High Five

3

I LEFT THE pork roll factory's parking lot and headed across town. It was almost five and government workers were clogging the roads. That was one of the many good things about Trenton. If you needed to practice Italian hand signals, there was no shortage of deserving bureaucrats.

I made a fast stop back at my apartment for some last-minute beautifying. I added an extra layer of mascara, fluffed my hair, and headed out.

Morelli was at the bar when I got to Pino's. He had his back to me, and he was lost in thought, elbows on the bar, head bent over his beer. He wore jeans and running shoes and a green plaid flannel shirt unbuttoned over a Gold's Gym T-shirt. A woman at the opposite end of the bar was watching him in the behind-the-bar mirror. Women did that now. They watched and wondered. When he was younger and his features were softer, women did more than watch. When he was younger, mothers statewide warned their daughters about Joe Morelli. And when he was younger, daughters statewide didn't give a darn what their mothers told them. Morelli's features were more angular these days. His eyes were less inviting to strangers. Women included. So women watched and wondered what it would be like to be with Morelli.

I knew, of course, what it was like to be with Morelli. Morelli was magic.

I took the stool next to him and waved a "beer, please" signal to the bartender.

Morelli gave me an appraising look, his eyes dilated black in the dim bar light. "Business suit and heels," he said. "That means you've either been to a wake, a job interview, or you tried to trick some nice old lady out of information she shouldn't be giving you."

"Door number three."

"Let me guess . . . this has to do with your uncle Fred."

"Bingo,"

"Having any luck?"

"Hard to say. Did you know Fred fooled around? He had a girlfriend."

Morelli grinned. "Fred Shutz? Hell, that's encouraging."

I rolled my eyes.

He took our beer glasses off the bar and motioned to the area set aside for tables. "If I was Mabel I'd be happy Fred was going elsewhere," he said. "I don't think Fred looks like a lot of fun."

"Especially since he collects pictures of dismembered bodies."

"I gave the pictures to Arnie. He didn't look happy. I think he was hoping Fred would turn up hitching a ride down Klockner Boulevard."

"Is Arnie going to do anything on this?"

"He'll probably go back and talk to Mabel some more. Run the photos through the system to see what comes up."

"Did you already run them through?"

"Yeah. And I didn't get anything."

There was nothing fancy about Pino's. At certain times of the day the bar was filled with cops unwinding after their shift. And at other times of the day the tables set aside for diners were filled with hungry Burg families. In between those times, Pino's was home to a few regular drunks, and the kitchen was taken over by cockroaches as big as barn cats. I ate at Pino's in spite of the roach rumor because Anthony Pino made the best pizza in Trenton. Maybe in all of Jersey.

Morelli gave his order and tipped back in his chair. "How friendly are you feeling toward me?"

"What'd you have in mind?"

"A date."

"I thought this was a date."

"No. This is dinner, so I can ask you about the date."

I sipped at my beer. "Must be some date."

"It's a wedding."

I sat up straighter in my chair. "It isn't my wedding, is it?"

"Not unless there's something going on in your life that I don't know about."

I blew out a sigh of relief. "Wow. For a minute there I was worried."

Morelli looked annoyed. "You mean if I asked you to marry me, that's the reaction I'd get?"

"Well, yeah."

"I thought you wanted to get married. I thought that was why we stopped sleeping together . . . because you didn't want sex without marriage."

I leaned forward on the table and cocked a single eyebrow at him. "Do you want to get married?"

"No, I don't want to get married. We've been all through this."

"Then my reaction doesn't matter, does it?"

"Jesus," Morelli said. "I need another beer."

"So what's with the wedding?"

"My cousin Julie's getting married on Saturday, and I need a date."

"You're giving me four days' notice to go to a wedding? I can't be ready for a wedding in four days. I need a new dress and shoes. I need a beauty parlor appointment. How am I going to do all this with four days' notice?"

"Okay, fuck it, we won't go," Morelli said.

"I guess I could do without the beauty parlor, but I definitely need new shoes."

"Heels," Morelli said. "High and spiky."

I fiddled with my beer glass. "I wasn't your last choice, was I?"

"You're my only choice. If my mother hadn't called this morning I wouldn't have remembered the wedding at all. This case I'm on is getting to me."

"Want to talk about it?"

"That's the last thing I want to do."

"How about Uncle Fred, want to talk about him some more?"

"The playboy."

"Yeah. I don't understand how he could just disappear."

