Notorious Nineteen (Stephanie Plum 19)

I speared a tomato chunk. “If she was that old she couldn’t get him to the window and shove him out.”

“How about that old lady who was playing cards,” Lula said. “If she was in the hospital, she could have shoved him out. She had rage going for her. We

should check to see if she was in the hospital.”

“Have you looked at his relatives?” I asked Connie.

“His parents are deceased. One sister, married, living in Des Moines. A brother in the Denver area.”

“Any recent credit card or bank activity?”

“None.”

I finished my salad. It was okay, but Lula’s looked a lot better.

“No way,” Lula said, inching away from me. “Don’t be looking at my salad like that. You made your choice. You got your plain ass grilled chicken. Not my fault you got no imagination.”

I slouched back onto the couch. “I don’t know where to go from here with Cubbin. I could do surveillance on his house, but I don’t think he’s going back there. Instinct tells me he’s either dead or in Tierra del Fuego. And I can’t access him in either of those places.”

“I have a couple more skips that came in today,” Connie said. “And you still have Melvin Barrel at large. Why don’t you clean up the small stuff while you wait for something to break loose on Cubbin?”

I took the new files from her and skimmed through the paperwork. “Brody Logan. Took a hammer to a police car and turned it into scrap metal.”

“I like it,” Lula said. “Why’d he do it?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“We could find him and ask him,” Lula said. “Where’s he live?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“He’s homeless,” Connie said. “Usually hangs around Third Street and Freemont. Sleeps under the bridge abutment with a bunch of other homeless people.”

My eyebrows lifted a quarter of an inch. “Vinnie bonded out a homeless person? How will the guy pay for his bond?”

“Apparently he has some sort of religious artifact that’s worth a lot of money, and he used it as collateral.”

“Why is he homeless if he has this thing worth money?”

Connie shrugged and did a palms-up. “Don’t know.”

The other FTA was Dottie Luchek. She’d been arrested for solicitation at the KitKat Bar, and hadn’t shown for court. “This has to be wrong,” I said to Connie. “This woman looks like an apple dumpling. And she gives her age as fifty-two.”

“A ’ho can come in any size,” Lula said. “There’s nothing wrong in a ’ho looking like a apple dumpling, and being of a certain age.” She leaned over my shoulder and looked at the photo. “That don’t look like a ’ho,” she said. “I never seen a ’ho look like that. And I’ve seen a lot of different kinds of ’ho. I wasn’t even the same ’ho every day. I had a whole ’ho wardrobe. I had schoolgirl ’ho, and nasty ’ho, and nun ’ho. But I never had this ’ho. This ’ho looks like she just baked her own bread this morning. If some actress played this ’ho, it’d have to be Doris Day.”

I shoved the two new files into my messenger bag and hung the bag on my shoulder. “Gotta go. People to see. Things to do.”

“I’ll go with you,” Lula said. “Which one of these losers you gonna see first?”

“Dottie Luchek. She’s in Hamilton Township.”

SIX

DOTTIE LIVED IN a neighborhood of small single-family houses with backyards large enough for a swing set, a Weber grill, and a picnic table. The yards were fenced for dogs and kids. Landscaping wasn’t lush, but it was neat. We parked on the street and walked to her door.

A pleasantly plump woman who was clearly Dottie answered our knock. “Yes?” she asked.

I introduced myself and gave her my card. “You missed your court date,” I told her. “We need to take you downtown to reschedule.”