Three to Get Deadly (Stephanie Plum Series #3)

by Janet Evanovich

Overview

Stephanie Plum, the brassy babe in the powder blue Buick is back and she's having a bad hair day -- for the whole month of January.
She's been given the unpopular task of finding Mo Bedemier, Trenton's most beloved citizen, arrested for carrying concealed, gone no-show for his court appearance.
And to make matters worse, she's got Lula, a former hooker turned file clerk -- now a wannabe bounty hunter -- at her side, sticking like glue. Lula's big and blonde and black and itching to get the chance to lock up a crook in the trunk of her car.
Morelli, the New Jersey vice cop with the slow-burning smile that undermines a girl's strongest resolve is being polite. So what does this mean? Has he found a new love? Or is he manipulating Steph, using her in his police investigation, counting on her unmanageable curiosity and competitive Jersey attitude?
Once again, the entire One for the Money crew is in action, including Ranger and Grandma Mazur, searching for Mo, tripping down a trail littered with dead drug dealers, leading Stephanie to suspect Mo has traded his ice-cream scoop for a vigilante gun.
Cursed with a disastrous new hair color and an increasing sense that it's really time to get a new job, Stephanie spirals and tumbles through Three to Get Deadly with all the wisecracks and pace her fans have come to expect.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780684868608
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	07/15/1999
Series:	Stephanie Plum Series , #3
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	3,548
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Bestselling author Janet Evanovich is the recipient of the Crime Writers Association's John Creasy Memorial, Last Laugh, and Silver Dagger awards, as well as the Left Coast Crime's Lefty award, and is the two-time recipient of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association's Dilys award. She lives in New Hampshire, where she is at work on her next Stephanie Plum adventure.

Hometown:

Hanover, New Hampshire

Date of Birth:

April 22, 1943

Place of Birth:

South River, New Jersey

Education:

B.A., Douglass College, 1965

Website:

http://www.evanovich.com

Read an Excerpt

I'm looking for Uncle Mo," I said. "I expected he'd be working in the store."

Dorothy shifted the baby. "He hasn't been here for two days. You aren't looking for him for Vinnie, are you?"

"Actually . . ."

"Mo would never do anything wrong."

"Well, sure, but . . ."

"We're just trying to find him on account of he won the lottery," Lula said. "We're gonna lay a whole load of money on his ass."

Dorothy made a disgusted sound and slammed the door closed.

We tried the house next to Dorothy and received the same information. Mo hadn't been at the store for two days. Nothing else was forthcoming, with the exception of some unsolicited advice that I might consider seeking new employment.

Lula and I piled into the Buick and took another look at the bond agreement. Mo listed his address as 605 Ferris. That meant he lived over his store.

Lula and I craned our necks to see into the four second-story windows.

"I think Mo took a hike," Lula said.

Only one way to find out. We got out of the car and walked to the back of the brick building where outdoor stairs led to a second-story porch. We climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. Nothing. We tried the doorknob. Locked. We looked in the windows. Everything was tidy. No sign of Mo. No lights left burning.

"Mo might be dead in there," Lula said. "Or maybe he's sick. Could of had a stroke and be laying on the bathroom floor."

"We are not going to break in."

"Would be a humanitarian effort," Lula said.

"And against the law."

"Sometimes these humanitarian efforts go into the gray zone."

I heard footsteps and looked down to see a cop standing at the bottom of the stairs. Steve Olmney. I'd gone to school with him.

"What's going on?" he asked. "We got a complaint from old lady Steeger that someone suspicious was snooping around Uncle Mo's."

"That would be me," I said.

"Where's Mo?"

"We think he might be dead," Lula said. "We think someone better go look to see if he's had a stroke on the bathroom floor."

Olmney came up the stairs and rapped on the door. "Mo?" he yelled. He put his nose to the door. "Doesn't smell dead." He looked in the windows. "Don't see any bodies."

"He's Failure to Appear," I said. "Got picked up on carrying concealed and didn't show in court."

"Mo would never do anything wrong," Olmney said.

I stifled a scream. "Not showing up for a court appearance is wrong."

"Probably he forgot. Maybe he's on vacation. Or maybe his sister in Staten Island got sick. You should check with his sister."

Actually, that sounded like a decent idea.

Lula and I went back to the Buick, and I read through the bond agreement one more time. Sure enough, Mo had listed his sister and given her address.

"We should split up," I said to Lula. "I'll go see the sister, and you can stake out the store."

"I'll stake it out good," Lula said. "I won't miss a thing."

I turned the key in the ignition and pulled away from the curb. "What will you do if you see Mo?"

"I'll snatch the little fucker up by his gonads and squash him into the trunk of my car."

"No! You're not authorized to apprehend. If you see Mo, you should get in touch with me right away. Either call me on my cellular phone or else call my pager." I gave her a card with my numbers listed.

"Remember, no squashing anyone into the trunk of your car!"

"Sure," Lula said. "I know that."

