Twelve Sharp

Fifteen

The sidewalk in front of the bonds office was wet from being scrubbed down and hosed off in an attempt to remove the bloodstains, and two guys were working to repair the front window. I parked the Mini in front of the used bookstore, carefully stepped around the men and the glass, and walked through the open front door.

It was after nine, and I was the last to arrive for work. Connie was at her desk. Meri was at a card table with a phone and a laptop, Melvin Pickle was a filing demon, and Lula was on the couch reading Star magazine.

'How's Ranger's man?' Connie wanted to know.

'He's okay. I stayed at the hospital until he was out of recovery. They wanted him to spend the night, but he refused. Lucky for him he was wearing a vest.'

'He told the police it looked like Ranger shooting him,' Meri said.

'Yes, but when I talked to him in the hospital he said that was a first impression. He said it freaked him out, and he didn't respond because of it. His second impression was that it wasn't Ranger. It was someone who was dressed in black and resembled Ranger.'

'How could he be sure it wasn't Ranger?' Meri asked. 'I mean, he was getting shot!'

'He said he was right up to the window, shining his flashlight on the guy. He said the guy looked him in the eyes and raised the gun and shot him without blinking.'

'Gives me the heebie jeebies,' Lula said. 'That's so cold. And I bet he's the one who's got the little girl. How terrible is that? That child must be terrified.'

'I don't know,' Meri said. 'I'm having a hard time with this. Everything always points back to this Ranger person. How can you be so sure it's not actually him? I mean, he could have gone nutso. From what I hear he was dark anyway, like Batman. Silent. Tortured soul. Always dressed in black.'

'The all black clothes just make things easy,' I said. 'He doesn't have to mix and match. He doesn't have any decisions in the morning. His housekeeper doesn't have to worry about colors running.'

Meri's eyes got wide. 'Do you know him that well?'

'Um, no,' I said. 'I was sort of putting myself in his place.' Okay, so that was liar, liar pants on fire, but there was something about Meri that had me on guard. Hard to say what it was, but she still felt off to me. Something about her manner, the way she looked, the way she asked questions, the way she showed up and was too good to be believed… too perfect for the job.

'Your problem is you don't know him,' Lula said to Meri. 'If you knew him you'd understand. He's dark in a good way. And besides, anybody that hot can't be all bad.'

'What's happening with Dooby Biagi and Charles Chin?' I asked Meri.

She handed the files over to me. 'They're both business as usual. I made some phone calls and neither seems to have skipped town.'

'Ready to ride?' I asked Lula.

'Yeah, I gotta talk to you anyway.'

We took my Mini, and Lula waited until we were away from the curb before she spoke.

'I got three things,' she said. 'First is, there's something bothering me about Meri. I don't know what it is. Second thing, where the heck did Ranger and Tank come from last night? Tank doesn't talk. He wouldn't say nothing. And third is, Tank don't need to talk because he was right about being big. It's like wrestling some prehistoric monster. Like having a go at King Kong. And he's big all over the place, if you know what I mean. I tell you I'm in love. I don't need to go visiting that Pleasure Treasures on account of I found my own pleasure treasure and his name is Tank. Probably he has some other name, but I don't know what it is. He wouldn't tell me that either.'

'Maybe it's just that Meri is new.'

'Melvin is new, and I don't feel like that about him. And it isn't that I don't like Meri. She's real likeable. I just don't feel comfortable somehow.'

I had Dooby Biagi's file on top. Dooby worked the counter at one of the fast-food places and got caught with his hand in the cash register. He said he was making change, but the day manager found more than change in Dooby's pocket. Dooby had a couple hundred plus a pipe and a dime bag of crack.

Dooby lived in a row house in the Burg. According to Meri's research, Dooby rented with three other guys. And needless to say, Dooby was unemployed.

I idled in front of Dooby's house, and Lula and I stared out at it, neither of us moving.

'I don't feel like doing this,' I finally said.

'Me either,' Lula said. 'I'm wore out with this job. I'm tired of dragging these people off to jail. Nobody's ever happy. I feel like the Grinch.'

