Smokin' Seventeen
Authors: Janet Evanovich
ALSO BY JANET EVANOVICH
Sizzling Sixteen
Finger Lickin’ Fifteen
Fearless Fourteen
Lean Mean Thirteen
Twelve Sharp
Eleven on Top
Ten Big Ones
To the Nines
Hard Eight
Seven Up
Hot Six
High Five
Four to Score
Three to Get Deadly
Two for the Dough
One for the Money
Wicked Appetite
Plum Spooky
Plum Lucky
Plum Lovin’
Visions of Sugar Plums
Metro Girl
Motor Mouth
How I Write
Smokin’ Seventeen
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Evanovich, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
B
ANTAM
B
OOKS
and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52769-1
Jacket design and art: © Jerry Todd
v3.1_r4
Thanks to Shirley Eng
for suggesting the title for this book
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
ONE
MY GRANDMA MAZUR
called me early this morning.
“I had a dream,” Grandma said. “There was this big horse, and it could fly. It didn’t have wings. It just could fly. And the horse flew over top of you, and started dropping road apples, and you were running around trying to get out of the way of the road apples. And the funny thing was you didn’t have any clothes on except a red lace thong kind of underpants. Anyways, next thing a rhinoceros flew over you, and he was sort of hovering over top your head. And then I woke up. I got a feeling it means something.”
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good.” And she disconnected.
So that’s how my day started. And to tell you the truth the dream pretty much summed up my life.
My name is Stephanie Plum. I work as a bond enforcer for my cousin Vinnie’s bail bonds office, and I live in an uninspired, low-rent, three-story, brick-faced chunk of an apartment building on the edge of Trenton, New Jersey. My second-floor apartment is furnished with my relatives’ cast-offs. I’m average height. I have an okay shape. I’m pretty sure I’m averagely intelligent. And I know for sure I have a crummy job. My shoulder-length curly brown hair is inherited from the Italian side of the family, my blue eyes from the Hungarian side of the family, and I have an excellent nose that’s a gift from God. Good thing he gave me the nose before he found out I wasn’t the world’s best Catholic.
It was early September and unseasonably hot. I had my hair up in a ponytail. I’d forgone makeup and opted for lip balm instead. And I was wearing a red stretchy tank top, jeans, and sneakers. Perfect clothes for running down bad guys or buying doughnuts. I parked my hunk-of-junk Ford Escort in front of Tasty Pastry Bakery on Hamilton Avenue and mentally counted out the money in my wallet. Definitely enough for two doughnuts. Not enough for three.
Loretta Kucharski was behind the counter when I entered the bakery. Last year Loretta was vice president of a bank. When the bank went belly-up, Loretta got the job at Tasty Pastry. To my way of thinking it was definitely career advancement. I mean, who doesn’t want to work in a bakery?
“What’ll it be?” Loretta asked me. “Cannoli? Italian cookies? Doughnut?”
“Doughnuts.”
“Boston cream, chocolate cake, jelly, lemon glazed, cinnamon sugar, blueberry, pumpkin spice, chocolate glazed, cream filled, bearclaw, or maple?”
I bit into my lower lip. I wanted them all. “Definitely a Boston cream.”
Loretta carefully placed a Boston cream in a small white bakery box. “And?”
“Jelly doughnut,” I said. “No wait! Maple. No! Either Maple or pumpkin spice. Or maybe the chocolate glazed.”
The door to the bakery opened, and an old woman who looked like an extra out of a low-budget mafia movie marched in. She was small and wiry and dressed in black. Plain black dress, black scarf on her steel-gray hair, sensible black shoes, dark stockings. Snapping dark eyes under bushy gray eyebrows. Mediterranean skin tone.
Loretta and I gasped when we saw her. It was Bella—the most terrifying woman in Trenton. She’d immigrated to the States over fifty years ago, but she was still more Sicilian than American. She was devious and sly and possibly flat-out crazy. She was also my boyfriend’s grandmother.
Loretta made the sign of the cross and asked the Holy Mother for protection. Considering my lack of church attendance I didn’t feel comfy asking the Holy Mother for help, so I gave Bella a weak smile and a small wave.
Grandma Bella pointed a bony finger at me. “You! What
you
doing here?”
To say that my relationship with Grandma Bella was tenuous would be a gross understatement. Not only am I the harlot who, to her way of thinking, seduced and corrupted Joseph Anthony Morelli, her favorite grandson, but even more damning, I’m Edna Mazur’s granddaughter. Grandma Bella and my Grandma Mazur do
not
get along.
“D-d-doughnut,” I said to Bella.
“Get out of my way,” Bella said, pushing me aside, stepping up to the counter. “I was here first.”
