THE LAST PEEP

Janet Evanovich

A Stephanie Plum story
FIRST APPEARANCE: One for the Money, 1994

Janet Evanovich struck gold with her lady bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. Readers and critics alike hailed both appearances on the scene with open arms and enthusiasm. Having appeared in five novels to date, Stephanie-and her creator-show no sign of slowing down and continue to forge their own path in the mystery genre, rather than follow someone who came before. Such originality is welcome, and refreshing.

This story first appeared in the Mary Higgins Clark anthology The Plot Thickens.

"Oh-oh," Lula said. "There's something crawling on me. I think it's big and black and ugly. And it's not my boyfriend, you see what I'm saving?"

Lula is a former hooker turned bounty hunter in training. She looks like George Foreman with hair by Shirley Temple, and she has the disposition of a '54 Buick. Lots of power under the hood, headlights the size of basketballs, plus you can hear her coming a mile away.

I don't look at all like George Foreman. I'm more Wonder Woman with a B cup. I'm the bounty hunter who's training Lula, but the truth is, I'm not exactly the bounty hunter from hell. A year ago, I blackmailed my bail bondsman cousin, Vinnie, into giving me this job, and now I'm going one day at a time, hoping the bad guys are all out of bullets.

"This is your fault," Lula said. "You're the one wanted to see what was in this dumb-ass cellar. Let's go down those rickety stairs and have a look, you said. Let's see if Sammy the Squirrel is down there. And then slam the door got closed and locked, and you drop your dumb flashlight and can't find it, and here we are in dark so thick I can smell it. Here we are standing on a dirt floor with things crawling on us."

"I told you to be careful of the door! I told you to make sure it stayed open!"

"Well, excuse me, Ms. Stephanie Plum," Lula said. "I was concentrating on not breaking my neck on the first step which happens to have a board missing."

"We should feel around for a light switch," I said. "There must be a light switch here someplace."

"I'm not feeling nothing. I'm not putting my hands to places I can't see."

"Then give me your gun. Maybe I can blast the lock off the door."

"I don't have no gun. I'm wearing spandex. I'm making a fashion statement here. I haven't got no room for gun bulges. I thought it was your turn to carry the gun."

"I didn't think I'd need it. I wasn't planning on shooting anyone today."

"Yow!" Lula said. "There's something just dropped on me again, and it's moving. Shit! There's another one. There's things all over me, I'm telling you. I bet they're spiders. I bet this place is filled with spiders."

"Just brush them off," I said. "Spiders won't hurt you."

I could be real brave as long as they weren't dropping on me.

"Ahhhh!" Lula yelled. "I hate spiders. There's nothing I hate more than spiders. Let me out of this place. Where's the door? Where's the freaking door?"

The door was at the top of the stairs, but the door was locked. We'd already tried the door.

"Outta my way," Lula said, somewhere in the blackness. "I'm not staying down here with no spiders."

Stomp, stomp, stomp. I could hear her on the stairs. And then crash! There was the sound of splintering wood and hinges popping. And a shaft of light cut through the dark.

I ran up the stairs and angled myself through the broken door.

Lula was spread-eagle on her back, on the floor, breathing heavy. "I don't like spiders," she said. "I got any on me?"

"Don't see any."

In all honesty, I wasn't looking too closely because my attention was diverted to a pile of rags on the other side of the room. We'd done a fast, room by room check of the house, but I hadn't looked under the soiled mattress or kicked around in the clutter. Some filthy blankets had been flung against the far wall, and from this angle I could see fingertips sticking out from under the blankets. I crossed the room in two strides, lifted the top blanket and found Sammy the Squirrel aka Sam Franco. He was dead. And he was naked.

The court wanted him for fleeing a charge of indecent exposure. I wanted him for the apprehension fee which was ten percent of his bond amount. Lula wanted him for her share of my share. And so far as I know that was the extent of Sam's being wanted. He was a societal dropout of the first magnitude.

"Uh-oh," I said to Lula. "Sam's turned up."

Lula opened her eyes and rolled her head to the side. "Yikes!" she shrieked, jumping to her feet.

The Squirrel had a hole in the middle of his forehead and a toe tag tied to his Mr. Happy. Someone had printed "Get a life" on the toe tag.

"Looks like the Squirrel flashed the wrong person," Lula said. "Someone didn't like him wagging his wonkie around."

Seemed like a high price to pay for wonkie wagging. "He wasn't shot here," I said. "No blood and brains on the floor."

"Yeah, and he's been dead awhile," Lula said. "He's pretty stiff." She took a closer look. "Most of him, anyway."

We were in a broken-down, boarded-up bungalow on Ryker Street in Trenton, New Jersey. The house backed up to the Conrail track and was a block from the old Milped Button Factory. There were scrubby fields on either side of the house and beyond that more abandoned bungalows. Very isolated. Excellent place to dump a body.

Everyone knew Sam lived in the house, and everyone knew he wasn't dangerous. Lula and I hadn't expected complications.

Lula cut her eyes side to side. "All of a sudden, this house is giving me the creeps. I don't like dead guys. I especially don't like them with their head ventilated like this."

There was a rattle at the back door and Lula and I exchanged glances.

"Probably the wind," I said.

"I'd go take a look, but one of us should call the police about the body. It's not that I'm afraid, or anything, it's just I got other things to do."

Unlike Lula, I was perfectly willing to admit I was spooked. No way was I staying there all by myself, waiting to get fitted for one of those toe tags using some innovative attachment process. "I'm sure there's no reason to be alarmed," I said. "But just in case, we'll both call the police."

"No need to panic," Lula said.

"Right. No need."

Then we whirled around almost knocking each other over trying to get out the front door. We scuttled across the yard of hard-packed dirt and weeds, to my black CRX and took off, laying rubber.

