Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

SEVEN

THE FUNERAL PARLOR is part renovated Victorian and part brick bunker. I found on-street parking and jogged to the front porch. Hours were almost over, but there were still a lot of mourners milling around. A group of men stood to one side on the wraparound porch. They were smoking and laughing, smelling faintly of whiskey. The funeral parlor had several viewing rooms. Two were presently occupied. Knowing Grandma, she probably visited both. Viewings were at the core of Grandma’s social scene. On a slow week, Grandma would go to the viewing of a perfect stranger if nothing better popped up.

I found Grandma and Lula to the back of Slumber Room #3.

“He’s up there at the casket,” Lula said. “He looks like he knows the stiff’s ol’ lady.”

“They’re relations,” Grandma said. “Nothin’ anyone would want to admit to. That whole family is odd. I went to school with Mary Jane Dugan, the wife of the deceased. She was Mary Jane Turley then. Up until fourth grade, she quacked like a duck. Never said a blessed word in school. Just quacked. And then one day she fell off the top of the sliding board in the park and hit her head and she started talking. Never quacked again. Not to this day. Junior’s father, Harry, was Mary Jane’s brother. He electrocuted himself trying to pry a broken plug out of a wall socket with a screwdriver. I remember when it happened. He blew out one of them transformer things, and four houses on that block didn’t have electric for two days. I didn’t see Harry after the accident, but Lorraine Shatz said she heard they had to put him in the meat locker to get him to stop smokin’.”

“Stay here,” I said to Lula. “I’m going to make my way up to the casket. You grab Junior if he bolts and tries to leave by this door.”

“Don’t you worry,” Lula said. “Nobody’s gonna get past me. I’m on the job. He come this way, and I’ll shoot him.”

“No! No shooting. Just grab him and sit on him.”

“I guess I could do that, but shooting seems like the right thing to do.”

“Shooting is the wrong thing to do. He’s an exhibitionist, not a murderer. He’s probably not even armed.”

Grandma helped herself to a cookie set out on a tray by the door. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you saw him naked.”

I eased my way along the wall, inching past knots of people who were more interested in socializing than in grieving. Not that this was a bad thing. Death in the Burg was like pot roast at six o’clock. An unavoidable and perfectly normal part of the fabric of life. You got born, you ate pot roast, and you died.

I came up behind Turley and snapped a cuff on his right wrist. “Bond enforcement,” I whispered in his ear. “Come with me, and we don’t have to make a big scene. We’ll just quietly walk to the door.”

Turley looked at me, and looked at the cuff on his wrist. “What?”

“You missed your court date. You need to reschedule.”

“I’m not going to court. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You flashed Mrs. Zajak.”

“It’s my thing. Everybody knows I’m the flasher. I’ve been flashing for years.”

“No kidding. This is the third time I’ve captured you for failing to appear. You should get a new hobby.”

“It’s not a hobby,” Turley said. “It’s a calling.”

“Okay, it’s a calling. You still have to reschedule your court date.”

“You always say that, and then when I get to the courthouse with you, I get locked up in jail. You’re a big fibber. Does your mother know you tell fibs?”

“Does your mother know you flash old ladies?”

Turley’s attention switched to the door where Lula and Grandma were standing. “What are the police doing here?” he asked.

I turned to look, and he jumped away.

“Hah! Fooled you,” he said. And he scuttled around to the other side of the casket.

I lunged and missed, bumping into Mary Jane Dugan. “Sorry about your loss,” I said, shoving her aside.

“What’s going on?” she wanted to know. “Stephanie Plum, is that you?”

Turley took off for the double doors at the front of the room, and I ran after him. He knocked some lady on her ass, and I tripped over her.

“Sorry,” I said, scrambling to my feet in time to see Grandma do a flying tackle at Turley.

Turley wriggled away from Grandma and escaped into the ladies’ room. Two women ran shrieking out, and Grandma, Lula, and I barged in.

Turley was trapped against the wall between the tampon dispenser and the sanitary hand dryer.

“You’ll never take me alive,” he said.

“Do you have a gun?” I asked him.

“No.”

“Are you booby-trapped?”

“No.”

“Then how are you going to die?”

“I don’t know,” Turley said. “I just always wanted to say that.”

“Could we hurry this up?” Lula said. “I’m missing my Wednesday night television shows.”

“I’ll make a deal,” Turley said. “I’ll go with you if I can flash everyone on my way out of the ladies’ room.”

“No way,” I told him.

