04 Four to Score (27 page)

“There's a little guy in the produce department who looks like R2D2,” I told Sally. “Give him this note and take off. If you see Maxine's mother, don't go near her. Just give Bernie the note and come back here, so we can follow her when she leaves.”

Sally loped across the lot on his long legs, earring glittering in the sunlight, rat's nest hair bobbing as, he walked. He swung through the big glass doors and turned toward Produce. I lost sight of him for a moment and then he was back in my line of vision, heading out.

“She was there,” he said, folding himself into the little car. “I saw her standing by the apples. You can't miss her with that big bandage on her head. She's got it covered with a scarf, but you can still see it's a bandage underneath.”

I'd chosen a spot off to the side, next to a van so we'd be less visible. We fell into silence, watching the door.

“There!” Sally yelped. “She's coming!”

We scrunched down in our seats, but it wasn't necessary. Mrs. Nowicki was parked in the front on the other side of the lot. And she wasn't being careful. Just another day in the life of a housewife. Out to do the marketing, scoring some dope from Businessman Bernie.

She was driving an old, beat-up Escort. If she was flush with funny money, she sure wasn't spending it on transportation. I let her get some space on me, and then I crept out of the lot after her. After a half mile I had a depressing feeling about her destination. After another half mile I was sure. She was going home. Maxine wasn't Albert Einstein, but I also didn't think she was dumb enough to hide out at her mother's house.

Mrs. Nowicki parked in front of her house and shuffled inside. If I thought Maxine was on the premises I had the right as a bounty hunter to break down the door and go in guns drawn. I wasn't going to do this because, first off, I didn't have a gun with me. And secondly, I'd feel like an idiot.

“Guess it wouldn't hurt to talk to her,” I said.

Sally and I knocked on the door and Mrs. Nowicki stepped into view. “Look what the cat drug in,” she said.

“How's your head?” This was my friendly approach, designed to throw drunken, pothead Mrs. Nowicki off guard.

She drew on her cigarette. “My head's peachy. How's your car?”

So much for friendly. “The insurance company felt sorry for me, so they gave me this Porsche.”

“Yeah, up your ass,” she said. “The Porsche belongs to the freak.”

“Seen Maxine lately?”

“Not since she took off at the beach.”

“You left the house early.”

“Got tired of sand,” Maxine said. “What's it to you?”

I moved past her, into her living room. “You don't mind if I look around?”

“You got a search warrant?”

“Don't need one.”

Her eyes followed me as I moved through the house. “This is harassment.”

It was a small bungalow. All on one floor. Easy to see Maxine wasn't there. “Looks like you're packing.”

“Yeah, I'm cleaning out my Dior stuff. I decided I was only wearing Versace from now on.”

“If you see Maxine . . .”

“Right. I'm gonna call you.”

There was an end table and chair by the door. A .38 had been placed on the end table.

“You think you need that?” I asked.

Mrs. Nowicki stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray by the gun. “Doesn't hurt to be careful.”

We got back in the car and my pager beeped, displaying my mother's number.

Grandma answered my callback. “We just wanted to know if you'll be home for dinner,” Grandma said.

“Probably.”

“And what about Sally?”

“Sally, too.”

“I saw he was wearing rhinestones when he went out today. You think I should get dressed up for supper?”

“Not necessary.”

I took off and drove back to the supermarket. I had one last detail to check out with Bernie.

Sally and I staggered through the heat into the air-conditioned store. Bernie was ripping leaves off heads of lettuce when he saw us. His eyes got round, and by the time we got up to him, he was jiggling around, unable to stand still.

“Oh man,” Bernie said, “you're back! Holy cow!” He was beaming at Sally, and he was wringing his hands. “I thought I recognized you, but I wasn't sure. And then when I saw you just now I knew! You're Sally Sweet! Jeez, I'm a big fan. A big fan! I go to the club all the time. I love that all-girl revue. Boy, you guys are great. And that Sugar. She's the best. I could really go for her. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.”

“Sugar's a guy,” I said.

“Get out!”

“Hey,” I said. “I know about these things.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot. You look so normal.”

“Did Francine Nowicki pay you with another twenty?”