I usually carry a cell phone, but today it was home, recharging on my kitchen counter, so we drove around, looking for a place to make a call. I used to have one of those gizmos that let my phone charge in my car, but someone stole it, and I hadn't had a chance to get a replacement. If it had been an emergency I'd have stopped and rapped on a stranger's door, but I didn't think five minutes here or there would matter to Squirrel. All the king's horses and all the king's men weren't going to put Squirrel back together again.

I turned onto State Street, drove two more blocks and found a 7-Eleven with a pay phone. I put the call into police dispatch, identified myself and reported the body. Then Lula and I retraced our route back to the bungalow.

A blue and white was already on the scene. Two uniforms stood beside the car. One was Carl Costanza. I've known Carl for twenty-five years, ever since kindergarten. When Carl was nine he could burp in time to the "Star Spangled Banner." This was an acccmplishment I unsuccessfully tried for years to emulate.

Carl gave me his long-suffering cop look. "Let me guess," Carl said. "You were the one who made the call."

"Yep."

"Is this the right house?"

"Yep."

"Well, I don't know how to break this to you... but there's no body here."

"It's laying in the living room," Lula said. "You can't miss it. It's a naked body with a big hole in its head."

Carl rocked back on his heels, thumbs stuck in his utility belt. "I went all through the house, and there's no body."

Two hours later, Lula and I were eating french fries and sucking milkshakes in the McDonald's lot just outside center-city.

"I know what I saw, and I saw a dead guy," Lula said. "That Squirrel was dead, dead, dead. Someone came and snatched that body. And it wasn't the polite thing to do either, because that was our body. We found it, and it was ours." She crammed some fries into her mouth. "This whole thing is creeping me out."

I was creeped out, too. But more than that I was slack-jawed and bug-eyed with dumbfounded curiosity. What the hell happened to Squirrel? We'd been gone thirty minutes tops. Why would someone dump a body and then remove it?

"I had plans for my share of the recovery fee," Lula said. "I don't suppose Vinnie's gonna give us the money now that some loser came and took our body."

It seemed unlikely since we hadn't recovered anything.

"You know Squirrel?" Lula asked.

"I went to school with him. He was four years older than me. Stayed back a couple times and finally dropped out in junior high. I've only seen him in passing lately."

"He used to talk to me sometimes when I was on the corner doing my previous profession. Used to ride up on that rickety red bike of his. Bet that bike was a hundred years old."

I'd forgotten about the bike. Most street people never ventured farther than a couple blocks. Because Squirrel had a bike he was able to live in an abandoned house and range far and wide for recreational peeping.

"Do you remember seeing the bike at the house?" asked Lula.

"Nope. That bike wasn't there. And we walked all over with the cops. We looked in the back and the front, and we looked all through the house."

We both thought about that for a moment.

"Squirrel wasn't a bad person," Lula said, serious voiced. "Was just that his train stopped a few feet from the station. He liked to watch people. Liked to look in bedroom windows at night. And then one thing would lead to another, and pretty soon Squirrel wouldn't have no clothes on, and sometimes he'd get caught and get his bony white ass hauled off to jail."

Lula was right about Squirrel not being a bad person. He could be damn annoying. And seeing his nose pressed against your window at one in the morning could be scary as hell. But Squirrel wasn't mean. and he wasn't violent. And I didn't like that someone had killed him. And, I also didn't like that I'd lost the body. What were the police going to tell Squirrel's mother? Someone said they saw your son with a bullet hole in his head, but we can't find him. Sorry.

"This has gotten ugly," I said to Lula.

"Damn skippy. I'm feeling downright cranky about the whole thing. In fact, the more I think about it, the crankier I'm getting.

I finished my milkshake and stuffed the straw under the lid. "We need to find Sam."

"Not me," Lula said. "I'm not looking for no dead guy. I don't like dead guys."

"I thought you had plans for the recovery money."

"Well, now that I think about it I guess dead guys aren't so bad. At least they don't shoot at you."

Usually, I relied on the bond agreement to provide some leads. In this case it wasn't much help. Squirrel's brother, Bruce, had put up the bond to get Squirrel out of jail. Bruce worked at the pork roll factory and was an okay guy, but I didn't think he knew much more than we did about Squirrel. Squirrel was a brother who lived on the fringe. He was a thirty-four-year-old man with faulty wiring. A man who related to people through panes of glass. A man who lived in an abandoned house, filled with treasures gleaned from the city's trash cans. A man who kept no calendar to remind him of holiday dinners. Squirrel and Bruce could have lived on different planets for all the interaction they'd had in the last ten years.

Myra Smulinski had filed the indecent exposure charge. I knew Myra, and I knew Squirrel must have made a royal nuisance of himself for Myra to call the police. Myra lives on Roosevelt, in the heart of the burg. And mostly Squirrel is tolerated in the burg. After all, that's where he was born and that's where his family still lives.

The burg is a tight Trenton neighborhood of second- and third-generation Italians, Hungarians and Germans. It's roughly shaped like a piece of pie, and it exists only in the minds of its residents. Windows are kept clean. Numbers runners never miss mass. And at an early age, men learn to change their own oil in the alleys and single car detached garages that hunker at the back of their lots.

Like Squirrel, I was born in the burg and lived there most of my life. Four years ago, at age twenty-six, I moved into an apartment beyond burg boundaries. Physically I'm at the corner of St. James and Dunworth. Mentally, I suspect I'll always be anchored in the burg. This is an admission that caused my sphincter muscle to tighten in terror that someday I'll turn into my mother.

I shoved the last french fry into my mouth and cranked the engine over. "I think we should visit my grandma Mazur," I told Lula. "If there's anything going through the burg rumor mill about Sam Franco, Grandma Mazur will know."

