14 Fearless Fourteen (12 page)

They're going to want to hear me say, Freeze! We're bounty
hunters.“ ”She got a point,“ Lula said. ”Yes, but here's the
problem,“ I said. ”Television bounty hunters do that sort of thing,
but I'm not a television bounty hunter. I'm a real-life
bond-enforcement agent. So here's how it's going to happen. I'm
going to knock on Susans door and hand her my card and explain who
we are. Then I'm going to ask her to come downtown with us so she
can get rebonded.“ ”Hunh,“ Lula said. ”I guess you could do it that
way, but it's not gonna get ratings.“ ”Humor me,“ I said. ”Brenda
can go to a studio and do voice-overs, and no one will know the
difference.“ ”That might work,“ Lula said to Brenda. ”Freeze,
suckah,“ Brenda said in a crouch position, pretending she had a
gun. ”That's pretty good,“ Lula told her. ”You should have your own
show. You could do CSI: Brenda.“ I took the paperwork from Connie
and shrugged into my jacket. It was almost eighty degrees outside,
and I was going to sweat like a pig in this thing. ”Here's the way
it works,“ the sound guy said. ”I'm going to wire you all, and I've
also wired the Firebird. We'll be able to hear everything, so
switch yourself off if you need to use the bathroom. We've also got
a lipstick cam in the Firebird, and we'll be filming from the van.
When you enter the lady's house, Jeff will follow you with the
minicam.“ ”What if she doesn't want to be filmed?“ I asked.
”Everyone wants to be filmed,“ the sound guy said. ”Just start
singing the “Bad Boys”theme song.“ We trudged outside, Lula got
behind the wheel, Brenda got in next to her, and I climbed into the
back. Brenda and Lula were in full view of the lipstick cam mounted
above the driver's side door. The camera didn't cover the backseat.
Fine by me. My hair didn't look all that great, and my cleavage
couldn't nearly measure up. Lula drove across town to North Trenton
and turned down Bing Street. The film crew van was right behind us.
We parked in the apartment building lot, and we all got out. I
thought we looked like one of those Publishers Clearing House
commercials. The only thing missing was the big check and a bunch
of balloons. I led the parade into the building and up one flight
of stairs. The building wasn't fancy, but it was clean and the
paint looked new. There were six apartments on the second floor.
”Now, remember,“ I said to Brenda and Lula. ”Let me do the
talking.“ ”I should be the one to do the talking,“ Brenda said.
”I'm the star.“ ”And I'm almost a star,“ Lula said. ”What about me?
I need to get a chance to talk."

“Yes,” I said. “But I'm the one who signed her name to the
contract to apprehend. I'm the one who gets sued if there's a
screwup.”

“Okay,” Lula said. “That sounds fair.”

“I can live with it,” Brenda said.

According to my paperwork, Susan Stitch was twenty-six years
old, unmarried, and worked nights as a bartender at the Holiday
Inn. She had no priors. And she lived alone.

I rang the bell and a young woman answered the door.
Shoulder-length brown hair, brown eyes, slim. Susan Stitch. She
looked just like her booking photo.

I introduced myself and gave her my card.

“I'm here to bring you to the courthouse so you can get
rebonded,” I told her.

And that was partially true. The part I neglected to mention was
that she would have to go through the arrest process again and that
it wasn't a given she would be released.

She looked over my shoulder at the cameraman and sound guy and
Brenda and Lula. “Who are all these people?”

“This is your lucky day,” Lula said. “You been selected to be
arrested by Brenda. And these are the guys who follow her around
and take pictures.”

“Freeze, bitch,” Brenda said.

Susan squinted at Brenda. “Omigod! Is it really
you?”

“Yep,” Brenda said. “In the flesh.”

“Omigod. Omigod!” Susan said. “I've got goose bumps. The lady at
the bonds office didn't tell me. I would have worn something
different. Omigod, you have to come in so I can get my camera. No
one's going to believe this.”

Susan ran off to get her camera, and we all shuffled into her
small apartment.

Her furniture looked a lot like mine. Inexpensive and without
personality.

Neither of us was a nest-builder. I always had good intentions
of buying throw pillows and arranging pictures in frames and maybe
getting a houseplant, but somehow it never happened.

“Hey,” Lula yelled into the bedroom at Susan. “Did you really
give your boyfriend a ride on the roof rack?”

