Hot Six

6

HERE'S THE THING that stuck in my brain all the way home. If you were a father grieving over losing a son, would you greet your firstborn with a smack in the head?

"Hey, what do I know," I said to Bob. "Maybe they're going for Dysfunctional Family of the Year."

And to tell the truth, it's always a comfort to discover a family more dysfunctional than my own. Not that my family is all that dysfunctional, by Jersey standards.

When I got to Hamilton Township I stopped at the Shop Rite, hauled out my cell phone, and dialed my mother.

"I'm at the meat counter," I said. "I want to make a meatloaf. What do I need?"

There was silence at the other end, and I could imagine my mother making the sign of the cross, wondering what could possibly have inspired her daughter to want to make a meatloaf, hoping against hope that it was a man.

"A meatloaf," my mother finally said.

"It's for Grandma," I told her. "She needs a meatloaf."

"Of course," my mother said. "What was I thinking?"

I CALLED MY mother again when I got home. "Okay, I'm home," I said. "Now what do I do with this stuff?"

"You mix it together and put it in a loaf pan and bake it at three hundred and fifty degrees for an hour."

"You didn't say anything about a loaf pan when I was at the store!" I wailed.

"You don't have a loaf pan?"

"Well, of course I have a loaf pan. I just meant… Never mind."

"Good luck," my mother said.

Bob was sitting in the middle of the kitchen, taking it all in.

"I don't have a loaf pan," I told Bob. "But hey, we're not gonna let a little thing like that stop us, are we?"

I dumped the ground beef into a bowl along with the other essential meatloaf ingredients. I added an egg and watched it slime across the surface. I poked it with a spoon.

"Eeeeyeu," I said to Bob.

Bob wagged his tail. Bob looked like he loved gross stuff.

I mashed at the mess with the spoon, but the egg wouldn't mix in. I took a deep breath and plunged in with both hands. After a couple of minutes of hand squishing, everything was nice and mushy. I shaped it into a snowman. And then I shaped it into Humpty Dumpty. And then I smashed it flat. Smashed flat, it looked a lot like what I'd left in the McDonald's parking lot. Finally I rolled it into two big meatballs.

I'd bought a frozen banana cream pie for dessert, so I slid the pie out of its aluminum plate onto a dinner plate and used the pie plate for the giant meatballs.

"Necessity is the mother of invention," I told Bob.

I put the meatballs in the oven, cut up some potatoes and set them to cooking, and opened a can of creamed corn and dumped it in a bowl so I could heat it up in the microwave at the last minute. Cooking wasn't so bad, I thought. In fact, it was a lot like sex. Sometimes it didn't seem like such a good idea in the beginning, but then after you got into it…

I set the table for two, and the phone rang just as I was finishing.

"Yo, babe," Ranger said.

"Yo yourself. I have some news. The car that came to visit Hannibal last night belongs to Terry Gilman. I should have recognized her when she got out of the car, but I only saw her from the back, and I wasn't expecting her."

"Probably carrying condolences from Vito."

"I didn't realize Vito and Ramos were friends."

"Vito and Alexander co-exist."

"Another thing," I said. "This morning I followed Hannibal to the house in Deal." Then I told Ranger about the older man in the Town Car, and the smack in the head, and the appearance of a younger man who I thought was Ulysses Ramos.

"How do you know it was Ulysses?"

"Just a guess. He looked like Hannibal, but slimmer."

There was a moment of silence.

"Do you want me to keep watching the town house?" I asked.

"Do a spot check once in a while. I want to know if anyone's living there."

"Don't you think it's strange that Ramos would smack his son?" I asked.

"I don't know," Ranger said. "In my family we smack each other all the time."

Ranger disconnected, and I stood without moving for several minutes, wondering what I was missing. Ranger never gave much away, but there'd been a moment's pause and a small change of inflection that had me thinking I'd told him something interesting. I reviewed our conversation and everything seemed ordinary. A father and two brothers gathered together at a time of family tragedy. Alexander's reaction to Hannibal's greeting had seemed odd to me, but I got the impression that wasn't what had caught Ranger's attention.

