Smokin' Seventeen

We unloaded Regina, I got my body receipt from the docket lieutenant, and we headed back to my apartment.

“We should stop and get a bottle of wine to go with dinner,” Lula said. “There’s a wine store on the next block. I shopped there before, and they got a good selection of cheap wines.”

I parked in the small lot attached to the store, and Lula and I walked up and down the aisles until Lula found one she liked.

“I buy wine according to the bottle design,” Lula said. “After I get down the first glass it all tastes okay to me, so I figure you go for something classy to look at on the table.”

In this case it was a bottle of cabernet with a picture of a guy in a black cape on it. The guy was either Zorro or Dracula.

We were at the register about to pay when the door opened, a big guy rushed in and pulled out a Glock.

“This is a holdup,” he said. “Nobody move.”

He was about six feet tall, built chunky, was wearing a black ski mask, and he had a big bandage on his foot.

Lula leaned forward and squinted at him. “Merlin?”

“Yuh.”

“What the heck are you doing?”

“I’m robbing the store.”

“Good Lord, man, don’t you have anything better to do?”

“I already did that. Now I feel like having a bottle of wine.”

“So why don’t you buy one. They got wine here for three dollars.”

“I don’t have no money. I don’t have a job.”

“What about unemployment?”

“I already spent my unemployment check. I had to make a car payment. And my television got busted, so I had to buy a new one. Those flat screens don’t come cheap, you know. And now that I’m home all the time, being I don’t have a job, I gotta have a decent television to watch.”

“I see what you’re saying.”

“Anyways I figure’d I’d rob a store. This way I get a bottle of wine and some money to tide me over for the week.”

“Yes, but we know who you are now,” I said to him.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s a bummer. ’Course I’m already wanted for armed robbery, so maybe it’s no big deal.”

“What kind of wine do you like?” Lula asked him.

“Red. I already stole a steak from Shop and Bag. I’m gonna have a real nice dinner tonight.” He looked at the bottle of wine in Lula’s hand. “That looks good. Hand it over.”

“No way,” Lula said. “I got the last bottle of this wine. Go find your own damn wine.”

Merlin pointed the gun at her. “Give me the wine, or I’ll shoot you.”

Lula narrowed her eyes and stomped on his bandaged foot with one of her Louboutins.

“Yow!” Merlin said, doubling over. “Fuck!”

Lula cracked him on the head with her bottle of wine, and Merlin went down like a sack of sand.

“This is my day,” Lula said. “Not only did I find this fine bottle of wine, but I just foiled a robbery.”

Merlin was out cold. Probably a kindness considering the way his foot must be feeling. I kicked his gun away and cuffed him. Lula paid for her wine, and the clerk helped us drag Merlin out to my car. We got a guy on the street to give us a hand, and we managed to shove Merlin into my backseat.

“I told you it was gonna be like this,” Lula said. “When it rains it pours.”

By the time we got to the station Merlin’s eyes were open, and he was moaning.

“How’d he get this big lump on his head?” the docket lieutenant wanted to know.

“He hit himself on the head with a bottle of wine,” I said. “It was one of those freak accidents.”

TWENTY-FIVE

LULA AND I went back to Connie at my place. We pushed Connie’s computer and stacks of files to the side and took the food and bottle of wine to the dining room table.

Lula poured wine for everyone and raised her glass. “Here’s a toast. When it rains it pours.”

We drank to that, and we dug in.

“This is delicious,” Connie said. “He’s a really good cook.”

Lula spooned out more casserole and looked over at me. “You should marry him. You could have perfectly good sex all by yourself, but you’ll never be able to cook this good.”

Connie agreed. “She has a point. If you don’t want to marry him, maybe I’ll marry him.”

“If I married Ranger I could have good sex and good food,” I said. “Ranger has Ella.”

Connie paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Does Ranger want to marry you?”

“No.”

“So that would be a problem,” Connie said.

I made a conscious effort not to sigh. I’d been doing a lot of sighing lately. “Sometimes Joe wants to marry me.”

Connie and Lula looked at me. Hopeful.

“Can he cook?” Connie asked.

“No,” I said. “Mostly he dials food. But he dials really good pizza and meatball subs.”

“I might go with Dave,” Lula said. “Someday you’ll be old, and you won’t want sex anymore, but you’ll always want food.”

“This is true,” Connie said. “I vote for Dave.”

“I love these little corn muffins,” Lula said. “These are outstanding muffins.”

By the time we were done we’d eaten the entire batch of muffins, and there wasn’t a lot of Tex-Mex Fiesta left either.

“What about dessert?” Lula wanted to know.

“That last muffin was my dessert,” Connie said. “I’m packing up and going home.”

Lula carted her plate to the kitchen. “I’m thinking I need ice cream.”

