“I guess I could see that,” Lula said, “but how do you expect me to pull off this Briggs rescue?”
“I guess you could shoot Poletti in a nonvital area.”
“Like his knee?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’m cool with that,” Lula said.
I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder, crossed the lot, and pushed my way through the front door of Pepper Trucking. The woman at the front desk was in her forties and looked overworked, overfed, and underpaid.
“I’d like to talk to Silvio,” I told her.
Looking like she could care less, she punched a button on her multiline phone.
“There’s a woman here to see you,” she said. She rolled her eyes and looked over at me. “Who are you?”
“Stephanie Plum.”
“Stephanie Plum,” she repeated into the phone. She hung up and looked down the hall. “Second door on the right.”
Silvio looked like his photo but more wrinkled.
“You’re the bounty hunter, right?” he said. “I know you from around. I guess you’re looking for Jimmy.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No, but I know where he should be. He should be in the nuthouse. He was always this smart guy. Businessman. Good poker player. Okay, maybe he had a weakness for the ladies, but who doesn’t? And so he made some bad business decisions, but hey, that’s no reason to go off the deep end and kill people.”
“So you think he’s the one who killed Bernie and Tommy?”
“Who else would kill them?”
I shrugged.
“I think it’s Jimmy,” Silvio said. “I think he’s afraid he’ll get ratted out. We were all pretty close. Not that we were involved, but we knew stuff.”
“What about Buster? Was he in business with Jimmy?”
“I don’t know exactly. Jimmy would send him on trips, and we figured it was business, but it could have been just to get cars.”
“I guess you’re worried.”
“Damn right I’m worried. Two of my best friends are dead. It’s terrible. How does stuff like this happen?”
“Maybe you should disappear for a while, like Ron.”
“Ron’s retired. He can go wherever he wants. I got a company to run. I’ve got people depending on me.”
“I don’t suppose you know where Ron is?”
He shook his head. “He just took off. No goodbye or anything. I hate to say it out loud, but he could be dead somewhere. He could have been the first one Jimmy took out.”
I gave him my card. “Let me know if you hear anything.”
He took the card and stared at it, blank-faced. “Sure.”
I went back to the Buick and got behind the wheel.
“Well?” Lula asked. “How’d it go?”
“As expected,” I said. “He knows nothing. He wasn’t involved. He thinks Jimmy’s gone postal.”
“Do you think all that’s true?” Lula asked.
“I don’t think any of it is true,” I said.
“I think the part about Jimmy going postal is true,” Briggs said.
I called Connie and asked her to do some snooping on Pepper Trucking. Was Silvio Pepper the sole owner? Where were the trucks kept when they were in town? What did the trucks haul?
I disconnected, then scanned Ron Siglowski’s background report. He was seventy years old and widowed. No children. He’d sold his insurance business five years ago and moved into a golf course community in Cranbury. His credit check didn’t turn up any recent airline tickets. No new withdrawals from his bank account. No new action on his credit cards. So either he was being smart and not leaving a trail, or else he was dead. I had no gut feeling either way.
The next stop was Pepper’s house. I knew a lot of people in the Burg, but I didn’t know Miriam Pepper. I left Lula and Briggs in the car and went to the door. Miriam answered the bell in a fuzzy pink bathrobe. She was in her sixties. She had short brown hair streaked with gray. She was chubby and rosy-cheeked. And the drink in her hand looked like Coke but smelled like hundred proof.
“You must be Stephanie Plum,” she said. “Silvio called and said you might be stopping by. He said I shouldn’t talk to you because goodness knows what I might say.”
It was eleven o’clock and the woman was in her bathrobe, getting cozy with Jim Beam. How lucky was this?
“You seem like an intelligent woman,” I said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t say anything inappropriate.”
“Thank you. I’m very discreet.”
“And that’s a lovely pink bathrobe.”
“Pink is my favorite color. It’s a happy color.”
“That’s so true. And I can see that you’re a happy person.”
“Especially when I have a little nip of something.” She leaned forward and whispered at me. “Actually, I’m an alcoholic. Would you like a Manhattan? I make an excellent Manhattan.”
“Thanks, but no. It’s early for me.”
“I like to get a head start on the day.”
“I wanted to ask you about Jimmy Poletti.”
Miriam knocked back some Manhattan. “He’s a pig.”
“In what way?”
“He’s a man. Isn’t that enough?”
“I was hoping you could be more specific.”
“Well, there’s his wife.”
“Yes?”
“She’s thin.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve met her.”
“How am I supposed to compete with that?”
“I’m sure Silvio loves you just the way you are.”
“Who?”
“Silvio. Your husband.”
She did a major eye roll. “Him! All he thinks about is that trucking company. I’ve had it up to here with that trucking company.”
“What sort of stuff does he haul?”
“He has a contract with a plant in Mexico that makes salsa and a plant in Newark that makes the containers. He carts the containers to Mexico and comes back with them full of salsa.”
Okay, now I’m getting somewhere. Another Mexican tie-in.
“Does he ever haul anything other than salsa?” I asked.
“I only know about the salsa. I’ve got a garage filled with five-gallon cans of the stuff. What the heck am I supposed to do with it all? I mean, do they pay him in salsa?”
“Did he ever haul anything for Jimmy?”
She stared into her whiskey glass. “It’s empty,” she said. “I hate when that happens.”
“About Jimmy.”
“Boy, I could use a cigarette,” she said. “Do you have any cigarettes on you?”
“No. Sorry. I don’t smoke.”
“Xanax?”
“No.”
“Cupcakes?”
Standing just inside the front door, I saw a car pull into the driveway. Silvio.
I gave Miriam my card. “Call me if you want to talk.”
“Sure,” she said, “but you have to bring cupcakes.”
I passed Silvio on the sidewalk.
“Your wife is lovely,” I said. “You’re a lucky man.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Lucky me.”