'Somebody's got to do it,' I said, trying to convince myself of my worth.

'I know that,' Lula said. 'This here's for the good of society. It's not like the police have time to find these people. I just think I need a mental health day.'

I looked in my rearview mirror for Ranger.

Lula looked too. 'He's back there, isn't he? He's following you around, right? That's how come they were at the Pleasure Treasures.'

'We're hoping the Ranger impostor will come after me. And then when he nabs me he'll lead us to Julie.'

'That's a pretty good plan,' Lula said. 'Unless the Ranger impostor decides to kill you instead.'

I slumped a little lower in my seat.

'It's gonna be a hot one today,' Lula said. 'You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to go to Point Pleasant and play the claw machine in the arcade and get one of them orange and vanilla swirly frozen custard ice creams.'

I put the Mini into gear, hooked a U-turn, and drove back to the office. 'We need to take your car,' I said. 'Is it parked in back?'

'Yep. It's in the lot. The glass truck was parked in my usual spot on the street.'

'Just changing cars,' I said to Connie, as we breezed through the office.

I selected a gun from the cabinet, took a box of rounds, and left the panic button in the gun cabinet. I dropped the gun and the ammo in my bag and Lula and I went out the back door.

'I know this is the wrong thing to do,' I said to Lula, 'but I need a break from all the sad scary things. And I need to get away from Ranger for a couple hours.'

'I don't see nobody back here,' Lula said. 'I think we tricked them.'

Ranger called when we were on the bridge, crossing the Manasquan Inlet. 'Where are you?' he asked.

'I'm taking a day off.'

'You removed the panic button.'

'Yes, but I took a gun. And it's even loaded. And I have extra bullets. And Lula is with me.'

Silence.

'Hello?' I said. 'Are you mad?'

'Mad doesn't come close. Are you going to tell me where you are?'

'Not when you're in this kind of mood.'

More silence.

'Are you trying to control yourself?' I asked. Easy to be brave when Ranger was in Trenton, and I was in Point Pleasant.

'Don't push me,' Ranger said.

'You can just keep going and going and going,' I told him. 'I'm not that strong. I'm running low on happy. And I hardly have any brave left at all. We were careful not to be followed. We're armed. We're sober. I'll be home this afternoon. I'll call you when I get to Trenton.' I disconnected and broke into a nervous sweat. 'That was Ranger.'

'No shit.'

'It gets worse,' I told her. 'He's been staying in my apartment, and this morning Morelli moved in.'

'Let me get this straight. You got Ranger and Morelli living with you. At the same time.'

'Looks that way.'

Lula pulled into the lot at the pavilion. 'Girl, you got a problem. You can't put two alpha dogs in the same kennel. They'll kill each other. It's not like those two are ordinary men. They got enough testosterone between them that if testosterone was electricity they could light up New York City for the month of August.'

'I don't want to talk about it. I want to get some ice cream and sit in the sun and listen to the ocean.'

Ranger was brooding in the parking lot in front of my condo when I pulled in. He was in a RangeMan SUV, which meant it was new, it was immaculate, it had the big engine, it was black with black tinted windows, and it had the big-bucks chrome wheel covers.

He got out of the SUV and silently escorted me to my apartment.

'Is Morelli here?' I asked him.

'No. Not yet, but it's almost five, so I imagine he'll be rolling in soon.' He unlocked the apartment door, stepped in first, and looked around before he motioned me in. 'Your nose is sunburned,' he said. 'They don't sell sunscreen at Point Pleasant?'

'Are you sure I was at Point Pleasant?'

'I knew it was either the mall or Point Pleasant, and there were no background mall sounds when you talked to me.'

'You followed me down there?'

'No. I sent Hal and Roy.'

'I didn't see them.'

'That's my point. Hal doesn't blend in. It's like being followed by a stegasaurus. So if you didn't see Hal, you sure as hell weren't going to pick out Edward Scrog.' He tossed his keys on the kitchen counter. 'If you have an issue with me I expect you to tell me about it, not run away.'

'You don't listen.'

