Three to Get Deadly (Stephanie Plum 3)
Jackie rented a two-room apartment three blocks from Uncle Mo's. Since we were in the neighborhood, we made a short detour to Ferris Street and looked things over.
“Nothing new here,” Lula said, letting her Firebird idle in the middle of the empty street. “No lights, no nothing.”
We drove down King and turned into the alley behind Mo's store. I hopped out and peeked into the garage. No car. No lights on in the back of the upstairs apartment.
“There's something going on here,” I said. “It doesn't make sense.”
Lula slowly made her way to Jackie's rooming house, taking a street for four blocks and then doubling back one street over, the three of us on the lookout for Jackie's car. We'd covered a sizable chunk of neighborhood by the time we reached Jackie's house, but nothing turned up.
“Don't you worry,” Lula said to Jackie. “We'll find your car. You go on in and watch some TV. Only thing good to do on a day like this is watch TV. Go check out the bitches on them daytime shows.”
Jackie disappeared behind a screen of rain, into the maroon-shingled two-story row house. The street was lined with cars. None of them Jackie's Chrysler.
“What's he like?” I asked Lula.
“Jackie's old man? Nothing special. Comes and goes. Sells some.”
“What's his name?”
“Cameron Brown. Street name is Maggot. Guess that tell you something.”
“Would he take off with Jackie's car?”
“In a heartbeat.” Lula pulled away from the curb. “You're the expert finder here. What we do next?”
“Let's do more of the same,” I said. “Let's keep driving. Canvass the places Brown would ordinarily hang at.”
Two hours later Lula missed a street in the rain, and before we could make a correction we were down by the river, weaving our way through a complex of high-rises.
“This is getting old,” Lula said. “Bad enough straining my eyeballs looking for some dumb car, but now I'm lost.”
“We're not lost,” I told her. “We're in Trenton.”
“Yeah, but I've never been in this part of Trenton before. I don't feel comfortable driving around buildings that haven't got gang slogans sprayed on them. Look at this place. No boarded-up windows. No garbage in the gutter. No brothers selling goods on the street. Don't know how people can live like this.” She squinted into the gray rain and eased the car into a parking lot. “I'm turning around,” she said. “I'm taking us back to the office, and I'm gonna nuke up some of them leftover hot dogs and then I'm gonna do my filing.”
It was okay by me because riding around in the pouring rain in slum neighborhoods wasn't my favorite thing to do anyway.
Lula swung down a line of cars and there in front of us was the Chrysler.
We both sat dumbstruck, barely believing our eyes. We'd painstakingly covered every likely street and alley, and here was the car, parked in a most unlikely place.
“Sonovabitch,” Lula said.
I studied the building at the edge of the lot. Eight stories high. A big cube of uninspired brick and low-energy window glass. “Looks like apartments.”
Lula nodded, and we returned our attention to the Chrysler. Not especially anxious to investigate.
“I guess we should take a look,” Lula finally said.
We both heaved a sigh and got out of the Firebird. The rain had tapered to a drizzle, and the temperature was dropping. The cold seeped through my skin, straight to my bones, and the possibility of finding Cameron Brown dead in the trunk of Jackie's car did nothing to warm me from the inside out.
We gingerly looked in the windows and tried the doors. The doors were locked. The interior of the car was empty. No Cameron Brown. No obvious clues . . . like notes detailing Brown's recent life history or maps with a bright orange X to mark the spot. We stood side by side, looking at the trunk.
“Don't see no blood dripping out,” Lula said. “That's a good sign.” She went to her own trunk and returned with a crowbar. She slipped it under the Chrysler's trunk lid and popped the lid open.
Spare tire, dirty yellow blanket, a couple grimy towels. No Cameron Brown.
Lula and I expelled air in a simultaneous whoosh.