Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

FOUR

THE HOUSE WAS a big white colonial with black shutters and a massive mahogany front door. The grounds were professionally landscaped. A dusty and battered police cruiser and two gleaming black Rangeman SUVs were parked in the circular drive. Ranger parked behind one of the Rangeman SUVs, we got out, and Tank and Hal came forward to meet us.

I gave Hal my paperwork for Marbles, Hal got behind the wheel, backed the Escalade out of the drive and disappeared down the street.

“Same MO,” Tank told Ranger. “The clients attended a political fund-raiser, came home, and found money and jewelry missing.” He handed Ranger a list. “We interrogated the system and found it had been briefly disarmed and then reset.”

“Anything missing besides the money and jewelry?”

“Some electronics. They’re going through the house now, trying to make sure the list is complete.”

“I want Stephanie to walk through the house and look at it from a woman’s point of view. Make sure she has total access. Assure the owners her paint isn’t wet.”

Tank looked at my paint-splattered hair and clothes. He paused for a beat, but he didn’t smile or frown or grimace. “Yessir,” he said to Ranger.

I wandered around, checking out the kitchen with its professional-level appliances, marble countertops and splash plates, warming ovens and wine cooler. I thought it would be nice to have a kitchen like this, although most of it would go unused. All I actually needed was a butter knife, a loaf of white bread, and a jar of peanut butter. And can you fill a wine cooler with Bud Light?

The upstairs master bath had a crystal chandelier and a bidet. I knew the purpose for the bidet, because I had seen Crocodile Dundee about a hundred times, but I wasn’t sure how one actually used a bidet. I mean, does it shoot water up your cooter or do you splash it around? And I thought I might have issues with the crystal chandelier. I wasn’t sure I could do number two in a room with a crystal chandelier.

I’d looked at the list, so I knew what had been taken and what had been left. There was a safe in the master bedroom, but it hadn’t been touched. Madame’s jewelry had been easy access in a jewelry case on display in her walk-in closet. A couple thousand in twenties had been left on the dresser. All this stuff was gone. Plus two laptop computers from the home office, and a Patek Philippe man’s watch.

I wandered around in the house for a half hour while the police did their thing, and Ranger did his thing, and the burgled house owners, a conservatively dressed middle-aged couple, quietly sat in the living room, looking shell-shocked.

Ranger caught up with me in the front foyer. “Any ideas?” he asked me.

“The thieves only hit two rooms. The master bedroom and the home office. There was a woman’s rose gold and diamond Cartier watch on the kitchen counter. And there were four icons that looked priceless in a display case in the living room. All untouched. Is this always the pattern?”

“Yes. They disable the alarm for precisely fifteen minutes, and they move directly to the master bedroom and office.”

“Why fifteen minutes?”

Ranger did palms-up. “I don’t know.”

“No prints left on doorknobs?”

“None.”

“And they only hit residential accounts?”

“So far.”

“This house has two security keypads. Can you tell which was used?”

“They always enter and exit through the garage.”

“The garage in this house opens into a short hall that leads to the kitchen. That means they walked through the kitchen twice and didn’t take the watch.”

“Correct,” Ranger said.

“Do you have anyone working for you who’s OCD or superstitious?”

“Almost everyone. I’m going to have Tank take you back to Rangeman so you can get your car. I need to stay here for a while and then I have paperwork to complete.”

“So I’m off the hook with the undressing thing?”

“Rain check,” Ranger said.

I drove home and did my own undressing, lathering, and shampooing. When I flopped into bed, my hair was still multicolored.

I STOPPED AT the bonds office on my way to Rangeman. It was a little before nine in the morning, and the air was warm, and the sky was almost blue. It was Indian summer in Jersey.

Connie and Lula looked over when I walked through the door.

“What the heck happened to you?” Lula wanted to know. “You got tutti-frutti hair. Is this some new fashion statement?”

“No, this is the result of a paintball encounter on Stark Street. The good news is I apprehended Kenny Hatcher.”

“Your mother’s going to have a cow when she sees your hair,” Connie said. “You try water? You try paint thinner?”

“I’ve tried everything.”

“I like it,” Lula said. “You should add some more pink. Pink’s a good color on you. And by the way, have you been listening to the radio? There’s a big reward being offered to anyone who brings in the guy who whacked Stanley Chipotle.”

“How big?”

