One for the Money (Stephanie Plum 1)

“An apartment complex on Route 1.” Another cringe.

“Now?”

“Yeah.” Very large sigh. “Now.”

“I'm having stuffed shells tonight. Would you like some stuffed shells?”

Hard to believe how much I wanted those stuffed shells. More than good sex, a fast car, a cool night, or eyebrows. I wanted temporary respite from adulthood. I wanted to feel unconditionally safe. I wanted my mom to cluck around me, filling my milk glass, relieving me of the most mundane responsibilities. I wanted to spend a few hours in a house cluttered with awful overstuffed furniture and oppressive cooking smells. “Stuffed shells would be good.”

My father was at the back door in fifteen minutes. He gave a start at the sight of me.

“We had an accident in the parking lot,” I said. “A car caught fire, and I was standing too close.” I gave him the address and asked him to stop at K-Mart on the way. Thirty minutes later he dropped me off in Morelli's parking lot.

“Tell Mom I'll be there by six,” I said to him.

He looked at the Nova and the case of motor oil I'd just purchased. “Maybe I should stay to make sure it runs.”

I fed the car three cans and checked the dipstick. I gave my father an A-okay sign. He didn't seem impressed. I got behind the wheel, gave the dash a hard shot with my fist, and cranked her over. “Starts every time,” I yelled.

My father was still impassive, and I knew he was thinking I should have bought a Buick. These indignities never befell Buicks. We pulled out of the lot together, and I waved him off on Route 1, pointing the Nova in the direction of Ye Olde Muffler Shoppe. Past the orange-peaked roof of the Howard Johnson Motel, past the Shady Grove Trailer Park, past Happy Days Kennels. Other drivers were giving me a wide berth, not daring to enter into my thundering wake. Seven miles down the road I cheered at the sight of the yellow and bl

ack muffler shop sign.

I wore my Oakleys to hide my eyebrows, but the counterman still did a double take. I filled out the forms and gave him the keys and took a seat in the small room reserved for the parents of sick cars. Forty-five minutes later I was on my way. I only noticed the smoke when I stopped at an intersection, and the red light only blinked on occasionally. I figured that was as good as I could expect.

My mother started as soon as I hit the front porch. “Every time I see you, you look worse and worse. Bruises and cuts and now what happened to your hair, and ommigod you haven't got eyebrows. What happened to your eyebrows? Your father said you were in a fire.”

“A car caught fire in my parking lot. It wasn't anything.”

“I saw it on the TV,” Grandma Mazur said, elbowing her way past my mother. “They said it was a bombing. Blew the car sky high. And some guy was in the car. Some sleazoid named Beyers. Except there wasn't much left of him.”

Grandma Mazur was wearing a pink and orange print cotton blouse with a tissue waded up in the sleeve, bright blue spandex shorts, white tennies, and stockings rolled just above her knee.

“I like your shorts,” I said to her. “Great color.”

“She went like that to the funeral home this afternoon,” my father yelled from the kitchen. “Tony Mancuso's viewing.”

“I tell you it was something,” Grandma Mazur said. “The VFW was there. Best viewing I've been to all month. And Tony looked real good. They gave him one of those ties with the little horse heads on.”

“We got seven phone calls so far,” my mother said. “I told everyone she forgot to take her medicine this morning.”

Grandma Mazur clacked her teeth. “Nobody knows fashion around here. You can't hardly ever wear anything different.” She looked down at her shorts. “What do you think?” she asked me. “You think these are okay for an afternoon viewing?”

“Sure,” I said, “but if it was at night I'd wear black.”

“Just exactly what I was thinking. I gotta get me some black ones next.”

By eight o'clock I was sated with good food and overstuffed furniture and ready to once again take up the mantle of independent living. I staggered out of my parents' house, arms loaded with leftovers, and motored back to my apartment.

For the better part of the day I'd avoided thinking about the explosion, but it was time to face facts. Someone had tried to kill me, and it wasn't Ramirez. Ramirez wanted to inflict pain and hear me beg. Ramirez was frightening and abhorrent, but he was also predictable. I knew where Ramirez was coming from. Ramirez was criminally insane.

Planting a bomb was a different kind of insanity. A bombing was calculated and purposeful. A bombing was meant to rid the world of a particular, annoying person.

Why me? I thought. Why would someone want me dead? Even articulating the question sent a chill through my heart.

I parked the Nova in the middle of my lot and wondered if I'd have the courage to step on the accelerator tomorrow morning. Morelli's car had been shoveled away and there was little evidence of the fire. The macadam was pocked and cracked where the Jeep had burned, but there was no crime scene tape or charred debris to further mark the spot.

I let myself into my apartment and found my answering machine light furiously blinking. Dorsey had called three times requesting a call back. He didn't sound friendly. Bernie had called to say they were having a storewide sale and I should drop by. Twenty percent off blenders and a complimentary bottle of daiquiri mix to the first twenty customers. My eyes glazed over at the thought of a daiquiri. I still had a few dollars left, and blenders had to be pretty cheap in the overall scheme of things, right? The last call was from Jimmy Alpha with another apology and his hopes that I hadn't been badly hurt by Ramirez.