'I always listen,' Ranger said. 'I don't always agree. I have a problem right now that I can't seem to solve by myself. I need you to help me find my daughter. And there's an even bigger problem involved. I feel a financial and moral obligation to my daughter. I send child support, I send birthday and Christmas presents, I visit when I'm invited. But I've kept myself emotionally distanced. I'm not emotionally distanced from you. I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you because I was using you to find someone… even if that someone was my daughter. So I have to make every effort to keep you safe.'

'You're a little smothering.'

'Deal with it.' He looked over at Morelli's duffle bag still sitting in the foyer. 'This should be interesting.'

'You're not going to do something stupid and macho, are you?'

'I try hard not to do things that are stupid. I'm willing to make an exception in this case. I'm not leaving. And if you sleep with him while I'm here, I'll have to kill him.'

If anyone else had said that I'd burst out laughing, but there was a slight chance Ranger was serious.

I took a shower and spent a few minutes on makeup and used the roller brush on my hair. Then I spent a few more minutes on makeup. I wiggled into a little black dress and stepped into black heels. I sashayed out of the bedroom and found Morelli and Ranger in the kitchen, eating.

Ranger was eating a chopped salad with grilled chicken. Morelli was eating a meatball sub. I checked out the refrigerator and discovered Ella had dropped off a cheesecake… so that's what I ate. No one said anything.

I finished off the cheesecake and glanced at my watch. Six o'clock. 'Gotta go,' I said. 'Don't want to be late for the viewing.'

Ranger had the panic button in his hand, and he was looking my dress over. If we'd been alone, he would have slipped it into my cleavage, but Morelli was watching with his hand on his gun.

'Oh, for God's sake,' I said. 'Just give me the stupid thing.' I took the panic button and stuck it into my Super Sexy Miracle Bra.

'GPS,' Ranger said to Morelli.

'Probably I can find her breast without it,' Morelli said. 'But it's good to know there's a navigational system on board if I need it.'

I saw Ranger's mouth twitch, and I was pretty sure it was a smile. I wasn't sure what the smile meant. First guess would be he was thinking he had no problem finding my breast without GPS either.

I grabbed my handbag and swung my ass out of the kitchen, out of the apartment, and down the hall. I was thinking I might get into the Mini and drive to California. Start over. New job. New boyfriend. No forwarding address. I checked my rearview mirror. Ranger in the silver BMW. Morelli in his green SUV. Two RangeMan goons in a black SUV, too far back to see their identity. I was leading a friggin' parade. And the parade would follow me to California.

'Stephanie,' I said, 'you're in deep shit.'

The little lot attached to the funeral home was packed by the time I got there. I drove up and down the streets, but the curbside parking was taken for blocks. I double-parked and got out of the car. The shiny black RangeMan SUV rolled up to me, the window slid down, and Hal looked out from the passenger seat.

'RangeMan valet parking?' I asked.

Hal got out, rammed himself into the Mini, and I thought I saw the tires flatten a little. Both cars drove off. One mark on the tally for Ranger. Employees available for valet parking. On the Morelli side was hates salad.

I fought my way through the crush of people on the funeral home porch and wormed my way through the crowd in the lobby. I felt a hand at my back and heard Morelli's voice in my ear.

'Go do your thing, and I'll keep you in sight,' Morelli said. 'Ranger has some men in here who are also watching you. Probably there are a couple feds as well.'

I got into the viewing room, but there was a wall of people in front of me. I looked left and saw a head rising above all else. It was Sally Sweet, close to seven feet tall in his heels. I inched closer and saw he was wearing shocking pink platform pumps with a five-inch stiletto heel and a raincoat. Lula was beside him, also in pink heels and a raincoat. I looked at the ground and saw they were molting pink feathers.

'This here's a mess,' Lula yelled when she saw me. 'I can't go forward, and I can't go back.'

Grandma elbowed her way over to us. 'I lost my sense of direction. Which way's the casket? I can't see a darned thing.'

Sally picked Grandma up and held her over his head.

'Okay,' Grandma yelled to Sally. 'I got a fix on it. You can set me down now.' And Grandma took off, burrowing through the bodies.