“A million dollars. It’s from the barbecue sauce company he did all those advertisements for. Fire in the Hole Red Hot Barbecue Sauce. He was supposed to represent them in this cook-off coming up. And I’m gonna get that reward. I know what those guys look like. All I have to do is find them. So I thought I’d cut you and Connie in on it, and between us we could track them down and we’d each get a third of a million dollars.”

“I’m so there,” Connie said. “I could pay my mortgage off with that money.”

“What would you do with the money?” Lula asked me.

I didn’t know what I’d do. My mind was blank. The amount was incomprehensible to me. I could put a crystal chandelier in my crapper for that kind of money. I could buy a case of motor oil and feed it to my $700 car. I could download all the 3rd Rock from the Sun episodes from iTunes. I could get the works on my pizza. I could buy new sneakers. I really needed new sneakers. I could probably buy a house, for crying out loud. Except I didn’t actually want a house. I had a hard enough time keeping people out of my apartment. If I had a house, the weirdos would be coming in every door and window and down the chimney like Santa. Plus, I’d have to cut grass and paint the porch and caulk the tub.

“I think this is about barbecue sauce,” Lula said. “Everyone knows it’s dog-eat-dog out there in barbecue land. You wait and see, someone didn’t want Stanley Chipotle in that barbecue contest. I looked into it, and he always wins those contests. He was the one who come up with Fire in the Hole Red Hot Barbecue Sauce. He invented that recipe, and when he’s in a contest, he has a secret ingredient he puts in. I’m tellin’ you, Stanley Chipotle’s killer is a sauce freak. So I figure we just gotta bust into the barbecue circuit and we’ll find the killer.”

“Bust into the circuit?”

“All I gotta do is enter the contest as one of them chefs. I bet I could even win.”

“You can’t cook.”

“That’s true so far, but that could change. I’m real good at eatin’. I got a highly developed palate. Especially for barbecue. I just gotta take some of my eatin’ talent and make it into cookin’ talent. Anyways, I only gotta come up with sauce. How hard could it be? I mean, you start out with ketchup and keep adding pepper until you feel it burnin’ a hole in your stomach.”

“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Connie said. “I watch these contests on The Food Channel, and you have to use the sauce on ribs and chicken and stuff. Can you cook ribs or chicken?”

“Not yet,” Lula said. “But I know I could be real good at it. Look at me. Don’t I look like a woman who could cook the shit out of chicken? I’m like a combination of Paula Deen and Mario Whatshisname. I’m just around the corner from bein’ the Mrs. Butterworth of barbecue sauce.”

“The cook-off is in a week,” Connie said. “Is there still time for you to enter? Do you have to qualify or something?”

“I don’t have to do nothin’ but sign up,” Lula said. “I already looked into it, and the idiot who’s runnin’ the cook-off used to be a customer of mine back when I was a ’ho. He was what you call a drive-by. He’d pick me up on my corner, and two blocks later, we’d concluded our business.”

“That’s more information than I need,” Connie said.

“Well, I’m just sayin’ so you get the picture.”

“I have to run,” I told them. “I’m late for work.”

“After we win the contest and capture the killer, none of us is gonna have to work,” Lula said. “We’re all gonna be ladies of leisure.”

IT WAS NOON, and Ranger’s men were moving around, breaking for lunch, so I left my cubicle and went to the kitchen area to mingle. Ella kept the large glass-fronted refrigerator filled with sandwiches, fruit, raw veggies, yogurt, low-fat milk, snack-size cheeses, a variety of fruit juices, plus individual cups of chicken salad and vegetable soup. Early in the morning, Ella supplemented this with a caldron of oatmeal and a chafing dish of scrambled eggs. The dinner offering was always some sort of Crock-Pot stew, plus a breadbasket.

Ranger almost always ate breakfast and dinner in his apartment. And lunch was usually a sandwich and piece of fruit from the common kitchen, taken back to his office. There were three small round tables set to one side of the kitchen. Each table held four chairs. Two men I didn’t know were eating at one of the tables. Hal and Ramon were at another. The third table was empty. I selected a sandwich and joined Hal and Ramon. I’ve known Hal for a while now. Hal isn’t the sharpest tack on the corkboard, but he tries hard. His nickname is Halosaurus, because there’s a stegosaurus resemblance.

“You’re my new favorite person,” Ramon said. “You got me out of that cubicle. I was dying in that cubicle.”

