Takedown Twenty (Stephanie Plum 20)

My mother pressed her lips together. Ranger wasn’t marriage material. Ranger wasn’t going to give her grandchildren… at least not legitimate ones.

“Gotta go,” I told them. “Things to do.”

I called Connie from my car and asked her for a home address for Rita Raguzzi.

“I’ll only give it to you if you come collect Lula,” Connie said. “She’s driving me nuts. We need to ration her coffee in the morning. She won’t stop talking about giraffes.”

I swung by the office and retrieved Lula.

“Here’s the information you wanted,” she said, handing me a computer printout and buckling herself in. “What’s up with this Raguzzi?”

“Grandma says Uncle Sunny keeps his toothbrush at her house.”

“Grandma knows everything. Did you ask her about the giraffe?”

“The giraffe didn’t come up.”

“How could the giraffe not come up? We got a giraffe in Trenton. It’s practically a miracle. And it’s not like he’s some plain-ass horse or cow. A giraffe’s special. It’s the tallest animal. It’s taller than a elephant. A giraffe can get to be nineteen feet tall. And his legs could be six foot. Did you know that?”

“No. I didn’t know that.”

“A giraffe could run thirty-five miles an hour, and they could weigh twenty-eight hundred pounds. And here’s the good part: He got a tongue could measure twenty-one inches. Bet Mrs. Giraffe likes that one.”

“That’s a big tongue.”

“Freakin’ A. In the wild a giraffe lives about twenty-five years, but I think running around Trenton could shorten a giraffe lifespan. I’m worried about poor Kevin.”

“Who’s Kevin?”

“The giraffe. I named him Kevin.”

I scanned the file on Rita. She was fifty-one years old, twice divorced, indeed living in Hamilton Township. She worked out of a downtown Trenton office as a realtor.

“I don’t suppose you want to go look for the giraffe,” Lula said.

“What would we do if we found him?”

“We could talk to him. He might be lonely. And we could make sure he’s getting something to eat. There’s not a whole lot of trees with nice juicy leaves in the neighborhood he picked out.”

“Surely his owner has found him by now.”

“Maybe his owner don’t want him. Maybe he’s an orphan giraffe. Like cats that go wandering around and don’t have a home. What do you call them cats?”

“Feral.”

“Yeah, this here could be a feral giraffe.”

I looked at my watch. “We can take a fast drive down Morgan and scope out the side streets, but then I need to follow up on Rita Raguzzi.”

“That works for me. I’ve just gotta make sure Kevin isn’t laying in the road with a dart stuck in his butt like Ralph Rogers. Lucky for Ralph that was only a tranquilizer dart.”

I nodded. “Lucky him,” I said, thinking this probably wasn’t a good time to tell Lula that Ralph Rogers was dead.

I took Hamilton to Olden and turned off at Morgan. Lula powered her window down so she could listen for giraffe noises, and I cruised up and down the streets.

“Hold on,” Lula said. “What’s that up ahead? Stop the car! I see giraffe poop.”

I jerked to a stop, and we squinted at the mound of brown stuff that was half on the sidewalk and half in the gutter about ten feet in front of us.