Seven Up - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,18

of his personality. Mooner is usually Mr. Mellow.

"There's something else going on," I said. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Hey, nothing, dude. I swear."

Call me crazy, but I like Dougie. He might be a schnook and a schemer, but he was kind of an okay schnook and schemer. And now he was missing, and I was having a bad feeling in my stomach.

"How about Dougie's family? Have you spoken to any of them?" I asked.

"No, dude, they're all in Arkansas someplace. The Dougster didn't talk about them a lot."

"Does Dougie have a phone book?"

"I've never seen one. I guess he could have one in his room."

"Stay here with Bob and make sure he doesn't eat anything. I'll check out Dougie's room."

There were three small upstairs bedrooms. I'd been in the house before, so I knew which room was Dougie's. And I knew what to expect of the interior design. Dougie didn't waste time with the petty details of housekeeping. The floor in Dougie's room was littered with clothes, the bed was unmade, the dresser was cluttered with scraps of paper, a model of the starship Enterprise, girlie magazines, food-encrusted dishes and mugs.

There was a phone at bedside but no address book beside the phone. There was a piece of yellow notepaper on the floor by the bed. There were a lot of names and numbers scribbled in no special order on the paper, some obliterated by a coffee cup stain. I did a fast scan of the page and discovered several Krupers were listed in Arkansas. None in Jersey. I scrounged through the mess on his dresser and just for the hell of it snooped in his closet.

No clues there.

I didn't have any good reason to look in the other bedrooms, but I'm nosey by nature. The second bedroom was a sparsely furnished guest room. The bed was rumpled, and my guess was Mooner slept there from time to time. And the third bedroom was stacked floor-to-ceiling with hijacked merchandise. Boxes of toasters, telephones, alarm clocks, stacks of T-shirts, and God-knows-what-else. Dougie was at it again.

"Mooner!" I yelled. "Get up here! Now!"

"Whoa," Mooner said when he saw me standing at the doorway to the third bedroom. "Where'd all that stuff come from?"

"I thought Dougie gave up dealing?"

"He couldn't help himself, dude. I swear he tried, but it's in his blood, you know? Like, he was born to deal."

Now I had a better idea of the origin of Mooner's nervousness. Dougie was still involved with bad people. Bad people are just fine when everything's going good. They become a concern when your friend shows up missing.

"Do you know where these boxes came from? Do you know who Dougie was working with?"

"I'm like, clueless. He took a phone call and then next thing there's a truck in the driveway and we've got this inventory. I wasn't paying too much attention. Rocky and Bullwinkle were on, and you know how hard it is to tear yourself away from ol' Rocky."

"Did Dougie owe money? Was there something wrong with the deal?"

"Didn't seem like it. Seemed like he was real happy. He said the stuff he got was a quick sale. Except for the toasters. Hey, you want a toaster?"

"How much?"

"Ten bucks."

"Sold."

I MADE A quick stop at Giovichinni's for a few food-type essentials, and then Bob and I hustled home for lunch. I had my toaster under one arm and my grocery bag in another when I got out of the car.

Benny and Ziggy suddenly materialized from nowhere.

"Let me help you with that bag," Ziggy said. "A lady like you shouldn't be carrying her own bag."

"And what's this? A toaster," Benny said, relieving me of the toaster, looking at the box. "This is a good one, too. It's got those extra-wide slots so you can do English muffins."

"I'm fine," I said, but they already had the bag and the toaster and were ahead of me, going through the door to my building.

"We just thought we'd stop by and see how things were going," Benny said, punching the elevator button. "You have any luck with Eddie yet?"

"I saw him at Stiva's, but he got away."

"Yeah, we heard about that. That's a shame."

I opened my door and they handed me my bag and toaster and peeked inside my apartment.

"You don't got Eddie in here, do you?" Ziggy asked.

"No!"

Ziggy shrugged. "It was a long shot."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Benny said.

And they left.

"You don't have to pass an intelligence test to get into the mob," I said to Bob.

I plugged