Fortune and Glory (Stephanie Plum 27)

“You’re right,” I said. “This isn’t good news.”

The big takeaway from Connie’s news was that Shine now had the ability to grab Grandma and me. He had henchmen.

“I don’t suppose you have a body receipt for Trotter?” Connie said.

“No, but I’m making progress. Have you heard anything from Lula?”

“The tooth she cracked had already been capped, so they popped it off and gave her a temporary. She would have come back to work, but she also chipped a nail and had to wait for an appointment with her nail tech.”

I looked down at my nails. They weren’t chipped but they weren’t wonderful, either. Maybe Morelli would have liked me better if I got a manicure once in a while. Probably the blonde had perfect nails. Probably she always chose lavender nail polish.

“Ugh!” I said.

“It was only one nail,” Connie said.

I blew out a sigh. “I’m heading out. Things to do.”

I had to get Shine and Salgusta off the street, and I had to get those freaking clues. Question was how? What would Indy do? He’d enlist professional help. I wasn’t sure Lula, Potts, and Grandma Mazur fell into the category of professional, but I knew two people who did.

If it wasn’t for the blonde, my first choice would be to go to Morelli. He had mob snitches. He was street-smart. He had all the self-defense skills I lacked. He was a cop, and law enforcement resources were available to him. Plus, he was sane. The fact that he was incredibly hot and sexy ordinarily would be in his favor, but would be a distraction right now.

Ranger had all the same skills as Morelli, but he was rogue. His karma path didn’t always follow the letter of the law. This was a strike against him, but he got points for not having a blond girlfriend. At least not one that I knew about. Truth is, I didn’t know for sure that Morelli had a girlfriend. It was more of a dreaded suspicion.

I called Ranger and told him I needed more help.

“I’m committed until eight o’clock,” he said. “I’m all yours after that. Is this going to involve a field trip, or can we talk at Rangeman?”

“Talking at Rangeman would be good.”

It was midafternoon. I wasn’t up for spending more time with Trotter, and I couldn’t get excited about tracking down the gun-toting fry-cook, Arnold Rugalowski. It was too early to mooch dinner at my parents’ house, so I headed for home.

I took a detour after two blocks, thinking I’d drive past Morelli’s house. See how it felt. Maybe convince myself that I was jumping to conclusions about the blonde. And even if my conclusions were correct, I needed to dial back on the indignation since I’d just spent time with Ranger. I needed to be open-minded about the situation, right? Cut Morelli some slack. Give him another chance to try to tolerate me.

I stopped in the middle of the road when I got to Morelli’s house. His car was parked at the curb and Gabriela’s Mercedes was parked behind it.

“What the fuck!” I said. “What the fucking fuck!”

I sat there for a full minute, waiting for my heart to start beating again. I tapped my head with my index finger. “Think, think, think.” She’s somehow connected to the La-Z-Boys. She’s looking for someone or something. It’s possible that she’s looking for the treasure. Morelli is a cop. She could assume he knows something. Or she could be a vampire and she came here to suck his blood and he’s lying on his kitchen floor, half dead. I was leaning toward the vampire theory.

I drove to the end of the block and turned the corner. I parked, got out of the Buick, and cut through three backyards before I reached Morelli’s. His kitchen was at the back of the house. He had a window over the sink and a window in his back door. I could faintly hear muffled talking. He had a small wooden table next to his Weber grill. I moved the table, so it was under the window, climbed up on it, and peeked into Morelli’s kitchen.

Gabriela had draped her jacket over one of the two chairs at Morelli’s small kitchen table. She was wearing a knee-length black pencil skirt, a silky black tank top that could pass for lingerie, and black strappy Chanel sandals that were trimmed in pearls and showed off her perfect pedicure and bloodred painted toes. She was casually lounging against the counter, a glass of white wine in her hand, laughing at something Morelli said. Morelli was close to her and he was smiling. The Chardonnay bottle was on the counter.

Bob was lying under Morelli’s kitchen table, and he was looking like he couldn’t believe this was happening. Like he wanted to choke on his own vomit. Okay, maybe it wasn’t Bob that wanted to choke. Maybe it was me. I was really close to spewing all over Morelli’s window.

I climbed off the table, returned it to the grill, and speed-walked back to the Buick. I kicked the beast’s whitewalls a bunch of times, wrenched the door open, got behind the wheel, and burst into tears. By the time I pulled into my apartment building’s parking lot I was pretty much done sobbing. Over the past couple of months, I’d acquired a laundry list of things worth crying about. My love life. My job. My apartment. My squint lines. My inability to cook, shoot, figure out streaming, understand the cloud, or complete any of the books recommended by Oprah. The list was endless. So hopefully the last twenty minutes of blubbering covered all the bases and I was good for another couple months.

The real bummer in all this was Gabriela. She was a double whammy. She had her hooks into my ex-boyfriend, and I was pretty sure she was trying to steal my treasure. The most annoying part to all this was that I knew next to nothing about her, and Morelli undoubtedly knew all sorts of things. He probably knew her last name and where she was living. And he probably knew why she was here. The obvious, intelligent, mature way to go about this was to simply have a conversation with him. Not at this precise moment, of course, but in the near future.

I marched up the stairs to my apartment and found Potts sitting on the floor, with his back to my door.

“I put a Band-Aid and some antiseptic on the hole where the dart went in and I’m back on the job,” he said, getting up.

“How did you get here?”

“My mom brought me. She was going out to the market anyway.”

I opened the door and Potts followed me into the kitchen. I g