I went to the Yellow Pages, found the number for RGC, and dialed the number. Larry Lipinski answered the phone.
“Larry,” I said, “this is Stephanie Plum, remember me?”
“Sure,” Larry said, “but I'm a little busy right now.”
“I read about Martha—”
“Yeah, Martha. What's on your mind?”
“My aunt's garbage. The thing is, Larry, the truck went right by her house just now and didn't pick up her garbage.”
There was a big sigh. “That's because she didn't pay her bill. There's no record of payment.”
“We went through all that yesterday. You said you'd take care of it.”
“Look, lady, I tried, okay? But there's no record of payment, and frankly I'm thinking Martha was right, and you and your aunt are trying to gyp us.”
“Listen, Larry!”
Larry disconnected.
“You dumb fuck!” I yelled at the phone.
Aunt Mabel looked shocked.
“Sorry,” I said. “I got carried away.”
I went down to the cellar, got the canceled RGC check off Fred's desk, and dropped it into my shoulder bag.
“I'll take care of this tomorrow,” I said. “I'd do it today, but I don't have time.”
Mabel was wringing her hands. “That garbage is going to smell if I leave it sitting out there in the sun,” she said. “What will the neighbors think?”
I did some mental head-?banging. “No problem. Don't worry about it.”
She gave me a tremulous smile.
I said good-?bye, marched to the curb, extracted Mabel's nicely tied up plastic garbage bag from her container, and stuffed it into the trunk of my car. Then I drove to RGC, pitched the bag onto the sidewalk in front of their office, and raced away.
Am I a take-?charge woman or what?
I drove away thinking about Fred. Suppose Fred saw someone do that? Well, not exactly what I just did. Suppose he saw someone take a garbage bag out of the trunk of their car and put it on the curb, alongside someone else's garbage. And suppose for one reason or another he got to wondering what was in the garbage bag?
This made a reasonable picture to me. I could see this happening. What I didn't understand, if in fact any of this occurred the way I imagined, was why Fred didn't report it to the police. Maybe he knew the person dumping the bag. But then why would he take pictures?
Hold on, let's reverse it. Suppose someone saw Fred dump the bag. They went to investigate, found the body and took pictures for evidence, then tried to blackmail Fred. Who would do such a thing? Bunchy. And maybe Fred all of a sudden got spooked and left for points south.
What's wrong with this picture? I couldn't see Fred taking a chain saw to some woman. And you'd have to be pretty dumb to blackmail Fred, because Fred didn't have any money.
THE SKIRT TO my black suit hit two inches above my knee. The jacket sat high on my hipbone. My stretchy white jersey tucked into the skirt. I was wearing sheer, barely black pantyhose and black heels. My .38 was in my black leather shoulder bag. And for this special occasion, I'd taken the time to put some bullets in the stupid thing . . . just in case Ranger showed up and gave me a pop quiz.
Bunchy was in the parking lot, parked behind my Buick. “Going to a funeral?”
“I have a job chauffeuring a sheik from Newark. It's going to take me out of town for the rest of the afternoon, and I'm worried about Mabel. Since you like to sit around and do nothing, I thought you might sit around and do nothing across from Mabel's house.” Give him something to do, I thought. Keep the guy busy.
“You want me to protect the people I'm squeezing?”
“Yeah.”