Four to Score (Stephanie Plum 4)

Vinnie had a cigar in his mouth that I'm willing to bet was twice the size of his dick. “Where's Maxine? I forfeit my money in f

ive days, for crissake. I should never have taken Barnhardt off.”

“I'm closing in.”

“Right,” Vinnie said. “Closing in on my liver.” He ducked into his office and slammed the door.

I traced Margie's address in the directory and came up with her last name. There are three hospitals in the Trenton area. Helene Fuld is a short distance from Nowicki's neighborhood. Margie's address is equal distance between Helene Fuld and St. Francis.

I went home to Joe's house, helped myself to another wedge of chocolate cake and called my cousin Evelyn, who works at Helene Fuld. I gave her the two names and asked her to nose around. Neither Margie nor Mama Nowicki was wanted by the police, so (assuming they were alive) they had no reason not to return to their doctors. Their only concern was keeping me from following them back to Maxine.

* * * * *

IT WAS three o'clock, and I was sort of hoping another Italian lady would stop around with something new for dinner. I kept looking out the window, but I didn't see any big black cars bearing food. This posed a problem because the idea of being in Morelli's kitchen, making him dinner, felt like a Doris Day movie.

Evelyn called and told me it was my lucky day. Both women had been treated at Fuld. Both women would go to their own doctors for follow-?up. She gave me the names of the attending physicians and also the names listed for primary care through their medical plans. I told her I owed her. She said a detailed description of Morelli in bed would do the trick.

I called the doctors and lied my ass off to their receptionists, telling them I'd forgotten my appointment time. Both women had Wednesday appointments. Shit, I was good.

Morelli dragged in with a sweat stain the length of his gray Tshirt. He went to the refrigerator and stuck his head in the freezer. “I've gotta get air in this house.”

I thought the weather was pretty good compared to yesterday. Today you could sort of see a yellow glow where the sun was behind the layer of funk air.

He pulled his head out of the freezer, tossed his gun on the counter and got a beer.

“Bad day?”

“Average.”

“I saw you in north Trenton.”

“You made me?”

“I recognized the car. I figured you were watching the Seven-?Eleven.”

“And watching, and watching, and watching.”

“Drugs?”

“Funny money.”

“I thought you weren't supposed to tell me.”

“Fuck it. Treasury has this case so screwed up it doesn't matter. There've been bogus twenties coming out of Trenton for five years that we know of . . . probably more. Treasury has everything in place. They go in to get the guy. No plates where the plates are supposed to be. No paper. No nothing. Including no funny money traffic. We can't even make an arrest. We look like a bunch of fucking amateurs. Then all of a sudden, yesterday, a couple of the twenties get passed at the convenience store on Olden. So we start all over, looking to see who goes in that store.”

“The clerk didn't know who passed them?”

“They were discovered at the bank when the teller was counting them out for deposit.”

“What do you think?”

“I think we had the right guy the first time. Some fluky thing happened and the stuff wasn't there.”

“I just had a weird thought. We attributed Helen Badijian's death to her connection with Maxine. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with Maxine. Maybe it had to do with the funny money.”

“I thought of that, too, but the MO ties it to Maxine. Cause of death to Badijian was a blow to the head, but she also had one of her fingers chopped off.”

I had an even weirder thought, but I didn't want to say it out loud and sound like a dunce.