I dropped Lula at the office and headed for Route 1. It was the middle of the day and traffic was light. I got to Perth Amboy and lined up for the bridge to Staten Island. The roadside leading to the toll booth was littered with mufflers, eaten away from winter salt and rattled loose by the inescapable craters, sinkholes and multilevel strips of macadam patch that composed the bridge.

I slipped into bridge traffic and sat nose to tail with Petrucci's Vegetable Wholesalers and a truck labeled DANGEROUS EXPLOSIVES. I checked a map while I waited. Mo's sister lived toward the middle of the island in a residential area I knew to be similar to the burg.

I paid my toll and inched forward, sucking in a stew of diesel exhaust and other secret ingredients that caught me in the back of the throat. I adjusted to the pollution in less than a quarter of a mile and felt just fine when I reached Mo's sister's house on Crane Street. Adaptation is one of the great advantages to being born and bred in Jersey. We're simply not bested by bad air or tainted water. We're like that catfish with lungs. Take us out of our environment and we can grow whatever body parts we need to survive. After Jersey the rest of the country's a piece of cake. You want to send someone into a fallout zone? Get him from Jersey. He'll be fine.

Mo's sister lived in a pale green duplex with jalousied windows and white-and-yellow aluminum awnings. I parked at the curb and made my way up two flights of cement stairs to the cement stoop. I rang the bell and found myself facing a woman who looked a lot like my relatives on the Mazur side of my family. Good sturdy Hungarian stock Black hair, black eyebrows and no-nonsense blue eyes. She looked to be in her fifties and didn't seem thrilled to find me on her doorstep.

I gave her my card, introduced myself and told her I was looking for Mo.

Her initial reaction was surprise, then distrust.

"Fugitive apprehension agent," she said. "What's that supposed to mean? What's that got to do with Mo?"

I gave the condensed version by way of explanation. "I'm sure it was just an oversight that Mo didn't appear for his court session, but I need to remind him to reschedule," I told her.

"I don't know anything about this," she said. "I don't see Mo a whole lot. He's always at the store. Why don't you just go to the store."

"He hasn't been at the store for the last two days."

"That doesn't sound like Mo."

None of this sounded like Mo.

I asked if there were other relatives. She said no, not close ones. I asked about a second apartment or vacation house. She said none that she knew of.

I thanked her for her time and returned to my Buick. I looked out at the neighborhood. Not much happening. Mo's sister was locked up in her house. Probably wondering what the devil was going on with Mo. Of course there was the possibility that she was protecting her brother, but my gut instinct said otherwise. She'd seemed genuinely surprised when I'd told her Mo wasn't behind the counter handing out Gummi Bears.

I could watch the house, but that sort of surveillance was tedious and time-consuming, and in this case, I wasn't sure it would be worth the effort.

Besides, I was getting a weird feeling about Mo. Responsible people like Mo didn't forget court dates. Responsible people like Mo worried about that kind of stuff. They lost sleep over it. They consulted attorneys. And responsible people like Mo didn't just up and leave their businesses without so much as a sign in the window.

Maybe Lula was right. Maybe Mo was dead in bed or lying unconscious on his bathroom floor.

I got out of the car and retraced my steps back to the sister's front door.

The door was opened before I had a chance to knock. Two little frown lines had etched themselves into Mo's sister's forehead. "Was there something else?" she asked.

"I'm concerned about Mo. I don't mean to alarm you, but I suppose there's the possibility that he might be sick at home and unable to get to the door."

"I've been standing here thinking the same thing," she said.

"Do you have a key to his apartment?"

"No, and as far as I know no one else does, either. Mo likes his privacy."

"Do you know any of his friends? Did he have a girlfriend?"

"Sorry. We aren't real close like that. Mo is a good brother, but like I said, he's private."

Copyright © 1997 by Janet Evanovich

Table of Contents

What People are Saying About This

Joan Hess

"This is one gritty romp, to put it mildly. Stephanie Plum has not only a hillarious family and some very peculiar associates, but a wicked sense of humor, a healthy libido, and the tenacity to tackle the most appaling thug to swagger down the streets of Trenton." -- Joan Hess

Gillian Roberts

"With Stephanie Plum, New Jersey has stuck gold. Janet Evanovich is a formitable writer who can turn even pollution into endearing local color"

Nora Roberts

Stephanie Plum is destined to join ranks with Kinsey Millhone and Carlotta Carlyle. Janet Evanovich has crafted a heroine for today, tough, velnerable, resourceful, and impulsive.

Editorial Reviews

In Three to Get Deadly, Stephanie's got the unenviable task of tracking a lovable guy who suspiciously jumps bail after committing a hand-slappin' crime. It gets more bizarre, and before long, Stephanie's up to her Glock in body bags.

bn.com editor

Suspenseful

LA Times

Here's Stephanie Plum, a bail-bond agent from Trenton, NJ, clumping onto the P.I. scene in Doc Martens, with a sassy lip that would stop Phillip Marlowe.

People

Terrific.

San Francisco Chronicle

Thrilling.

