Hardcore Twenty-Four (Stephanie Plum 24)

“You gonna just drive around?”

“Yes. And then I’ll decide if I want to talk to anyone.”

“I think you should talk to your granny. It would have the added benefit of a piece of coffee cake or some of them Italian cookies. There’s always excellent bakery products at your momma’s house.”

I’d had the same thoughts. Grandma was tapped into the Burg gossip network. There was a good possibility she knew something about Johnny Chucci. And, more important, I could use a cookie.

Johnny’s parents lived in a two-story frame house that was similar in size to my parents’ house. It had a postage stamp front yard, a small front porch, and a single-car detached garage at the rear of their property. There was a blue F-150 pickup parked in the driveway.

“This is a nice house,” Lula said. “It’s all kept up with fresh paint, and they even got a pot of flowers on the porch.”

“Do we have an address for his sister?”

“She’s two houses down on the same side of the street. It’s the house that’s painted blue and has the big American flag hanging on the front porch and the kids’ toys on the sidewalk. If I had a house of my own I’d fly a flag. It’d be a big one too, on account of I’m not a halfway person. And I’m all for being patriotic.”

“What about the ex-wife?”

“The ex-wife, Judy, is on South Street.”

South Street was on the other side of the Burg and one block away from my parents’ house. Convenient for the cookie drop-in. I followed the familiar maze of streets to South Street and idled in front of Judy Chucci’s house.

“Holy cow,” Lula said. “She’s got gnomes all over her front lawn. It’s a gnome-con. There must be forty gnomes here. They’re all painted the same, too. Red hats and blue pants. I guess that’s classic gnome colors.” Lula shifted in her seat. “You ever notice that Trenton has some strange stuff going on? Clusters of gnomes and zombies. Trenton could be like Ghostbusters, where all the paranormal apparitions get together in one spot, and one day BOOM. All hell breaks loose, and we get overrun by funky-ass gnomes.”

I glanced over at Lula. “You realize those gnomes aren’t real, right? They’re made of plaster, and she probably got them at the flea market.”

“Okay, but who knows what happens at night? They could come alive like the zombies.”

I turned the corner and drove to my parents’ house. “You need cake.”

“Hell, yeah.”

NINE

GRANDMA WAS AT the door when Lula and I set foot on the porch. “I was hoping someone would come to visit,” Grandma said. “The television is on the blink, and there are no viewings at the funeral home today. I got nothing to do.”

“How come there are no viewings?” Lula asked. “Seems like there are always viewings.”

“The word is that they’re working overtime at Stiva’s trying to get Emily Molinowski’s head back on her. She’s supposed to have a viewing tonight, and they’re advertising an open casket. The funeral home is going to be packed. I’m going a half hour early or I won’t get a good seat.”

We all made our way back to the kitchen, where my mother was putting a meatloaf together.

“Sit down and I’ll get the cookies,” Grandma said to Lula and me.

Lula took a seat at the small kitchen table. “We just passed by a house with a whole bunch of gnomes in the front yard. What’s with that?”

“You must be talking about Judy Chucci,” Grandma said, setting out a bakery box of Italian cookies. “She’s a little nutty with the gnomes. Gets them at the craft store and paints them herself. The inside of her house is filled with them. She said she needed a hobby after the divorce from Johnny. And then she had that accident at work and went on disability. I guess now she sits home all day painting gnomes.”

“What kind of a disability does she have?”

“She worked at the button factory. One of the machines went haywire and spewed oil on her, and she slipped and fell down and broke her back.”

“That’s horrible,” Lula said.

“I think it was only broke a little,” Grandma said. “She was laid up for a couple weeks, but she seems to get around okay now. I imagine she’ll be on disability until the lawsuit is settled with the button factory.”

I took a cookie from the box. “Does she still see Johnny?”

“Not that I know about,” Grandma said. “It was a nasty divorce. Not as nasty as yours. Your divorce was epic. Still, hers was pretty good.”