Two for the Dough (Stephanie Plum 2) - Page 9

Color crept into Julia's cheeks. “Actually, I sort of saw him last night. He called right after you left, and then he came over. I told him you wanted to talk to him. I told him he should call you. I gave him your card with your beeper numbers and everything.”

“Do you think he'll come back tonight?”

“No.” She shook her head for emphasis. “He said he wasn't coming back. He said he had to keep a real low profile because there were people after him.”

“The police?”

“I think he meant someone else, but I don't know who.”

Morelli gave her another card with instructions to call him anytime, day or night, if she heard from Kenny.

She looked noncommittal, and I didn't think we should count on much help from Julia.

We went back out into the rain and hustled to the car. Aside from Morelli, the only piece of cop equipment in the Fairlane was a recycled two-way radio. It was tuned to the police tactical channel and the dispatcher relayed calls between bursts of static. I had a similar radio in my Jeep, and I was struggling to learn the police codes. Like all other cops I knew, Morelli listened unconsciously, miraculously processing the garbled information.

He turned out of the campus, and I asked the inevitable question. “Now what?”

“You're the one with the instincts. You tell me.”

“My instincts aren't doing a lot for me this morning.”

“Okay, then let's run down what we have. What do we know about Kenny?”

After last night we knew he was a premature ejaculator, but that probably wasn't what Morelli wanted to hear. “Local boy, high school graduate, enlisted in the army, got out four months ago. Still unemployed, but obviously not hurting for money. For unknown reasons he decided to shoot his friend Moogey Bues in the knee. He got caught in the process by an off-duty cop. He had no priors and was released on bond. He violated his bond contract and stole a car.”

“Wrong. He borrowed a car. He just hasn't gotten around to returning it yet.”

“You think that's significant?”

Morelli stopped for a light. “Maybe something happened to change his plans.”

“Like acing ol' Moogey.”

“Julia said Kenny was afraid someone was after him.”

“Leo's father?”

“You're not taking this seriously,” Morelli said.

“I'm taking it very seriously. I'm just not coming up with much, and I don't notice you sharing a lot of your thoughts with me. For instance, who do you think is after Kenny?”

“When Kenny and Moogey were questioned about the shooting they both said it was over a personal issue and wouldn't discuss it. Maybe they had some bad business going on.”

“And?”

“And that's it. That's what I think.”

I stared at him for a moment, trying to decide if he was holding out on me. Probably he was, but there was no way to tell for sure. “Okay,” I finally said on a sigh, “I have a list of Kenny's friends. I'm going to run through it.”

“Where'd you get this list?”

“P

rivileged information.”

Morelli looked pained. “You broke into his apartment and stole his little black book.”

“I didn't steal it. I copied it.”

Tags: Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum Mystery
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