Dirty Thirty (Stephanie Plum, #30)(51)

“I just heard about the fire at Lula’s apartment building,” she said. “Are you in Maine? Did you hear about the fire? Are you in Trenton?”

“We’re in Trenton. We rolled in late last night. The fire trucks were getting ready to leave when we got there. It was a real punch in the gut for Lula.”

“Was she able to get in to see the damage?”

“The building was crime taped, so Lula spent the night with me. We went through it this morning. Her apartment is a mess. The structure is still there but everything is charred.”

“What about the rest of the building?”

“Water and smoke damage. We’re at the office. She needs to call her insurance company.”

“That’s horrible. I know she loved her apartment. I’m coming to the office. I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

“Connie is coming in,” I said to Lula.

“That’s real nice of her,” Lula said. “She makes better coffee than you.”

Ten minutes later Connie arrived.

“I got a lot to do,” Lula said to Connie. “Stephanie has a list for me, but I’m all flummoxed and I can’t remember anything.”

“Pull a chair up to my desk,” Connie said. “I’ll help you.”

God bless Connie.

“I’m heading out,” I said. “Let me know if you hear from Grendel.”

I drove by the Manley house. Nothing happening there. No Yamaha parked in the driveway. The next drive-by was Duncan’s house on Faucet Street. No sign of life at number 72. Two blocks away I stopped in front of Sissy’s house. I sat for a couple minutes and drove around the block to the alley entrance. I took the alley and paused in front of Sissy’s garage. The garage door was open, and the garage was empty. Sissy was probably out with the Kia Rio. Nutsy’s Yamaha wasn’t parked in Sissy’s yard.

Curiosity took me to Plover’s Jewelry next. I cruised down King Street and parked a block from Plover’s store. Bob and I got out and walked down the street. Even on a Sunday, it was a fairly busy section of town. Four blocks of office buildings interspersed with stores and restaurants. A middle school was one block over. Panhandlers hung out on corners, but I didn’t see any hard-core drug users or dealers. At least none who were lying on the ground in an overdose or peddling heroin by shouting out sale prices.

I paused in front of Plover’s and looked at the window displays. I caught a glimpse of the security guard through the front door. He was armed and in uniform, looking very official. A narrow alley ran down one side of Plover’s and connected with the service alley behind the store. Bob and I turned at the corner and walked down the service alley. It was standard fare. Employee parking, dumpsters, and loading zones. Not attractive, but I didn’t have to kick rats out of my way either. We returned to King Street, and I tried to imagine the robbery. According to the police report, Duncan ran out of the store, ran half a block, and jumped into his car and sped away. When the police finally stopped him, he didn’t have the bag of jewelry. He said he dropped it as soon as he got out of the store, but the bag was never found. There were people on the sidewalk when Duncan ran out. One of them could have taken the bag, but there were problems with that theory. The police were immediately on the scene. People were detained and questioned. No one saw anyone make off with the big black garbage bag full of jewelry.

“What do you think?” I asked Bob. “Who has the jewelry?”

Bob didn’t have any ideas, and I didn’t have any ideas, so we went to the car and sat there for a while. I called Nutsy but he didn’t pick up and his mailbox was full. No surprise there.

“Obviously I need to talk to Nutsy, and it’s my bad that I didn’t do it sooner,” I said to Bob. “I’m not buying into the I can’t tell you my big dangerous mystery thing. I don’t mind if you listen in, but I didn’t want to force him to talk in front of Lula. Lula has a tendency to lose focus. I was afraid in the middle of Nutsy’s confession, Lula would have asked a clown question.”

I didn’t want to go home to Nutsy’s mess on my living room floor, and I didn’t have any good reason to go to the office, so I took a leisurely drive back to Sissy’s house. I thought there was a good chance that at some point in the day, Nutsy would show up to retrieve the things he’d left behind in his rush to get to Maine.

I drove down the alley behind Sissy’s house. The garage was still open and empty. No Yamaha.

“We have to be sneaky,” I said to Bob. “If Nutsy wanted to talk to me he would have called back. He knows Ranger’s SUV, so we won’t hang out here.”

I parked on Orchid Street, one block away, and Bob and I walked down Sissy’s alley and found a comfy place to wait behind Sissy’s garage. An hour later I heard the Yamaha putt-putt down the alley and park in Sissy’s backyard. Luck or dogged persistence, whatever you wanted to call it, was still working for me.

Bob was immediately on his feet, happy to see an old friend. I released his leash and he rushed at Nutsy. Nutsy was happy to see Bob, not so much to see me.

“Do you have a key?” I asked him. “I don’t think Sissy is home.”

“She’s at her sister’s house. She goes there for lunch and then she stays and plays with her niece and nephew. It’s a Sunday ritual. And yes, I have a key.”