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

her smartphone.
    She tapped her nails on the dash and sang along. “Rox-
annnnnne.
”
    “Hey.”
    She sang louder. “You don’t have to put on the red light.”
    “HEY!”
    She pulled out an earbud. “What?”
    “You’re driving me nuts with the tapping and the singing. Can’t you just
listen
?”
    “I’m trying to occupy myself. I can’t sit here anymore. My ass is asleep, and I gotta tinkle.”
    I rolled the engine over and drove Lula to her car.
    “See you tomorrow,” she said. “And I’m still not convinced that wasn’t Ziggy. Vampires are known for being sneaky.”
    She’d parked on Hamilton, behind Mooner’s bus. The construction trailer was no longer there. Presumably moved to improve visibility from the road and make the lot less appealing as a burial ground. I idled at the curb for a moment, staring across the scarred earth to the alley and the fence on the far side. The crime scene tape had been removed, but the chilling memory of the video remained. In my mind I could see the car drive onto the lot, and I could see the killer dump the body. It wasn’t a vision I enjoyed replaying. It sent tendrils of fear and horror curling along my spine. Three people had been murdered. And the unshakable feeling that I
knew
the killer burned in my chest. I put Nick Alpha in the overalls and Frankenstein mask. He was a possibility. I hit the automatic door locks and left the scene.

TWENTY-SIX
     
    MORELLI AND BOB were waiting for me when I got home.
    “I finished off whatever was in the casserole dish in the refrigerator,” Morelli said. “Were you serious about Dave Brewer cooking?”
    I dropped my bag on the kitchen counter and tapped on Rex’s cage by way of greeting. “Yeah. He likes to cook, and his mom doesn’t want him in her kitchen, so he mooches kitchens. He didn’t stay to eat. He just wanted to cook. I guess it relaxes him.”
    “He never struck me as someone who needed to relax. From what I remember he never looked stressed. He played football like it was a walk in the park.”
    “Everyone loves him. Lula, Connie, my mom, my grandmother.”
    Morelli leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. Serious. “And you?”
    “Not so much. His mother said he was framed in Atlanta. What do you think?”
    “It’s possible. He could have taken a bullet for someone else. Or he could have been encouraged to operate in a gray area. Or he could have been fed bad information.”
    “Or he could have been guilty?”
    “Yeah, that, too. I checked on him. He had a good lawyer, and several people who were supposed to testify had a lastminute lapse of memory. And two other bank officials who were also accused of crimes took off for parts unknown.”
    “I didn’t know any of that.”
    “It wasn’t a hot ticket item with the press, but the whole deal was messy, at best.”
    We wandered into the living room to watch TV and stood looking at Bob. He was sprawled on the couch, feet in the air, sound asleep.
    “There’s no room for us,” I said to Morelli.
    He hooked a finger into the neckline of my shirt and pulled me into the bedroom. “Guess we’ll have to find some other way to occupy our time.” He wrangled me out of my shirt and bra. He moved on to my jeans, got them to my knees and stopped. “What the hell?”
    I followed his eyes to my granny panties.
    “It’s complicated,” I said.
    “Cupcake, complicated is your middle name.” He tugged my jeans entirely off and went for the granny panties. “It’s a good thing I’m Italian with a strong sex drive. A normal man would walk away from this.”
    “It’s all your grandmother’s fault. She put the vordo on me.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t care if she put vordo, peanut butter, or mayo on you. These pants should get burned and buried.”
    Morelli stripped the pants off me and flipped them out of the bedroom.
    “Vordo is a spell,” I told him. “Your grandmother put a spell on me.”
    “She’s a crazy old lady. Spells are her hobby.”
    “It’s a bad hobby.”
    “It’s harmless,” Morelli said. “Spells aren’t real.”
    “Then how do you explain this huge pimple on my forehead?”
    “Doughnuts?”
    Okay, call me overly sensitive, but I’d just had my underwear insulted and been told I got a monster zit from eating doughnuts. Not stuff a naked woman wants to hear. Especially if it has some merit. I leaned forward, feet apart for stability, hand on hip, eyes narrowed,