“Eeuw,” Lula said. “Ick.”

Grandma slid her dentures around a little, thinking. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” she said.

Turley unzipped his pants and reached inside.

“Hold it right there,” Lula said. “I got a stun gun here, and you pull anything out of your pants, I’ll zap you.”

Next thing there was a zzzzt from the stun gun and Junior Turley was on the floor with his tool hanging out.

“Whoa, Nellie,” Lula said, staring down at Junior.

“Yep,” Grandma said. “He’s got a big one. All them Turleys is hung like horses. Not that I know firsthand, except for Junior. And maybe Junior’s Uncle Runt. I saw him take a leak outside the Polish National Hall one time, and it was like he had hold of a fire hose. I tell you, for a little guy, he had a real good-size wanger.”

“We need to get that thing back in his pants before we drag him out of here,” I said.

“I’ll do it,” Grandma said.

“I think you done enough,” Lula said. “You’re the one encouraged him to take it out in the first place.”

They looked over at me.

“No, no, no,” I said. “Not me. No way, Jose. I’m not touching it.”

“Maybe we could drag him out facedown,” Lula said. “Then no one would see. All’s we have to do is flip him over.”

That seemed like an okay plan, so we rolled him over, and I finished cuffing him. Then Lula took a foot, and I took a foot, Grandma got the door, and we hauled him out of the ladies’ room.

All conversation stopped when we dragged Junior through the lobby. It was like everyone inhaled at precisely the same time and the air all got sucked out of the room. Halfway across the oriental carpet, Junior’s eyes popped open, his body went rigid, and he let out a shriek.

“Yow!” Junior yelled, flopping around like a fish out of water, wrangling himself over onto his back. He had a huge erection and a bad case of rug burn.

“I gotta tell you, I’m impressed,” Lula said, checking out Junior’s stiffy. “And I don’t impress easy.”

“It’s a pip,” Grandma said.

It was a pip and a half. I was going to have nightmares.

By now, the funeral director was hovering over Junior, hands clasped to his chest, face red enough to be in stroke range. “Do something,” he pleaded. “Call the police. Call the paramedics. Get him out of here!”

“No problemo,” I said. “Sorry about the disturbance.”

Lula and I pulled Junior to his feet and muscled him to the door. We got him outside, onto the porch, and he kicked Lula.

“Hey,” Lula said, bending over. “That hurts.”

He gave Lula a shove, she grabbed me by my sweatshirt, and Lula and I went head-over-teakettle down the wide front stairs.

“Adios,” Junior yelled. And he ran away into the night.

I was flat on my back on the sidewalk. My jeans had a tear in the knee, my arm was scraped and bleeding, and I was worried my ass was broken. I went to hands and knees and slowly dragged myself up to a semivertical position.

Lula crawled to her feet after me. “I’m surprised he could run with that monster boner,” she said. “I swear, if it was two inches longer, it’d be draggin’ on the ground.”

I DROPPED GRANDMA off at my parents’ house, drove to my building, parked, and limped to my apartment. I flipped the light on, locked the door behind me, and said hello to Rex. Rex was working up a sweat running on his wheel, beady black eyes blazing bright. I dropped a couple raisins into his cage and my phone rang.

“Myra Baronowski’s daughter has a good job in the bank,” my mother said. “And Margaret Beedle’s daughter is an accountant. She works in an office like a normal human being. Why do I have a daughter who drags aroused men through funeral parlors? I had fourteen phone calls before your grandmother even got home.”

The Burg has a news pipeline that makes CNN look like chump change.

“I think it must have happened when he got rug burn,” I told my mother. “He didn’t have an erection when I cuffed him in the ladies’ room.”

“I’m going to have to move to Arizona. I read about this place, Lake Havasu. No one would know me there.”

I disconnected, and Morelli called me.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “I heard you dragged a naked guy through the funeral parlor, and then shots were fired, and you fell down the stairs.”

“Who told you that?”

“My mother. Loretta Manetti called her.”

“He wasn’t naked, and no shots were fired. He kicked Lula, and Lula took me down the stairs with her.”

“Just checking,” Morelli said. And he hung up.

I dropped my clothes on the bathroom floor and washed the blood away in the shower. I pulled on my old flannel pajamas and went to bed. Tomorrow would be a better day, I thought. I’d get a good night’s sleep in my nice soft jammies and wake up to sunshine.

MY PHONE RANG at 5:20 A.M. I reached for it in the dark and brought it to my ear.

“Who died?” I asked.

