07 Seven Up by Janet Evanovich Read Free Book Online Page B

box of pie plates and casserole dishes. No bread crumbs.
    I climbed the stairs and closed the cellar door. Lula was still looking out the window.
    “Uh-oh,” Lula said.
    “What uh-oh?” I hate uh-oh!
    “Cop car just pulled up.”
    “Shit!”
    I grabbed Bob's leash, and Lula and I ran for the back door. We exited the house and scooted over to the stoop that served as back porch to Angela's house. Lula wrenched Angela's door open and we all jumped inside.
    Angela and her mother were sitting at the small kitchen table, having coffee and cake.
    “Help! Police!” Angela's mother yelled when we burst through the door.
    “This is Stephanie,” Angela shouted to her mother. “You remember Stephanie?”
    “Who?”
    “Stephanie!”
    “What's she want?”
    “We changed our mind about the cake,” I said, pulling a chair out, sitting down.
    “What?” Angela's mother yelled. “What?”
    “Cake,” Angela yelled back at her mother. “They want some cake.”
    “Well for God's sake give it to them before they shoot us.”
    Lula and I looked at the gun in my hand.
    “Maybe you should put that away,” Lula said. “Wouldn't want the old lady to mess her pants.”
    I gave the gun to Lula and took a piece of cake.
    “Don't worry,” I yelled. “It's a fake gun.”
    “Looks real to me,” Angela's mother yelled back. “Looks like a forty-caliber, fourteen-round Glock. You could put a good hole in a man's head with that. I used to carry one myself, but I switched to a shotgun when my eyesight went.”
    Carl Costanza rapped on the back door and we all jumped.
    “We're making a security patrol and I saw your car outside,” Costanza said, helping himself to the piece of cake in my hand. “Wanted to make sure you weren't thinking of doing anything illegal . . . like violating the crime scene.”
    “Who, me?”
    Costanza smiled at me and left with my cake.
    We turned our attention back to the table, where there was now an empty cake plate.
    “For goodness sakes,” Angela said, “there was a whole cake here. What on earth could have happened to it?”
    Lula and I exchanged glances. Bob had a piece of white confectioners' sugar icing clinging to his lip.
    “We should probably be going anyway,” I said, dragging Bob to the front door. “Let me know if you hear from Eddie.”
    “That didn't do us much good,” Lula said when we were on the road. “We didn't find out nothing about Eddie DeChooch.”
    “He buys sliced turkey breast from Giovichinni,” I said.
    “So what are you saying? We should bait our hook with turkey breast?”
    “No. I'm saying this is a guy who's spent his whole life in the Burg and isn't going anywhere else. He's right here, driving around in a white Cadillac. I should be able to find him.” It would be easier if I'd been able to get the number off the Cadillac's license plate. I had my friend Norma do a search at the DMV for white Cadillacs, but there were too many to check out.
    I dropped Lula off at the office and went in search of the Mooner. Mooner and Dougie mostly spend their days watching television and eating Cheez Doodles, living off a shared semi-illegal windfall. Sometime soon I suspect the windfall will all have gone up in wacky tabacky smoke, and Mooner and Dougie will be living a lot less luxuriously.
    I parked in front of Mooner's house and Bob and I marched up to the front stoop and I knocked on the door. Huey Kosa opened the door and grinned out at me. Huey Kosa and Zero Bartha are Mooner's two roommates. Nice guys but, like Mooner, they were living in another dimension.
    “Dude,” Huey said.
    “I'm looking for Mooner.”
    “He's at Dougie's house. He like had to do laundry, and the Dougster has a machine. The Dougster has everything.”
    I drove the short distance to Dougie's house and parked. I could have walked, but that wouldn't have been the Jersey way.
    “Hey dude,” Mooner said when I rapped on Dougie's door. “Nice to see you and the Bob. Mi casa su casa. Well,