Grandma Mazur moved in with my parents two years ago when my grandpa went to his final lard-enriched, all-you-can-eat breakfast bar in the sky. Grandma is part of a chain of burg women who make the internet look like chump change when it comes to the information highway.

My mother opened the door to Lula and me. She'd never met Lula, and she was making a good effort not to look dazed at seeing a huge blond-haired black woman wearing brilliant azure eye shadow speckled with silver sparkles, shocking pink spandex shorts and a poison green spandex tank top, standing on her porch. Grandma was jockeying for position beside my mother and wasn't nearly so circumspect.

"Are you a Negro?" Grandma asked Lula. "I didn't know Negroes could have yellow hair."

"Honey, we can have any color hair we damn well want to have. I've got yellow hair because blondes have more fun."

"Hmm," Grandma said, "maybe I need to make my hair blond. I could use some fun."

My father was in the living room with his nose pressed to the sports section. He mumbled a few words about my grandmother having fun on the moon and sunk lower in his chair.

"I've got a couple big thick steaks for supper," my mother said. "And I made a cake."

"We can't stay," I told my mother. "I just stopped around to see if you'd heard anything about Sammy Franco."

"What about him?" Grandma wanted to know. "Are you looking for him? Is this a case you're on?"

"He got arrested for indecent exposure again and didn't show up for his hearing."

"I knew he got arrested," Grandma said. "Poor Myra didn't have no other choice. She said he was always in her backyard. Said he trampled her marigolds into the ground."

"And that's it? That's all you've heard?"

"Is there more?"

"Sammy's been shot. Someone killed him."

Grandma sucked in air. "No! How terrible!"

My mother made the sign of the cross. My father went very still in his chair.

I told them the whole thing.

"I saw a TV show once on body snatchers," Grandma said. "The reason they wanted the bodies was so they could eat their brains."

"Don't mean to disrespect the dead," Lula said, "but those snatchers wouldn't make much of a meal on ol' Squirrel."

Grandma slid her uppers around some while she thought. "Maybe it was one of Squirrel's relatives that came and got him. Maybe he's downstairs at Stiva's on one of them grooved tables."

Stiva was the burg undertaker of choice, and his mortuary was the social hub of Grandma's universe. She read the obits like other people read the movie section.

"I suppose that's possible," I said. Anything was possible.

"I could check it out for you. I was going to Stiva's anyway. Big doings there tonight. Joe Lojak is laid out. There'll be a crowd on account of Joe was an Elk. I'm going to have to get there early if I want a seat up front. And don't worry about me. I can take care of myself. I'll go prepared, if you know what I mean."

I took Grandma aside. "What do you mean by 'go prepared'?"

"I'll take 'the big boy,' " Grandma whispered. "Just in case."

"No! No 'big boy.' No, no, no!"

My mother gave me an inquiring look, and I lowered my voice.

"No 'big boy,' " I said to Grandma. "I thought you promised to get rid of it."

"I was going to," Grandma said. "but I'm sort of attached."

"What's this discussion about?" my mother wanted to know, fixing her eyes on me. "Your grandmother makes a scene at the funeral parlor, and I'm holding you responsible. Last time the two of you huddled like this she set off an explosion and caused three hundred thousand dollars worth of damage."

"It could have happened to anybody," Grandma said. "It was an accident."

"Like your granny," Lula said when we were back in the car. "Bet she kicks ass at the funeral parlor. What's the 'big boy'?"

"It's a forty-five long-barrel she picked up at a yard sale."

"That the gun she shot the roast chicken with?"

"No," I said. "She shot the chicken with my thirty-eight."

Lula was looking through the bag of food my mother had sent home with me. "You got two cans of peaches, half a pound of sliced ham, some provolone and a tomato. And it looks like there's some walnuts in the bottom of the bag."

"They're for my hamster, Rex."

"Just like going to the supermarket only you don't have to pay."

"Actually, there's a price."

I turned the corner at Roosevelt and rolled to a stop in front of Myra Smulinski's home. There were six houses on the block, all duplex, all two-story. Each half of a house had its own personality, its own small front yard and rectangular strip of backyard. The backyards bordered a single-lane service road which everyone called an alley. Myra's house was fourth in from Green Street. It was July, and Myra had window boxes filled with begonias sitting on her front porch.

Lula looked at the house. "You think Myra whacked Squirrel?"

Myra was in her late seventies. She had seven grandchildren and a hundred-year-old schnauzer who was mean as a snake. She drove a ten-year-old Buick at a consistent twenty mph, and she was burg renowned for her sour cream pound cake. I didn't think Myra was the one who whacked Squirrel.

"Just thought it'd be useful to talk to her," I said.

Myra answered at the first knock. I wasn't sure word had gotten out about Squirrel being shot, so I simply said I was looking for him.

Myra shook her head. "That Squirrel is a pip. I called the police on him two weeks ago, and he's still coming around trampling my flowers. If you're looking for Squirrel, you've come to the right place."

"Have you actually seen him? Or is it just that the flowers are trampled?"

"I saw him the night I made the phone call. Naked as the day he was born. I heard this noise, so I put the light on the back porch, and there he was... shaking hands with the devil. It's a wonder the man isn't blind as a bat the way he was working at that thing."

"Have you seen him recently?"

"I haven't, but Helen Molnar said she saw his bicycle laying in the alley when she carne home from bingo the day before yesterday."

"Any of your other neighbors see him?"

"Just Helen. She lives at the end of the block next to Green, and she said his bike was laying at the back of my yard. Don't know why he's singled me out. It isn't like I've got something to see."

"Is his bike still on your property?"

"Nope. The bike disappeared."

"You mind if we look around?"