I looked in my freezer to see if ice cream had magically been deposited. Nope. No ice cream.

“I have to drive you back to your car,” I told Lula. “We can stop on the way for ice cream.”

“If we go to Cluck-in-a-Bucket I can get soft-serve. I like when they mix the vanilla and chocolate and put them chocolate sprinkles on top.”

We stacked everything in the sink, I gave Rex a chunk of muffin I’d set aside for him, and Lula and I locked up and headed out. I’m pretty good at walking in heels, but Lula is the champion. Lula can go all day in five-inch spikes. I think she must have no nerve endings in her feet.

“How do you walk in those shoes for hours on end?” I asked her.

“I can do it on account of I’m a balanced body type,” she said, hustling across the lot to my Escort. “I got perfect weight distribution between my boobs and my booty.”

I drove down Hamilton, past the construction site with Mooner’s bus parked curbside, and pulled into the Cluck-in-a-Bucket parking lot. Lula went inside to get her ice cream, and I stayed behind to take a call from Morelli.

“I just got rid of Terry,” he said. “I have some paperwork to clear out, and then I’m done. I thought I’d stop by.”

“How did it go with Terry?”

“It was a big zero,” Morelli said. “She didn’t recognize the killer. And she couldn’t find a connection between Juki Beck and Lou Dugan. But just so it wasn’t a complete waste of my time she wore a little skirt that had Roger Jackson falling out of his seat across the room.”

“And you?”

“I couldn’t get a really good look from where I was sitting. Not to change the subject, but I spoke to Jerry about Belmen. Jerry picked up on the gun, too. And turns out the gun belonged to the bartender. Jerry went out to talk to him, and the charges have been dropped. Connie should be getting the paperwork tomorrow.”

“Let me take a guess. The bartender shot himself.”

“Yeah, it was an accident, but he thought it wouldn’t play well with the ladies, so he pinned it on Belmen. He figured Belmen was so drunk he wouldn’t know what the hell happened.”

“So I’m off the hook with the bear.”

“Looks that way. Maybe you want to think about getting a different job. Something with better work conditions … like roach extermination or hazardous waste collection.”

“You sound like my mother.”

“After I talked to you earlier I did some checking, and found out that Jimmy Alpha’s brother just got out of prison on an early parole. Until last month he’d been locked away on racketeering charges. I’m told there’s a strong resemblance.”

“Do you think he’d have ties to Lou Dugan?”

“I’m on it.”

“I have to go. Lula’s here with her ice cream.”

“I got an idea,” Lula said, getting into the Escort. “We should hunt down Ziggy while we got all this good juju. We’re so hot with juju right now you could probably walk up to Ziggy and he’d come without a fuss.”

“Are you sure you want to go after Ziggy without your garlic?”

“I could chance it. I’ve been carrying a cross in my pocketbook as backup.”

I motored onto Hamilton and told Lula about Jimmy Alpha’s brother.

“I should have thought of him,” Lula said. “Nick Alpha. He was a bad guy. He had his hand in lots of stuff. You didn’t ho on Stark Street without knowing Nick Alpha. He might not be happy with you for killing his baby brother.”

I turned into the Burg, meandered around, and hit Kreiner Street. The sun had set and streetlights were on. A sliver of moon hung in the sky over the housetops, and light poured from downstairs windows … with the exception of Ziggy’s house. Ziggy’s house was dark.

“He could be in there,” Lula said. “He got those black curtains closed so you can’t tell what’s going on.”

“His car isn’t parked in front of his house.”

“It could be in his garage.”

“He doesn’t have a garage,” I said.

Lula worked at her cone. She’d gotten the giant enormous size and had whittled it down to extra large. “Maybe he sold the car.”

I was parked directly across the street from Ziggy, and my gut told me Ziggy wasn’t home. Ziggy liked to step out at night. When the sun went down Ziggy went bowling, he played bingo, he did his grocery shopping.

Lula leaned forward. “Did you see that? There’s something moving alongside Ziggy’s house. Someone’s creeping along over there.”

I squinted into the darkness. “I don’t see anything.”

“On the right side of his house. He’s coming to the front. It’s Ziggy!”

Lula wrenched the door open, hurled herself out of the car, and took off. She was running flat out in her five-inch heels, and she was still holding her ice cream cone.

I saw the man stand straight when Lula charged him. He was Ziggy’s height and build, but he was lost in shadow. He turned and ran, and Lula ran after him. I grabbed the keys and ran after Lula.

Hard to believe it was Ziggy. Ziggy was seventy-two years old. He was in decent shape for his age, but this man from the shadows was really moving. They disappeared behind a house, and I followed the sound of stampeding footsteps. I heard someone shriek and grunt, and then a thud. I rounded a corner and almost fell over Lula. She was sitting on some poor guy who was facedown in a flower bed, and she was still holding her ice cream.

