Disclaimer: I don't own the Stephanie Plum series.
Relatively Speaking
By
Kole
Previously…
Fifteen minutes later we were in front of Cantell's house in Hamilton Township. It was a trim little ranch on a small lot, in a neighborhood of similar houses. The grass was neatly cut, but it was patchy with crabgrass and parched from a hot, dry August.
Young azaleas bordered the front of the house. A blue Honda Civic was parked in the driveway.
"Don't look like the home of a hijacker," Lula said. "No garage."
"Sounds like this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience."
Chapter 3
We approached the front door and knocked. And Cantell answered.
"Oh God," Cantell said. "Don't tell me you're from the bond agency. I told the woman on the phone I didn't want to go to jail."
"This is just a rebooking process," I told her. "We bring you in and then Vinnie bonds you out again."
"No way. I'm not going back to that jail. It's too embarrassing. I'd rather you shoot me and kill me."
"We wouldn't shoot you," Lula said. "Unless, of course, you drew a gun. What we'd do is gas you. We got pepper spray. Or we could zap you with the stun gun. My choice would be the stun gun on account of we're using my girl's new car and there's a lot of snot produced if we give you a face full of pepper spray. I don't want think she wants a back seat full of snot."
Cantell's mouth dropped open and her eyes glazed over. "I just took a couple bags of chips," she said. "It's not like I'm a criminal."
Lula looked around. "You wouldn't have any of them chips left over, would you?"
"I gave them all back. Except for the ones I ate."
Cantell had short brown hair and a pleasant round face. She was dressed in jeans and an extra-roomy T-shirt. Her age was listed as thirty-two.
"You should have kept your court date," I said to Cantell. "You might have only gotten community service."
"I didn't have anything to wear," she wailed. "Look at me. I'm a house! Nothing fits. I ate a truck full of Fritos!"
"You're not as big as me," Lula said. "And I got a lot of stuff to wear. You just gotta know how to shop. We should go out shopping together some day. My secret is I only buy spandex and I buy it too small. That way it sucks everything in. Not that I'm fat or anything. It's just I got a lot of muscle."
Lula was currently in athletic gear mode, wearing hot pink stretch pants, matching halter top, and serious running shoes. The strain on the spandex was frightening. I was heading for cover at the first sign of a seam unraveling.
"Here's the plan," I said to Cantell. "I'm going to call Vinnie and have him meet us at the courthouse. That way you can get bonded out immediately, and you won't have to sit around in a holding cell."
"I guess that would be okay," Cantell said. "But you have to get me back here before my kids get off the school bus."
"Sure," I said, "but just in case, maybe you want to make alternative arrangements."
"And maybe I can lose some weight before I have to go to court," Cantell said.
"Be a good idea not to hold up any more snack food trucks," Lula said.
"I had my period! I needed those chips."
"Hey, I hear you," Lula said.
After we got Cantell rebooked and rebonded and returned to her house, I drove Lula back to her place.
"That wasn't so bad," Lula said. "She seemed like a real nice person. Do you think she's going to show up for court this time?"
"No. We're going to have to go over to her house and drag her to court, kicking and screaming."
"Yeah, that's what I think, too. Wait. Is that what you think or what you know? Cause you've been actin' a little weird today."
"Yeah. Sorry about that, I'll explain everything later. I kind of have to process a little first." Lula nodded then got out of the car.
I drove over to my parents house. I was expected for dinner tonight. My Grandma Mazur was at the front door, waiting for me.
Grandma Mazur rooms with my parents now that Grandpa Mazur is living la vida loca everlasting. Grandma Mazur has a body like a soup chicken and a mind that defies description. She keeps her steel gray hair cut short and tightly permed. She prefers pastel polyester pantsuits and white tennis shoes. And she watches wrestling. Grandma doesn't care if wrestling's fake or real. Grandma likes to look at big men in little spandex panties. I love Grandma. I think she s completely crazy and at the same time completely awesome.
"Hurry up," Grandma said. "Your mother won't start serving drinks until you're at the table, and I need one real bad. I had the day from heck. I traipsed all the way over to Stiva's Funeral Parlor for Lorraine Schnagle's viewing, and she turned out to have a closed casket. I heard she looked real bad at the end, but that's still no reason to deprive people from seeing the deceased. People count on getting a look. I made an effort to get there, dressing up and everything. And now I'm not going to have anything to talk about when I get my hair done tomorrow. I was counting on Lorraine Schnagle."
