Takedown Twenty (Stephanie Plum 20)

“When did they play?”

“Just about every night, but usually not until after nine o’clock,” Grandma said. “There’s other things to do up to nine o’clock. Television shows and real-life Bingo.”

My mother had stopped ironing. “This is the first I heard about this.”

“That’s because you don’t play Bingo, and you sleep at night,” Grandma said. “When you get older you nod off all day long, and then you don’t need to go to bed so early.”

“I find it hard to believe those women were running up gambling debts,” my mother said.

“That’s just one of my theories,” Grandma said. “It could also have been aliens from some other galaxy that got them. And the aliens needed money but they didn’t need any old ladies.”

“If I wanted to drop in and watch the Bingo games, how would I do it?” I asked Grandma.

“I can gi

ve you the website. There’s lots of online gambling sites, but mostly I only hear talk about this one that comes off an island in the Caribbean.”

I got the information from Grandma, finished my coffee, and stood to leave.

“You can stop ironing,” I said to my mother. “I don’t have cancer. I’m not pregnant. And Grandma isn’t gambling her Social Security checks away playing online Bingo.”

“There’s always tomorrow,” my mother said.

I left my parents’ house and drove past Joe’s mother’s house. It was only a few blocks away so it wasn’t a huge effort. I idled for a moment and moved on. There was no indication that Sunny had returned, and I wasn’t about to knock on the door without good reason.

My real destination was Victory Hardware. I was going to buy a vacuum cleaner. I had no idea if Victor carried them, but it seemed like a good place to start.

Snoot ambled up to me when I walked in. Snoot wasn’t nearly as old as Victor, but he had the same deeply lined dead-skin look of a lifelong heavy smoker. If I had to guess I would say he was in his forties. He was about six feet tall, and lanky, walking slouched and loose-jointed. His thinning brown hair was pulled back into a low ponytail.

“Yuh?” he asked me.

“Is Victor here?”

“He stepped out to get us eats.”

“I’m looking for a vacuum cleaner.”

“We don’t have none of those. We had a couple of ’em years ago, but they took up too much space, so Victor never got any more in. If you want a vacuum cleaner you should go to the Hoover store two blocks down. You can’t go wrong with a Hoover.”

“There’s a Hoover store?”

“It’s part of the tattoo parlor. They sell Hoovers and sewing machines, and you can get a tattoo. I’ve seen some fine tattoos come out of there.”

“Did you know any of the women who were murdered and left in Dumpsters?”

“You mean like Mrs. Fratelli? She came in here all the time.”

“Did you know any of the others?”

“Nope. Don’t think so.”

“You didn’t kill them, did you?”

“Not that I remember.”

I drove two blocks and parked in front of Fancy Dan’s Tattoo Parlor. The front of the store had a vacuum cleaner display, and the back was given over to the tattoo business.

A heavily tattooed guy approached me and introduced himself as Fancy Dan. “I bet you’d like a rose tattooed on your shoulder,” he said to me. “I’m pretty good at knowing these things.”