The guy looked up at me and mouthed help.

“Good grief,” I said to Lula. “That’s not Ziggy. Get off the poor man.”

“It used to be Ziggy,” Lula said. “I caught a look at him in the moonlight, and I saw fangs.”

“To begin with, there’s hardly any moonlight tonight.”

“Well it was some kind of light. It glinted off his fangs.”

“Is this a mugging?” the man asked. “Are you going to rob me? I don’t have any money.”

Lula rolled off, and I helped him to his feet. “Mistaken identity,” I said. “Sorry you got tackled.”

He brushed dirt off his shirt. “I can’t believe she caught me in those heels.”

“Why did you run?”

“I was searching for my cat, and I saw this big, crazy woman barreling across the road at me. Anyone would run.”

Lula narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean big woman? You think I’m fat or something?”

Even in total darkness I could see the guy go pale.

“N-n-no,” he said, taking a couple steps back.

I marched Lula back to Ziggy’s house, and we prowled around and knocked on doors. There was nothing to indicate anyone was home, and the key was gone from its hiding place. We returned to the Escort, and we sat for a while longer doing house surveillance.

Lula finished her ice cream, texted everyone she knew, and reorganized her purse. When she was done reorganizing she plugged an ear bud into her ear and dialed into music on her smartphone.

She tapped her nails on the dash and sang along. “Rox-annnnnne.”

“Hey.”

She sang louder. “You don’t have to put on the red light.”

“HEY!”

She pulled out an earbud. “What?”

“You’re driving me nuts with the tapping and the singing. Can’t you just listen?”

“I’m trying to occupy myself. I can’t sit here anymore. My ass is asleep, and I gotta tinkle.”

I rolled the engine over and drove Lula to her car.

“See you tomorrow,” she said. “And I’m still not convinced that wasn’t Ziggy. Vampires are known for being sneaky.”

She’d parked on Hamilton, behind Mooner’s bus. The construction trailer was no longer there. Presumably moved to improve visibility from the road and make the lot less appealing as a burial ground. I idled at the curb for a moment, staring across the scarred earth to the alley and the fence on the far side. The crime scene tape had been removed, but the chilling memory of the video remained. In my mind I could see the car drive onto the lot, and I could see the killer dump the body. It wasn’t a vision I enjoyed replaying. It sent tendrils of fear and horror curling along my spine. Three people had been murdered. And the unshakable feeling that I knew the killer burned in my chest. I put Nick Alpha in the overalls and Frankenstein mask. He was a possibility. I hit the automatic door locks and left the scene.

TWENTY-SIX

MORELLI AND BOB were waiting for me when I got home.

“I finished off whatever was in the casserole dish in the refrigerator,” Morelli said. “Were you serious about Dave Brewer cooking?”

I dropped my bag on the kitchen counter and tapped on Rex’s cage by way of greeting. “Yeah. He likes to cook, and his mom doesn’t want him in her kitchen, so he mooches kitchens. He didn’t stay to eat. He just wanted to cook. I guess it relaxes him.”

“He never struck me as someone who needed to relax. From what I remember he never looked stressed. He played football like it was a walk in the park.”

“Everyone loves him. Lula, Connie, my mom, my grandmother.”

Morelli leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. Serious. “And you?”

“Not so much. His mother said he was framed in Atlanta. What do you think?”

“It’s possible. He could have taken a bullet for someone else. Or he could have been encouraged to operate in a gray area. Or he could have been fed bad information.”

“Or he could have been guilty?”

“Yeah, that, too. I checked on him. He had a good lawyer, and several people who were supposed to testify had a lastminute lapse of memory. And two other bank officials who were also accused of crimes took off for parts unknown.”

“I didn’t know any of that.”

“It wasn’t a hot ticket item with the press, but the whole deal was messy, at best.”

We wandered into the living room to watch TV and stood looking at Bob. He was sprawled on the couch, feet in the air, sound asleep.

“There’s no room for us,” I said to Morelli.

He hooked a finger into the neckline of my shirt and pulled me into the bedroom. “Guess we’ll have to find some other way to occupy our time.” He wrangled me out of my shirt and bra. He moved on to my jeans, got them to my knees and stopped. “What the hell?”

I followed his eyes to my granny panties.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“Cupcake, complicated is your middle name.” He tugged my jeans entirely off and went for the granny panties. “It’s a good thing I’m Italian with a strong sex drive. A normal man would walk away from this.”

“It’s all your grandmother’s fault. She put the vordo on me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t care if she put vordo, peanut butter, or mayo on you. These pants should get burned and buried.”

Morelli stripped the pants off me and flipped them out of the bedroom.

