’s ninety-three years old!”

“Yeah, but he’s crafty. And he gets around pretty good.”

“I know Willy,” Lula said. “He looks shifty on account of
his one eye don’t look at you. It looks someplace else. You can’t malign a man for a disability.”

“It depends where the other eye’s looking,” Grandma said.

Marion Wenger was onstage twirling the cage containing the numbered Bingo balls. She selected one and called out B-10.

“I know I got a B-10 somewhere,” Lula said. “Here’s one. And here’s another one. Am I off to a good start, or what?”

“I got one too,” Grandma said, marking it off with her dauber.

“G-47,” Marion called.

“Got it,” Lula said. “Here, and here, and here …”

“N-40.”

“Hold on,” Lula said. “I’m not done looking for G-47.”

“B-15.”

“Say what?”

“You’ve got a bunch of B-15s,” Grandma said to Lula. “I can see them from here.”

“B-2.”

“Hey!” Lula yelled to Marion. “You got some better place to go that you gotta rush us through our Bingo game?”

The game came to a screeching halt and everyone turned to look at us.

“Lula’s new at this,” Grandma announced to the room. “She hasn’t got the hang of it yet.”

Across the table and two chairs down, Mildred Frick narrowed her eyes at Lula. “Amateur,” she said on a hiss of air.

Lula glared back. “Who you calling a amateur? You got a lot of nerve calling someone a amateur when you don’t even know them.”

“You have a lot of nerve sitting there with thirty cards when you’re not capable of playing them,” Mildred said to Lula. “Clearly you’re too dumb to manage thirty cards. It’s an insult to the rest of the room that you would even try. You’re a
dumb bunny
.”

“Well, you’re a ugly old hag,” Lula said. “And I find your choice of accessories to be a insult. You got a handbag hanging on the back of your chair that I wouldn’t be caught dead in.”

Mildred was at least eighty years old. She was five feet tall. And she had a spray tan that made her look mummified. She jumped to her feet and leaned across the table at Lula. “You take back what you said about my handbag.”