22 Tricky Twenty-Two by Janet Evanovich Page A

wouldn’t even look at you for ten bucks.”
    “How about twenty? I bet I could get a tug from you for twenty.”
    “This here’s insulting,” Lula said. “Do you know what you could get for twenty? You could get a snootful of pepper spray. I got some in my purse.”
    Lula reached into her purse and pulled out her gun.
    His eyes got wide and he jumped away. “Crap! I know who you are. You’re the nut who shot up the balcony.”
    Someone yelled,
“She’s got a gun! It’s the shooter! Call the police.
Run for your lives.”
    “I was just lookin’ for my pepper spray,” Lula said.
    People were bolting up the stairs and out the front door.
    “This isn’t good,” Lula said. “This here’s pandemonium.”
    I turned Lula around and pointed her toward the kitchen. “Follow Connie!”
    We ran through the deserted kitchen and out the back door. I smacked into Dean Mintner and knocked him flat.
    Connie and I picked him up and set him on his feet.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see you here in the dark.”
    “What are you doing out here?” Lula asked him.
    “I’m watching. I’m taking down names and collecting evidence.”
    “What kind of evidence?”
    “I don’t know yet,” Mintner said. “I haven’t figured it out.”
    “This is why I’m not going to college,” Lula said. “Everybody’s a goofball.”
    We left Mintner and hustled back to the Firebird. Lula put her handicap parking permit into the glove compartment and drove us to the office.
    “This was a good girls’ night out,” Lula said. “We should do this more often.”

TWELVE
    I WOKE UP to the smell of coffee brewing. On the one hand terrific, and on the other hand terrifying, because it meant someone was in my kitchen. If it was a deranged killer he probably wouldn’t be making coffee. That left Morelli with a key. And Ranger with the ability to magically unlock anything. My money was on Morelli. Ranger would have brought Starbucks coffee in a container. I got out of bed and padded barefoot into the kitchen.
    Morelli was lounging against my counter with a coffee mug in his hand. He poured out a mug for me, added cream, and handed it over.
    “I need to talk to you,” he said.
    “I have a phone. I have a
doorbell.
”
    “I tried your doorbell. It isn’t working.”
    “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”
    “Cupcake, your gun is in the cookie jar, and it isn’t loaded.”
    I drank some coffee and pushed my hair off my face. “What do you want to talk about?”
    “Doug Linken. We’re starting to get toxicology tests back, and he had traces of black gunpowder on the soles of his shoes. Harry Getz had the same gunpowder on his shoes. It’s not something you see every day. You might find it on a gunsmith or collector, but neither Linken or Getz owned a gun.”
    “Why are you telling this to me?”
    “You’re going to be with Monica Linken tonight. I’ve asked her about the gunpowder, but she had nothing. I thought you might be able to pick up something. Someone passing in front of the casket who might make his own ammo. Maybe a history buff who likes guns.”
    “Is Monica still a suspect?”
    “She’s a person of interest. She has a solid alibi on the Getz shooting. Getz’s wife has a solid alibi on the Linken shooting.”
    “So now Getz and Linken were killed by the same gun, and they both had gunpowder on their shoes.”
    “Yep.”
    “Do they have anything else in common?”
    “They were business partners.”
    “Maybe they were doing business with someone who used gunpowder.”
    “We’ve combed through all their transactions and can’t find anything, but it’s not off the table. Clearly they stepped in it somewhere.”
    “Why do you think it relates to the shootings?”
    “I wouldn’t go so far as to say it relates to the shootings. I just think it’s an interesting piece of information. It’s a mystery I wouldn’t mind having solved.”
    I put a piece of bread in the toaster and looked at Morelli.