“Vordo is a spell,” I told him. “Your grandmother put a spell on me.”

“She’s a crazy old lady. Spells are her hobby.”

“It’s a bad hobby.”

“It’s harmless,” Morelli said. “Spells aren’t real.”

“Then how do you explain this huge pimple on my forehead?”

“Doughnuts?”

Okay, call me overly sensitive, but I’d just had my underwear insulted and been told I got a monster zit from eating doughnuts. Not stuff a naked woman wants to hear. Especially if it has some merit. I leaned forward, feet apart for stability, hand on hip, eyes narrowed, wisps of smoke possibly curling off my scalp. “Excuse me?”

“Shit,” Morelli said. “You look really hot like that.”

I felt my eyes almost pop out of their sockets and my arms were involuntarily waving in the air. “I’m having a fit of outrage, and you’re still thinking about sex? What the heck is wrong with you?”

“I can’t help it. I’m in launch mode. And if you want me to calm down you need to stop waving your arms and jiggling your breasts in my face.”

“I’m not jiggling my breasts in your face. My breasts are way over here, and your face is way over there.”

“That could change.”

“I don’t think so. I’m getting dressed.” I looked around. “Where are my clothes?”

Morelli looked into the living room. “Uh oh.”

I followed his line of sight. Bob was off the couch, sitting in front of the television, eating my underwear.

“Drop them,” I said to Bob. “This instant!”

Bob jumped up and ran into the kitchen with what was left of the granny panties.

“No problem,” Morelli said. “He’s eaten worse. He ate an entire couch once. Not that this was a small meal. There’s enough material in those bloomers to cover a Volkswagen.”

“Are you comparing my ass to a Volkswagen?”

“I’m going to count to ten and we’re going to start over,” Morelli said. “It’ll go smoother this time since you’re already naked.”

Good lord, what the heck was I doing? I was deliberately picking a fight with Morelli. The granny pants hadn’t worked and now I was resorting to a breakup fight.

“Hold it,” I said. “Don’t move.”

I went to my closet, wrapped myself in a robe and returned to Morelli.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I’m confused. I’m getting relationship pressure from my mother. I’ve possibly got a curse put on me by your grandmother. And I might have a bladder infection.”

“I can deal,” Morelli said. “Go to the doctor. Drink cranberry juice. And do whatever you have to do to unconfuse yourself. I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”

I was relieved that he was so understanding, but disappointed that he didn’t put up more of a fight to stay.

• • •

I opened my eyes and squinted at the clock. It was almost nine in the morning. The day had started without me. I dragged myself out of bed and stood in the shower until the water ran cold. I got dressed and spent some quality time with Rex while I ate a bowl of cereal, and he ran on his wheel. I brushed my teeth, pulled my hair back into a ponytail, and grabbed my bag. I opened the door to leave and almost ran over Grandma Bella, who was in the hall, in front of my door. She put her finger to her eye and cackled.

I jumped back, slammed the door shut, and locked it. I hauled my phone out of my bag and called Morelli.

“Your Grandma Bella is here,” I told him. “She’s out in the hall.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Scary old Italian lady dressed in black, right?”

“She doesn’t drive. How would she get there?”

“Maybe she took a cab. Hell, maybe she flew on a broom.”

“Why?”

“She’s stalking me! Everybody is stalking me!”

“Okay, let me talk to her.”

I opened the door and Bella was gone. No sign of her anywhere.

“She’s gone,” I said to Morelli.

“Thank God for small favors. Are you wearing another pair of those giant underpants?”

“No. I’m wearing a red lace thong.”

“Are you sure that’s the best thing for a bladder infection?”

“I feel okay this morning. I think the infection went away.”

“One less thing to worry about,” Morelli said.

“How’s Bob?”

“He’s fine. He gakked the pants up at 2 a.m. Do you want them back?”

• • •

I hurried out to my car, drove to the bonds office empty lot, and parked behind Mooner’s bus. Connie, Lula, and Vinnie were already there, parked farther up the street. There were no crime scene vans, no cop cars, no coroner’s meat wagon, no satellite television trucks. Woohoo, a day without a murder. I was hugely relieved.

The door to the bus was open, shades were up, and light poured out. I stuck my head in and looked around. “What’s going on?”

“I’m taking charge,” Connie said. “The womb decor isn’t working. I’ve got Uncle Jimmy and two cousins coming today. We’re going to rip out everything black and replace it with something that doesn’t make me want to kill myself.”

Mooner was texting on his phone.

“Hey,” I said to him.

“Peace,” Mooner said.

Vinnie was in a chair, hunched over his computer. “This business is crappin’ out. Nobody’s calling. We’re not getting any bonds. It’s like we don’t exist anymore.”

