Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich Read Free Book Online Page A

up. “I guess I may as well go. It ain’t so sunny anymore anyway.”
    The Trenton Police Department houses itself in a three-story red-brick block-type building. A sister block, attached at street level, provides space for the courts and related offices. On every side of the municipal complex is the ghetto. This is very convenient, as the police never have to go far to find crime.
    I parked in the lot attached to the station and squired Eula through the front hall to the cop at the front desk. If it had been after business hours, or if I’d had an unruly fugitive on my hands, I’d have gotten myself buzzed through the back door directly to the docket lieutenant. None of that was necessary for Eula, so I sat her down while I tried to determine if the judge who’d originally set her bond was working cases. It turned out he wasn’t, and I had no recourse but to take her to the docket lieutenant anyway and have them hold her.
    I gave her the locker keys, picked up my body receipt, and left through the back door.
    Morelli was waiting for me in the parking lot, leaning against my car, hands shoved into his pockets, doing his imitation of a street tough, which probably wasn’t an imitation.
    “What’s new?” Morelli said.
    “Not much. What’s new with you?”
    He shrugged. “Slow day.”
    “Un-huh.”
    “Got any leads on Kenny?” he asked.
    “Nothing I’d share with you. You swiped the phone bill last night.”
    “I didn’t swipe it. I forgot I had it in my hand.”
    “Un-huh. So why don’t you tell me about the Mexican numbers?”
    “Nothing to tell.”
    “I don’t believe that for a second. And I don’t believe you’re putting all this effort into finding Kenny because you’re a good family person.”
    “You have a reason for your doubts?”
    “I have a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.”
    Morelli grinned. “You can take that to the bank.”
    Okay. Different approach. “I thought we were a team.”
    “There’s all kinds of teams. Some teams work more independent of each other.”
    I felt my eyes roll back in my head. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “What this comes down to is that I share all my information, but you don’t. Then when we find Kenny you spirit him off for reasons as yet unknown to me and cut me out of my recovery.”
    “It’s not like that. I wouldn’t cut you out of your recovery.”
    Give me a break. It was exactly like that, and we both knew it.

Morelli and I had done battle before with only short-lived victories on both sides. I suspected this would be another war, of sorts. And I figured I’d have to learn how to live with it. If I went head-on with Morelli, he could make my life as a bounty hunter difficult to impossible.
    Not to say that I should be a total doormat. What was important was that I look like a doormat at appropriate moments. I decided this wasn’t one of those moments and that my demeanor now should be angry and offended. This was an easy act to pull off, since it was true. I peeled out of the police lot, pretending to know where I was going when in fact I didn’t. It was close to four, and I had no more stones to turn in the hunt for Mancuso, so I headed home, driving on autopilot, reviewing my progress.
    I knew I should go see Spiro, but I couldn’t muster a lot of joy over the project. I didn’t share Grandma’s enthusiasm for mortuaries. Actually, I thought death was just a bit creepy, and I though Spiro was downright subterranean. Since I wasn’t in all that good of a mood anyway, procrastination seemed like the way to go.
    I parked behind my building and skipped the elevator in favor of the stairs since the morning’s blueberry pancakes were still oozing over the top of my Levi’s. I let myself into my apartment and almost stepped on an envelope that had been shoved under the door. It was a plain white business-size envelope with my name printed in silver paste-on letters. I opened the envelope, removed the single piece of