Seven Up (Stephanie Plum 7)

“How do you know Eddie?”

“He's one of the owners of The Snake Pit. Eddie and Pinwheel Soba and Dave Vincent. Why are you looking for Eddie? You're not going to arrest him, are you? He's really a sweet old guy.”

“He missed his court date and he needs to reschedule. Do you know where I can find him?”

“Sorry. He stopped by one day last week. I don't remember which day. He wanted to borrow the car. His car is a real lemon. Always something wrong with it. So I loan him the Cadillac a lot. He likes to drive it because it's big and white and he can find it at night in a parking lot. Eddie doesn't see all that well.”

It's none of my business, but I wouldn't be loaning my car to a blind guy. “Looks like you do a lot of reading.”

“I'm a book junkie. When I retire from wrestling I'm going to open a mystery bookstore.”

“Can you make a living selling mysteries?”

“No. Nobody makes a living selling mysteries. The stores are all fronts for numbers operations.”

We were standing in the foyer and I was looking around as best I could for evidence that DeChooch might be hiding out with Mary Maggie.

“This is a great building,” I said. “I didn't realize there was this much money in mud wrestling.”

“Mud wrestling doesn't pay anything. I stay alive with the endorsements. And I've got a couple corporate sponsors.” Mary Maggie glanced at her watch. “Yikes, look at the time. I have to go. I'm supposed to be at the gym in a half hour.”

I pulled out of the underground garage and parked on a side street so I could make a few calls. First call was to Ranger's cell phone.

“Yo,” Ranger said.

“Do you know DeChooch owns a third of The Snake Pit?”

“Yeah, he won it in a crap game two years ago. I thought you knew.”

“I didn't know!”

Silence.

“So what else do you know that I don't know?” I asked.

“How much time do we have?”

I hung up on Ranger and called Grandma.

“I want you to look up a couple names in the phone book,” I said to Grandma. “I need to know where Pinwheel Soba and Dave Vincent live.”

I listened to Grandma thumbing through pages, and finally she came back on the line. “Neither of them's listed.”

Rats. Morelli would be able to get me the addresses, but Morelli wouldn't want me messing around with Snake Pit owners. Morelli would give me a big lecture about being careful, we'd get into a shouting match, and then I'd have to eat a lot of cake to calm down.

I took a deep breath and redialed Ranger.

“I need addresses,” I told Ranger.

“Let me guess,” Ranger said. “Pinwheel Soba and Dave Vincent. Pinwheel's in Miami. He moved last year. Opened a club in South Beach. Vincent lives in Princeton. There's supposed to be bad feelings between DeChooch and Vincent.” He gave me Vincent's address and disconnected.

A flash of silver caught my eye and I looked up to see Mary Maggie zip around the corner in her Porsche. I pulled out after her. Not exactly following her, but keeping her in view. We were both going in the same direction. North. I stayed with her and it seemed to me she was going pretty far afield to get to a gym. I bypassed my turnoff and stayed with her through center city to north Trenton. If she'd been on guard she would have spotted me. It's hard for a single car to do a decent tail. Fortunately, Mary Maggie wasn't looking for a tail.

I dropped back when she turned onto Cherry Street. I parked around the corner from Ronald DeChooch's house and watched Mary Maggie get out of her car, walk to the door, and ring the doorbell. The door opened and Mary Maggie stepped inside. Ten minutes later, the front door opened again and Mary Maggie Mason came out. She stood on the front porch for a minute or two talking to Ronald. Then she got into her car and drove away. This time she went to a gym. I watched her park and go into the building and then I left.

I took Route 1 to Princeton, hauled out a map, and located Vincent's house. Princeton isn't actually part of New Jersey. It's a small island of wealth and intellectual eccentricity floating in the Sea of Central Megalopolis. It's an honest-to-god town awash in the land of the strip mall. Hair is smaller, heels are shorter, asses are tighter in Princeton.

Vincent owned a large yellow-and-white colonial set onto a half-acre lot on the edge of town. There was a detached two-car garage. No cars in the driveway. No flag proclaiming that Eddie DeChooch was in residence. I parked one house down on the opposite side of the street and watched the house. Very boring. Nothing happening. No cars cruising by. No children playing on the sidewalk. No metal blaring out of a second-story boom box. A bastion of respectability and decorum. And a little intimidating. Knowing it was bought with Snake Pit profits did nothing to alter the feeling of old-money snootiness. I didn't think Dave Vincent would appreciate having his peaceful Sunday disturbed by a bounty hunter looking for Eddie DeChooch. And I could be going out on a limb here, but I suspected Mrs. Vincent wouldn't take a chance on tarnishing her social standing by harboring the likes of Choochy.