Takedown Twenty (Stephanie Plum 20)

“Me too,” Grandma said. “I want extra cheese.”

I sat at the table across from Grandma. “I need some help with the women who were murdered. When I discovered they all played Bingo I thought that might be the common interest that would lead me to the murderer, but I couldn’t single out a suspect at either game. There has to be something else the women had in common that they would come into contact with the murderer.”

“I didn’t know Melvina,” Grandma said. “I knew Bitsy Muddle, Lois Fratelli, and Rose Walchek. Poor Rose is going to be laid out tomorrow. I had to cancel a date so I could go. I heard you could see the cord marks on Rose’s neck. I hope they don’t get too covered up. I wouldn’t mind seeing something like that.”

“That’s gruesome,” my mother said.

“Maybe,” Grandma said, “but I got a natural scientific curiosity about those things. I bet I could have been one of them forensic people like on television.”

“Tell me about Rose,” I said to Grandma. “How well did you know her?”

“I guess I knew her pretty well,” Grandma said. “I saw her at Bingo, and I saw her at the beauty salon. And I saw her at the funeral parlor too. She liked to go to the afternoon viewings, because they weren’t so crowded.”

“Did she have a man friend?”

“She was seeing Barry Farver for a while, but he died. That’s the problem with dating the old geezers. That’s why I always say if you’re going to invest in a man you got to go young.”

“Gordon Krutch doesn’t look all that young.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty old, but he’s got a car. And Madelyn Krick went out with him, and she said he’s hot.”

My mother was at the stove, frying the grilled cheese. She wasn’t facing me, but I could feel her eyes rolling around in her head.

“Did she play cards? Did she belong to a book club? Did she take tap dancing lessons?” I asked Grandma.

“She liked the Jumble. She always had one of them Jumble books when she was at the beauty salon.”

“I knew Rose,” my mother said, bringing the sandwiches to the table. “She liked to cook. She went to all the cooking demonstrations at the kitchen store next to the liquor store.”

“That’s right,” Grandma said. “I forgot about that. Your mother and I go to some of them. They’re real good. You should go with us next time.”

I bit into my sandwich. “Are there men in the audience?”

“The times we were there it was almost half men,” Grandma said. “The demonstrations are early Saturday morning, and it’s a good location between the liquor store and the supermarket.”

“Did any of the other victims attend the cooking demonstrations?”

“We don’t go every week,” Grandma said. “Bitsy was there once when they were doing crêpes Suzette. Bitsy liked her booze.”

“What about Lois?” I asked. “Did she go to the cooking demonstrations?”

“I never saw her there,” Grandma said. “But I saw her in the liquor store that was next to it. It’s an excellent liquor store. Your mother and me get all our hooch there.”

“Anything else about Lois?”

“She lived a block from here, but we didn’t see her much,” Grandma said. “Sometimes we’d see her at mass.”

I finished my soup and sandwich and took my clothes out of the washing machine. They still smelled like fish, so I ran them through a second time and dumped in some bleach.

“I have to get back to work,” I said. “I’ll stop by later for my clothes.”

“Come for dinner,” my mother said. “I’m making stuffed shells, and there’s chocolate cake for dessert.”

“Sounds good.” Hard to pass up stuffed shells and chocolate cake.

I rumbled off to my apartment, changed my clothes, and turned my laptop on. I plugged the four murdered women into a basic search program and printed out a page on each of them. Address, credit history, litigation, relatives, work history. Mostly I cared about the addresses and the relatives. I was sure I was duplicating police efforts, but Ranger wanted me to snoop, so I was snooping.

Melvina had lived in a garden apartment in Hamilton Township. She’d had a couple low-limit credit cards. No work history. No litigation. Besides her son, Ruppert, there was a daughter who lived in Chicago. Melvina had survived her husband and her two siblings.