Look Alive Twenty-Five (Stephanie Plum 25)

“We saw one cross the lot when Hal was taken. It’s probably what lured him out of camera range.”

“Is there a cellar under this building?” I asked.

“No cellar. Just a crawl space with a dirt floor. I’ve already checked it out. Nothing interesting down there.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything interesting up here either.”

“I didn’t expect there’d be any surprises,” Ranger said. “I’m hoping we get lucky on the second floor.”

“Is it safe to go up there?”

“The second deck is concrete. It’s a fire floor. I’m told the damage upstairs is minimal compared to the deli.”

“How do we get up there?”

“It has its own side entrance. I noticed it when I took the alley to move the car last night.”

I followed Ranger to the side door and waited while he ripped the crime scene tape off and worked his magic on the police-installed padlock.

The stairs were narrow and smelled like wet dog and smoke. Once we were out of the stairwell, the air got better. There were two rooms and a bathroom. The front room had an apartment kitchen at one end. The rest of the room was filled with water-logged furniture, a couple metal file cabinets, soggy rugs that had been rolled, a metal desk and desk chair, and a medium-size safe. The second room was unfurnished, but filled with empty vegetable crates, stacks of chipped plates, a garbage bag filled with soiled napkins, and other assorted treasures.

“Can you get in the safe?” I asked Ranger.

“I’m not a safe expert,” he said. “I’ll text Slick.”

“You have someone working for you named Slick?”

“He’s an independent contractor. He calls himself Slick, and he gets paid in cash. I don’t ask questions.”

We each took a file cabinet and methodically went drawer by drawer.

“I’m not finding anything helpful,” I said. “There’s an entire drawer of appliance instructions and warranties. I don’t imagine any of it covers grease fire. And there’s a drawer of Ernie’s income tax returns from twenty years ago.”

It was a four-drawer file cabinet. I began paging through the third drawer and realized I was looking at movie and television scripts. I pulled them out and stacked them on the desk. I went to the last drawer and found folders labeled STORY IDEAS, PILOTS, CONTACTS, FUTURE PROJECTS. The folders were empty.

“What do you make of this?” I said to Ranger.

Ranger looked through the scripts. “These look like real scripts from movies and television shows.”

“Why would you have a whole file drawer of other people’s scripts?”

“If you had aspirations of writing or even producing you might want to study scripts that already made it to the screen.”

“And what about the empty folders?”

“They’re not pristine,” Ranger said. “I’m guessing they had material in them, and the material has been removed.”

“Did you find anything in your cabinet?”

“Papers from divorce settlements. Veterinary records for two dogs. Lease agreements for cars. Lease agreements for commercial properties. Nothing current.”

There were footsteps on the stairs, and a slim older man wearing a small black nylon backpack came into the room.

“You didn’t tell me to wear boots,” he said to Ranger. “It’s a mess out there.”

“I’ll include an allowance for shoes,” Ranger said.

“Nikes,” the man said. “Two hundred bucks.”