"People disappear all the time," Morelli said. "They get on a bus and start life over. Or they jump off a bridge and float out with the tide. Sometimes people help them disappear."

"This is a man in his seventies who was too cheap to buy a bus ticket and would have had to walk miles to find a bridge. He left his cleaning in the car. He disappeared in the middle of running errands."

We both momentarily fell silent while our pizza was placed on the table.

"He'd just come from the bank," Morelli said when we were alone. "He was an old man. An easy mark. Someone could have driven up to him and forced him into their car."

"There were no signs of struggle."

"That doesn't mean one didn't take place."

I chewed on that while I ate my pizza. I'd had the same thought, and I didn't like it.

I told Morelli about my conversation with Winnie Black.

"She know anything about the pictures?"

"No."

"One other thing," Morelli said. "I wanted to tell you about Benito Ramirez."

I looked up from the pizza. Benito Ramirez was a heavyweight professional boxer from Trenton. He liked to punish people and didn't limit the punishing to inside the ring. He liked to beat up on women. Liked to hear them beg while he inflicted his own brand of sick torture. And in fact, I knew some of that torture had ended in death, but there'd always been camp followers who'd gotten posthumous credit for the worst of Ramirez's crimes. He'd been involved in my very first case as a bounty hunter, and I'd been instrumental in putting him behind bars. His incarceration hadn't come soon enough for Lula. Ramirez had almost killed her. He'd raped her and beat her and cut her in terrible places. And then he'd left her naked, bloody body on my fire escape for me to find.

"What about Ramirez?" I asked Morelli.

"He's out."

"Out where?"

"Out of jail."

"What? What do you mean, he's out of jail? He almost killed Lula. And he was involved in a whole bunch of other murders." Not to mention that he'd stalked and terrorized me.

"He's released on parole, doing community service, and getting psychiatric counseling." Morelli paused to pull off another piece of pizza. "He had a real good lawyer."

Morelli had said this very matter of fact, but I knew he didn't feel matter of fact. He'd put on his cop face. The one that shut out emotion. The one with the hard eyes that gave nothing away.

I made a display of eating. Like I wasn't too bothered by this news either. When in fact, nausea was rolling through my stomach. "When did this happen?" I asked Morelli.

"Yesterday."

"And he's in town?"

"Just like always. Working out in the gym on Stark."

A big man, Mrs. Bestler had said. African-American. Polite. Prowling in my hall. Sweet Jesus, it might have been Ramirez.

"If you even suspect he's anywhere near you, I want to know," Morelli said.

I'd shoved another piece of pizza into my mouth, but I was having a hard time swallowing. "Sure."

We finished the pizza and dawdled over coffee.

"Maybe you should spend the night with me," Morelli said. "Just in case Ramirez decides to look you up."

I knew Morelli had other things in mind beyond my safety. And it was a tempting offer. But I'd already taken that bus, and it seemed like a ride that went nowhere. "Can't," I said. "I'm working tonight."

"I thought things were slow."

"This isn't for Vinnie. This is for Ranger."

Morelli did a little grimace. "I'm afraid to ask."

"It's nothing illegal. It's a security job."

"It always is," Morelli said. "Ranger does all kinds of security. Ranger keeps small Third World countries secure."

"This has nothing to do with gunrunning. This is legitimate. We're doing front-door security for an apartment building on Sloane."

"Sloane? Are you crazy? Sloane's at the edge of the war zone."

"That's why the building needs policing."

"Fine. Let Ranger get someone else. Trust me, you don't want to be out looking for a parking place on Sloane in the middle of the night."

"I won't have to look for a parking place. Tank's picking me up."

"You're working with a guy named Tank?"

"He's big."

"Jesus," Morelli said. "I had to fall in love with a woman who works with a guy named Tank."

"You love me?"

"Of course I love you. I just don't want to marry you."

* * * * *

I STEPPED OUT of the elevator and saw him sitting on the floor in the hall, next to my door. And I knew he was Mabel's visitor. I stuck my hand in my shoulder bag, searching for my pepper spray. Just in case. I rooted around in the bag for a minute or two, finding lipsticks and hair rollers and my stun gun, but no pepper spray.

"Either you're searching for your keys or your pepper spray," the guy said, getting to his feet. "So let me help you out, here." He reached into his pocket, pulled out a canister of pepper spray, and tossed it to me. "Be my guest," he said. And then he pushed my door open.

"How'd you do that? My door was locked."