Grandma staggered through the front door. "Boy, have I had a day," she said. "I'm all done in."

"How'd the driving lesson go?"

"Pretty good, I guess. I didn't run anybody over. And I didn't wreck the car. How was your day?"

"About the same."

"Louise and me went to the mall to do some senior citizen power walking but we kept getting sidetracked into the stores. And then after lunch we went looking at apartments. I saw a couple I might settle for, but nothing that really floated my boat. Tomorrow we're gonna look at some condos." Grandma snooped into the potato pot. "Isn't this something. I come home from a hard day of running around and here's dinner all waiting for me. Just like being a man."

"I got a banana cream pie for dessert," I said, "but I had to use the pie plate for the meatloaf."

Grandma peeked at the pie in the refrigerator. "Maybe we should eat it now before it defrosts and loses its shape."

That sounded like a good idea to me, so we all had some pie while the meatloaf was baking.

When I was a little girl I'd never thought of my grandmother as the sort of person to eat her pie first. Her house had always been neat and clean. The furniture was dark wood and the upholstered pieces were comfortable but unmemorable. Meals were traditional Burg meals, ready at noon and at six o'clock. Stuffed cabbage, pot roast, roast chicken, an occasional ham or pork roast. My grandfather wouldn't have had it any other way. He'd worked in a steel mill all his life. He had strong opinions, and he dwarfed the rooms of their row house. Truth is, the top of my grandmother's head comes to the tip of my chin, and my grandfather wasn't much taller. But then I guess stature doesn't have much to do with inches.

Lately I've been wondering who my grandmother would have been if she hadn't married my grandfather. I wonder if she would have eaten her dessert first a lot sooner.

I took the meatballs out of the oven and set them side by side on a plate. Sitting there together they looked like troll gonads.

"Well, will you look at these big boys," Grandma said. "Reminds me of your grandfather, rest his soul."

When we were done eating I took Bob for a walk. Street lights were on, and light poured from the front windows of the houses behind my apartment building. We walked several blocks in comfortable silence. It turns out that's one of the good things about a dog. They don't talk a lot, so you can go along, thinking your own thoughts, making lists.

My list consisted of Catch Morris Munson, Worry about Ranger, and Wonder about Morelli. I didn't exactly know what to do about Morelli. My heart felt like it was in love. My head wasn't so sure. Not that it mattered, because Morelli didn't want to get married. So here I was with my biological clock ticking and nothing around me but indecision.

"I hate this!" I said to Bob.

Bob stopped and looked over his shoulder at me, like, What's the big deal back there? Well, what did Bob know. Someone had whacked off his doodles when he was a puppy. Bob was just left with some extra skin and a distant memory. Bob didn't have a mother waiting for grandchildren. Bob didn't have all this pressure!

When I got back to the apartment Grandma was asleep in front of the television. I wrote a note saying I had to go out for a while, pinned the note to Grandma's sweater, and told Bob to behave himself and not eat any of the furniture. Rex was buried under a mound of shavings, sleeping off his piece of pie. All was well in the Stephanie Plum household.

I drove directly to Hannibal's town house. It was eight o'clock, and the place looked like no one was home, but then it always looked like no one was home. I parked two streets over, got out of the car, and walked to the back of the house. No light shining from any of the windows. I climbed the tree and looked down into Hannibal's yard. Totally dark. I dropped out of the tree and retraced my steps on the bike path, thinking this was very spooky. Black trees and bushes. No moon overhead to light the way. Only the occasional streak of light spilling from a window.

Wouldn't want to meet a bad guy out here. Not Munson. Not Hannibal Ramos. Maybe not even Ranger… although he was bad in a very intriguing way.

I moved the car to the end of Hannibal's block, where I had better visibility. I pushed the seat back, locked the doors, and watched and waited.

It didn't take long for waiting to get old. To pass the time, I dialed Morelli on my cell phone. "Guess who?" I said.