Susan came in with her camera. “He's not my boyfriend. He used
to be my boyfriend, but he's a total jerk. I'm just sorry all I got
was his leg. If he hadn't gotten up so fast, I would have run over
him like he was a speed bump.”

She focused the camera and took everyone's picture. “Now one of
me with Brenda,” she said, handing the camera to Lula. “This is so
cool.”

“Why'd your boyfriend jump on the car?” Lula wanted to know.
“Guess he didn't want you to go?”

“Had nothing to do with me. It was that I took Carl. He just
wanted his precious Carl.”

“Isn't that tragic,” Brenda said. “You have a little boy. A
split is always so hard on the children.”

“Actually, Carl's a monkey,” Susan said.

Lula snapped her head around. “He isn't here, is he? Nothing
personal, but I hate monkeys.”

“I have him in the bathroom. He gets excited when strangers come
into the apartment.”

“I have to see this,” Brenda said, crossing to the closed
bathroom door. “What kind of monkey is it?”

“Don't open the door!” Susan said.

Too late. Brenda yanked the door open, and the monkey launched
himself out at her and draped himself over her head.

Everyone in the room went rigid and sucked air.

Brenda rolled her eyes, trying to see through her skull. “What
the heck?”

“Hee, hee, hee,” Carl said. And he reached down and pinched
Brenda's nose... hard.

Brenda slapped his hand away, and Carl shrieked and hunkered
down, digging into Brenda's scalp with his monkey fingers and toes.
All you could see was monkey tail and brown monkey fur sticking out
of Brenda's rat's nest hair.

“Uh-oh,” Lula said. “I never seen a monkey hump before, but I
could swear Carl's in love.”

“Somebody do something, for crissake,” Brenda yelled. “Get him
off me! Kill him. Get him a damn banana!”

It was the spider all over again, times fifty. The difference
was that this time Brenda's freak-out was justified. If I had a
monkey humping my head, I'd be freaked, too.

“Don't slap at him,” Susan said. “You'll make him
mad.”

Lula had her gun out. “Hold still, and I'll nail the nasty
little bugger.”

The sound guy reached for Carl, and Carl latched on to his arm
and bit his hand.

“Yow! Shit!” the sound guy said. “Shoot him. Shoot him.” He
whipped his arm out, and Carl flew off into space, hit the wall,
and bounced off like a tennis ball. And he kept bouncing. Onto the
table, to the chandelier, to the couch, to an end table, to the
television.

Carl rocketed around the room, shrieking and chattering and
baring his teeth. His eyes were black and glittery and bugged out
of his head, and he was spraying monkey spit.

“It's a demon monkey!” Lula yelled. “Get a
priest.”

“I'm out of here,” the cameraman said. “Life's too
short.”

The sound guy was already in the hall, and Brenda was at the
stairs.

“Wait for me,” Lula said, pounding after them.

If I didn't catch up, they'd leave without me. They'd drive away
and never look back.

“Turn yourself in,” I said to Susan. “Sorry about the
monkey.”

I sprinted across the lot and got to the Firebird just as Lula
put the key into the ignition. I hurled myself into the backseat,
and we took off with the camera crew truck right on our
ass.

“What the hell was that?” Brenda wanted to know.

Unknown

Lula gave the Firebird gas. “She said don't open the door, but
would you listen? Heck, no. You had to go open the door. What were
you thinking?”

“I wanted to see the monkey. Did she say the monkey was rabid?
No. Did she say the monkey was on crack? No. I assumed it was a
pet. Its name was Carl.”

“Right there, it tells you something,” Lula said. “Carls are
always crazy. You never trust anyone named Carl or
Steve.”

“That's ridiculous,” Brenda said. “Do you have any other
theories on names?”

“Yeah. It's been my experience that guys named Ralph only got
one good nut.”

I was sitting behind Brenda, and her hair was Wild Woman of
Borneo, with a couple chunks obviously chewed off by the
monkey.

“Is my hair all right?” Brenda asked. “Do I need to comb it or
something?” She patted the top of her head. “What's this sticky
stuff?”

At the very best, I thought it was monkey spit.

“Jeez,” I said. “I don't know. I think it might be your gel or
something. Probably you want to wait until you get to a ladies'
room to comb it.”

Mark Bird and his producer were waiting for us at the office.
The producer gasped when Brenda walked through the door. “H-h-how'd
it go?” she asked, her attention caught on Brenda's
hair.