"God-given talent," he said. "I thought it would save time if I searched your apartment before you got home."

I shook the spray to make sure it was live.

"Hey, don't get all bent out of shape," he said. "I didn't wreck anything. Although, I have to tell you, I did have fun in your panty drawer."

Instinct said he was playing with me. There was no doubt in my mind he'd gone through my apartment, but I doubted he lingered with my lingerie. Truth is, I didn't have a lot and what I had wasn't especially exotic. I felt violated all the same, and I would have sprayed him on the spot, but I didn't trust the spray in my hand. It was his, after all.

He rocked back on his heels. "Well, aren't you going to ask me in? Don't you want to know my name? Don't you want to know why I'm here?"

"Talk to me."

"Not here," he said. "I want to go in and sit down. I've had a long day."

"Forget it. Talk to me here."

"I don't think so. I want to go inside. It's more civilized. It would be like we were friends."

"We're not friends. And if you don't talk to me right now, I'm going to gas you."

He was about my height, five-foot-seven, and built like a fireplug. It was hard to tell his age. Maybe late thirties. His brown hair was receding. His eyebrows looked like they'd been fed steroids. He was wearing ratty running shoes, black Levi's, and a dark gray sweatshirt.

He gave a big sigh and hauled a .38 out from under the sweatshirt. "Using the pepper spray wouldn't be a good idea," he said, "because then I'd have to shoot you."

My stomach dropped an inch and my heart started banging in my chest. I thought about the pictures and how someone had gotten themselves killed and mutilated. Fred had gotten involved somehow. And now I was involved, too. And there was a reasonable chance that I was being held at gunpoint by a guy who was on a first-name basis with the photographed garbage bag.

"If you shoot me in the hall, my neighbors will be all over you," I said.

"Fine. Then I'll shoot them, too."

I didn't like the idea of him shooting someone, especially me, so we both went into my apartment.

"This is much better," he said, heading for the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and getting a beer.

"Where'd that beer come from?"

"It came from me. Where do you think, the beer fairy? Lady, you need to go food shopping. It's unhealthy to live like this."

"Who are you?"

He shoved the gun under his waistband and stuck his hand out. "I'm Bunchy."

"What kind of a name is Bunchy?"

"When I was a kid I had this underwear problem."

Ugh. "You have a real name?"

"Yeah, but you don't need to know it. Everybody calls me Bunchy."

I was feeling better now that the gun wasn't pointed at me. Feeling good enough to be curious. "So what's this business deal with Fred?"

"Well, the truth is, Fred owes me some money."

"Uh-huh."

"And I want it."

"Good luck."

He chugged half a bottle of beer. "Now, see, that's not a good attitude."

"How did Fred come to owe you money?"

"Fred likes to play the ponies once in a while."

"Are you telling me you're Fred's bookie?"

"Yeah, that's what I'm telling you."

"I don't believe you. Fred didn't gamble."

"How do you know?"

"Besides, you don't look like a bookie," I said.

"How do bookies look?"

"Different." More respectable.

"I figure you're looking for Fred, and I'm looking for Fred, and maybe we can look for Fred together."

"Sure."

"See, that wasn't so difficult."

"Are you gonna go now?"

"Unless you want me to stay and watch television."

"No."

"I got a better television, anyway," he said.

* * * * *

AT 12:30 I was downstairs, waiting for Tank. I'd taken a nap, and I was feeling halfway alert. I was dressed in black jeans, black T-shirt, Ranger's SEALS hat, and the black SECURITY jacket. At Ranger's request, I had my gun clipped to my belt, and my shoulder bag held the other essentials—stun gun, pepper spray, flashlight, and cuffs.

The lot was eerie at this time of the night. The seniors' cars were fast asleep, their hoods and roofs reflecting light from the halogen floods. The macadam looked mercurial. The neighborhood of small single-family houses behind my building was dark and quiet. Occasionally there was the whir of traffic on St. James. Headlights flashed at the corner and a car turned into my lot. I had a moment of stomach-fluttering panic that this wasn't Tank, that this might be Benito Ramirez. I held my ground, thinking about the gun on my hip, telling myself I was cool, I was bad, I was a dangerous woman not to be messed with. Make my day, punk, I thought. Yeah, right. If it turned out to be Ramirez I'd wet my pants and run screaming back into the building.

The car was black and shiny. An SUV. It rolled to a stop in front of me, and the driver's side window slid down.

Tank looked out. "Ready to rock and roll?"