"You didn't try to open the casket, did you?"
"Me? Of course not. I wouldn't do such a thing. And anyway, it was locked up real tight."
"Is Valerie here?"
"Valerie's always here," Grandma said, "That's another reason I'm having the day from heck. I was all tired after the big disappointment at the funeral parlor, and I couldn't take a nap on account of your niece is back to being a horse and won't stop the galloping. And she whinnies all the time. Between the baby crying and the horse thing, I'm pooped. I bet I got bags under my eyes. If this keeps up I'm going to lose my looks." Grandma squinted out at the street. "You bring anyone with you? Anyone like, that hot bounty hunter, Ranger?"
"Nope. Sorry Grandma, maybe next time." Grandma asked me that almost every time I saw her. She was under the impression that now that I was definitely not seeing Morelli anymore that I was now going to start seeing Ranger. While, I thought that sounded like an amazing idea, Ranger was still in the whole 'processing the fact that I'm no longer the Stephanie he knew' phase. I didn't want to rush him, but I am still curious. He was acting weird towards me before I told him who I really was and now sometimes I catch him looking at me. I might be reading to much into it, but I plan on questioning him about it soon.
"I'm telling you this town's going to hell in a hand basket. We never had so much crime. It's getting to where you don't want to go out of the neighborhood." Grandma said, out of no where. It was pretty much what she said in the book, if I remember correctly. I had noticed that even though I have changed things and a lot of stuff is different, fate seems to want to play out in pretty much the same manner it did in the books. It helps that I know what is coming, but some things I cant change, some I don't know if I should change, and some I don't want to.
But, Grandma was right about the crime. I saw it escalating at the bond office. More robberies. More drugs on the street. More murders. Most of it drug and gang related. And now I had seen the Red Devil's face, so I was sucked into it.
I found my mom at the kitchen sink, peeling potatoes. My sister Valerie was in the kitchen, too. Valerie was seated at the small wood table, and she was nursing the baby. It seemed to me Valerie was always nursing the baby. Grandma followed me into the kitchen.
My mother stopped peeling when she noticed me. "I heard you blew up a car today?"
"It wasn't my fault." This seemed to be the first thing out of my mouth a lot today. I now knew why Stephanie said it so often, the way people say things like 'I heard you blew up a car today' it sounds so accusatory.
My mother made the sign of the cross and took a white-knuckled grip on the paring knife. "I hate when you blow up cars!" she said. "How am I supposed to sleep at night knowing I have a daughter who blows up cars?"
"You could try drinking," Grandma said. "That always works for me. Nothing like a good healthy snort before bedtime."
My cell phone chirped, and everyone paused while I answered.
"You at your parent's house?" Morelli wanted to know.
"Yeah. Why?" I asked, already knowing the answer. They had a suspect.
"Bad news. You're going to have to miss dinner. One of the guys just brought in a suspect, and you're going to have to ID him."
"Now?"
"Yeah. Now. Do you need a ride?"
"No. I'll be there soon."
"That was Joe," I told everyone. "I have to meet him at the police station. They think they might have the guy who set fire to Lula's car."
"Will you be back for the chicken?" my mother wanted to know. "And what about dessert?"
"Don't wait dinner. I'll get back if I can, and if not I'll take leftovers."
"I'll ride with you to the police station. I could use to get out of the house. And on the way home we could stop at Stiva's to see if they got the lid up for the evening viewing. I'd hate to miss out on seeing Lorraine." Grandma said, not asking, but I didn't mind. Like I said, even though she's crazy, I love her.
Twenty minutes later, Grandma and I cruised into the public parking lot across the street from the cop shop. The Trenton police are housed in a no-nonsense chunk of brick and mortar in a no nonsense part of town that gives the cops easy access to crime. The building is half cop shop and half courthouse. The courthouse half has a guard and a metal detector. The cop half has an elevator decorated with bullet holes.
I looked at Grandmas big black patent leather purse. Grandma was known to, from time to time, carry a. 45 long barrel.
"You don't have a gun in there, do you?" I asked.
"Who, me?"
"If they catch you taking a concealed weapon into the building they'll lock you up and throw the key away."
"How would they know I got a concealed weapon if it's concealed? They better not search me. I'm an old lady. I got certain rights."