"Go right ahead. Just try not to make too much noise. Lucille's husband, Walter, next door, worked a double shift last night, and he'll be sleeping. I'm getting ready to go out to the beauty parlor. Need to get a fast set to my hair for tonight. Did you hear about Joe Lojak being laid out at Stiva's? He was an Elk, you know. Gonna have to get there early if I want a good seat."

"Gonna have to muscle Granny for it," Lula whispered behind me.

Lula and I walked the length of the street, turned the corner and started down the alley. Helen and Lou Molnar lived in the end house. The other half of the duplex was occupied by Biggy and Kathy Zaremba and their two little kids. Biggy worked for his father. Zaremba and Sons Moving and Storage. There were four sons and mostly what they stored were hijacked cigarettes and CDs. And mostly what Biggy did was play cards with his brothers in the warehouse on Mitchell Street.

Kathy Zaremba's sister, Lucille, lived three houses down, in the other half of the house occupied by Myra. Lucille worked at the hospital, and her husband, Walter, was a security guard.

When we'd walked the alley in its entirety I made my way back, cutting across yards, snooping into windows. All the houses had a back door with a small stoop. The door opened into the kitchen, and there was a room to the other side of the door which was intended to be a formal dining room, but several people, including Myra, had turned it into a TV room.

Several houses had chain link fencing which delineated the yard. Myra and Lucille had foregone the fencing in favor of a low hedgerow bordered with flowers. It was this hedgerow that Sam had mutilated, probably not able to see it in the dark. Neither Myra's house nor Lucille's house had central air. Both had air conditioners hanging butt-out from upstairs bedroom windows. Both had the downstairs windows open. Myra's stoop was nice and tidy, but Lucille's stoop was cluttered with a bag of kitty litter, a rented carpet shampooer, a sponge mop that had seen better days and a broken lamp which was probably on its way out to garage.

"A bag of kitty litter and a rug shampooer," Lula said. "I bet Lucille's cat peed on the rug."

As if on cue, a gray cat poked its head out the broken screen door. The cat was immediately pulled back and scooped up by Lucille.

"Hi," she said, seeing us standing there.

"I'm looking for Sam Franco," I said. "I know he hung out here sometimes. Have you seen him lately?"  Lucille stepped outside, leaving the cat in the kitchen. She had a roll of red duct tape and a scissors in her hand. She stood still for a moment... thinking, lower lip caught between her teeth. "I saw him the night the police came. Don't think I've seen him since then. Sometimes I'd see him on the street, on his bike. Not since that night though."

"You're not gonna be able to patch that door with tape," Lula said. "You need a new length of screen."

"It's the cat," Lucille says. "Every time I put in a new screen the cat pushes it out."

Lucille had a raised welt in the middle of her forehead that was surrounded by a brand-new bruise. I'd been studiously trying not to stare. Lula, on the other hand, was never lost to the dictates of etiquette.

"Boy, that's a beauty of a bruise you're growing," Lula said. "How'd you get that big goose egg on your head?"

Lucille lightly touched the bump. "Wasn't paying attention and ran into a cabinet. Caught the corner."

Lula and I left Lucille to worry about her door and cut across two more duplexes, bringing us up to Biggy's house. Usually there was a Zaremba Moving and Storage Econoline van parked in the alley. It was missing today, along with Biggy's Ford Explorer.

Kathy was in the kitchen, feeding the toddler cereal. I rapped on the kitchen window, and Kathy jumped in her seat and the spoon flew out of her hand.

"Jeez!" Kathy said, coming to the back door. "You almost scared me half to death."

I'd gone to school with Kathy, but we didn't see each other much anymore. She'd been the prom queen in high school. Lots of auburn hair and a fast smile. The hair was the same, but the smile was forced now and didn't reach her eyes. She was too thin, and her face was too pale, the only color being a smudge of a fading bruise high on her cheekbone. No point to blaming that bruise on a kitchen cabinet. Everyone knew Biggy smacked Kathy around.

"I'm trying to find Sam Franco," I said to Kathy. "I don't suppose you've seen him?"

She shook her head vigorously. "No!" she said. "I haven't seen anyone, and I can't talk now. I'm feeding Timmy here."

"That Kathy person is on the edge," Lula said when we were back at the car. "I guess babies'll do that to you."

Not to mention Biggy.

"Maybe we should talk to Biggy," I said. "Maybe we should mosey over to the warehouse and see if he's seen Sam."

The Zaremba warehouse was on the other side of Broad, down by the river. I drove to Mitchell, found a space at the curb at the end of the block and sat staring at the open bay doors. Open doors meant there was no business being conducted today. That was good. Most likely no one would want to talk to me if the warehouse was filled with stolen toasters.

Lula and I got out of the car and walked to the first bay. I flagged down a man wearing Zaremba coveralls and told him I wanted to talk to Biggy. A moment later, Biggy appeared. Biggy looked like a Polish knockoff of King Kong in clothes.

"I'm looking for Sam Franco," I told Biggy. "I know he spent time on Roosevelt Street. I was wondering if you've seen him recently."

Biggy grinned and jingled change deep in the pocket of his pleated polyester slacks. "I saw your picture in the paper when you and your granny blew up the funeral home. You're that twinkie bounty hunter."

"Twinkie?" Lula said, hand on hip. "Excuse us?"

Biggy swiveled his eyes to Lula. "Who's the fatso?"

"That does it," Lula said to me. I'm gonna shoot him."

Biggy gave Lula a punch to the shoulder that knocked her a couple feet backward. "You aren't gonna shoot anyone, chubs. We don't allow shooting in this neighborhood. It lowers the property values." Lula got her footing and leaned into Biggy, nose to nose, lower lip stuck out. "Don't you touch me," Lula said. "I don't like people to touch me. You touch me again, and I'll bust a cap up your ass. See what that does to property values, you bag of monkey slime."