“It’s not my favorite job, either,” I said, “but I needed the money.”

I unwrapped my sandwich and examined it. Multigrain bread, pretty ruffled green lettuce, thin-sliced chicken, a slice of tomato, slices of hard-cooked egg, and salad dressing that was for sure low fat. It looked good, but it would look even better with bacon.

“No bacon,” I said, more to myself than to Hal and Ramon.

Hal grinned. “Ranger thinks bacon is the work of the devil.”

“Sometimes I walk past Ella’s apartment, and I smell bacon frying,” Ramon said. “I think she makes it for Louis.” He looked over at me. “Have you ever seen Ranger eat bacon?”

“No,” I said. “Not that I can remember.”

“I think sometimes he cheats and goes to eat with Louis,” Ramon said.

“No way,” Hal said. “Ranger’s pure.”

Both men looked at me.

“Forget it,” I said. “I’m not commenting on that one.”

Hal flushed red, and Ramon gave a bark of laughter.

I finished my sandwich and pushed back from the table. “I’m going for a walk around the building. Is there anyplace off-limits for us worker people?”

“Only the seventh floor. No one would mind if you went into the men’s locker room, but there could be a lot of wood if you stayed too long. And then Ranger would probably fire us all,” Ramon said.

“I don’t want to get anyone fired.”

“That’s good,” Hal said, “because everyone here wants to keep their job.”

“Not everyone,” Ramon said.

I cut my eyes to him.

“You were on the job last night,” he said to me. “I’m sure you know the problem. Everyone in the building knows the problem.”

“Then why isn’t the problem solved?” I asked him.

Ramon did palms-up. “Good question. If I knew, I would tell immediately. And so would Hal. And before this happened, I would say every man in the building would tell and would lay down their life for Ranger.”

“Maybe it’s not in the building,” I said to Ramon.

“I would like to believe that.”

I glanced at Hal. “What do you think?”

Hal shook his head. “I don’t know what to think. It used to be we were a team here, and now we’re all pulled up inside ourselves. It’s creepy working with people who are looking at you funny.”

I stood and gathered my trash off the table. “I’m sure Ranger has it under control. He doesn’t seem overly worried.”

“I saw Ranger jump off a bridge into the Delaware River in January once. He was going after a skip, and he didn’t seem overly worried,” Ramon said. “He handed me his gun, and he did about a sixty-foot free fall into black water.”

“Did he get the skip?” I asked him.

“Yeah. He dragged the guy out and cuffed him.”

“So he was right not to be worried.”

“Anyone else would have fuckin’ died. Excuse the language.”

I wandered out of the kitchen, walked past my cubicle and down the hall to Ranger’s office.

“Knock, knock,” I said at his open door.

He looked up from his computer. “Babe.”

“Do you have a minute?”

“I’ve got as much time as you need.”

I knew he wasn’t just talking about conversation, and there was a quality to his voice that gave me a rush. And then, for some inexplicable reason, I thought about Morelli. Morelli didn’t flirt like Ranger. Morelli would say sure and then he’d look down my shirt to try to see some boob. It was actually very playful, and it felt affectionate when Morelli did it.

Ranger relaxed back in his chair. “I’m pretty sure I lost you for a couple beats.”

“My mind wandered.”

“As long as it always comes back.”

I repeated my conversation with Hal and Ramon.

“This business runs on trust,” Ranger said. “Ninety-five percent of the time, the work is mundane. When it rolls over into the other five percent, you need total confidence that the man watching your back is on the job. Knowing there’s an unidentified weak link in the organization puts stress on everyone.”

I left Ranger and walked through the building. I couldn’t listen at doors or rifle through files, because I was always on camera. I peeked into the conference rooms and strolled halls. I stuck my head into the gym but stayed away from the locker room. The garage, the practice range, some high-security holding rooms were below ground, and I didn’t go there. The men I encountered gave me a courteous nod and returned to work. No invitations to stay and chat.

I returned to Ranger. “You have a well-oiled machine,” I told him. “Everything looks neat and clean and secure.”

He almost raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“How much am I paying you?”

“Not enough.”

“If you want more money, you’re going to have to perform more services,” he said.

“Are you flirting with me again?”

“No. I’m trying to bribe you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Would you like to think about it over dinner?”

“No can do,” I said. “I promised Lula I’d test-drive some barbecue sauce with her.”