"Is Grandma gone?"

"No. I'm working, and she's home with Bob."

"Bob?"

"Brian Simon's dog. I'm baby-sitting him while Simon's on vacation."

"Simon's not on vacation. I saw him today."

"What?"

"I can't believe you fell for that vacation scam," Morelli said. "Simon's been trying to pawn that dog off ever since he got him."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know he was gonna give you the dog."

I narrowed my eyes at the phone. "Are you laughing? Is that laughter I hear?"

"No. I swear."

But it was laughter. The rat was laughing.

"This is no laughing matter," I said. "What am I going to do with a dog?"

"I thought you always wanted a dog."

"Well, yeah… someday. But not now! And the dog howls. He doesn't like being left alone."

"Where are you?" Morelli asked.

"It's a secret."

"Christ, you aren't staking out Hannibal's house again, are you?"

"Nope. I'm not doing that."

"I have a cake," he said. "Do you want to come over and have some cake?"

"You're lying. You don't have a cake."

"I could get one."

"I'm not saying I'm staking out Hannibal's house, but if I was, do you think there'd be any value to it?"

"As far as I can tell, Ranger has a handful of people he trusts, and he has those people watching the Ramos family. I've spotted someone at Homer's house in Hunterdon County, and I know there's someone in place in Deal. He's got you sitting over there on Fenwood. I don't know what he expects to find, but my guess is, he knows where he's going. He has information about this crime that we don't have."

"Doesn't look like there's anyone home, here," I said.

"Alexander's in town, so Hannibal has probably moved into the south wing of the Deal house." Morelli let a beat go by. "Probably Ranger's got you sitting there because it's safe. Make you feel like you're doing something, so you don't stumble into a more important surveillance situation. Probably you should give up on it and come over to my house."

"Nice try, but I don't think so."

"It was worth a shot," Morelli said.

We disconnected, and I hunkered in to do my surveillance thing. Probably Morelli was right, and Hannibal was living at the shore. There was only one way to find out: watch and wait. By twelve o'clock Hannibal still hadn't appeared. My feet were cold, and I was sick of sitting in the car. I got out and stretched. A final check of the back, and then I was going home.

I walked the bike path with my pepper spray held in my hand. It was stygian. No lights anywhere. Everyone was in bed. I got to Hannibal's back door and looked up at his windows. Cold, dark glass. I was about to leave when I heard the muffled sound of a toilet flushing. No question which house the sound emanated from Hannibal's. A chill raced the length of my spine. Someone was living in the dark, in Hannibal's house. I stood dead still, barely breathing, listening with every molecule of my body. There were no more sounds, and no further sign of life in the house. I didn't know what this meant, but I was totally creeped out. I scurried down the path, crossed the grass to the car, and took off.

REX WAS RUNNING on the wheel when I walked in the door, and Bob ran up to me, eyes bright, panting in anticipation of a pat on the head and possible food. I said hello to Rex and gave him a raisin. Then I gave a couple raisins to Bob, making him wag his tail so hard the whole back half of his body whipped side to side.

I set the box of raisins on the counter and went to the bathroom, and when I returned the raisins were gone. Only a slobbery, mangled corner of the box remained.

"You have an eating disorder," I said to Bob. "And take it from someone who knows, compulsive eating isn't the way to go. Before you know it your skin won't fit."

Grandma had set a pillow and blanket out for me in the living room. I kicked my shoes off, crawled under the blanket, and was asleep in seconds.

I woke up feeling tired and disoriented. I looked at my watch. Two o'clock. I squinted into the darkness. "Ranger?"

"What's with the dog?"

"I'm baby-sitting. Guess he's not much of a watchdog."

"He would have opened the door if he could have found the key."

"I know it's not that hard to pick a lock, but how do you get past the security chain?"

"Trade secret."

"I'm in the trade."

Ranger handed me a large envelope. "Check out these pictures and tell me who you recognize."