“Maybe you gotta move away from this lot,” Lula said. “It’s probably leaking death cooties and ruining our usual good juju.”

“Harry wants us here. He doesn’t want to have to change our address in his iPhone. So I got an idea. I figure it’s that we have to advertise. People see the empty lot they think we closed up shop.”

“What kind of advertising you gonna do?” Lula asked.

“Signs and stuff. Last week I got in touch with a company that specializes in promoting brands. They’re making me a jingle so I can advertise on the radio. And they’re going to put a sign on the bus today.”

“A sign for the bus is a good idea,” Lula said. “That’s a step in the right direction.”

“Yeah, and I had some flyers made up. You girls can put them up all over town. Especially in the high-crime areas, like Stark Street.”

“Who all’s included in you girls?” Lula asked. “Because I don’t get paid for littering public property with shit.” She took one of the flyers from him and looked at it. “Wait, this here’s a picture of me.”

“Yeah, the branding company made them up. They thought we needed the personal touch, so they used pictures of you and Stephanie in the ad.”

“That’s a whole different thing then,” Lula said. “This is a real flattering picture. I’m wearing one of my favorite outfits. I’d be happy to staple myself around town. I might even get some modeling jobs from this. This is a good showcase for my talents.”

I snatched the flyer out of her hand. It was Lula and me all right. She was wearing a super low-cut gold sequin tank top showing a lot of squished-together boob, a short poison green skirt, and five-inch gold platform heels. I was wearing the exact same outfit. The headline read: If You’re Bad We’ll Send our Girls out to Get You.

I was speechless. My mouth was open but only little squeaks were coming out.

“You didn’t look that good in any of your pictures,” Vinnie said. “So they did some digital enhancement. They gave you new clothes and bigger hooters.”

I shook my head. “No, no, no, no.”

“My way or the highway,” Vinnie said. “If we don’t get a rush of phone calls from locked-up losers soon, you’re gonna be panhandling for gas money.”

He was right. This was one of the many problems with my job. I don’t get a salary. I make money by capturing skips. If there are no skips to catch, my paycheck is zero. Currently my only outstanding skip was Ziggy, and he wasn’t exactly a big-ticket item.

I grabbed a staple gun off the table and rammed it into my bag. “Fine. Great. Give me a stack of the stupid flyers.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

BANG! BANG! LULA STAPLED a flyer to a telephone pole on lower Stark Street, and I pulled out a black Magic Marker and colored my face in.

“Vinnie’s not gonna like that,” Lula said. “You should at least put a happy face on it.”

“Not in this lifetime.”

“Boy, you sure are in a cranky mood. I bet it’s the granny panties. You didn’t get any last night, right? And now you’re all cranky.”

“The granny panties didn’t work. Morelli ripped them off, and the dog ate them.”

BANG! BANG! Lula put up another flyer. “I guess granny panties are no match for the vordo. That’s a powerful spell you got put on you.”

I colored my face in. “The truth is I don’t believe in spells, and yet her spells seem to be working.”

“Maybe you just got a high rate of coincidence. Like you got coincidence mojo.”

We were standing in front of a small grocery store. The door crashed open, and a skinny guy in baggy clothes and too big shoes burst out and smashed into Lula. He had a gun in one hand and a fistful of money in the other. He knocked into her square in the chest, and BANG! she stapled him. He shrieked, spun around, ran into the street, and got hit by an Escalade. The Escalade punted the guy to the curb, and kept rolling down the street as if nothing unusual had happened.

“What the hell,” Lula said.

Some street people and wasted kids scurried out of the shadows like roaches when the lights go off, and in the blink of an eye the money and the gun had new homes. Lula handed everyone a flyer and the street people and kids disappeared back into the shadows.

An old man ran out of the grocery store. “I called the police,” he said, waving his cell phone. “I’ve been held up four times this week.” He looked at the guy lying in the road. “What happened?”

“He got hit by a Escalade,” Lula said. “Then he got robbed.”

The old man walked over to the guy in the road and gave him a good hard kick. “Dog turd,” the old man said. He turned and stomped back into his store, and on the way Lula handed him a flyer.

Lula and I went over to the guy in the road.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

He opened his eyes. “Do I look okay, bitch?”

“Sorry about the staple,” Lula said. “It was one of them reflex things.”

A Trenton police car rolled to a stop and two uniforms got out and looked down at the guy in the road.

“Hey Eddie,” one of the cops said. “How’s it going?”

“I got robbed. This neighborhood is a crap hole.”

The old man reappeared. “He got robbed of my money. This is the fourth time this week. I hate this man. He’s a dog turd.”

Lula gave Eddie a flyer. “Call Vinnie and he’ll have you out in no time. And if you save your flyer I’ll autograph it for you.”