“Yep. I got it right here.” He took it out of his shirt pocket. “And I did what you said. I only gave her a couple pieces of fruit. Too bad, too, because I could have made a real killing. She had a lot of money on her. She took out a roll of twenties big enough to choke a horse.”

I took the twenty from him and looked at it. It had the scratch mark in the corner.

Bernie was on tiptoe, trying to see the bill. “What's with the interest in the twenty. It marked or something?”

“No. Just checking to see if it's real.”

“Well? Is it?”

“Yep.” Real counterfeit.

“We need to go now,” I said. “Thanks for calling me.”

“My pleasure.” He was gaping at Sally again. “It's been a real treat to meet you,” he said. “I don't suppose I could have your autograph.”

Sally took the black marking pen out of Bernie's shirt pocket and wrote “Best wishes from Sally Sweet” on Bernie's bald dome.

“There you go, dude,” Sally said.

“Oh man,” Bernie said, looking like he'd burst with happiness. “Oh man! This is so great.”

“You do that a lot?” I asked Sally.

“Yeah, but usually when I do head writing I have to write a lot smaller.”

“Hmm.”

I wandered over to the cookie aisle to pick out some lunch, and I wondered if Morelli was still watching the 7-Eleven. I could save him a lot of trouble. I was pretty sure Maxine's mother had been the one to pass the phony twenties. It was her neighborhood store. And she didn't seem shy about floating the bad bills. The upside to telling Morelli about Francine Nowicki passing another bogus twenty dollars was that he'd probably abandon the store and watch Francine for me. The flip side was that if anything went down I couldn't trust him to include me. And if he brought Maxine in, and I wasn't along for the ride, neither Vinnie nor I would get our money.

Sally and I settled on a box of Fig Newtons and a couple of sodas. We went through checkout and ate in the car.

“So, lay this marriage gig on me,” Sally said. “I always thought Morelli was just nailing you.”

“We're not married. And he's not nailing me.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Okay, so he used to be nailing me. Well, actually, he only nailed me for a very short time. And it wasn't nailing. Nailing sounds like body piercing. What we had was . . . uh, consensual sex.”

“Consensual sex is excellent.”

I nodded in agreement and popped another Fig Newton into my mouth.

“I guess you got a thing going for Morelli though, huh?”

“I don't know. There's something there. I just can't figure out what it is.”

We chewed Fig Newtons and thought about that for a while.

“You know what I don't get?” Sally said. “I don't understand why everyone was working so hard to throw us off the trail five days ago, and now old lady Nowicki is back in her house. We walked right up to her, and she didn't care.”

He was right. Obviously something had changed. And my fear was that Maxine was good-bye. If Maxine was safely on her way to a new life, Mrs. Nowicki could afford to take more chances. And so could Margie. I hadn't stopped at Margie's house, but I was sure she was there, packing her valuables, explaining to her cat why Mommy was going to be gone for a long, long time. Probably paying the cat-sitting neighbor off in bad twenties.

But of course she wasn't ready to leave yet. She had a doctor's appointment. And so did Francine. Good thing for me, because I'd be hard-pressed to do surveillance. I wasn't exactly the FBI. I didn't have any of their cool surveillance equipment. For that matter, I didn't even have a car. A silver Porsche, a '53 Buick, and a red Firebird weren't gonna cut it as primo stealth vehicles. I was going to have to find a car that would go unnoticed, so I could sit in front of the Nowicki house tomorrow.

*    *    *    *    *

“NO!” MORELLI SAID. “You can't borrow my pickup. You're death on cars.”

“I am not death on cars!”

“Last time you used my car it got blown up! Remember that?”

“Well, if you're going to hold that against me . . .”

“And what about your pickup? And your CRX? Blown up!”

“Technically, the CRX caught fire.”

Morelli scrunched his eyes closed and smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Unh!”

It was a little after four. Sally was watching television in the living room, and Morelli and I were in the kitchen. Morelli'd just gotten in, and he looked like he'd had another one of those days. Probably I should have waited for a better time to ask him about the truck, but I had to be at my mother's in an hour for dinner. Maybe I should try a different approach. I ran my fingertip across his sweat-soaked T-shirt and leaned very close. “You look . . . hot.”

“Honey, I'm about as hot as a man can get.”