I took the seat beside him and buckled up. "Do you expect a lot of rockin' and rollin' tonight?"

"I expect none. Working this shift is like watching grass grow."

That was a relief. I had a lot to think about, and I didn't especially want to see Tank in action. Even more, I didn't want to see myself in action.

"I don't suppose you know a bookie named Bunchy, do you?"

"Bunchy? Nope. Never heard of him. He local?"

"Actually, I'm not sure."

The ride across town was quiet. One vehicle was parked at the curb in front of the Sloane Street apartment building. It was another new black SUV. Tank parked behind it. Beyond the building on either side and across the street, cars lined the curb.

"One of the things we like to enforce is a no-parking zone in front of the building," Tank said. "Keeps things clean. The tenants have parking behind the building. Only security vehicles are allowed here at the door."

"And if someone wants to park here?"

"We discourage it."

Master of understatement.

Two men were in the lobby. They were dressed in black, wearing the SECURITY jackets. One came forward when we approached and unlocked the door.

Tank stepped in and looked around. "Anything happening?"

"Nothing. Been quiet all night."

"When was the last time you walked?"

"Twelve."

Tank nodded.

The men gathered their belongings—a large Thermos, a book, and a gym bag—and pushed through the lobby door. They stood for a moment on the street, taking it in, before climbing into their SUV and motoring off.

A small table and two folding chairs had been placed against the far lobby wall, enabling the security team to watch both the door and the stairs. There were two walkie-talkies on the table.

Tank locked the front door, took one of the walkie-talkies, and clipped it to his belt. "I'm going to do a walk-through. You stay here and keep your eye on things. Call me if anyone approaches the door."

I sent him a salute.

"Snappy," he said. "I like that."

I sat in the folding chair and watched the door. No one approached. I watched the stairs. Nothing going on there, either. I checked out my manicure. Not great. I looked at my watch. Two minutes had gone by—478 minutes more and I could go home.

Tank ambled down the stairs and took his seat. "Everything's cool."

"Now what?"

"Now we wait."

"For what?"

"For nothing."

Two hours later, Tank was comfortably slouched in his chair, arms crossed, eyes slitted but vigilant, watching the door. His metabolism had dropped to reptilian. No rise and fall of his chest. No shifting of position—250 pounds of security in suspended animation.

I, on the other hand, had given up trying to keep from falling off my chair and was stretched out on the floor where I could doze without killing myself.

I heard Tank's chair creak. Heard him lean forward. I opened an eye. "Time for another walk-through?"

Tank was on his feet. "Someone's at the door."

I sat up to see, and BANG! There was the loud discharge of a gun, and then the sound of glass shattering. Tank pitched back, hit the table, and crashed to the floor.

The gunman rushed into the lobby, gun still in hand. It was the man Tank had thrown through the window, the occupant of apartment 3C. His eyes were wild, his face pale. "Drop the gun," he yelled at me. "Drop the fucking gun."

I looked down, and sure enough, I was holding my gun. "You aren't going to shoot me, are you?" I asked, my voice sounding hollow in my head.

He was wearing a long raincoat. He ripped the coat open and held it wide to show a bunch of packets duct-taped to his body. "You see this? These are explosives. You don't do what I say, and I'll blow us up."

I heard a clunk and realized the gun had slipped from my fingers and fallen onto the floor.

"I need to get into my apartment," he said. "I need to get in now."

"It's locked."

"So get a key."

"I don't have a key."

"Jesus," he said, "so kick the damn door down."

"Me?"

"You see anyone else here?"

I looked down at Tank. He wasn't moving.

The raincoat guy waved his gun in the direction of the stairs. "Move."

I edged around him and took the stairs to the third floor. I stood in front of the door to 3C and tried the handle. Locked, all right.

"Kick it in," the raincoat guy said.

I gave it a kick.

"Christ! That's not a kick. Don't you know anything? Don't you watch television?"

I took a couple of steps back and hurled myself at the door. I hit sideways and bounced off. Nothing happened to the door. "That worked when Ranger did it," I said.

The raincoat guy was sweating, and the gun was shaking in his hand. He turned to the door, aimed the gun with two hands, and squeezed the trigger twice. Wood splintered, and there was the sound of metal on metal. He kicked the door at lock height, and the door crashed open. He jumped in, hit the light switch, and looked everywhere at once. "What happened to my stuff?"

"We cleaned the apartment."