“No one died,” Ranger said. “I’m coming into your apartment, and I didn’t want you to freak.”

I heard my front door open and close, and moments later, Ranger was in my bedroom. He flipped the light on and looked down at me.

“I’d like to crawl in next to you, but there was another break-in tonight. This time it was a commercial account. I want you to take a look at it with me.”

“Now? Can’t it wait?”

Ranger grabbed jeans from my closet and tossed them at me. The jeans were followed by a sweatshirt and socks. “I want to go through the building before people arrive for work.”

“It’s the middle of the night!”

“Not nearly,” Ranger said. He looked at his watch. “You have thirty seconds to get dressed, or you’re going in your pajamas.”

“Honestly,” I said, rolling out of bed, scooping my clothes up into my arms. “You are such a jerk.”

“Twenty seconds.”

I stomped off into the bathroom and slammed the door closed. I got dressed and was about to brush my hair when the door opened and Ranger pulled me out of the bathroom.

“Time’s up,” Ranger said.

“I didn’t even have time to fix my hair!”

Ranger was dressed in a black Rangeman T-shirt, cargo pants, windbreaker, and ball cap. He took the ball cap off his head and put it on mine.

“Problem solved,” he said, taking my hand, towing me out of my apartment.

THE BUILDING THAT had gotten hit was just four blocks from my apartment. Police cars and Rangeman cars were angled into the curb, lights flashing, and lights were on inside the building. Ranger ushered me into the lobby and one of his men brought me a cup of coffee.

“This building is owned by a local insurance company,” Ranger said. As you can see, the first floor is mostly lobby, with a front desk and satellite glass-fronted offices. Executive offices, a boardroom, a small employee kitchenette, and a storeroom are on the second floor. It’s not a high-security account. They have an alarm system. No cameras. For the most part, there’s nothing of value in this building. The computers are antiquated. There are no cash transactions. The only thing of value was a small collection of Fabergé eggs in the company president’s office. And that’s what was taken.”

“Was the routine the same?”

“The thief entered through a back door that had a numerical code lock. He deactivated the alarm, went directly to the second-floor office, took the eggs, reset the alarm, and left. The alarm was off for fifteen minutes.”

“He had to be moving to get all that done in fifteen minutes.”

“I had one of my men run through it. It’s possible.”

“Was the president’s office locked?”

“The office door was locked, but it wasn’t a complicated lock, and the thief was able to open it. He didn’t bother to close the door or relock it when he left.”

“How much were the eggs worth?”

“There were three eggs. One was especially valuable. Collectively, he probably lost a quarter of a million.”

“Is this guy going to have a hard time fencing the eggs?”

“I imagine they’ll go out of country.”

I looked around. There was one uniform left in the building and one plainclothes guy from Trenton P.D. I didn’t know either of them. Ranger had four men on site. Two were at the front door, and two were at the elevator.

“How was this discovered?” I asked Ranger. “Is there a night watchman or something?”

“The company president likes to get an early start. He’s here at five every morning.”

Morelli was awake at five. Ranger was awake at five. And now here was another moron at work at five. As far as I was concerned, five was the middle of the night.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked Ranger.

“Look around.”

I went to the back door and looked outside. From what I could see, there was an alley, a small blacktop parking lot with six designated spaces. No light. There should be a light. I stepped outside and looked up at the building. The light had been smashed. There were some glass shards on the ground under the light.

I went back inside and looked for the alarm pad. On the wall to my right. Exactly where I would have put it. I walked to the stairs, imagining the thief doing this in the dark. Probably had a penlight and knew exactly where he was going. And he was in a hurry, so he would take the stairs rather than the elevator.

I prowled through the second floor, peeking into offices, the kitchen, the storeroom. It all looked pretty normal. The president’s office was nice but not extravagant. Corner office with windows. Executive desk and fancy leather chair. Couple smaller chairs in front of the desk. Built-in bookcase behind the desk with an empty shelf. I guessed that was where the eggs used to be.

I sat in the fancy leather chair and swiveled a little, checking out the pictures on the desk. Balding, overweight guy with a cheesy mustache, posing with a preppy dark-haired woman and two little boys. The corporate family photo display placed next to the corporate pen-and-pencil set that some decorator probably requisitioned and the guy never used. Matching leather blotter. And alongside the desk was the matching corporate wastebasket. A single Snickers wrapper was in the wastebasket.

I called Ranger on my cell phone. “Where are you?” I asked.