Loretta’s eyes were as big as duck eggs, darting back and forth between Bella and me. “Um,” Loretta said, still holding the bakery box containing my Boston cream.
“Actually, I was here first,” I said to Bella, “but you can go ahead of me if you want.”
“What? You telling me you first? You dare to say such a thing?” Bella hit me on the arm with her purse. “You have no respect.”
“Cripes,” I said. “Get a grip.”
“Christ? You say Christ?” Bella crossed herself and pulled her rosary beads out of her pocket. “You burn in hell. You gonna get smite down. Get away from me. I don’t want to be near when it happens.”
“I didn’t say Christ. I said
cripes.
”
“You
heathen
,” Bella said. “Like your Grandma Edna. She should rot in hell.”
Okay, so Bella was a crazy old lady, but that was going too
far. “Hey, watch what you say about my grandmother,” I said to Bella.
Bella shook her finger at me. “I put the eye on you. I fix you good.”
Loretta sucked in air and ducked down behind the counter.
“I’m going to tell Joe on you,” I said to Bella. “You’re not supposed to be giving people the eye.”
Bella tipped her head back and looked down her nose at me. “You think he believe you over his grandma? You think he believe you when you ugly with boils? You think he believe you when you fat? When you stink like cabbage?”
Loretta whimpered from behind the counter.
“Stay down,” Bella said to Loretta. “You good girl. I don’t want you to get in the way of the eye.”
So here’s the thing with the eye. I’m pretty sure it’s a bunch of baloney. Still, there’s the outside chance that Junior Genovisi didn’t lose his hair from male pattern baldness. I mean no one else in his family ever went bald, and it happened right after Bella put the whammy on him. Then there was Rose DeMarco. She accidentally mowed Bella over with her motorized wheelchair, and the next day Rose broke out with shingles.
Loretta popped up, stuffed a bunch of doughnuts into the bakery box, and threw it at me. “Run for it!”
I caught the box and looked over at Loretta. “How many are in here? What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Just get out of here!”
“Hah, too late for her,” Bella said to Loretta. “She got the eye now. I’ll take an almond coffee cake. I want the one in front with the most icing.”
• • •
Under normal circumstances, at this time of day I would head for the bail bonds office on Hamilton. Unfortunately the bonds office burned down to the ground not so long ago, so for the moment we’re operating out of a motor home owned by a guy named Mooner. I’ve known Mooner for a bunch of years, and he wouldn’t be my first choice for landlord, but desperate times call for desperate measures. My cousin Vinnie needed to find a place with cheap rent, and Mooner needed gas and burrito money. Voilà! A mobile bail bonds office. Problem is I never know exactly where the office is parked.
I drove down Hamilton and cruised past the lot that had been the site of the original office. Mooner’s bus was there. There was a construction trailer parked at the curb behind Mooner’s bus, the charred rubble had been carted away, and there were stakes stuck into the dirt. Vincent Plum Bail Bonds was in rebuilding mode.
It was Monday morning and business as usual, except today there were two cop cars, Joe Morelli’s green SUV, and the medical examiner’s meat wagon parked at odd angles around the construction trailer and Mooner’s bus. Four uniformed cops, Morelli, the M.E., my cousin Vinnie, the bail bonds office
manager, Connie Rosolli, and Mooner were all standing in front of a small backhoe, looking into a shallow pit.
I’ve known Morelli all my life, and he’s one of those men who gets better with age. He was a handsome, reckless, heart-breaker in high school. He’s even more handsome now that his face shows some character and maturity. He’s lean and muscular with black hair waving over the top of his ears and along the nape of his neck. His brown eyes are sharp and assessing when he’s working. They soften when he’s aroused. He’s a Trenton plainclothes cop, and he was wearing jeans and boots and a blue buttoned-down shirt with his gun clipped to his belt. This was in sharp contrast to my cousin Vinnie, who is four inches shorter than Morelli and looks like a weasel with slicked-back hair and pointy-toed shoes.
I parked behind Morelli’s SUV and joined the group.
“What are we looking at?” I asked Morelli.
“I’m guessing Lou Dugan,” he said.
A half-rotted hand was poking out of the disturbed dirt, and not far from the hand was something that might be part of a skull. I see a lot of bad things in my job, but this was right up there at the top of the Gonna Gork Meter.
TWO
“WHY DO YOU THINK
it’s Lou Dugan?” the M.E. asked Morelli.
Morelli pointed to the hand. “Pinky ring. Diamonds and rubies. Dugan was at the pancake supper at St. Joaquin’s, told Manny Kruger he was going home, and that was the last anyone saw him.”
Lou Dugan wasn’t without enemies. He ran a topless titty bar downtown, and it was common knowledge that the women went way beyond lap dances. He was a flamboyant pillar of the community, and I’d heard he could be ruthless in his business dealings.