We covered two more blocks with flyers and returned to my car. It still had wheels, but someone had spray painted DIE BITCH on it. I looked across the street, and saw Nick Alpha standing in a doorway. He was staring at me, unsmiling, smoking a cigarette. He made his hand into a gun, pointed it at me and mouthed bang. Then he turned and walked away.

“Holy crap,” I said to Lula. “Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Nick Alpha!”

“Where?”

“He’s gone.”

“I’m feeling funny,” Lula said, looking at herself in the visor mirror. “I think my teeth are growing. Look at my teeth. Are my fang teeth getting pointy? I know they’re longer than they were yesterday. I think the vampire cooties are taking hold of me.”

“I think the nut cooties are taking hold of you.”

“Okay, but I told you about this. I’m not gonna be responsible if I leap on you all of a sudden and suck your blood out. And this is a terrible time for this to be happening. Just now when I might get a modeling contract from all these signs we’re putting up.”

We left Stark Street and drove to the public housing projects. Lots of potential customers there.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Lula stapled flyers all over, and we left a stack at an open-air drug market.

“This is going better than I thought,” Lula said. “People are even thanking me for giving them the flyer. And you got some nice compliments on your picture.”

“A pimp and a drunk told me I looked better in the photo than in real life. That’s not a compliment.”

“They were liking your enhanced chest. You even got a job offer.”

“From the pimp!”

“Yeah, but he’s a pretty good one. His girls work some excellent corners.”

When we were done wallpapering the projects we covered the area around the police station. I was holding the last five flyers while Lula stapled.

I felt the air pressure change and desire rippled through me. I turned and bumped into Ranger.

“Babe.”

“Jeez!” I took two steps back. “I didn’t hear you sneak up on me. Are you picking up police reports?”

“I was doing a background check.” Ranger looked at the flyer Lula had just attached to a building. “Are you putting this up or tearing it down?”

“It’s Vinnie’s idea to bring in more business.”

Lula opened the staple gun and looked inside. “I’m out of staples. I’m tired of this anyway. I got a blister on my thumb from stapling, and I broke off one of my nails. My friend Shirleene has a nail salon on the next block. I’m gonna walk over there and get a manicure. Do you want to come with me?”

“I’ll pass.”

“Well I can’t walk around with a broken nail. I’ve got a reputation. I’ll figure my transportation out, and if I get stuck I’ll make Vinnie come get me. This is a work-related emergency.”

Lula powered off down the street, and I stuffed the last of the flyers into my bag.

“Where did you park?” Ranger asked.

“Around the corner on Leeder.”

“I parked on Leeder, but I didn’t see your car.”

We walked to Leeder and Ranger was right … no Escort. I felt my shoulders sag. “Someone stole my car.”

“Are you sure you parked here?”

“Yes. There’s a fresh oil stain from my transmission.”

Ranger slung an arm around my shoulders and kissed me on the top of my head. “Someday I need to talk to you about car care.”

“I know about car care. I kept a case of motor oil in the back.”

“That’s my girl.”

His Porsche 911 turbo was parked a couple cars away. We got in, buckled our seat belts, and the vordo took over. There was a subtle hint of Bulgari Green shower gel when Ranger moved. His brown hair was silky clean and perfectly cut. His dark Latino skin was smooth and kissable. He was dressed in a Rangeman black T-shirt and cargo pants. The T-shirt spanned his biceps as if it had been painted on. The cargo pants were filled out in all the right places.

“Have you ever done it in a 911?” I asked him.

“I don’t think it’s possible.”

“I bet I could do it.”

He turned and looked at me. And then he smiled.

“It’s the vordo,” I told him.

“We’d be more comfortable if we went back to Rangeman.”

I had my hand on his leg and my lips at his ear. “Too far away.”

Ranger put the car in gear, drove two blocks. and pulled into a blind alley between two buildings. He powered his seat back and cut the engine. “Do it,” he said.

I pushed my seat back, kicked my sneakers off, and wriggled out of my jeans. I was wearing the red lace thong, and I had a brief horrifying memory of Grandma’s dream with the flying horse and the rhinoceros. This could be the rhino incident, I thought. He could fall out of the air and squash me like a bug. Okay, last chance to assess the sanity of the act. How bad do you want to do this? I sucked in some air. I wanted to do it really bad.

I checked out the logistics of playing hide the salami in a sports car. Ranger was right. This wouldn’t be easy. If I crawled over him there would be no room for my leg. His door was too close. There was only one way I could see managing this. I got out, ran around the car, opened his door, and straddled him with one leg outside and one foot on the consul.

Beeeeeep! My ass was on the horn. Beeeep, beeeep, beeeep, beepbeepbeepbeepbeep!

A bead of sweat streaked down the side of Ranger’s face. “Babe.”