“Downstairs with Gene Boran, the president of the company.”

“How did the thief know about the eggs?”

“The Trenton paper ran a feature on them two weeks ago.”

“Perfect.”

“Anything else?” Ranger asked.

“It looks like the cleaning crew came through here last night.”

“They left at eleven-thirty.”

“There’s a Snickers wrapper in the wastebasket.”

There was some discussion at the other end, and Ranger came back on. “Gene said he saw it on the floor, so he put it in the wastebasket.”

“It could be a clue,” I said to Ranger.

Ranger disconnected.

I ambled downstairs and slouched into a man-size chair in the lobby. The police had cleared out, and there were only two Rangeman employees left. Ranger spoke to the company president for another five minutes, they shook hands, and Ranger crossed the room to where I was sitting.

“I’m leaving Sal and Raphael here until the building opens for business,” Ranger said. “We can go back to Rangeman.”

“It isn’t even seven A.M.! Normal people are still asleep.”

“Is this going somewhere?” Ranger asked.

“Yes. It’s going to… take Stephanie home so she can go back to bed.”

“Babe, I’d be happy to take you back to bed.”

Unh. Mental head slap.

IT WAS ALMOST noon when I left my apartment for the second time that morning. I’d run out of Rangeman clothes, so I was dressed in jeans and a stretchy red V-neck T-shirt. My hair was freshly washed and fluffed. My eyes were enhanced with liner and mascara. My lips were comfy in Burt’s Bees lip balm.

I stopped at the bonds office on my way to Rangeman.

“Just in time for lunch,” Lula said when I walked in the door. “Me and Connie are feeling like we should try the chicken at the new barbecue place by the hospital.”

“That’s sacrilege. You always get your chicken at Cluck-in-a-Bucket.”

“Yeah, but we gotta do barbecue research. I don’t have my just-right gourmet barbecue sauce yet. I might have had it on the chicken last night, but the dogs run off with it. Anyways, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to shop around. And I hear the guy who owns the barbecue place is gonna be in the contest.”

“Sorry, no can do. I’m late for work.”

“Just tell Ranger you needed barbecue,” Lula said. “Everybody understands when the barbecue urge comes over you. And besides, there’s no place to park by that barbecue place. I need a ride up there. It’ll take you a minute, and it’s the least you can do since I rescued you from that embarrassing experience last night.”

“You didn’t rescue me! You pulled me down the stairs and let Junior escape.”

“Yeah, but people was watching me go ass-over-elbows down the stairs, and they hardly noticed you at all.”

That could be true. “Okay, I’ll give you a ride, but then I have to go to work.”

Lula hiked her purse onto her shoulder. “We got it all planned out what me and Connie want to eat. All’s I gotta do is run in and out.”

Lula and I stepped out of the office onto the sidewalk and stood for a moment squinting into the sun.

“This here’s a beautiful day,” Lula said. “I got a real good feeling about today.”

A black Mercedes with tinted windows pulled out of a parking space half a block away and cruised up to the bonds office. It slowed, the side window slid down, a gun barrel appeared, there was maniacal giggling, and four rounds were fired off.

I heard a bullet whistle past my ear, the plate-glass window behind me cracked, and Lula and I hit the ground. Connie kicked the bonds office door open and aimed a Glock at the Mercedes, but the car was already too far away.

“That asshole took out my computer,” Connie said.

Lula hauled herself up off the sidewalk and pulled her lime green spandex miniskirt down over her butt. “Someone call the police. Call the National Guard. Those guys are out to get me. That was one of those Chipotle killers behind that gun. I saw his idiot face. And I heard that crazy-ass giggling. Did someone get that license plate?”

Vinnie appeared in the doorway and cautiously peeked outside. “What’s going on?”

Vinnie was my rodent cousin. Good bail bondsman. Scary human being. Slicked-back hair, face like a ferret, dressed like Tony Soprano, had a body like Pee-wee Herman.

“Someone’s trying to kill Lula,” Connie said.

Vinnie put his hand to his heart. “That’s a relief. I thought they were after me.”

“It’s no relief to me,” Lula said. “I’m a nervous wreck. And stress like this is bad for your immune system. I read about it. I could get shingles or something.”

People from nearby businesses migrated onto the sidewalk, looked around, and realized it was just the bonds office getting shot at. Their faces registered that this was no big whoopity-do, and they drifted back into their buildings.

Lights flashed in the distance on Hamilton, and a fire truck and an EMS truck rumbled to a stop in front of the office.