Biggy pushed his shirt aside so we could see the 9mm Glock stuck in the waistband of his pants. "Draw," Biggy said to Lula. "Let's see what you got."

"Hold it!" I shouted. "This isn't the gunfight at OK Corral!"

"He's just being a smart-ass," Lula said. "It's obvious I don't have no gun. Anybody could see I left my gun at home."

Biggy draped his shirt back over his Glock. "I don't like people snooping around this warehouse. I find either of you here again, and I'm going to get mad. And bad things happen when I get mad."

I grabbed Lula by the hand and pulled her away from Biggy, back toward the end of the street where the car was parked.

"I don't like him one bit," Lula said, shoe-horning herself into the passenger seat of the CRX. "And if you ask me, I think he did it. I think he shot the Squirrel. He wouldn't think nothing of it. He'd just go bang... squirrel season."

I did some mental eye rolling and stuck the key in the ignition. I returned to the burg and cruised Roosevelt for several blocks, looking for Squirrel's red bike. I took the corner at Liberty and made my way down Hunt, running parallel to Roosevelt, and kept enlarging the area until there was no more burg left.

"Maybe he wasn't in the burg when he was shot," Lula said. "Squirrel went all over Trenton on that bike."

"Okay," I said, "plan number two. You check the Stark Street neighborhood. I'll go home and make some phone calls."

I was halfway through my list of reliable gossipmongers when Eddy Gazarra called. Gazarra was another cop friend, and he was married to my cousin Shirley the Whiner.

"I heard you're looking for Squirrel," Gazarra said. "Dead or alive."

"You know where he is?"

"The boys just opened up a van on the corner of Wall and Perry. Someone called in a nuisance report. Apparently the van's been sitting there in the sun all afternoon, giving off a bad odor, drawing a thick fog of flies."

"Sam Franco?"

"Yeah. Strapped to a hand truck for easy transport. If you hurry you might still qualify for the recovery money."

I was on my feet and out the door before Eddie had a chance to say good-bye. Recovery of a felon wasn't sufficient grounds for a bondsman to get his bond returned. The bondsman's agent had to be present at the recovery. Considering the bizarre history of this case, I might still get the money back if I hustled.

I screeched to a stop behind a pack of cruisers on Perry Street and hit the ground running. I sorted through a gaggle of cops, looking for a friendly face and felt a wave of relief when I picked out Carl Costanza.

"Long time no see," Carl said. "At least four hours."

"Do you think I'm too late to get credit for the recovery?"

"What, weren't you always here? I was first on the scene, and I could have sworn you were already in place."

"I owe you a beer."

"You owe me a six-pack," Carl said. "And a pizza. Large. Pepperoni."

I glanced at the black lettering on the yellow Econoline. "Zaremba Moving and Storage."

"A clue," Carl said.

"Sort of an obvious clue."

Carl shrugged. "Maybe Biggy didn't think the smell would get bad this fast. Maybe he was waiting for it to get dark to dump the body."

"So you think it was Biggy?"

"It's his personal truck. The one he keeps in the alley behind his house. And he's the sort of hotheaded jerk who'd do something like this. I've been to his house twice this month on domestic violence. Never his wife who calls. She's too scared. Always the neighbor or Lucille, the sister."

I agreed with Carl. Biggy was a hotheaded jerk. Trouble was none of the events made sense. "This is all pretty strange," I said to Carl. "I saw this body in the abandoned house this morning. Why would Biggy take it back and put it in his truck?"

"Second thoughts," Carl said. "Happens all the time. You're in a rush to get rid of the body, so you drop it at the first place comes to mind. Then you get to worrying maybe your fingerprints are on his joystick, so you think the river might be better."

There were two suits from violent crimes in the van with Sam. The medical examiner's pickup arrived and backed in close to the truck. The ME drove a dark blue Ford Ranger with a white cap divided into compartments that reminded me of kennels. The ME got out, stepped onto the van's bumper and hauled himself up.

I sat on the curb and waited while everyone did their thing. By the time I got my body receipt signed, the sun was low in the sky. The medical examiner had placed the time of death around two a.m. Even better, he'd been able to ascertain that Sammy'd been killed with a.45... as the slug had miraculously dropped from Sammy's head when one of the attendants lost his grip on the hand truck holding Sam, and the hand truck crashed to the floor, jarring the bullet loose. At least that's the story they told me.

I didn't feel like being alone with my thoughts, so I ambled over to my parents' house to mooch leftovers.

"Other women have daughters who work in banks and business offices. I have a daughter who looks for people," my mother said, watching me eat. "How did this happen? What am I supposed to say to Marion Weinstein when she asks what my daughter does?"

"Tell her I'm in law enforcement."

"You could get a good job if you just put your mind to it. I hear the personal products plant has openings."

"Just what I wanted to do... spend my days over-seeing the boxing machine at the tampon factory."

A car door slammed shut out on the street, and Grandma hustled into the house. "You should have been there! That Stiva knows how to do a viewing, I'm telling you. The place was packed. Joe Lojak looked real good. Nice color to his cheeks. Real natural. He had on a red tie with little brown horse heads on it. And the best part was I beat Myra out for the best seat. She even had her hair done, but I got the seat in the first row next to the window! I'm telling you, I'm good.

"And everybody was talking about Sam Franco! They found him in Biggy's van. And that isn't all. Mildred Sklar was there, and you know Mildred's boy is a police dispatcher, and Mildred said it just came in that they went out to Biggy's house and found the murder weapon in Biggy's closet. Can you imagine!"

"I'm not surprised," my mother said. "Biggy Zaremba is a hoodlum."

"What about Biggy?" I asked. "Did they arrest Biggy?"