“This bounty hunter thing is harder than I thought,” Brenda
said. “I need a ladies' room.”

“There's a powder room straight back,” Connie said. “It'll be on
your right.”

Brenda sashayed off to the powder room, and we all stayed mute
until the door closed.

“What the heck happened to her?” Connie asked.

“Monkey,” Lula said. “Bugger humped her head.”

The sound guy was grinning wide. “We looked at the footage in
the truck on the way here. It's great!”

“You couldn't possibly use it,” I said to him.

“It would be a crime not to,” he said. “It's
gold.”

Connie looked to me. “I assume there was no
capture.”

I took my cell phone out and punched Morelli's number in. “Your
assumption is correct.”

Morelli answered with a grunt.

“What's new?” I asked him.

“Nothing worth talking about. I caught a double homicide this
morning and haven't been able to do anything about Dom or Loretta.
Larry Skid is working Loretta. So far, no one's spotted
Dom.”

“Larry Skid is an idiot.”

“Yeah. My description for him would be sack of shit. I've got to
go. You're picking the kid up today, right?”

“Right.”

I disconnected and fished around in my bag, looking for my keys.
“I have to talk to some people,” I said to Connie. “I'll get back
to Susan Stitch later. Her monkey needs alone time.”

“Where you going?” Lula wanted to know. “I might have to go with
you. I don't want to be here when Ms. Monkey Hair comes out of the
bathroom.”

Ten minutes later, we were in front of Dom's mother's house. I
knew Morelli had done a search, but I didn't think it would hurt
for me to take a look, too. I knocked on the front door. No answer.
I turned the knob and the door swung open. We stepped inside and
listened.

“All I hear is the refrigerator,” Lula said.

The interior of the house was dark and fussy. Lots of candy
dishes and figurines and vases filled with plastic flowers. The
dining room table was covered with a lace
tablecloth.

“What are we looking for?” Lula wanted to know.

“Clues.”

“Good thing I asked. I thought it might have been
elephants.”

I prowled through the kitchen, and it looked to me like Dom had
cleared out in a hurry. There were dirty dishes in the sink and a
fry pan on the stove. The refrigerator held the usual staples.
Yesterday's paper was open on the small kitchen table. A cup of
cold coffee was beside the paper. A cardboard box containing
cereal, jars of soup, and canned food was on the floor next to the
sink. I was guessing this came from Loretta's stash. There were
more cardboard boxes upstairs in a spare bedroom. They were labeled
“clothes” and “bathroom.”

The master bedroom was untouched, the bed neatly made. A second
bedroom was a disaster. Linens rumpled into a mess in the middle of
the bed. Drawers open with clothes everywhere. Either Dom was a
slob or else the room had been tossed.

I checked the garage. No cars. Loretta's possessions neatly
stacked in a corner.

“What'd we learn here?” Lula wanted to know.

“Not much. Loretta moved in and then disappeared. Dom made an
unplanned departure. Hard to tell how many people have searched the
house. I'm guessing at least three... Morelli and me and someone
else.”

The limo and the film crew van were gone when I returned to the
office.

“Guess it's safe to park,” Lula said. “Looks like everyone went
away.”

Not everyone. Gary-the-Stalker was sitting on the curb in front
of the bonds office. He stood when I got out of the Sentra and
walked over to me.

“Brenda went back to the hotel,” I told him.

“I know. I saw her leave. I thought I'd have better luck talking
to you.”

“I'm not working security for her anymore.”

“Yeah, but you talk to her.”

“Actually, no.”

“I had a dream that she was sitting on a toilet in the
southbound lane of Route 1.”

“Un-hunh?”

“I thought someone needed to know”

“Why?”

“Just in case,” he said.

“Anything else?”

“No. That's it.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Thanks.”

My phone rang and a strange number popped onto the
screen.

“Is this Stephanie Plum?” a man asked.

“Yeah,” I said, recognizing the voice. “Is this the
Mooner?”

“Affirmative. It's the Moonster, the Moondog, the MoonMan. I'm
here at the house, looking for Zookarama, but he isn't
here.”

“He's in school.”

“School! Far out.”

“Anything else?”

“Here's the thing, it was real late when we were done playing
last night, and I think I might have left my computer in the house,
because I don't seem to have it with me. So I was wondering if you
could, like, let me into the house.”