Fearless Fourteen - Janet Evanovich [90]
The maroon Econoline was a fireball. Sirens were screaming in the distance. People were running from neighboring houses, scarfing up the money and frozen fish sticks and disappearing back into their homes. Mooner was running everywhere, stuffing hundred-dollar bills into his pants and his shirt.
I looked down the alley, and saw Dom jogging my way.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“I’m better than okay. I’m fucking fabulous. The sonovabitch blew himself up.”
“You were in the garage a long time.”
“The battery was dead,” Dom said. “We had to give it a jump start.”
“I thought the key disabled the bomb. Why did it explode?”
Dom was grinning. “I don’t know. I’m guessing it just went off when the van rammed into the deli. The asshole should have moved the boxes of money to a different car before he took off, but he was in a rush to get away. Tell you the truth, I was practically crapping in my pants, giving the van a jump. Allen was the one who rigged the bomb, and between you and me, Allen wasn’t the sharpest tack on the board.”
“Did you find out about Loretta?”
“She’s in the basement of the lab guy’s house. He lives two blocks from Morelli. He said she’s okay.”
I jogged back to the deli with Dom and stuffed him into my car. Brenda was on her feet, with a big Band-Aid across her nose and tissues stuffed up her nostrils, and she was interviewing Mooner. Gary was rocked back on his heels, smiling. His prophecy had come true. The only thing left was the business about Brenda sitting on a toilet on Route 1, and I was hoping I wouldn’t be around for that one.
I was moving the car so the fire trucks could get better access and saw Morelli fly in with his roof light flashing. I pulled alongside him.
“We’re all okay,” I said. “The fourth partner was in the van with the money. It looks like a lot of the money survived. I don’t think the lab tech made it.”
“What about Loretta?”
“The lab tech told Dom she’s locked away in his basement.”
“I’ve got his address,” Morelli said. “Spanner fed me the information on my way over. The tech’s name is Steve Fowler, and besides being a crime scene tech, he also did some moonlighting as security at the bank ten years ago.”
I followed Morelli and we wound through the Burg and took a left into Morelli’s neighborhood. He parked in front of a row house that looked like all the other row houses on the street. Two stories. Small front yard. Neat but unexceptional. No indication that a killer lived inside.
We all piled out of our cars and went to the door. We all looked a little grim. We weren’t sure what we’d find. Amputation isn’t pretty. And for that matter, we weren’t convinced Loretta was still alive.
Morelli tried the door. Locked, of course. He moved to a window. Also locked. He put his elbow to it, and it shattered. He cleared some glass away, opened the window, and went in. He opened the door for us and told everyone to stay in the foyer. He drew his gun and moved to the cellar door.
Dom and I were silent, gnawing on our lower lips, barely breathing. A couple minutes passed, and there were footsteps on the cellar stairs, and next thing, Loretta was standing there in front of us. She was pale and shaking and her hair was snarled. She was crying and laughing. Borderline hysteria.
We all stared at her feet and hands. No big bandages. No sign of amputation.
“You have all your toes,” I said to her.
She looked down at herself. “Yeah,” she said. “What do you mean?”
“He said he chopped off two toes. I saw them.”
“Not mine,” Loretta said.
I looked at Morelli, and Morelli shrugged. He hadn’t a clue who belonged to the toes.
_______
IT WAS SIX o’clock, and we were all in front of the television eating meatball subs, tuned in to the news. Mooner, Gary, Zook, Loretta, Dom, Morelli, Bob, and me. Lula had declined in favor of a night with her big Honey Pot. The party was thrown by Mooner with money he’d collected when the Econoline exploded. Mooner’d given twenty thousand to Loretta and Zook, ten thousand to the