Four to Score (Stephanie Plum 4)

“I don't know. Like I said, there wasn't anything to remember.”

“And you don't know where Maxine is staying?”

“Sorry. I just don't know.”

“Let's try it from another direction. If Maxine wasn't living in her apartment and didn't have to go to work every day . . . where would she go?”

“That's easy. She'd go to the shore. She'd go to get some ocean air and play the games on the boardwalk.”

“Seaside or Point Pleasant?”

“Point Pleasant. She always goes to Point Pleasant.”

This made sense. It accounted for the tan and the fact that she wasn't conducting business in Trenton.

I gave Mrs. Nowicki my card. “Call me if you hear from Maxine or think of anything that might be helpful. Keep your doors locked and don't talk to strangers.”

“Actually, I've been thinking of going to stay with my sister in Virginia.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

* * * * *

I TURNED LEFT onto Olden and caught a glimpse of a black Jeep Cherokee in my rearview mirror. Black Cherokees are popular in Jersey. They're not a car I'd ordinarily notice, but from somewhere in the recesses of my subconscious a mental abacus clicked in and told me I'd seen this car one time too many. I took Olden to Hamilton and Hamilton to St. James. I parked in my lot and looked around for the Cherokee, but it had disappeared. Coincidence, I said. Overactive imagination.

I ran up to my apartment, checked my answering machine, changed into my swimsuit, stuffed a towel, a T-?shirt and some sunscreen into a canvas tote, pulled on a pair of shorts and took off for the shore.

The hole in my muffler was getting bigger, so I punched up the volume on Metallica. I reached Point Pleasant in less than an hour, then spent twenty minutes looking for cheap parking on the street. I finally found a space two blocks back from the boardwalk, locked up and hooked the tote bag over my shoulder.

When you live in Jersey a beach isn't enough. People have energy in Jersey. They need things to do. They need a beach with a boardwalk. And the boardwalk has to be filled with rides and games and crappy food. Add some miniature golf. Throw in a bunch of stores selling T-?shirts with offensive pictures. Life doesn't get much better than this.

And the best part is the smell. I've been told there are places where the ocean smells wild and briny. In Jersey the ocean smells of coconut-?scented suntan lotion and Italian sausage smothered in fried onions and peppers. It smells like deep-?fried zeppoles and chili hot dogs. The scent is intoxicating and exotic as it expands in the heat rising from crowds of sun-?baked bodies strolling the boardwalk.

Surf surges onto the beach and the sound is mingled with the rhythmic tick, tick, tick of the spinning game wheels and the highpitched Eeeeeeee of thrill seekers being hurtled down the log flume.

Rock stars, pickpockets, homies, pimps, pushers, pregnant women in bikinis, future astronauts, politicians, geeks, ghouls, and droves of families who buy American and eat Italian all come to the Jersey shore.

When I was a little girl, my sister and I rode the carousel and the whip and ate cotton candy and frozen custard. I had a stomach like iron, but Valerie always got sick on the way home and threw up in the car. When I was older, the shore was a place to meet boys. And now I find myself here on a manhunt. Who would have thought?

I stopped at a frozen custard stand and flashed Maxine's photo. “Have you seen her?”

No one could say for sure.

I worked my way down the boardwalk, showing the picture, distributing my cards. I ate some french fries, a piece of pizza, two chunks of fudge, a glass of lemonade and a vanilla-?and-?orange-?swirl ice-?cream cone. Halfway down the boardwalk I felt the pull of the white sand beach and gave up the manhunt in favor of perfecting my tan.

You have to love a job that lets you lie on the beach for the better part of the afternoon.

* * * * *

THE LIGHT was frantically blinking on my answering machine when I got home. If I had more than three messages my machine always went hyper. Blink, blink, blin

k, blink—faster than Rex could twitch his whiskers.

I accessed the messages and all were blank. “No big deal,” I said to Rex. “If it's important, they'll call back.”

Rex stopped running on his wheel and looked at me. Rex went nuts over blank messages. Rex had no patience to wait for people to call back. Rex had a problem with curiosity.

The phone rang, and I snatched it up. “Hello.”