Fearless Fourteen (Stephanie Plum 14)

“Yes.”

Zook was leaning forward, straining against his seatbelt. “Who shot him?”

“I don't know. He was dead when I found him.”

“What did he look like?”

“He looked dead. Bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.”

“Whoa. That's amazing. Is he still there?”

“No. They moved him out.”

Zook slumped back. “Darn. I miss all the good stuff.”

“Did your Uncle Dom ever say anything about the money? Like where it was hidden?”

“No. He just kept saying he was going to be living the high life.”

“Did he have other friends besides Allen Gratelli?”

“I guess, but I don't know any. Allen was the only one who came around after Uncle Dom went to prison. And Allen just started to come around a couple months ago.”

The police were gone when I returned to Morelli's house. Only Mooner in the lawn chair and a single van from an emergency cleaning service suggested something unusual had just occurred.

“Zookamundo,” Mooner said. “Been waiting for you, man. We gotta convene with the wood elves.”

“Did you see the dead guy?” Zook asked.

“Yeah. He was real dead,” Mooner said. “Pooped in his pants and everything.”

“Awesome,” Zook said.

I left Mooner and Zook in the living room with the ice cream sandwiches and the wood elves, and I went to the kitchen to help Morelli. He was methodically going through drawers, extracting keys and odd scraps of paper. The basement door was open, and the smell of bleach and pine-scented detergent drifted up the stairs.

“Zook tells me Allen Gratelli was friends with Dom,” I said to Morelli.

“Shazam.”

Morelli grinned and wrapped an arm around me. “I'm going to get you naked tonight and make you say shazam again.”

I knew that wasn't an empty promise. “Having any luck here?” I asked him.

“I've got a pile of renegade keys, and I now know the problem with our plan. It's not enough to find a key. You have to know where it goes.”

My cell phone rang, and I answered to Connie.

“I have Brenda back with the film crew,” Connie said. “They want more footage.”

“Are you kidding me? They want more monkey?”

“No. They want a different takedown.”

“We screwed up a simple domestic disturbance. Where do we go from there?”

“How about Loretta? She's disappeared, right? That's a violation of her bond agreement.”

“I can't find Loretta. I have no place to look. I have no clue.”