He ran into the bedroom and bathroom and back to the living room. He opened all the cabinet doors in the kitchen. "You had no right," he screamed at me. "You had no right to take my stuff."

"There wasn't much."

"There was a lot! Do you know what I had here? I had good stuff. I had pure. Jesus, do you know how bad I need a hit?"

"Listen, how about if I drive you to the clinic. Get you some help."

"I don't want the clinic. I want my stash."

The occupant of apartment 3A opened her door. "What's going on?"

"Get back in your apartment and lock your door," I said. "We have a little problem here."

The door slammed shut and the lock clicked.

The raincoat guy was running around in his apartment again. "Jesus," he was saying. "Jesus. Jesus."

Another woman appeared in the hall. She was frail and stooped. Her age had to be upwards of a hundred. Her short white hair stuck up in tufts. She was dressed in a worn pink flannel nightgown and big fuzzy slippers. "I can't sleep with all this racket," she said. "I've lived in this building for forty-three years, and I've never seen such goings-on. This used to be a nice neighborhood."

The raincoated guy whipped around, pointed his gun at the woman, and fired. The bullet tore into the wall behind her.

"Bite me," the old lady said, pulling a nickel-plated 9mm from somewhere in the folds of her nightgown, aiming the gun two-handed.

"No!" I yelled. "Don't shoot. He's wired with—"

Too late. The old lady drilled the guy, the sound of my voice lost in the blast.

* * * * *

I WOKE UP strapped to a gurney. I was in the apartment-house lobby, and the lobby was filled with people, mostly cops. Morelli's face swam into focus. He was moving his mouth, but he wasn't saying anything.

"What?" I yelled. "Speak up."

He shook his head, waved his hands, and I saw him mouth, "Take her away." A paramedic rolled the gurney out of the lobby into the night air. We clattered over the sidewalk, and then I felt myself lifted into the ambulance, the flashing strobes blinding against the black sky.

"Hey, wait a minute," I said. "I'm fine. Let me up. Untie these straps."

* * * * *

IT WAS MIDMORNING when I was released from the hospital. I was dressed and pacing when Morelli strode into my room with my discharge papers.

"They're letting you go," he said. "If I had my way, I'd move you upstairs to psychiatric."

I stuck my tongue out at him because I was feeling exceptionally mature. I grabbed my bag, and we fled the room before the nurse arrived with the mandatory wheelchair.

"I have a lot of questions," I said to Morelli.

He steered me toward the elevator. "I have a few of my own. Like, what the hell happened?"

"Me first. I need to know about Tank. No one will tell me anything. Is he, um, you know—?"

"Dead? No. Unfortunately. He was wearing a flak vest. The impact of the bullet knocked him back and stunned him. He hit his head when he fell and was out for a while, but he's fine. And by the way, where were you when he was shot?"

"I was stretched out on the floor. It was past my bedtime."

Morelli grinned. "Let me get this straight. You didn't get shot because you fell asleep on the job?"

"Something like that. It sounded better the way I phrased it. What about the guy with the bomb?"

"So far they've found a shoe and a belt buckle in the vicinity of what's left of the apartment—which, by the way, isn't much—and some teeth on Stark Street."

The elevator door opened, and we both stepped in.

"You're kidding about the teeth, right?"

Morelli grimaced and pushed the button.

"Nobody else hurt?"

"No. The old lady got knocked on her ass just like you. Can you corroborate her story that it was self-defense?"

"Yeah. The drug guy got a round off before she blew him up. It should be embedded in the wall . . . if the wall's still there."

We exited the downstairs lobby and crossed the street to Morelli's truck.

"Now what?" Morelli asked. "Your place? Your mother's house? My place? You're welcome to stay with me if you're feeling shaky."

"Thanks, but I need to go home. I want to take a shower and change my clothes." Then I wanted to go look for Fred. I was antsy to retrace Fred's steps. I wanted to stand in the parking lot where he'd disappeared and get psychic vibes. Not that I'd ever gotten psychic vibes from anything before, but hey, there's always a first time. "By the way, do you know a bookie named Bunchy?"

"No. What's he look like?"

"Average short Italian guy. Forty, maybe."

"Doesn't do anything for me. How do you know him?"

"He visited Mabel, and then he visited me. He claims Fred owes him money."

"Fred?"

"If Fred wanted to play the horses, why wouldn't he place his bets with his son?"

"Because he doesn't want anyone to know he's gambling?"

"Oh, yeah. I didn't think of that." Duh.