“I might be able to do something about that.”

His eyes narrowed. “Let me get this straight. Are you offering sex for the use of my truck?”

“Well, no, not exactly.”

“Then what are you offering?”

I didn't know what I was offering. I'd intended this to be sort of playful, but Morelli wasn't playing.

“I need a beer,” Morelli said. “I've had a really long day, and it's going to be even longer. I have to relieve Grossman in an hour.”

“Anything new turn up on Kuntz's car?”

“Nothing. ”

“Anything happen at the Seven-Eleven?”

“Nothing.” He pulled on his beer. “How was your day?”

“Slow. Not a lot going on.”

“Who you want to watch?”

“Mrs. Nowicki. She moved back into her house. I went in to talk to her, and she was packing.”

“Doesn't mean she's going to take you to Maxine,” Morelli said.

I shrugged. “It's all I've got.”

“No, it's not,” Morelli said. “You're sitting on something.”

I raised an eyebrow. It said, Oh yeah?

Morelli chucked the empty beer bottle into the recycling bin. “This better not have to do with the counterfeiting case I'm on. I'd hate to think you were withholding evidence.”

“Who me?”

He took a step closer and pinned me to the counter. “So, how bad do you want my truck?”

“Pretty bad.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth. “How bad?”

“Not that bad.”

Morelli gave a disgusted sigh and backed off. “Women.”

Sally was watching MTV, singing along with the groups, doing his head-banger thing.

“Jesus,” Morelli said, looking into the living room, “it's a wonder he doesn't shake something loose.”

*    *    *    *    *

“I CAN'T loan you my car,” my father said. “It's gotta go in to get serviced tomorrow. I got an appointment. What's wrong with the Buick you're driving?”

“The Buick is no good for surveillance,” I said. “People stare at it.”

We were at the table, and my mother was serving out stuffed cabbage. Plop, onto my plate, four cabbage rolls. I opened the button on my shorts and reached for my fork.

“I need a new car,” I said. “Where's my insurance money?”

“You need a steady job,” my mother said. “Something that pays benefits. You're not getting any younger, you know. How long can you go chasing hoodlums all over Trenton? If you had a steady job you could finance a car.”

“Most of the time my job is steady. I just got stuck with a lemon of a case here.”

“You live from hand to mouth.”

What could I say; she was right.

“I could get you a job driving a school bus,” my father said, digging into his dinner. “I know the guy does the hiring. You make good money driving a school bus.”

“One of them daytime shows did a thing on school bus drivers,” Grandma said. “And two of the drivers got bleeding hemorrhoids on account of the seats weren't any good.”

My eye had started to twitch again. I put my finger to it to make it stop.

“What's wrong with your eye?” my mother asked. “Do you have that twitch back?”

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Grandma said. “One of your friends came looking for you today. I said you were out working, and she gave me a note for you.”

“Mary Lou?”

“No, not Mary Lou. Someone I didn't know. Real pretty. Must have been one of those makeup ladies at the mall, because she was wearing a ton of makeup.”

“Not Joyce!”

“No. I'm telling you it was someone I didn't know. The note's in the kitchen. I left it on the counter by the phone.”

I pushed away from the table and went to get the note. It was in a small, sealed envelope. “STEPHANIE” had been printed in neat block letters on the face of the envelope. It looked like an invitation to a shower or a birthday party. I opened the envelope and put a hand to the counter to steady myself. The message was simple. “DIE BITCH.” And in smaller script it said when I least suspected it he'd make his move. It was written on a recipe card.

What was even more disturbing than the message in the note was the fact that Sugar had waltzed right into my parents' house and handed the envelope to Grandma.

I returned to the table and wolfed down three cabbage rolls. I didn't know how to handle this. I needed to warn my family, but I didn't want to scare them half to death.

“Well?” Grandma said. “What's in the note? Looked like an invitation.”

“That was someone I know from work,” I said. “Actually, she's not a nice person, so if you ever see her again, don't let her in the house. In fact, don't even open the door to her.”

“Ommigod,” my mother said. “Another lunatic. Tell me she doesn't want to shoot you.”

“Actually . . .”

My mother made the sign of the cross. “Holy Mary, mother of God.”