Explosive Eighteen - Janet Evanovich [33]
“Why didn’t Ritchy just get back on the plane?”
“He wasn’t feeling good. And then he was … you know, dead.”
“Jeez.”
“Shit happens,” Brenda said. “So where’s the photograph?”
“Don’t know. Don’t have it.”
Her lips compressed. “You want money, right? How much?”
“I don’t want money. I don’t have the stupid photograph.”
Brenda stuck her hand into her hobo bag and pulled out a little silver gun. “I want the photograph. We all know you have it. So get smart and hand it over.”
I looked down at the gun. “Is that real?”
“You bet it’s real. It’s pretty, right? And it’s light. I bet you carry some piece of shit like a Glock or a Smith and Wesson. Those guns ruin your whole look. You get a neck spasm, right?”
“Yeah, I have a Smith and Wesson.”
“They’re dinosaurs.”
“Who are you?”
“Boy, you don’t listen. I already told you. I’m Brenda Schwartz. And I want the photograph.”
“Shooting me isn’t going to get it.”
“I could shoot you in the knee for starters. Just so you know I’m serious. It hurts a lot to get shot in the knee.”
Lula swung through the coffee shop door and came over to us. “Is that a gun?”
“Oh, for Crissake, who’s this?” Brenda said.
“I’m Lula. Who the heck are you?”
“This is a private conversation,” Brenda said.
“Yeah, but I want to take a look at your little peashooter. It’s kinda cute.”
“It’s a gun,” Brenda said.
Lula pulled her Glock out of her bag and aimed it at Brenda. “Bitch, this is a gun. It could put a hole in you big enough to drive a truck through.”
“Honestly,” Brenda said, “this is just so boring.” And she huffed off to her car and drove away.
“She was kinda snippy, being I just wanted to see her gun,” Lula said.
Snippy was the least of it. She was a perfect addition to my growing collection of homicidal misfits.
“She’s in mourning,” I told Lula. “Thanks for stepping in.”
“She didn’t look like she was in mourning,” Lula said. “And she didn’t look like no doctor’s fiancée.”
Lula and I returned to Connie, and I called Bill Berger.
“I’ve got a third party interested in the photograph,” I told him. “Do you care?”
“Who’ve you got?” Berger asked.
“Brenda Schwartz. Says she was Crick’s fiancée. Blond, five foot five, in her forties. Carries a little bitty gun.”
“As far as we know, Crick didn’t have a fiancée.”
I ended the call with Berger and turned to Connie. “Can you find her?”
“Brenda Schwartz is a fairly common name,” Connie said. “Do you have an address? Did you get her license plate number?”
“The first part was ‘POP,’ and I didn’t get the rest. She was driving one of those cars that looks like a toaster.”
“It was a Scion,” Lula said.
Connie plugged the information into a search program and started working her way through it. I got a black-and-white cookie and a Frappuccino, and came back to the table.
“I think I’ve got her,” Connie said. “Brenda Schwartz. Age forty-four. Hairdresser, working at The Hair Barn in Princeton. Divorced from Bernard Schwartz, Harry Zimmer, Herbert Luckert. One child. Jason. Looks like he’s twenty-one now. Most current address is West Windsor. Renting. No litigation against her. Picked up for possession of a controlled substance five years ago. Got a slap on the wrist. There’s more personal information. I’ll print it for you later. I haven’t got a printer here.”
I wrote down Brenda’s address, ate my cookie, and sipped my drink, wondering what I should do about the photograph mess. Probably, I should tell Ranger, but he might kill everyone, and that wouldn’t help his karma issue. I glanced out the big front window and realized my car was gone.
“Damn! Shit! Sonovabitch!” I said.
“That’s a lot of swearin’,” Lula said.
“He took my car again.”
Everyone turned and looked out the window.
“Yep, it sure looks gone,” Lula said.
I called the Rangeman control room. “Where’s my car?” I asked the tech who answered.
“It’s on Hamilton. Looks like it just parked at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.”
I stood at my seat. “Let’s roll,” I said to Lula. “He’s at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.”
“WHAM!” Lula said. “Turn me loose on him.”
“I have two guys I’d like you to run through the system