"Carrying a concealed weapon isn't one of them." I actually was licensed to carry concealed, now. Ranger helped me get that. He said that since I was going to be carrying my gun all the time, I should be able to hide it. More effective that way, he says. I just like that now I can legally carry my gun the way I had always carried it. I didn't have to worry about getting in trouble this way.
Grandma pulled the gun out of her purse and shoved it under her seat. "I don't know what this country's coming to when an old lady can't keep a gun in her purse. We got a rule for everything these days. What about the bill of health? It says I can bear arms!"
"That's the Bill of Rights, and I don't think it specifically addresses guns in purses."
I locked my car and called Joe on my cell. "I'm across the street," I told him. "And I've got Grandma with me."
"She isn't armed, is she?"
"Not anymore."
I could feel Joe smile across the phone line. "I'll meet you downstairs."
Civilian traffic in the building was minimal at this time of day. The courts were closed, and police business was shifting from front-door inquiries to back-door arrests. A lone cop sat in a bulletproof cage at the end of the hall, struggling to stay awake on his shift.
Morelli stepped out of the elevator just as Grandma and I swung through the front-entrance doors. Grandma looked at Morelli and gave a snort.
"He's wearing a gun," she said.
"He's a cop."
"Maybe I should be a cop," Grandma said. "Do you think I'm too short?"
Thirty minutes later, Grandma and I were back in my car, a new, blue, Chevrolet Equinox.
"That didn't take long," Grandma said. "I hardly had a chance to look around."
"I couldn't make an ID. They picked up a guy who was carrying the backpack, but it wasn't the guy who ran out of the store. He said he found the backpack discarded in an alley."
"Bummer. This doesn't mean we're going to have to go back to the house, does it? I can't take any more of the galloping and the baby talk."
"Valerie talks baby talk to the baby?"
"No, she talks it to Kloughn. I don't like to make judgments on people, but after a couple hours of listening to 'honey pie smoochie bear cuddle umpkins' I'm ready to smack someone."Okay, so I knew she did that but it still freaked me out and I was glad I'd never been there when Valerie called Kloughn cuddle umpkins because I would have wanted to smack someone, too. And my self-restraint isn't as well honed as Grandma's.
"It's too early to go to the viewing," I said to Grandma.
"I guess I could stop in on Sally Sweet. He turned up Failure To Appear today on an assault charge." I said this all cool like, but inside I was jumping around like a crazy person because I was so excited to meet Sally.
"No kidding? I remember him. He was a nice young man. Sometimes he was a nice young woman. He had a plaid skirt I always admired."
I pulled out of the lot, right-turned onto North Clinton, and followed the road for almost a quarter mile. At one time in Trenton's history this was a thriving industrial area. The industry had all vacated or drastically downsized and the rotting carcasses of factories and warehouses produced an ambience similar to what you might find in postwar Bosnia. I left Clinton and wove my way through a neighborhood of small bleak single-story row houses. Originally designed to contain the factory workers, the row houses were now occupied by hardworking people who lived one step above welfare... Plus there were a few oddballs like Sally Sweet.
I found Fenton and parked in front of Sally's house. "Wait in the car until I find out what's going on," I said to Grandma.
"Sure," Grandma said, her hands gripping her purse in excited anticipation, her eyes glued to Sally's front door.
Thirty seconds after Grandma agreed to wait in the car, she was on the sidewalk, following me to Sally's front door.
"I thought you were going to wait in the car?" I said.
"I changed my mind. I thought you might need help."
"Okay, but let me do the talking. I don't want to alarm him."
"Sure," Grandma said. I didn't believe her. I knew what she was going to do, but I just didn't feel up to stopping her. My day had been hectic enough.
I knocked on Sally's front door, and the door opened on the third knock. Sally Sweet looked out at me, recognition kicked in, and his face creased into a grin. My face broke out into a grin as well, because he was exactly as I had imagined him.
"Long time no see," he said. "What brings you to my casa?"
"We're here to drag your behind back to jail," Grandma said.
"Fuck," Sally said. And he slammed the door shut.
AN: Sorry it took so long to get this chapter up. Life has been a little crazy, lately. Let me know what you think. I put up links to pictures of what Ranger and Morelli look like in my story on my profile. Check them out. As always, reviews are love and after the week I've had I could use some love. Love A Skoner.