Notorious Nineteen (Stephanie Plum 19)

I took off for the garage, and reached it just as she backed out. Her car came out fast, she laid rubber, and sped down the street.

“Hunh,” Lula said. “I didn’t see that one coming. Where do you suppose she’s going?”

“I’m guessing she won’t go far. She’ll probably park a couple blocks away and call her neighbor to find out if we’re still here.”

“So we could be sneaky, and one of us could drive away, and one of us could hide out here, since she didn’t bother to lock up her house.”

My phone rang and an unfamiliar number appeared.

“I got your granny, and I’m turning her over to the police if you don’t get her out of my sight in the next ten minutes,” the caller said.

“Who is this?”

“Randy Briggs. Who else would be calling? And you’re lucky I’m head of security here. Anyone else would have shot her.”

“What did she do?”

“What didn’t she do. Just come get her!”

“I’m on my way, but I’m in Hamilton Township. It might take more than ten minutes. And do not call my mother.”

“That don’t sound good,” Lula said. “What was that about?”

“Just drive me to the hospital.”

Twenty minutes later, as Lula idled in the Central parking lot, I ran in to retrieve Grandma. I found her handcuffed to a chair in Briggs’s office. Her wig was tipped to one side, and I’m pretty sure I saw steam coming off the top of her head.

“What’s going on?” I asked Briggs.

“She’s a menace,” he said. “She set off a fire alarm, and then I found her at a nurses’ station, trying to get into the patient database.”

“I would have done it too, if this idiot hadn’t come along,” Grandma said. “I was real close.”

“Thank you for not calling the police,” I said to Briggs.

“Don’t thank me. I didn’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I’d be a laughingstock if one of the police beat hacks heard about an arrest. The headline would be ‘Little Man Tackles Old Lady.’ Or the gold standard, ‘Short Stuff Sticks His Nose in Old Lady’s Business.’”

This didn’t evoke a good mental picture. “I agree. Not good publicity for the head of Central security. Unlock the cuffs and we’ll be out of here.”

“I’m not getting near her,” Briggs said. “She’s an animal. She ripped my shirt and went for my gun.”

“That’s a big fat lie,” Grandma said. “I don’t need your gun. I got one of my own.”

Briggs handed the key over to me, I got Grandma out of the cuffs, straightened her hair, and herded her past Briggs and out of his office. We crossed the lot, I loaded Grandma into the Firebird, and Lula took off.

“How’d it go?” Lula asked Grandma.

“I got some good stuff,” Grandma said. “And I had shrimp salad for lunch. They make a real good shrimp salad. Mitch McDoogle was there with two of his lodge buddies, and he didn’t even recognize me. It might have been on account of his cataracts, but I still had a pretty good disguise.”

“What did you find out?” Lula asked.

“I got the name of the night nurse that was checking on Cubbin. Her name’s Norma Kruger. I heard a group of nurses talking about her at lunch. And I heard her name before. She gets around, if you know what I mean. I’ve never seen her because she only works the night shift, but I think she’s a looker. Rumor is she disappears into the broom closet with some of the doctors.”

“Well, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” Lula said.

&nb

sp; “Yeah, and I wouldn’t mind doing it,” Grandma said. “I just got trouble finding a man that don’t have a heart attack opening the condom package. They gotta make it easier to get them dang things open. It gets to be depressing. There’s paramedics that know me by name.”