Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich

sink that had a few black chips showing. The cupboards held a mismatched assortment of glasses, cups,plates and bowls. No keys. I went through the under-the-counter drawers. One dedicated to silverware. One for dish towels. One for plastic wrap, aluminum foil, plastic bags. One for junk. Still no keys.
    I took a moment to look at the photos on the wall next to the fridge. Pictures of children. All from the burg. I recognized almost everyone. I searched until I found mine. Twelve years old, eating an ice cream cone. I remembered Mo taking the picture.
    I poked in the refrigerator, checking for cleverly hollowed out heads of cabbage and fake cola cans. Not finding any, I moved on to the bedroom.
    The double bed was covered with a quilted bedspread, its yellow and brown flowers faded, the cotton material softened from years of service. The bed and nightstand were inexpensive walnut veneer. Uncle Mo lived modestly. Guess there wasn’t all that much profit in ice cream cones.
    I started with the top bureau drawer and sure enough, there was the key ring consigned to its own compartment in a removable wooden jewelry tray. I pocketed the key ring, closed the drawer and was about to leave when the stack of movie magazines caught my eye. Premiere, EntertainmentWeekly, Soap Opera Digest, Juggs. Whoa! Juggs ? Not the sort of reading material one would expect to find in a gay man’s bedroom.
    I wedged the flashlight under my armpit, sank to the floor and flipped through the first half of Juggs. Appalling. I flipped through the second half. Equally appalling and fascinatingly disgusting. The next magazine in the stack had a naked man on the cover. He was wearing a black mask and black socks and his Mr. Happy hung almost to his knees. He looked like he’d been sired by Thunder the Wonder Horse. I was tempted to look inside, but the pages were stuck together, so I moved on. I found a couple magazines that I’d never heard of that were devoted primarily to amateurish snapshots of people in various stages of undress, in a variety of embarrassing poses labeled “Mary and Frank from Sioux City” and “Rebecca Sue in Her Kitchen.” There were some more Entertainment Weekly s, and on the bottom of the pile there were a couple photographic catalogues, which reminded me that I’d found a couple unopened boxes of film in the fridge.
    And this reminded me that I was supposed to be conducting an illegal search, not comparing anatomical features with womenwearing crotchless panties and spiked dog collars.
    I neatened everything up and crept out of the room, out of the apartment, thinking that Uncle Mo was a very weird guy.
    There were two keys on the ring. I tried one of the keys on the back door to the store and struck out. I tried the second key and had to squelch a nervous giggle when the door clicked open. There’d been a part of me that hadn’t wanted the keys to work. Probably it was the smart part. The part that knew I wouldn’t look good in prison clothes.
    The door opened to a narrow hall. Three doors ran off the hall, and the hall opened to the store. I could look the length of the hall and the length of the store, through the front plate-glass window, and see lights shining in the house across the street. This meant they could also see lights shining in the store, so I would have to be careful how I used my flashlight. I gave the hall and the store a quick flick of the beam to make sure I was alone. I opened the first door to my right and discovered stairs leading to a basement.
    I called, “Hello, anybody down there?”
    No one answered, so I closed the door. Hollering into the dark was about as brave as I was going to get on the cellar investigation.
    The second door was a lavatory. The third door was a broom closet. I cut the light and took a moment to allow my eyes to adjust. It had probably been two or three years since I’d been in the store, but I knew it well, and I knew nothing had changed. Nothing ever changed at Uncle