Counting Crowes (a Stephanie Plum crossover)
By MsBrooklyn
Disclaimer: I own nothing, except a few ideas about how to play with other people's toys. The characters of Diesel and Wulf are from the Stephanie Plum 'Between the Numbers' novellas, Visions of Sugar Plums, Plum Lovin', Plum Lucky and Plum Spooky. They also appear in Wicked Appetite and Wicked Business.
Chapter One
Family is a big deal in Trenton. At least once a week, the whole family gets together for dinner. Your neighbors know you by who your parents are, who your siblings are and sometimes, who your kids are.
My name is Stephanie Plum and people may know my parents and my sister, but I don't have any kids. What I did have were somebody else's three angry kids waving various kitchen tools at me as I tried to convince their mother to call a babysitter so I could haul her ass back to jail.
This wasn't unusual for me. I'm a bail enforcement agent or, if you prefer, a bounty hunter. I work for my cousin Vinnie and while I'm not the greatest at it, bringing in a single mother of three who shoplifted groceries wasn't supposed to be that hard. Then again, none of my cases were supposed to be that hard. But they were.
"Who's gonna watch my kids?" Keisha Wallace demanded, waving a potato masher at me. "I can't leave them by themselves because Child Services won't like that."
Keisha had a point. It wasn't like I could take them with us, either. Their mother was going to be stuck in jail until Vinnie could arrange bail for her. Also, I wasn't unsympathetic. Child support only went so far and Keisha shoplifted a Thanksgiving dinner for her family, including a fourteen pound turkey.
"Who watched them when you took the turkey?" I asked.
She eyed me and cracked her gum dismissively. "They were with me. Best distraction in the world."
Great. I was dealing with a modern Ma Barker. "If I can get you a baby sitter, will you come reschedule your court date?"
Keisha looked at her three kids and blew out a sigh.
"You shoplifted food for your kids and it's coming up on Christmas," I added. "No judge is going to keep you locked up. This is Trenton."
"It's my third time," Keisha told me. "I got caught shoplifting Easter dinner and stuff for the Fourth of July. My ex-husband doesn't pay his child support around the holidays. He likes to use the money to take his new girlfriend out instead of feeding his kids."
She had a point. Judges didn't like to see repeat offenders. On the other hand, they also didn't like deadbeat parents.
Besides, I also had mouths to feed and if I didn't haul Keisha to the clink, neither I nor my hamsters were going to eat. And one of my hamsters was pregnant. Turned out the cute hamster they told me was a boy and that I named after my friend the US Marshal was a girl. Raylan the hamster was due any day. Just like my sister Valerie, who was expecting her second child with Albert Kloughn. And like the Marshal, whose ex-wife/girlfriend was also due any day somewhere in Kentucky. Being single never looked so good.
It was my turn to sigh as I ran through my options. "What if I got you someone to watch your kids?" I asked again.
"It's almost Christmas. People are busy." She shook the potato masher for emphasis. The kids waved their kitchen tools too.
I knew someone who wasn't. My Grandma Mazur. If she could handle my mother and me and now Valerie's three daughters, chances were she could handle Keisha's kids, none of which was under five or older than nine. I pulled out my cell phone and made the call.
Fifteen minutes later, she arrived, carrying a small pile of board games and a shopping bag filled with potato chips, pretzels and candy bars. "Who wants to play Parcheesi?"
I love my Grandma Mazur. She's somewhere between seventy and one hundred years old, keeps her steel gray hair tightly permed and today was wearing a hot pink track suit that said Angel on the ass. After my grandfather went to the all you can eat buffet in the sky, Grandma moved in with my parents.
Keisha's kids eyed Grandma warily. Then the oldest one spoke, lowering the egg beater he'd been brandishing. "What's Parcheesi?"
"Go ahead," Grandma told Keisha. "We're fine."
"She may gone be all day," I warned.
"I got Monopoly and Life, too. And if that gets boring, I can teach them to shoot craps."
"We already know that game," the oldest boy said, eyeing Grandma with newfound respect.
"See?" Grandma looped a bony arm around the kid's shoulders. "We're just fine."
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"What happened to your car?"
I stopped short and my mouth dropped open. My brand new Hyundai Tucson was on fire but not like any car fire I'd ever experienced. Someone had poured the accelerant in the shape of a bird on my hood. It was pretty and horrifying, all at once. The interior was also on fire. That wasn't pretty, just horrifying. Also, my tires were melting.
"Is that a pigeon?" Keisha asked me.
I made noises but the words wouldn't come out.
She smacked me on the arm. "Guess I can't go back to jail today. We'll have to do this another time." With that, she went back into her apartment building, leaving me alone to stare in disbelief.
Xxxxxxxxxx
Morelli showed up thirty seconds after the fire department did. Joe Morelli is a plainclothes cop in Trenton. He's also my boyfriend. Morelli is lean and muscular, with curly black hair that reaches the tops of his ears and the nape of his neck. His chocolate brown eyes can either be soft like melted chocolate or hard like frozen chocolate. They were frozen chocolate as he looked at my car.
"You're not testifying in some mob case and forgot to tell me, right?" he asked, cutting his gaze to me.
I shook my head. "Nope."
"Going after someone who's supposed to testify?"
"Nope. I've got a shoplifter and a wife beater."