I sat up, switched the table lamp on, and opened the envelope. I identified Alexander Ramos and Hannibal. There were also photos of Ulysses and Homer Ramos and two first cousins. All four were very much alike; each could have been the man I saw standing in the doorway of the Deal house. Except, of course, Homer, who was dead. There was another woman, photographed with Homer Ramos. She was small and blond and smiling. Homer had his arm around her, and he was smiling back.

"Who's this?" I asked.

"Homer's latest girlfriend. Her name's Cynthia Lotte. She works downtown. Receptionist for someone you know."

"Omigod! Now I recognize her. She works for my exhusband."

"Yeah," Ranger said. "Small world."

I told Ranger about the town house being dark, with no sign of life, and then the toilet flushing.

"What does that mean?" I asked Ranger.

"It means someone's in the house."

"Hannibal?"

"Hannibal's in Deal."

Ranger snapped the table lamp off and stood. He was wearing a black T-shirt, black Gore-Tex windbreaker, and black cargo pants tucked into black boots, army style. The well-dressed urban commando. I could guarantee that any man facing him in a blind alley would have an empty scrotum, his most prized possessions gone north. And any woman would be licking dry lips and checking to make sure all her buttons were buttoned. He looked down at me, hands in pockets, his face barely visible in the dark room.

"Would you be willing to visit your ex and check out Cynthia Lotte?"

"Sure. Anything else?"

He smiled, and when he answered his voice was soft. "Not with your grandmother in the next room."

Eek.

When Ranger left I slid the security chain in place and flopped back onto the couch, thrashing around, thinking erotic thoughts. No doubt about it. I was a hopeless slut. I looked heavenward, only the ceiling got in the way. "It's all hormones," I said to Whoever might be listening. "It's not my fault. I have too many hormones."

I got up and drank a glass of orange juice. After the orange juice I returned to the couch and thrashed around some more because Grandma was snoring so loud I was afraid she'd suck her tongue down her throat and choke to death.

"ISN'T THIS A pip of a morning!" Grandma said, on her way to the kitchen. "I feel like having some pie!"

I checked my watch. Six-thirty. I dragged myself off the couch and into the bathroom where I stood under the shower for a long time, sullen and bitchy. When I got out of the shower I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink. I had a big zit on my chin. Well, isn't this just great. I have to go see my ex-husband with a zit on my chin. Probably God's punishment for last night's mental lusting.

I thought about the.38 in the cookie jar. I made a fist, thumb up, index finger extended. I put the index finger to my temple and said, "Bang."

I dressed myself up in an outfit like Ranger's. Black T-shirt, black cargo pants, black boots. Big zit on my face. I looked like an idiot. I took the black T-shirt and pants and boots off and stuffed myself into a white T-shirt, topped with a plaid flannel shirt and a pair of Levi's with a small hole in the crotch which I convinced myself no one could see. This was an outfit for someone with a zit.

Grandma was reading the paper when I came out of the bedroom.

"Where'd you get the paper?" I asked.

"Borrowed it from that nice man across the hall. Only he don't know it yet."

Grandma was a fast learner.

"I don't have another driving lesson until tomorrow, so Louise and me are going to look at some condos today. I've been checking out the job situation too, and it looks to me like there's lots of good stuff. There's jobs for cooks and cleaning people and makeup ladies and car salesmen."

"If you could have any job in the world, what would you choose?"

"That's easy. I'd be a movie star."

"You'd make a good one," I said.

"Of course, I'd want to be a leading lady. Some of my parts have started to sag, but my legs are still pretty good."

I looked at Grandma's legs sticking out from under her dress. I guess everything is relative.

Bob was standing at the door with his knees together, so I clipped his leash on him and we headed out. Look at this, I thought, I'm getting exercise first thing in the morning. Probably after two weeks of Bob I'll be so skinny I'll have to buy all new clothes. And the fresh air is good for my pimple, too. Hell, it might even cure it. Maybe the pimple will be gone by the time I get back to the apartment.

