Smokin' Seventeen: A Stephanie Plum Novel (Stephanie Plum Novels)

snapped to attention.
    “Someone get the door,” my father yelled.
    My father took the trash out, washed the car, and did anything associated with plumbing, but he didn’t get the door. It wasn’t on his side of the division of labor.
    “I got my hands full with the meatloaf,” Grandma said.
    I blew out a sigh. “I’ll get it.”
    If Dave Brewer was too awful I could let him in and just keep right on going, out to my car. The heck with the pudding.
    I opened the door and took a step back. Brewer was a pleasant-looking guy with a lot less hair than I remembered. The athletic body he’d had in high school had turned soft around the middle; in direct contrast to Morelli and Ranger who seemed to come into sharper focus as they aged. He was half a head taller than me. His blue eyes had some squint lines at the corners. What was left of his sandy blond hair was trimmed short. He was dressed in black slacks and a blue dress shirt that was open at the neck.
    “Stephanie?” he asked.
    “Yep.”
    “This is awkward.”
    “For the record, this wasn’t my idea. I have a boyfriend.”
    “Morelli.”
    “Yes.”
    “I wouldn’t want to tangle with him,” Brewer said.
    I felt my eyebrows go up every so slightly. “But you’re here?”
    “I’m temporarily living with my mother,” he said. “She made me come.”
    Good grief, I thought, the poor dumb schmuck was worse off than I was.
    At one minute to six the food was set on the table, and my father pushed himself out of his chair and headed for the dining room. My father took early retirement from his job at the post office and now drives a cab part-time. He has a couple steady fares that he takes to the train station five days a week, and then he picks his friends up and drives them to the Sons of Italy lodge where they play cards. He’s 5′10″ and stocky. He’s got a lot of forehead and beyond that a fringe of curly black hair. He doesn’t own a pair of jeans, preferring pleated slacks and collared knit shirts from the Tony Soprano collection at JCPenney. He endures my grandmother with what seems like grim resignation and selective deafness, though I suspect he harbors murderous fantasies.
    I was seated next to Dave with Grandma across from us. “Isn’t this nice,” Grandma said. “It isn’t every day we get to have a handsome young man at the table.”
    My father shoveled in food and murmured something that sounded a little like
just shoot me
. Hard to tell with the meatloaf rolling around in his mouth.
    “So what are you doing here in Trenton?” Grandma asked.
    “I’m working for my Uncle Harry.”
    Harry Brewer owned a moving and storage company. When I moved out of my house after the divorce, I used Brewer Movers.
    “Are you moving furniture?” Grandma asked.
    “No. I’m doing job estimating and general office work. My cousin Francie use to do it, but she had some words with my uncle, left work, and never came back. So I stepped in to help out.”
    Grandma made a sucking sound with her dentures. “Has anyone heard from her?”
    “Not that I know.”
    “Just like Lou Dugan,” Grandma said.
    I knew about Francie, and it wasn’t exactly like Lou Dugan. Francie’s boyfriend was also missing, and when Francie stormed out of the office she took almost $5,000 in petty cash with her. The theory going around is that Francie and her boyfriend were in Vegas.
    “Who wants wine?” my mother asked. “We have a nice bottle of red on the table.”
    Grandma helped herself to the wine and passed it across the table to Dave. “I bet you and Stephanie have a lot in common being that you went to school together.”
    “Nothing,” I said. “Nada.”
    Dave stopped his fork halfway to his mouth. “There must be something.”
    “What?” I asked him.
    “A mutual friend.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “You played football, and she was a twirler,” Grandma said. “You must have been on the field together.”
    “Nope,” I said. “We were on at halftime, and they were in the locker room.”
    He turned and looked at me. “Now I remember you. You flipped your baton into the trombone section during ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”
    “It wasn’t my fault,” I said. “It was cold and my fingers were frozen. And if you so much as crack a smile over this I’ll stab you with my fork.”
    “She’s pretty tough,” Grandma said to Dave. “She’s a bounty hunter, and she shoots people.”
    “I don’t shoot people,” I said. “Almost