MIdwest Book Review

[Evanovich's novels are] among the great joys of contemporary crime fiction.

GQ

Trenton, N.J., bounty hunter and former lingerie buyer Stephanie Plum (last seen in Two for the Dough) becomes persona non grata when she tracks down a neighborhood saint who has failed to show up for his court appearance. No one wants to help Stephanie, who works for her bail-bondsman cousin, Vinnie. While questioning admirers of the man nicknamed Uncle Mo, Stephanie is attacked and knocked out as she cases his candy store. She comes to next to the dead body of her attacker, who turns out to be a well-known drug dealer. Suddenly, she can't avoid stumbling across the bodies of dead drug dealers: one in a dumpster, one in a closet and four in the candy store basement. Stephanie suspects that mild-mannered Mo has become a vigilante and is cleaning up the streets in a one-man killing spree. But when she's repeatedly threatened by men wearing ski masks, she wonders if Mo has company and just might be in over his head. Despite her new clownish orange hair job, Stephanie muddles through another case full of snappy one-liners as well as corpses. By turns buttressed and hobbled by her charmingly clueless family and various cohorts (including streetwise co-worker Lulu, detective and heartthrob Morelli and professional bounty hunter Ranger), the redoubtable Stephanie is a character crying out for a screen debut.

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly

Trenton, N.J., bounty hunter and former lingerie buyer Stephanie Plum (last seen in Two for the Dough) becomes persona non grata when she tracks down a neighborhood saint who has failed to show up for his court appearance. No one wants to help Stephanie, who works for her bail-bondsman cousin, Vinnie. While questioning admirers of the man nicknamed Uncle Mo, Stephanie is attacked and knocked out as she cases his candy store. She comes to next to the dead body of her attacker, who turns out to be a well-known drug dealer. Suddenly, she can't avoid stumbling across the bodies of dead drug dealers: one in a dumpster, one in a closet and four in the candy store basement. Stephanie suspects that mild-mannered Mo has become a vigilante and is cleaning up the streets in a one-man killing spree. But when she's repeatedly threatened by men wearing ski masks, she wonders if Mo has company and just might be in over his head. Despite her new clownish orange hair job, Stephanie muddles through another case full of snappy one-liners as well as corpses. By turns buttressed and hobbled by her charmingly clueless family and various cohorts (including streetwise co-worker Lulu, detective and heartthrob Morelli and professional bounty hunter Ranger), the redoubtable Stephanie is a character crying out for a screen debut. Mystery Guild selection; Literary Guild alternate; major ad/promo; author tour. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Hunting for a local candy-store owner who jumped bail, Trenton's most famous bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum (last seen in Two for the Dough, LJ 1/96) is knocked out on the job. She awakens beside a dead man who happens to be in violation of a bond agreement with her cousin Vinnie, so homicide wants to give her the third degree. More fast and funny action from a winning writer. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/96.]

Library Journal

Most of the "Failure To Appears" that bounty hunter Stephanie Plum goes after are no great loss to society; it's only their girlfriends and bowling partners who don't want them caught. But Moses Bedemier is no ordinary FTA. The candy-store owner pulled in on a concealed-weapon charge is a popular guy in his Trenton neighborhood, and nobody but Stephanie cares whether he sets a new court date. So when Stephanie goes after Uncle Mo, the path is littered with the bodies of buddies who've thrown themselves in the way—and some bodies that have been thrown by other folks, too. Before long, Stephanie, on her second illegal visit to Mo's apartment, comes across the first of four dead drug dealers (and she'll soon lead her onetime-lover/constant nemesis Joe Morelli and his colleagues on the Trenton Police to four more, though the cops have to dig these four up themselves). What's the connection between staunch if slippery Uncle Mo and the bad guys? Why do a bunch of ski-masked thugs keep threatening Stephanie and her hamster with violence if she doesn't lay off Mo? And what can she do about the hideous orange color her hair turned in the middle of a chase after still another FTA?

Stephanie's third case (Two for the Dough, 1996, etc.) dispenses almost entirely with mystery and detection in favor of a comedy/variety format. But in going repeatedly for the funny bone, Evanovich, who clearly agrees with her heroine that "adaptation is one of the great advantages to being born and bred in Jersey," is obviously dealing from strength.

Kirkus Reviews

"[Evanovich's novels are] among the great joys of contemporary crime fiction." --GQ

"Suspenseful." --Los Angeles Times

"Terrific." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Irresistible." --Kirkus Reviews

"Thrilling." --The Midwest Book Review

"Hilariously funny." --USA Today

"A blast of fresh air." --The Washington Post

"Inventive and fast-paced." --San Diego Union-Tribune

"Superb." --Detroit Free Press

From the Publisher

Suspenseful.

Los Angeles Times

Thrilling.

The Midwest Book Review

Hilariously funny.

USA Today

A blast of fresh air.

The Washington Post

Inventive and fast-paced.

San Diego Union-Tribune

Superb.

Detroit Free Press