"Nope," Grandma said. "He clean got away."

I called Lula and left a message on her machine. "Found Sam Franco," the message said. "So that's the end of that. Give you the details tomorrow."

After two hours of television at my parents' house I still didn't feel comfortable with the Zaremba thing. Not that it was any of my business. My business was simple. Find the missing person. Deliver him to the court. Solving murders was a whole other ball game, and bounty hunters weren't on that team.

"Well," Grandma said, "guess I'm going to bed. Gotta get my beauty rest."

My father opened his mouth to say something, received a sharp look from my mother, and closed his mouth with a snap. My father, on occasion, had likened my grandmother to a soup chicken, and no one was able to deny the resemblance.

"It's late for me too," I said, pulling myself to my feet.

Late enough for me to act like an idiot and snoop along Roosevelt Street under cover of darkness. Don't ask why I felt compelled to do this. Sometimes it's best not to examine these things too closely.

I waved good-bye to my mother and drove down High Street as if I were going home. After three blocks I turned and doubled back and parked at the corner of Roosevelt and Green. The neighborhood was quiet and very dark. No moon in the sky. Downstairs lights were on in all the houses. The burg was a peeper's paradise at night. No one drew their curtains or pulled their shades. Drawn shades might mean your house wasn't immaculate, and no burg housewife would admit to having a dirty house. With the exception of Biggy's house. Biggy's curtains were always closed. Even now when Biggy wasn't in the house, the shades were drawn from force of habit. Biggy had enemies. There were people who might want to snipe at Biggy while he crushed beer cans on his forehead and watched Tuesday Night Fights. I traveled this street all the time, and I knew Biggy never left himself open for target practice.

If this was the movies there'd be a cop watching the Zaremba house, waiting for Biggy. Since Hollywood was a long way from Trenton, I was on the street alone. Round-the-clock surveillance wasn't in the Trenton cop budget.

I followed the sidewalk to the alley and hung a left. I'd only walked a few feet when a car cruised down Green and pulled to the curb. It was a red Firebird with rap music playing so loud the car seemed to levitate at standstill. The driver cut the music and got out of the car. Lula.

"Hah!" she said. "Knew I'd find you sneaking around here. Could hear on the phone you weren't satisfied."

"Curiosity is a terrible thing."

"Killed the cat," Lula said. "Biggy catches you in his yard it gonna kill you too."

"If Biggy has any sense at all, he's on his way to Mexico."

"Uh-oh," Lula said. "Don't look now, but we have company."

The company was Grandma Mazur. She was husling across the street, waving at us, her white tennis shoes a beacon in the darkness, a distant streetlight reflecting off the big patent leather purse looped into the crook of her arm. I dreaded to speculate what was in the purse.

"I thought you might be coming here to do investigating," she said. "Thought you might need a hand."

What I needed was a parade permit.

"Bet you snuck out of the house," Lula said to Grandma.

"Was easy," Grandma said. "They don't pay attention to me. All I have to do is say I'm getting a glass of water and then walk out the back door."

"I wanted to go through the alley at night," I said. "I wanted to be out here like Sam. See what he saw."

"Then let's do it," Lula said.

"Yeah," Grandma chirped. "Let's do it."

We strolled forward in silence and stopped when we got to the house owned by Lucille and Walter Kuntz. We moved ten feet into the yard, and we could clearly see Lucille watching TV in the back room. She was dressed in a nightgown, her hair was slicked back, and I guessed she was fresh from the shower.

"Where's her husband?" Grandma wanted to know.

"Works the night shift at the stadium. Security guard. Gets off at twelve. Except last night he worked a double shift and didn't get home until eight in the morning."

We simultaneously swiveled our heads to Myra Smulinski's house when the downstairs lights blinked off.

"Myra goes to bed early," Lula said.

We turned our attention back to Lucille. Lucille stayed up late. Maybe she even fell asleep in front of the television.

"Squirrel wasn't peeping in Myra's windows," Lula finally said. "Nothing to see in Myra's windows. Lots to see in Lucille's."

"Nothing to see in Biggy's windows either," I said. "Biggy keeps his shades drawn. So why did Biggy kill Sam if it wasn't for peeking in his windows?"

"Could be anything," Lula said. "Sam could have seen Biggy unloading a van full of hot blenders."

"Maybe it's something homosexual," Grandma said. "Maybe Sam and Biggy were having an affair. And Biggy wanted to end it, and Sam wouldn't hear of it. And so Biggy shot him."

We both just looked at Grandma.

"I was watching television last week and one of talk shows was about homosexuals," Grandma said. "I know all about them now. And it turns out they're all over the place. You never know who's gonna pop out of the closet next. Some of those homosexual men even wear ladies underpants. Must be hard to fit your ding dong into a pair of lace panties. Maybe that's why Biggy is so mean. Maybe his ding dong don't fit."

Sort of like the Grinch whose shoes were too tight.

"I gotta lot of theories," Grandma said. "Old ladies got a lot of time to think about these things."

A car swung into the alley and caught us in its headlights.

"Hope it's not the police," Lula said. "The police give me the hives on account of my previous profession."

"Hope it's not my dumb son-in-law," Grandma said. "He gives me the hives on account of he's such an old fart."

I wasn't nearly so concerned about the hives as I was about my life expectancy. I didn't have a good feeling about the car. Normally a driver would slow at the sight of three women walking in an alley. This car seemed to be accelerating. In fact, this car was flat-out aiming for us!

"Run!" I yelped, spinning Grandma around, pointher at Myra's back door. "Run for cover!"

"Holy cow!" Lula shouted. "This dumb sonnovabitch is trying to mow us down!"