“Hey!” I yelled to the fire truck. “You’re blocking me in. I have to go to work. We don’t need you.”

“Of course we need them,” Lula said. “Do you see that big beautiful man drivin’ that fire truck? I think I saw him on one of them Fire Truck Hunks calendars.” Lula stood on tiptoes in her spike heels and waved to him. “Yoohoo, sweetie! Here I am. I been shot at,” she called. “I might be faint. I might need some of that mouth-to-mouth.”

Ten minutes later, I was still waiting for the fire truck to take off, and Morelli strolled over.

“Now what?” he said.

“A guy in a black Mercedes shot at Lula. She said it was one of the Chipotle killers.”

Morelli cut his eyes to Lula. “Guess they didn’t tag her.”

“No, but they got Connie’s computer.”

“Anyone see the license plate?”

“Nope.”

“I like this red shirt you’re wearing,” Morelli said, tracing along the neckline with his fingertip. “Did you get fired from your new job already?”

“No. I ran out of black clothes.”

“What happens if you don’t dress in black? Do you have to go to detention? Do you get fined?”

I did an eye roll.

“I’m serious,” Morelli said, laugh lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Are all the towels in the building black? Is there black toilet paper?”

I did a five-count of deep breathing as an alternative to kicking him in the knee.

“If you could get that fire truck to move, I could go to work,” I finally said.

Morelli was still smiling. “You would owe me.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“A night of wild gorilla sex.”

“Good grief.”

“How bad do you want to go to work?” he asked.

“Wild gorilla sex isn’t going to happen. I’m not interested. I’m done with men.”

“Too bad,” he said. “I learned some new moves.”

“We are no longer a couple,” I told him. “And you better not have learned those moves from Joyce Barnhardt.”

Morelli and I went to school with Joyce Barnhardt, and she’d always had a thing for Morelli. For as long as I can remember, Joyce Barnhardt has been like a needle in my eye. I severely disliked Joyce Barnhardt.

IT WAS CLOSE to two o’clock when I walked through the fifth-floor control room and settled myself in my cubicle.

My intercom buzzed and Ranger came on. “My office,” he said.

I walked the short distance to his office and looked in at him. “What?”

“Come in and close the door.”

I closed the door and sat in a chair opposite him. He was at his desk, and I was struck by the same thought I had every time I came into his office. Ranger always looked at ease, but he never actually looked like he belonged behind a desk. He looked like he should be scaling a wall, or jumping out of a helicopter, or kicking the crap out of some bad guy.

“Do you like doing this?” I asked him. “Do you like running this security firm?”

“I don’t love it,” he said. “But I don’t hate it, either. It’s a phase in my life. It’s not so different from being a company commander in the military. Better work conditions. Less sand.”

I wondered if my job was also just a phase in my life. Truth is, I felt a little stalled.

“Do you have any new thoughts on my problem?” he asked.

“Nothing big. Sybo Diaz gets the prize for most suspicious guy so far, but he doesn’t fit into the puzzle right. He’s like trying to ram a square peg into a round hole. Diaz was on duty when two of the break-ins occurred, so he’d have to be working with someone else. Problem is, I don’t see Diaz having a partner in this kind of operation. He’s totally closed. He’d have to do it all himself.

“The computer with the security codes is actually available to a lot of people. Four men have primary responsibility, but a bunch of other guys fill in for them when they take a break. And all the other men who are watching other monitors have the ability to see the screen on the code computer. You already knew this.

“The thing is, the longer I’m here, the less likely I’m inclined to believe this is an inside job. Everyone is watching everyone now. And the code computer is under constant scrutiny. And yet there was a new break-in. I think you have to look at outside possibilities. Maybe a rival security firm. Or a techno freak you fired or didn’t hire. Or maybe someone not associated with you at all who’s doing it for the rush.”

“This isn’t a large firm,” Ranger said. “We offer quality personal service to a select group of clients. If I remove all clients with video surveillance, I cut the list in half. If I only look at residential accounts, the list gets much smaller. I was able to increase the number of cars I have patrolling video-free, residential accounts during hours when the break-ins occurred. If I have to enlarge that list to include commercial accounts spread over a two-shift period, I’m short manpower.”

“Maybe you can get more accounts to use video.”

“That’s like announcing my system is corrupted. I’m trying to keep this quiet.” He handed me a list of names. “These are non-video clients, both residential and commercial. The clients that have been hit by this guy are printed in red. I’d like you to ride around and see if anything jumps out at you.”