• • •

Thirty seconds later I was back on my side of the car, feeling much more relaxed, struggling to get into my jeans before he eased out of the alley.

I was going to hell. There was no doubt about it.

“Tell me about vordo,” Ranger said.

“It’s a sex spell. Morelli’s Grandma Bella put it on me, so Morelli would think I was a slut.”

“If I thought this was the result of Bella’s spell I’d send her a gift.”

“How else would you explain what I just did?”

“Animal magnetism.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

RANGER TURNED ONTO CLINTON. “I’d still like you to look at the security system on the new account.”

“Sure. I can do it now if it works for you.”

“I have a client meeting in a half hour, but you can go over the plans on your own. They can’t leave the building, so you’ll have to use my office or the apartment.”

There wasn’t much traffic in the middle of the day, and we sailed through all of the lights. Ranger parked in the underground garage, got out, and gestured to the fleet cars. “Pick one.”

“That’s nice of you, but it’s not necessary to loan me a car.”

“I loan you cars all the time.”

“And I almost always destroy them or lose them. I have terrible luck with cars.”

“Working at Rangeman is a high-stress job, and you’re one of our few sources of comic relief. I give you a car and my men start a pool on how long it will take you to trash it. You’re a line item in my budget under entertainment.”

“Jeez.”

“Besides, you need to get home somehow, and I can’t take you. I have an afternoon filled with meetings, and I have a dinner meeting with my lawyer.”

“I’ll take the Jeep Cherokee.”

“I’ll tell Hank. The keys are in the car.”

We rode the elevator in silence. He let us into his apartment, and I followed him to his study. The plans were on his desk.

“Take as long as you want,” he said. “Let the control desk know when you leave.” He pulled me tight against him. “Or you can stay and spend the night.”

“When is your next meeting?” I asked him.

He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes.”

I unzipped his cargo pants. “Plenty of time.”

Nine minutes later Ranger rolled off me. I saw him to the door, I grabbed a chicken salad sandwich from his fridge, and I settled in at the dining room table to review his security blueprint. Lula called me just as I finished the sandwich.

“You gotta get back to the bus,” she said. “There’s a big new development here, and business is booming. Vinnie’s downtown bonding out three idiots. And Connie got a lead on Ziggy.”

I cleaned up and left a note for Ranger, detailing the few suggestions I had for the plan, apologizing for not being able to finish. I called the control desk and told them I was heading out.

• • •

Traffic was unusually slow on Hamilton. I got closer to the bonds office lot and realized cars were creeping past it and gawking. I cringed at the thought of another dead body. And then I saw it.

They were gawking at the bus. It had been totally shrink-wrapped. The background was poison green. The lettering was black. And Lula and I were plastered on the side. It was the exact same message and photo they’d used on the flyers … except I was now seven feet tall, and my breasts were as big as basketballs.

I parked and ran across the street to the bus. A guy in a truck honked his horn at me, and a guy in a Subaru told me he was bad and asked me if I’d spank him. I kept my head down and scrambled inside Mooner’s monstrosity.

Connie was at her computer. Lula was on the couch texting. Mooner was standing on his head in the back bedroom.

“What’s he doing?” I asked Connie.

“I’m not sure. I think he might be trying to get the drugs to leak out of his head through his hair.”

“Traffic is backed up for almost a mile down Hamilton because people are stopping to stare at the bus.”

“The television people were here just a little while ago,” Lula said. “We’re gonna be on the evening news. We’re famous. We’re like rock stars.”

“Was this the big new development?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Lula said. “It don’t get much more exciting than this.”

I pantomimed hanging myself.

“I hate to say it, but it’s working,” Connie said. “The scumbag losers are loving the flyers. We’re back in business.”

I looked around the bus. “What about the renovation?”

“Uncle Jimmy is starting tonight after business hours. He said it wasn’t a big deal to do the walls and the floor. The upholstered pieces will have to wait until Sunday.”

There was a loud crash, and we all looked to the bedroom.

“No problem,” Mooner said. “I just fell off my head.”

Connie went to the fridge and got a bottle of water. “For what it’s worth, my Aunt Theresa lives next to Maronelli’s garage, the one attached to the funeral home, and she said she’s been seeing Ziggy sneaking in and out. Aunt Theresa is ninety-three years old and can’t see her hand in front of her face, so there’s no guarantee it’s actually Ziggy, but I’m giving it to you anyway.”

“We’ll check it out,” Lula said. “Our motto is no stone unturned.”

“Does she see him during the day or at night?” I asked Connie.

“She didn’t say.”

My phone rang, and I knew from the ring tone it was from my parents’ house.

“I just came back from an afternoon viewing at Stiva’s funeral parlor,” Grandma said. “Marilyn Gluck took me home and we went past where the bonds office used to be and there’s a bus parked there with your picture on it. It’s a beaut. It looks like you got some of them breast implants, and we never noticed before.”