We scattered in three directions. Grandma, having seen the last of her running days, did a fast shuffle to Myra's side of the house. Lula ran to Lucille's side of the house. And for no reason other than dumb panic, I jumped behind the single garage that belonged to Lucille and her husband and sat at the back edge of their lot.

The car slid to a stop, spraying dirt and gravel, the door flew open, and Biggy lunged out and took off after me.

"You!" he yelled. "You set me up! I heard about the police report. You were the first one at the van. You found that body in the house and then you stole my truck and set me up, you pussy liar! I want to know who paid you to set me up!"

He didn't look like a man who would listen to reason, so I bagged the denial and raced for Roosevelt Street. He caught me with a flying tackle in Lucille's side yard, and we both went down to the ground, cussing and clawing. We rolled around without making much progress for a few seconds, and then I accidentally pushed his gonads into the space normally reserved for his pancreas.

"Ulp," Biggy whispered, releasing his grip on me.

"I didn't set you up!" I told him. "I had nothing to do with it."

He dragged himself to his knees. "This is what happens when I help someone out of a jam. I get goddamn screwed. I didn't even kill that little retard, but I'm going to freaking kill you. I'm going to cut you up into little pieces. I'm going to carve my initials in your tongue."

"Help!" I shrieked. I looked around. No one was coming to help. So I did what any intelligent person would do. I hauled ass out of there. I was moving so fast when I hit Roosevelt Street my feet were airborne. Biggy was thundering behind me. And in my peripheral vision I saw the Firebird rip around the corner and screech to the curb in front of me.

"Get in!" Lula hollered.

I dove into the backseat and the Firebird rocketed away.

Lula slowed after a block. "He's not handling this murder thing well," she said. "Good thing he's not a woman. He'd never make it through the monthly."

Grandma was in the front seat, holding her purse her chest. "All them Zarembas are soreheads. The whole lot of them. Bunch of big babies."

"We need to call the police," I said. "Who's got a phone?"

"Not me," Lula said. "I don't make that kind of money."

"Not me," Grandma said. "I'm on social security."

I had one, but it was in my car, along with my gun and my pepper spray and my stun gun and my bulletproof vest. And unfortunately, my car was parked back on Roosevelt.

"We're only a block from St. Francis Hospital," I told Lula. "You can drop me off there, and I'll run in and make the call."

"Sounds like a good plan to me," Lula said. "That way if Biggy catches up to you, you're real close to the trauma unit."

Lula stopped for a light at Hamilton. High beams flashed in her rearview mirror, and we all swiveled to look.

"Oh, boy," Lula said. "I think I know this car."

I knew the car too. Ford Explorer with bug lights on the top. Biggy's car.

"You might not want to wait for the light to turn," I suggested to Lula. "You might want to move now!"

Lula stomped on the gas, and the Firebird jumped forward. Biggy was less than half a car length away, hunched at the wheel, looking like the antichrist, eyes glittering red, reflecting our taillights.

Lula paused at a cross-street and... wham! Biggy slammed into the back of the Firebird. I felt my head snap, felt the Firebird accelerate again, away from Biggy.

"Did you see that!" Lula squeaked. "He hit my car! I have six more payments to make on this car."

Grandma had a hand braced against the dash. "You think he did that on purpose?"

Wham! Another jolt from behind.

"He's trying to kill us!" Lula said. "That crazy bastard is trying to kill us!"

Grandma leaned her head out the window and yelled back at Biggy. "You stop hitting us this instant! I'm an old lady. You can't go around whacking an old lady like this! I've got bones like a bird. Another crash and my neck could snap like a dry stick!"

Wham! Biggy didn't care much about old ladies' bones.

"Eeeeee," we all shrieked on impact.

Grandma sucked air. "If that don't beat all!" She fumbled in her purse. "I'll put a stop to this! I'll shoot out his tires. That'll slow him down!" She dragged the big.45 out two-handed, leaned out the window for a second time, and before I could reach her, she squeezed one off. A streetlight exploded and the kick from the gun knocked Grandma off her seat. "Dang," she said. "It looks a lot easier in the movies. Clint Eastwood never has this problem."

Biggy gave us another smack from behind, Lula lost control of the wheel, and the Firebird smashed into a parked car and stalled out.

"Okay, now I'm getting irritated," Lula said. "Now my car don't work at all."

We looked back at Biggy, and we gave a collective gasp when he sprang from his car with a tire iron in his hand and raced toward us.

"Yow!" Lula shrieked at Grandma. "Shoot him! Shoot him!"

Grandma examined her gun. "Looks to me like I only had one bullet." She rolled her window up. "Don't worry, he can't get to us in here."

Smash. The back window went out with one swing of the tire iron. Smash. Another window. I crouched to the floor, cowering and praying, and making promises to God, and safety glass chunked down on me. I should have listened to my mother, I thought. I should have gotten a job at the tampon factory. Hardly any one got beaten senseless at the tampon factory. If I worked at the tampon factory I'd be home with my nose stuck in a thick book. A smutty romance with a half-naked man on the cover.

Red light flashed through the shattered windows, and I realized cops were shouting to Biggy to get off the car and drop his weapon. I raised my head and saw Carl Costanza looking in at me. "We've gotta stop meeting like this," he said. "People are gonna talk."

It took about an hour to complete the police report, get Lula's car towed away, and receive assurances that Biggy would be locked up and not let out anytime soon. It was a nice night out, and Lula, Grandma and I were only a couple blocks from my parents' house, so we decided to walk. We took a shortcut through the alley behind Roosevelt and fell quiet when we reached Lucille's backyard. Lucille was still watching in her nightgown. We stood there for few moments, all of us lost in our own thoughts. I was the first to break the silence.

"I think Lucille killed Sam Franco," I said.

Lula smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead. "Unh!"

