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“I got a lot of plaque, whatever the hell that is. They put these stent things in me and then I’m okay. Gonna get another one on Monday. Personally, I think it was stress this time.” He took a bite and closed his eyes. Some pizza grease ran down his chin. “Oh boy. Oh man. There’s nothing like a Pino’s pie.”
“What were you stressed about?”
“Your granny, what else? She’s got the keys, and now it’s a real cluster fuck. Excuse my language, but that’s what it is. We should never have listened to Julius. He kept saying to give her more time. ‘She’ll come around,’ he said. ‘She’s grieving.’” He finished the first piece and took a second.
“Did Charlie or Lou come to visit you? Do they know you’re here?”
“They got their hands full. They got to negotiate now.”
“What are they negotiating?”
“Price. The asshole who has your granny is nuts. If we’d snatched her in the beginning it wouldn’t have cost us anything. Now this guy wants to ruin us.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“No. It’s all done by Internet and throwaway phones. If you ask me, technology sucks. Nothing’s personal anymore.”
“But you know it’s a guy?”
“No. I just assume.” He started on another piece of pizza. “You should have brought beer with this.”
“Next time,” I said.
“You’re okay,” Benny said. “You come here to pump me for information, but you’re nice enough to bring pizza. And I like that you listen. It’s like we’re just having a conversation.”
“I think you’re okay, too,” I said to Benny. “Take care. I hope everything works out on Monday.”
“Walk in the park,” Benny said.
My mom and dad were still at the table when I got back. I got a soda from the fridge and helped myself to a slice of the extra cheese.
“Who got the pizza?” my mom asked.
“Benny the Skootch. He’s in the hospital. Needs a stent.”
“Him and everybody else,” my dad said. “You get to be our age and things start to clog up.”
“I didn’t know you were friends with Benny,” my mom said.
“I wanted to ask him if he knew who took Grandma.”
“Did he know?”
I shook my head. “No.”
I finished eating and went into the kitchen with my mom. She tidied up and I sat at the little table and read through the Miracle Fitness list. It was a long list, and I took my time. Morelli and his co-workers couldn’t find a connection between Lucca and the La-Z-Boys. Ranger and Connie couldn’t find anything in Lucca’s history that would connect him to the La-Z-Boys. The connection had to be on the list in front of me. I got through all the names and came back to Barbara. She had real motivation. She never got over the divorce. She had anger. And she wanted money. Maybe not for herself, but for Jeanine and her grandchildren. If she couldn’t access whatever treasure the keys had locked away, she could ransom Grandma to the La-Z-Boys. It was smart. Actually, it was brilliant.
I called Morelli and told him about my visit with Benny and my theory about Barbara.
“I’m impressed,” Morelli said. “I took the wrong approach with Benny, and you did the right thing. And I think you’re right about Barbara. She has a motive, and she has the connection. I just can’t see her acting alone.”
“If she was able to talk Lucca into kidnapping Grandma, she probably is capable of finding another fall guy.”
“I’m tied up right now. I was pulled off the kidnapping temporarily. Had a gang bloodbath in the projects. I’ll be here all night, but tomorrow morning we’ll visit Barbara. In the meantime, you might want to have Ranger do something illegal, like put her under physical and technical surveillance.”
I hung up and looked over at my mom. “You’re still not ironing.”
“It isn’t the same without your grandmother making fun of me.”
