One for the Money (Stephanie Plum 1)

Made perfect sense to me, but my feet were stuck to the pavement and my heart was rocketing around in my chest. “All right. Here I go,” I said. “Now or never.”

Morelli had dropped to his belly and was looking under the Nova.

“What do you see?” I asked him.

“A hell of an oil leak.” He crawled out and got to his feet.

I raised the hood and checked the dipstick. Wonder of wonders, the car needed oil. I fed it two cans and slammed the hood down.

Morelli had taken the keys from the door handle and angled himself behind the wheel. “Stand back,” he said to me.

“No way. This is my car. I'll start it up.”

“If one of us is going to get blown apart it might as well be me. I'm as good as dead if I don't find that missing witness, anyway. Move away from the car.”

He turned the key. Nothing happened. He looked at me.

“Sometimes you have to smack it around,” I said.

He turned the key again and brought his fist down hard on the dash. The car coughed and caught. It idled rough and then settled in.

Morelli slumped against the wheel, eyes closed. “Shit.”

I looked in the window at him. “Is my seat wet?”

“Very funny.” He got out of the car and held the door for me. “Do you want me to follow?”

“No. I'll be fine. Thanks.”

“I'll be on Stark Street if you need me. Who knows . . . maybe the witness will show up at the gym.”

When I got to Bernie's store I noticed people weren't standing in line to go through the door, so I assumed I was in good shape for the daiquiri mix.

“Hey,” Bernie said, “look who's here.”

“I got your message about the blender.”

“It's this little baby,” he said, patting a display blender. “It chops nuts, crushes ice, mashes bananas, and makes a hell of a daiquiri.”

I looked at the price affixed to the blender. I could afford it. “Sold. Do I get my free daiquiri mix?”

“You bet.” He took a boxed blender to the register, bagged it, and rang it up. “How's it going?” he asked cautiously, his eyes fixed on the singed stumps of hair that had once been eyebrows.

“It's been better.”

“A daiquiri will help.”

“Without a shadow of a doubt.”

On the other side of the street, Sal was Windexing his front door. He was a pleasant-looking man, thick-bodied and balding, wrapped in his white butcher's apron. So far as I knew, he was a small-time bookie. Nothing special. I doubted he was connected. So why would a guy like Kulesza, whose entire life centered on Stark Street, drive all the way across town to see Sal? I knew a few of Kulesza's vital statistics, but I didn't know anything of his personal life. Shopping at Sal's was the only moderately interesting piece of information I had about Kulesza. Maybe Ziggy was a betting man. Maybe he and Sal were old friends. Maybe they were related. Now that I thought about it, maybe Sal would know about Carmen or the guy with the flat nose.

I chatted with Bernie for a few more minutes while I settled in to the idea of interviewing Sal. I watched a woman enter the shop and make a purchase. This seemed like a good approach to me. It would give me an opportunity to look around.

I promised Bernie I'd be back for bigger and better appliances and walked across the street to Sal's.

Stephanie Plum 1 - One for the Money

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