"I think Lucille woke up on the couch here, in the middle of the night, and saw someone looking in her window. I think she got all flustered and got a gun. Walter was a security guard. He would have had guns in the house. Lucille was alone every night. She would have known where the guns were kept. Maybe she kept one in the TV room... just in case. Then I think when she was rushing around to get the gun, Sam came into the house. Easy to do if Lucille only had the screen door closed so the house could cool off. Especially if the screen was already broken from the cat. I read through Sam's priors. He'd broken into a house once before. He said he'd been watching a lady get undressed and suddenly he wanted a soda."

"I could see that," Grandma said.

"Makes perfect sense to me," Lula said.

I agreed. I could see Squirrel doing such a ridiculous thing... walking into a house buck naked and asking for a soda. "Next thing you know, Lucille, who isn't in a lucid state of mind and isn't even very good with guns, has somehow managed to drill Sam Franco square in the middle of the forehead. He's stretched out in her den (after knocking her lamp over). He's obviously dead. And even more obviously he's unarmed. Walter is working, so Lucille calls the next person on her list. Kathy. And Kathy sends Biggy over to take charge. Biggy possibly having some experience in gangland body disposal, or at least having watched Goodfellas a hundred times, tags a message onto Sam and drives him home to the abandoned house."

"What about the part where we leave and the body disa   ppears," Lula said. "You got that all figured out too?"

"The next morning Biggy goes off to the warehouse, and Kathy and Lucille get together and see the potential for getting rid of Biggy... who we all know beats the crap out of Kathy on a regular basis."

"Frame him for the shooting," Lula said.

"Exactly. So they hustle over with the moving van Biggy always keeps in his yard, not knowing two people have already seen Sam in the abandoned house, load Sam onto the hand truck, park him and the van in a place with foot traffic and plant the gun in Biggy's closet. Or maybe they don't even have to plant the gun. Maybe Biggy took the gun home with him."

"I think this is all a load of cockydoody," Lula said.

"I saw something like this in a movie," Grandma said. "On that Turner Classics station. I'm pretty sure it was Abbott and Costello."

"I'll tell you when I got this brainstorm," I said. "It was when Grandma fired off that first shot at Biggy and got knocked off her seat. The first time I fired a forty-five I had it too close to my face and the kick mocked the barrel into my forehead. I still have the scar."

"That little white mark?" Lula took a closer look. "Uh-oh, right in the same spot as Lucille's goose egg."

"Yes! And I bet the police can find trace evidence over Lucille's den."

"You mean you think there might be some left after she shampooed her rug?" Lula asked.

I'd been so excited about my brilliant deduction I'd forgotten about the rug shampooer.

"No self-respecting burg housewife would leave brain gunk on her walls and floors," Grandma said. "We keep our houses clean. Not like in some of them other neighborhoods."

This was bizarre but true.

"You think we have to tell the cops about your Lucille idea?" Grandma asked.

"It would be the right thing to do," I said.

"Yeah," Lula said. "And we always do the right thing. On the other hand, Biggy Zaremba is a real jerk. I don't like men who beat up on women."

"And kids."

I could feel Lula stiffen next to me. "He beat on his kids?"

"That's what people tell me."

"A man like that should be locked up."

"You could be wrong about Lucille," Grandma said to me. "You don't have any proof."

That was true. I could be wrong. But I didn't think so. Biggy had gone unglued when he saw me in the alley. And he said things he should have kept to himself. Like, how he'd done someone a favor, and how I'd been the one to transfer Sam from the house to the van. Biggy wasn't clever enough to orchestrate a scene like that for his own benefit. Biggy wasn't the killer. Biggy was an accomplice.

"Not only that, but you go telling the cops this theory about Lucille it's gonna take all the fun out of it for them," Lula said. "Homicide won't get no satisfaction if you don't let them figure this for themselves."

Jeez, I wouldn't want to ruin it for homicide.

Grandma shuffled one foot to the other. "There's all kinds of justice, you know."

"Fuckin' A," Lula said.

I thought justice looked like a real big gorilla. I wasn't in the business of determining justice. I was in the business of enforcing the law. But I had to admit, the thought of Biggy in jail sort of warmed by heart.

"Well, we could go to the police station and tell them Lucille's the one," Grandma said. "Or we could go back to the house and have some homemade chocolate cake."

This caught my attention. I'd forgotten about the cake.

"With vanilla ice cream," Grandma said. "The good kind with all them fat grams." She cut her eyes to me. "And hot fudge sauce to go on top."

Grandma wasn't above delivering a well-placed sucker-punch.

"Suppose homicide doesn't figure it out?" I asked Grandma and Lula.

Grandma took a moment to consider. "I guess if it would make you feel better, we could visit Biggy once in a while in the big house. Bring him some cookies."

"Yeah," Lula said, "or we could chip in for a TV. They let them lifers have TV sets."

"We can't just stand by and let a man spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit!"

"The hell we can't," Lula said.

"And besides," Grandma said, "what about all the crimes he got away with? What about the stuff he stole and the people he beat up? What about evening the score?"

I pressed my lips together. "This isn't hockey."

We all shuffled our feet some more, and a drop of rain splattered on my bare arm. Then another. And another.

"It's a sign from God," Lula said, tilting her face heavenward, squinting into the rain. "God wants us to forget about all this shit and go eat some cake."

Wonderful. Now God was in on it.

"God's no dummy," Lula said. "He knows chocolate cake helps clear a person's head for making important decisions."

I thought about the bruise on Kathy's face. And then I thought about the way the oldest Zaremba kid always looked scared. And then I thought Lula might be right... that I wouldn't want to make a decision without the benefit of chocolate cake. In fact, to ensure that I wasn't making a terrible mistake, it might take me a very, very, very long time to make any decision at all.

The End