Three to Get Deadly (Stephanie Plum 3)

I pulled on gloves but thought twice about a hat. You wear a hat in the morning and you look like a fool for the rest of the day. Not that I looked all that wonderful this morning. It was more that I didn't want to compound the problem. Especially since Morelli was sitting in my parking lot. Just in case the unthinkable happened, and I got arrested . . . I didn't want to have hat hair for my mug shot.

We rumbled off to Stark Street, each of us lost in our own thoughts. My thoughts ran mostly to warm beaches and half-naked men serving me long, cool drinks. From the stony expression on Lula's face I suspected her thoughts ran a lot darker.

Lula pulled up to the curb in front of Shirlene's apartment building and heaved herself out of the car. We stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the third-floor windows.

“He said he wasn't going to shoot at us, right?” I asked, just to be sure.

“That's what he said.”

“You believe him?”

Lula shrugged.

Ranger would go in with gun drawn, but that wasn't my style. I felt stupid with a gun in my hand. After all, what purpose did it serve? Was I going to shoot Leroy Watkins if he refused to get in the car with me? I don't think so.

I grimaced at Lula. She grimaced back. We entered the building and slowly climbed the stairs, listening for the shotgun ratchet.

When we got to the third floor, Shirlene was in the dingy hall, staring at her ruined door. Shirlene was medium height, lean and sinewy. Her age would be somewhere between twenty and fifty. She was wearing pink terry cloth bedroom slippers, faded pink warm-up pants that were a size too small and a matching sweatshirt that was dotted with various-hued food stains, none of which looked recent. Her hair was short and chopped. Her mouth turned down at the corners. Her eyes were expressionless. She held a piece of cardboard box in one hand and a hammer in the other.

“Not gonna be able to hammer anything into that cheapskate door,” Lula told her. “You need mollies. Only thing gonna hold that cardboard in place is mollies.”

“Haven't got any mollies,” Shirlene said.

“Where's Leroy?” Lula asked. “He isn't gonna shoot at us again, is he?”

“Leroy's gone,” Shirlene said.

“Gone? What do you mean gone?”

“Gone is gone,” Shirlene said.

“Where'd he go?”

“Don't know,” Shirlene said.

“When will he be back?”

“Don't know that either.”

Lula stuffed her fists onto her hips. “Well, what do you know?”

“I know I gotta get this door fixed,” Shirlene said. “And you're standing here taking up my time.”

Lula walked into the front room. “You don't mind if I look around, do you?”

Shirlene didn't say anything. We both knew nothing short of that twelve-gauge pump was going to stop Lula from looking around.

Lula disappeared into the back room for a moment. “You're right,” she said to Shirlene. “He's gone. He take any clothes with him? He look like he gonna be gone a long time?”

“He took his gym bag, and you know what he got in there.”

I looked over at Lula, eyebrows raised in silent question.

Lula made her hand into a gun shape and aimed it at me.

“Oh,” I said.

“My time is valuable,” Lula said to Shirlene. “What's the matter with that man, doggin' me like this? He think I haven't got anything better to do than to hike up those stairs?”