"I talked to your doctor," Morelli said. "He told me you're supposed to stay quiet for a couple days. And he said the ringing in your ears should diminish over time."

"The ringing's already a lot better."

Morelli glanced at me sideways. "You're not going to stay quiet, are you?"

"Define 'quiet.' "

"At home, reading, watching television."

"I might do some of that."

Morelli pulled into my parking lot and rolled to a stop. "When you're up to it, you need to stop in at the station and make a formal report."

I jumped out. "Okay."

"Hold it," Morelli said, "I'll go up with you."

"Not necessary. Thanks anyway. I'm fine."

Morelli was grinning again. "Afraid you might lose control in the hall and beg me to come in and make love to you?"

"In your dreams, Morelli."

When I got up to my apartment the red light on my phone machine was blinking, blinking, blinking. And Bunchy was asleep on my couch.

"What are you doing here?" I yelled at him. "Get up! Get out! This isn't the Hotel Ritz. And do you realize what you're doing is breaking and entering?"

"Boy, don't get your panties in a bunch," he said, getting to his feet. "Where have you been? I got worried about you. You didn't come home last night."

"What are you, my mother?"

"Hey, I'm concerned, that's all. You should be happy to have a friend like me." He looked around. "Do you see my shoes?"

"You are not my friend. And your shoes are under the coffee table."

He retrieved the shoes and laced them up. "So where were you?"

"I had a job. I was moonlighting."

"Must have been some job. Your mother called and said she heard you blew someone up."

"You talked to my mother?"

"She left a message on your machine." He was looking around again. "Do you see my gun?"

I turned on my heel and went in to the kitchen to play my messages.

"Stephanie, it's your mother. What's this about an explosion? Edna Gluck heard from her son, Ritchie, that you blew someone up? Is this true? Hello? Hello?"

Bunchy was right. Damn that big-mouth Ritchie.

I played the second message. Breathing. As was message number three.

"What's with the breathing?" Bunchy wanted to know, standing in the middle of my kitchen floor, hands stuck in his pockets, his rumpled, beyond-faded, plaid flannel shirt hanging loose.

"Wrong number."

"You'd tell me if you had a problem, right? Because, you know, I have a way of solving problems like that."

No doubt in my mind. He didn't look like a bookie, but I had no trouble at all believing he could solve that kind of problem. "Why are you here?"

He prowled through my cabinets, looking for food, finding nothing that interested him. Guess he wasn't crazy about hamster pellets.

"I wanted to know if you found anything," he said. "Like, do you have clues or something?"

"No. No clues. Nothing."

"I thought you were supposed to be this hotshot detective."

"I'm not a detective at all. I'm a bail enforcement agent."

"Bounty hunter."

"Yeah. Bounty hunter."

"So, that's okay. You go out and find people. That's what we want to have happen here."

"How much money did Fred owe you?"

"Enough that I want it. Not enough to make a man feel like he had to disappear. I'm a pretty nice guy, you know. It isn't like I go around breaking people's knees 'cause they don't pay up. Well, okay, so sometimes I might break a knee, but it's not like it happens every day."

I rolled my eyes.

"You know what I think you should do?" Bunchy said. "I think you should go check at his bank. See if he's taken any money out. I can't do things like that on account of I look like I might break people's knees. But you're a pretty girl. You probably got a friend works in the bank. People would want to do a favor for you."

"I'll think about it. Now go away."

Bunchy ambled to the door. He took a beat-up brown leather jacket from one of the pegs on the wall and turned to look at me. His expression was serious. "Find him."

What hung unsaid in the air was . . . or else.

I slipped the bolt behind him. First chance I had I was going to have to get a new lock. Surely someone made a lock that actually kept people out.

I called my mother back and explained to her that I hadn't blown someone up. He'd sort of blown himself up with some help from an old lady in a pink nightgown.

"You could have a good job," my mother said. "You could take lessons from that place that advertises on television and teaches you to be a computer operator."

"I have to go now."

"How about dinner. I'm making a nice pot roast with potatoes and gravy."

"I don't think so."

"Pineapple upside-down cake for dessert."

"Okay. I'll be there at six."

I erased the breathing messages and told myself they were wrong numbers. But in my heart, I knew the breather.

I double-checked all the locks on my door, and I checked to make sure my windows were secure and no one was hiding in a closet or under the bed. I took a long, hot shower, wrapped myself in a towel, stepped out of the bathroom . . . and came face-to-face with Ranger.