Bob and I were walking along at a pretty good rate. We rounded the corner and swung into the lot, and there were Habib and Mitchell, waiting for me in a ten-year-old Dodge totally upholstered in chartreuse broadloom. A neon sign on the top of the car advertised Art's Carpet's. It made the wind machine look tasteful.

"Holy cow," I said. "What is this?"

"It was all that was available on short notice," Mitchell said. "And I wouldn't make a big deal out of it if I was you, because it's a sensitive topic. And not to change the subject, or anything, but we're getting impatient. We don't want to freak you out, but we're gonna have to do something real mean if you don't deliver your boyfriend pretty soon."

"Is that a threat?"

"Well, yeah, sure," Mitchell said. "It's a threat."

Habib was behind the wheel, wearing a large foam whiplash collar. He gave a small nod of acknowledgment.

"We're professionals," Mitchell said. "You don't want to be fooled by our pleasant demeanor."

"Just so," Habib said.

"Are you going to follow me around today?" I asked.

"That's the plan," Mitchell said. "I hope you're gonna do something interesting. I don't feel like spending the day at the mall lookin' at ladies' shoes. Like we said, our boss is getting antsy."

"Why does your boss want Ranger?"

"Ranger has something that belongs to him, and he'd like to discuss the matter. You could tell him that."

I suspected that discussing the matter might involve a fatal accident. "I'll pass it along if I happen to hear from him."

"You tell him he just gives back what he's got and everyone's gonna be happy. Bygones will be bygones. No hard feelings."

"Uh-huh. Well, I've got to be running along now. I'll see you guys later."

"When you come back to the parking lot I would appreciate your bringing me an aspirin," Habib said. "I am suffering with this neck whiplashing."

"I don't know about you," I said to Bob when we got in the elevator, "but I'm sort of freaked out."

Grandma was reading the comics to Rex when I came in. Bob sidled up to join in the fun, and I took the phone into the living room to call Brian Simon.

Simon answered on the third ring. " 'Lo."

"That was a short trip," I said.

"Who's this?"

"It's Stephanie."

"How'd you get my number? I have an unlisted number."

"It's printed on your dog's collar."

"Oh."

"So I imagine now that you're home, you're going to be around to get Bob."

"I'm kind of busy today-"

"No problem. I'll drop him off. Where do you live?"

A moment of silence. "Okay, here's the thing," Simon said. "I don't actually want Bob back."

"He's your dog!"

"Not anymore. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. You have the food. You have the pooper-scooper. You have the dog. Listen, he's a nice dog, but I don't have time for him. And he makes my nose run. I think I'm allergic."

"I think you're a jerk."

Simon sighed. "You're not the first woman to tell me that."

"I can't keep him here. He howls when I leave."

"Don't I know it. And if you leave him alone he eats the furniture."

"What? What do you mean, he eats the furniture?"

"Forget I said that. I didn't mean to say that. He doesn't actually eat the furniture. I mean, chewing isn't really eating. And not that he even chews. Oh, shit," Simon said. "Good luck." And he hung up. I redialed, but he wouldn't answer.

I returned the phone to the kitchen and gave Bob his breakfast bowl of dog crunchies. I poured a cup of coffee and ate a chunk of pie. There was one piece of pie left so I gave it to Bob. "You don't eat furniture, do you?" I asked.

Grandma was hunkered down in front of the television, watching the Weather Channel. "Don't worry about supper tonight," she said. "We can have leftover balls."

I gave her a thumbs-up, but she was concentrating on the weather in Cleveland and didn't see me.

"Well, I guess I'll go out now," I said.

Grandma nodded.

Grandma looked all rested. And I felt all done in. I wasn't getting enough sleep. The late-night visits and the snoring were taking a toll on me. I dragged myself out of the apartment and down the hall. My eyes drooped closed while I waited for the elevator.

"I'm exhausted," I said to Bob. "I need more sleep."

I drove to my parents' house and Bob and I trooped in. My mother was in the kitchen, humming as she put together an apple pie.

