Read Explosive Eighteen: A Stephanie Plum Novel (Stephanie Plum Novels) for Free Online Page A

course it is,” Annie said. And she winked at me.
    “I hate to rush everyone, but we gotta get a move on,” Grandma said. “Bowling starts at seven o’clock, and you gotta get there early or all the good shoes are gone and only the fungus shoes are left. I’m going to get my own shoes, but I have to wait for my Social Security check.”
    Rushing through dinner is never a problem. My father doesn’t waste unnecessary minutes on bodily functions. He slurps his soup down boiling hot, has seconds, mops the bowl with a crust of bread, and expects to immediately move on to dessert. This no-nonsense approach to dinner gets him backto the television in record time and cuts down on time spent tuning out Grandma.
    “I was talking to Mrs. Kulicki at the bakery today, and she said she heard Joyce Barnhardt was mixed up in something bad and got compacted at the junkyard,” Grandma said, helping herself to an almond cookie.
    “How awful,” my mother said. “How would Mrs. Kulicki know such a thing? I haven’t heard anything.”
    Grandma dunked her cookie in her coffee. “Mrs. Kulicki’s son Andy works at the junkyard, and it came from him.”
    That would be a real bummer if it were true. It was a pain in the ass to get money back on a dead FTA. Especially when the body was incorporated into the bumper of an SUV. Plus, I suppose I’d miss Joyce, in a perverse, sick sort of way.
    After Grandma and Annie took off, I helped my mom with the dishes and spent a few minutes watching television with my dad. No one mentioned rings or marriage. My family solves problems with silence and meat loaf. Our philosophy is, if you don’t talk about a problem, it might go away. And if it doesn’t go away, there’s always meat loaf, mac and cheese, roast chicken, pineapple upside-down cake, pasta, potatoes, or baloney on white bread to take your mind off unpleasant things.
    My mother sent me home with a bag of cookies, a half-pound of deli ham, provolone, and a loaf of bakery bread. If you come to eat at my mom’s house, you leave with something in a bag.
    I stopped at the entrance to my apartment building parking lot and did a fast survey. No black Lincoln Town Car in sight, and I was sure I hadn’t been followed. So probably it was safe to go to my apartment. I took the stairs, walked the second-floor hall, and listened at my door. Silence. I pushed the door open and peeked in. No fake FBI guys lurking in the kitchen. Most likely, Slasher was sitting somewhere icing down his privates. I’d made a good connection. Imagine what sort of damage I could inflict if I actually knew what I was doing.
    I gave Rex part of a cookie, went to my computer, and searched around until I found a news story on the man murdered at LAX. His name was Richard Crick. Age fifty-six. Surgeon. Had an office in Princeton. He’d been in Hawaii attending a professional conference. Police were speculating it was a random robbery gone bad.
    I suspected different. Crick had something valuable … the photograph. For whatever reason, he slipped the photograph of the man into my bag while I was sleeping. And then either he fingered me before he died, or else a bunch of people figured it out. I had no clue as to the significance of the photograph, and didn’t especially want to know.
    I tapped Crick into one of the bonds office background search programs and watched the information scroll down. He’d been an army doctor for ten years. Three were in Afghanistan. Three in Germany. The rest Stateside. He’d gone into private practice when he left the army. Divorced. Two adult sons.One living in Michigan, and one in North Carolina. Squeaky clean until a year and a half ago, when he was hit with a wrongful death malpractice claim. So far as I could see, the claim was still pending. He owned a home in Mill Town. The latest appraisal was $350,000. He owed $175,000 on his mortgage. He drove a two-year-old Accord. No other litigation. No liens. No reports of bad credit. All