Morelli blew out a sigh. "Then I have no idea why somebody burned a pigeon on the hood of your car."
"That's not a pigeon." One of the firemen came up to us, grinning and holding up his cell phone to show us a picture of a fiery bird that was identical to the charred image on my car. "That's a crow. You know, like from that old movie."
"The one with Brandon Lee," Morelli agreed, studying the image. "Yeah, it's a match. Thanks, Danny." He turned back to me. "Piss off any movie buffs?"
"I don't think so."
"Any goths?"
That rang a bell. In fact, the skip's name was Bell. Nostradamus Bell, formerly Todd Persky, was arrested for spray painting his tag - a bell, naturally - on City Hall, the local community college and was caught in the act of painting it on the famous Lower Trenton Bridge. That's the bridge that says, Trenton Makes...The World Takes. Bell was serving ninety days in the pokey or at least he was supposed to be.
"Great googly moogly!" Grandma came up beside me. "Don't that beat all. Someone burned a chicken on your car."
"It's a crow," I told her.
"Looks like a chicken to me." She shrugged. "I need to get home. Betty Szajack and I got a double date tonight. We met a couple of live ones at Stiva's last night during Harry Barkolowsky's funeral."
Morelli and I exchanged glances and then he blew out a sigh. "I'll drive you to your parents' house."
He left the rest of the sentence hanging about how I was going to borrow my Uncle Sandor's 1957 Buick. We both knew I hated the Buick. It was huge and drove like a refrigerator on wheels. It was also indestructible. More importantly, it was free, which was good because I was dead broke.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"I have meatloaf," my mother greeted us at the front door. "Valerie's here with Albert and the children." There was a slight slur to her words and I had a feeling she'd been nipping at the bottle she kept tucked in the kitchen cupboard. I could hear my nieces playing loudly inside the house and baby Lisa screaming her tiny lungs out.
Morelli looked apologetic. "I wish I could stay but I have a task force meeting."
"What kind of task force?" I asked, narrowing my eyes. "You weren't working on anything last night."
"Crime never sleeps." With that, he leaned forward, pecked me on the lips and took off.
Blowing out a sigh, I made my way into the dining room where Valerie was burping baby Lisa and Albert was attempting to engage my father in small talk. Mary Alice was galloping through the living room and Angie, a clone of Valerie at that age, was reading a Little House book.
"What happened to your car?" Valerie asked me.
"Nothing unusual."
Twenty minutes later, my grandmother came down the stairs in a purple track suit, wearing matching purple lipstick and all sound in the living room stopped. I heard my mother suck in air and saw her cross herself.
"I got a hot date," Grandma announced. "Me and Betty Szajack are having dinner with a couple of stud muffins we met yesterday." The doorbell rang and Grandma clapped her hands. "That must be my stud muffin now. He's still got a driver's license."
I shuddered and opened the door. "You're not Grandma's stud muffin."
"I sure hope not," Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens told me. "Am I in time for dinner?"
Xxxxxxxx
The stud muffin arrived just as we sat down to dinner. There was a loud crash outside the house and before any of us could react, Givens was on his feet, gun drawn and peering out the window. "Call 911."
My mother reached for the phone and I followed Givens out the front door to see an old Ford Taurus stuck to the bumper of Givens' Town Car. There was a white-haired old man slumped over the wheel.
"Think he's dead?" I asked Givens.
"He may not be, but I am. I'm pretty sure he bent the frame of my car. Art's gonna be pissed." Givens holstered his gun and made his way over to the driver's side of the Taurus. "Sound asleep."
"Shoot," Grandma Mazur complained, coming up behind us and peering into the car. "I guess all the good ones really are dead. Maybe I need to find myself a younger man."
"He's not dead," I told her. "He's asleep."
She slid her dentures around her mouth. "Probably it's better than going out on another dud date. Except Betty Szajack's out there having a hot time with her stud muffin and I'm stuck here listening to your sister talk about her hemorrhoids."
Givens winced.
"Does Winona have hemorrhoids?" I asked, recalling our marshal lessons about exploiting weak points. Winona was Givens' pregnant ex-wife/girlfriend and she hadn't exactly been nice to me when I met her during my visit to Kentucky. Then again, she thought Givens and I were fooling around, thanks to some insinuations he'd made.
He eyed me and upped the stakes. "I can call her if you wanna ask."
Before I had to think of a reply, an ambulance and a cop car pulled up. The cop car was driven by Eddie Gazarra, who's married to my cousin, Shirley the Whiner. Eddie hopped out and walked around the two cars, surveying the damage to Givens' Town Car and then peering into the Taurus where Grandma's date was snoring loudly.
"That didn't take long," he said to Givens.
Givens' posture didn't change but his eyes went hard and wary. "Excuse me?"
Eddie grinned. "You're running neck and neck in the car destruction tally. Stephanie's car got burned to a crisp this morning and it looks like yours is totaled. The guys back at the station are going to be all over the new pool."
"I guess that's what you gotta do to keep yourselves busy," Givens shrugged, "workin' in a place like this."
The EMT wheeled a gurney over. "You guys mind?"
"Not at all." Givens took my arm and Grandma's arm and steered us back into the house.
"What about your car?" I asked him.
"It ain't goin' anywhere."