Hard Eight (Stephanie Plum 8)

Vinnie grinned at me. “You're going up against Jeanne Ellen? Are you nuts? This isn't one of my FTAs, is it?”

“Child custody bond,” I said. “Mabel's great-granddaughter.”

“The Mabel next door to your parents? The old-as-dirt Mabel?”

“That's the one. Evelyn and Steven got a divorce and Evelyn took off with Annie.”

“So Jeanne Ellen is working for Soder. That makes sense. Sebring probably wrote the bond, right? Jeanne Ellen works for Sebring. Sebring can't go after Evelyn, but he can recommend that Soder hires Jeanne Ellen. Just the sort of case Jeanne Ellen would take, too. A missing kid. Jeanne Ellen loves to have a cause.”

“How do you know so much about Jeanne Ellen?”

“Everybody knows about Jeanne Ellen,” Vinnie said. “She's a legend. Cripes, you're gonna get your ass kicked.”

This Jeanne Ellen thing was starting to annoy me.

“Gotta go,” I said. “Things to do. I just stopped in to borrow a pair of cuffs.”

Everyone's eyebrows rose a couple inches.

“You need another pair of cuffs?” Vinnie asked.

I gave him my PMS look. “You got a problem with that?”

“Hell no,” Vinnie said. “I'm gonna go with S and M. I'm gonna pretend you got a man chained up naked somewhere. It's more comforting than thinking one of my FTAs is running around with your bracelet attached.”

I PARKED IN the back of the lot, next to the Dumpster, and walked the short distance to my apartment building's rear entrance. Mr. Spiga had just docked his twenty-year-old Oldsmobile in one of the coveted handicapped slots, close to the door, his handicapped sign proudly affixed to his windshield. He was in his seventies, retired from his job at the button factory and, with the exception of his addiction to Metamucil, was in perfect health. Lucky for him, his wife is legally blind and lame from a hip replacement gone bad. Not that it cuts a lot of slack in this lot. Half the people in the building have poked out an eye and run over their foot to get handicapped status. In Jersey, parking is often more important than sight.

“Nice day,” I said to Mr. Spiga.

He grabbed a grocery bag from the backseat. “Ha

ve you bought ground chuck lately? Who decides these prices? How can people afford to eat? And why is the meat so red? You ever notice it's only red on the outside? They spray it with something, so you think it's fresh. The food industry's going to hell.”

I opened the door for him.

“Another thing,” he said, “half the men in this country have breasts. I'm telling you, it's from those hormones they feed the cows. You drink the milk from the cows and you grow breasts.”

Ah, I thought, if only it was that easy.

The elevator doors opened and Mrs. Bestler peeked out. “Going up,” she said.

Mrs. Bestler was about two hundred years old and liked to play elevator operator.

“Second floor,” I told her.

“Second floor, ladies handbags and better dresses,” she sang out, punching the button.

“Cripes,” Mr. Spiga said. “This place is filled with loonies.”

First thing I did when I entered my apartment was check my messages. I work with a mysterious bounty hunter guy who turns me to jelly and makes sexual innuendoes and never follows through. And I'm in the off-again phase of an off-again-on-again relationship with a cop guy I think I might want to marry . . . someday, but not now. That's my love life. In other words, my love life is a big zero. I can't remember the last time I had a date. An orgasm is nothing more than a distant memory. And there were no messages on my machine.

I flopped onto my couch and closed my eyes. My life was in the toilet. I did about a half hour of self-pity and was about to get up and take a shower when my doorbell rang. I went to the door and looked out my security peephole. Nobody there. I turned to walk away and heard rustling on the other side of the door. I looked out again. Still no one there.

I called my neighbor across the hall and asked him to look out his door and tell me if anyone was there. Okay, so this is a little despicable on my part, but no one ever wants to kill Mr. Wolesky and from time to time people want to kill me. Doesn't hurt to be careful, right?

“What are you crazy?” Mr. Wolesky said. “I'm watching The Brady Bunch. You called right in the middle of The Brady Bunch.”

And he hung up.