"This must be Bob," she said. "Your grandmother told me you had a dog."

Bob ran over to my mother.

"No!" I yelled. "Don't you dare!"

Bob stopped two feet from my mother and looked back at me.

"You know what I'm talking about," I said to Bob.

"What a well-mannered dog," my mother said.

I stole a chunk of apple from the pie. "Did Grandma also tell you she snores, and she's up at the crack of dawn, and she watches the Weather Channel for hours on end?" I poured myself a cup of coffee. "Help," I said to the coffee.

"She's probably taking a couple nips before bed," my mother said. "She always snores after she's belted back a few."

"That can't be it. I don't have any liquor in the house."

"Look in the closet. That's where she usually keeps it. I clean bottles out of her closet all the time."

"You mean she buys it herself and hides it in the closet?"

"It's not hidden in the closet. That's just where she keeps it."

"Are you telling me Grandma's an alcoholic?"

"No, of course not. She just tipples a little. She says it helps get her to sleep."

Maybe that was my problem. Maybe I should be tippling. Trouble is, I throw up when I tipple too much. And once I start tippling it's hard to tell when it's too much until it's too late. One tipple always seems to lead to another.

The kitchen heat washed over me and soaked into the flannel shirt, and I felt like the pie, sitting in the oven, steaming. I struggled out of the flannel shirt, put my head down on the table, and fell asleep. I had a dream that it was summer, and I was baking on the beach in Point Pleasant. Hot sand under me, and hot sun above me. And my skin all brown and crispy like pie crust. When I woke up the pie was out of the oven, and the house smelled like heaven. And my mother had ironed my shirt.

"Do you ever eat the dessert first?" I asked my mother.

She looked at me dumbfounded. As if I'd asked whether she ritually sacrificed cats every Wednesday at the stroke of midnight.

"Suppose you were home alone," I said, "and there was a strawberry shortcake in the refrigerator and a meatloaf in the oven. Which would you eat first?"

My mother thought about it for a minute, her eyes wide. "I can't remember ever eating dinner alone. I can't even imagine it."

I buttoned myself into the shirt and slipped into my denim jacket. "I have to go. I have work to do."

"You could come to dinner tomorrow night," my mother said. "You could bring your grandmother and Joseph. I'm making a pork roast and mashed potatoes."

"Okay, but I don't know about Joe."

I got to the front door and saw that the carpet car was parked behind the Buick.

"Now what?" my mother asked. "Who are those men in that weird car?"

"Habib and Mitchell."

"Why are they parked here?"

"They're following me, but don't worry about it. They're okay."

"What do you mean, 'Don't worry about it'? What kind of thing is that to say to a mother. Of course, I'll worry about it. They look like thugs." My mother pushed past me, walked up to the car, and rapped on the window.

The window slid down and Mitchell looked out at my mother. "How ya doin?" he asked.

"Why are you following my daughter?"

"Did she tell you we're following her? She shouldn't have done that. We don't like to worry mothers."

"I have a gun in the house, and I'll use it if I have to," my mother said.

"Jeez, lady, you don't have to get your panties all in a bunch," Mitchell said. "What is it with this family? Everybody's always so hostile. We're just following your kid around a little."

"I have your license plate number," my mother said. "If anything happens to my daughter I'll tell the police all about you."

Mitchell pressed the window button and his window slid closed.

"You don't really have a gun, do you?" I asked my mother.

"I just said that to throw a scare into them."

"Hmm. Well, thanks. I'm sure I'll be okay now."

"Your father could pull some strings and get you a good job at the Personal Products plant," my mother said. "Evelyn Nagy's girl is working there, and she gets three weeks' paid vacation."

I tried to visualize Wonder Woman working the line at the Personal Products plant, but the picture wouldn't finetune. "I don't know," I said. "I don't think I have a future in Personal Products." I got into Big Blue and waved goodbye to my mother.

She gave Mitchell one last warning glare and returned to her house.

"She's going through the change," I said to Bob. "She gets excited. Nothing to worry about."