Read Online Hard Eight by Janet Evanovich - Free Book Online Page B

double mouth drop. Jeanne Ellen wasn’t seen a lot. She mostly worked at night and was as elusive as smoke.
    “Tell me,” Lula said. “I gotta know everything.”
    “Steven Soder hired her to find Evelyn and Annie.”
    Connie and Lula exchanged glances. “Does Ranger know about this?” Connie asked.
    There were a lot of rumors about Ranger and Jeanne Ellen. One rumor had them secretly living together. One rumor had them as mentor and mentee. Clearly there’d been some sort of relationship at some point. And I was pretty sure it no longer existed, although it was hard to know anything for sure with Ranger.
    “This is going to be good,” Lula said. “You and Ranger and Jeanne Ellen Burrows. If I was you, I’d go home and do my hair and put some mascara on. And I’d stop at the Harley store and get a pair of these cool boots. You need a pair of these boots just in case you need to walk over Jeanne Ellen.”
    My cousin Vinnie stuck his head out of his office. “Are you talking about Jeanne Ellen Burrows?”
    “Stephanie ran into her today,” Connie said. “They’re working a case together, from opposite sides.”
    Vinnie grinned at me. “You’re going up against Jeanne Ellen? Are you nuts? This isn’t one of
my
FTAs, is it?”
    “Child custody bond,” I said. “Mabel’s great-granddaughter.”
    “The Mabel next door to your parents? The old-as-dirt Mabel?”
    “That’s the one. Evelyn and Steven got a divorce and Evelyn took off with Annie.”
    “So Jeanne Ellen is working for Soder. That makes sense. Sebring probably wrote the bond, right? Jeanne Ellen works for Sebring. Sebring can’t go after Evelyn, but he can recommend that Soder hires Jeanne Ellen. Just the sort of case Jeanne Ellen would take, too. A missing kid. Jeanne Ellen loves to have a cause.”
    “How do you know so much about Jeanne Ellen?”
    “Everybody knows about Jeanne Ellen,” Vinnie said. “She’s a legend. Cripes, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.”
    This Jeanne Ellen thing was starting to annoy me.
    “Gotta go,” I said. “Things to do. I just stopped in to borrow a pair of cuffs.”
    Everyone’s eyebrows rose a couple inches.
    “You need another pair of cuffs?” Vinnie asked.
    I gave him my PMS look. “You got a problem with that?”
    “Hell no,” Vinnie said. “I’m gonna go with S and M. I’m gonna pretend you got a man chained up naked somewhere. It’s more comforting than thinking one of my FTAs is running around with your bracelet attached.”
     
    _______
     
    I parked in the back of the lot, next to the Dumpster, and walked the short distance to my apartment building’s rear entrance. Mr. Spiga had just docked his twenty-year-old Oldsmobile in one of the coveted handicapped slots, close to the door, his handicapped sign proudly affixed to his windshield. He was in his seventies, retired from his job at the button factory and, with the exception of his addiction to Metamucil, was in perfect health. Lucky for him, his wife is legally blind and lame from a hip replacement gone bad. Not that it cuts a lot of slack in this lot. Half the people in the building have poked out an eye and run over their foot to get handicapped status. In Jersey, parking is often more important than sight.
    “Nice day,” I said to Mr. Spiga.
    He grabbed a grocery bag from the backseat. “Have you bought ground chuck lately? Who decides these prices? How can people afford to eat? And why is the meat so red? You ever notice it’s only red on the outside? They spray it with something, so you think it’s fresh. The food industry’s going to hell.”
    I opened the door for him.
    “Another thing,” he said, “half the men in this country have breasts. I’m telling you, it’s from those hormones they feed the cows. You drink the milk from the cows and you grow breasts.”
    Ah, I thought, if only it was that easy.
    The elevator doors opened and Mrs. Bestler peeked out. “Going up,” she said.
    Mrs. Bestler was about two