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A Stephanie Plum Mystery
by Janet Evanovich
"And you used to sell ladies panties." "
That was entirely different. I blackmailed you into giving me this job."
"Exactly," Vinnie said. "So what's your point?"
"Fine!" I shouted. "Just keep her out of my way! I hate Joyce
Barnhardt!"
And everybody knew why. At the tender age of twenty-four, after less than a year of
marriage, I'd caught Joyce bare-assed on my dining room table, playing hide-the-salami
with my husband. It was the only time she'd ever done me a favor. We'd gone through school
together where she'd spread rumors, told fibs, ruined friendships and peeked under the
stall doors in the girls bathroom to see peoples underpants.
She'd been a fat kid with a terrible overbite. The overbite had been minimalized by
braces, and by the time Joyce was fifteen she'd trimmed down to look like Barbie on
steroids. She had chemically enhanced red hair done up in big teased curls. Her nails were
long and painted, her lips were high gloss, her eyes were rimmed in navy liquid liner, her
lashes gunked-up with blue-black mascara. She was an inch shorter than me, five pounds
heavier and had me beat by two cup sizes. She had three ex-husbands and no children. It
was rumored she had sex with large dogs.
Joyce and Vinnie were a match made in heaven. Too bad Vinnie was already married to a
perfectly nice woman whose father happened to be Harry the Hammer. Harry's job description
read "expediter", and Harry spent a lot of his time in the presence of men who
wore Fedoras and long black overcoats.
"Just do your job," Vinnie said. "Be a professional." He waved his
hand at Connie. "Give her something. Give her that new skip we just got in."
Connie took a manila folder from her desk top. "Maxine Nowicki. Charged with stealing
her former boyfriend's car. Posted bond with us and failed to show for her court
appearance."
By securing a cash bond Nowicki had been free to leave the lock-up behind and return to
society at large while awaiting trial. Now she'd failed to appear. Or in bounty-hunter
speak, she was FTA. This lapse of judicial etiquette changed Nowicki's status to felon and
had my cousin Vinnie worrying that the court might see fit to keep his bond money.
As a bond enforcement officer I was expected to find Nowicki and bring her back into
the system. For performing this service in a timely manner I'd get ten percent of her bond
amount. Pretty good money since this sounded like a domestic dispute, and I didn't think
Maxine Nowicki would be interested in blowing the back of my head off with a .45 hollow
tip.
I rifled through the paperwork which consisted of Nowicki's bond agreement, a photo,
and a copy of the police report.
"Know what I'd do?" Lula said. "I'd talk to the boyfriend. Anybody
pissed off enough to get his girlfriend arrested for stealing his car is pissed off enough
to snitch on her. Probably he's just waiting to tell someone where to go find her."
It was my thought too. I read aloud from Nowicki's charge sheet. "Edward Kuntz.
Single white male. Age 27. Residing at 17 Muffet Street. Says here he's a cook."
I parked in front of Kuntz's house and wondered about the man inside. The house was
white clapboard with aqua trim around the windows and tangerine paint on the door. It was
half of a well-cared-for duplex with a minuscule front yard. A three foot tall statue of
the Virgin Mary dressed in pale blue and white had been planted on the perfectly clipped
patch of lawn. A carved wood heart with red lettering and little white daisies had been
hung on the neighboring door, proclaiming that the Glicks lived there. The Kuntz side was
free of ornamentation.
Copyright © 1998 by Evanovich, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of St. Martin's Press, Inc.
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