“I didn’t get breast implants. They were enlarged on a computer.”

“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since I got home. Everybody is calling to say they saw you on the bus. Norma Klap said her son, Eugene, would like to get fixed up with you.”

“Does my mother know?”

“Yeah. She’s ironing.”

I hung up, and Lula and I went out to look for Ziggy. Lula was wearing her cross and carrying a couple cloves of garlic in her purse. I was wearing dark glasses and a ball cap, hoping no one would recognize me.

Maronelli’s funeral home is at the back end of the Burg, one street off Liberty. It’s been in the Maronelli family for generations, and with the exception of installing indoor plumbing, it hasn’t changed much over the years. The viewing rooms are small and dark. English is spoken as a second language. The Italian flag is displayed in the small lobby. Manny Maronelli and his wife live in an apartment above the viewing rooms, but they’re in their late seventies and spend most of the year in their double-wide in Tampa. Their sons, Georgie and Salvatore, run the business and keep it in the black with a diversified menu of services that includes off track betting, prostitution, and an occasional hijacking. It’s a very efficient operation since men can attend a viewing and grieve and get a BJ all at the same time.

The four-car garage is detached and to the side of the funeral home. The hearse is usually parked in the driveway, so I assumed the garage was used to store miscellaneous items that fell off the back of a truck. It was close to four o’clock when Lula and I cruised by the funeral home, and there was no sign of activity. We’d arrived between the afternoon and evening viewing.

I parked across the street, and we sat for a couple minutes scoping things out. No street traffic. No dog walkers. No kids on bikes. Lula and I got out and went to the garage and tried the side door. Not locked. I opened the door, and Lula and I stepped inside and looked around. No windows. Very dark. I flipped the light switch, closed the door, and looked around.

Mortuary supplies were stacked on one wall. Everything from cocktail napkins to embalming fluid. A black Lincoln Town Car was parked in one of the middle bays. A flower car was parked next to it. Caskets lined the entire back of the garage. One of the caskets had the lid up.

“I like the casket with the lid up,” Lula said. “That’s a first-rate casket. When I go I want to have a casket like that. I bet it’s real comfy for your eternal slumber.”

She walked over to the casket, bent over it to look inside, and Ziggy popped up.

“Eeeeeee,” Lula shrieked. “I got a cross! I got garlic! Lord help me!”

“A man can’t even take a nap no more,” Ziggy said, climbing out of the casket.

Lula pulled her gun out of her purse. “I got a silver bullet. Stand back!”

“A silver bullet’s for werewolves,” Ziggy told her. “What time is it? Is it nighttime?”

I looked at my watch. “It’s four o’clock.”

“What are you doing here anyway?” Lula asked him.

“I’m trying to sleep. It’s nice and quiet here. And it’s dark.”

“Don’t the people who own the funeral parlor mind you sleeping in their casket?”

“Actually, it’s my casket. I bought it a couple years ago. It’s very restful. I used to have it at the house, but it was freaking my sister out when she came to visit, so Georgie said I could leave it here.”

“Even for a vampire you’re weird,” Lula said.

“It’s not easy being a vampire,” Ziggy said. “I have to avoid the sunlight, and I have to find blood to drink, and I can’t even wear normal dentures. I had to have these made special. And there are expectations. Like sleeping in a coffin. And I always have to be on guard for people who want to drive a stake through my heart.”

“That’s it,” Lula said. “A stake to the heart. I knew there was a way to kill you.”

Ziggy sucked in air.

“You already got the casket,” Lula said. “Nothing to worry about. It’s all good.”

“No way are you putting a stake in me,” Ziggy said. “I’m not ready. You come near me, and I’ll suck out all your body fluids.”

“Damn,” Lula said. “I got enough of the vampire cooties already. My teeth are growing, and I’m not happy about it. I had perfect teeth before you sucked on me.” She reached into her purse, grabbed her stun gun, and tagged Ziggy.

Ziggy crumpled into a heap on the floor.

“That was scary,” Lula said. “I like my body fluids. I wouldn’t look good without them.”

“I don’t know which of you is worse. He’s not a vampire, and he’s not going to drain any of your fluids. The best he could do is slip a diuretic into your coffee.”

“How am I worse?”

“You’re full of baloney. You haven’t got a silver bullet or a stake. You’re making threats you have no intention of carrying out.”

“Yeah, but we do that all the time.”

True. “We should cuff him and load him into the Jeep before he comes around.”

“What about the sunshine?”

“He’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure? And what about the screaming? I couldn’t take any more of that screaming. We need to cover him.”

I looked around. Nothing. No drop cloths, sheets, garbage bags.

“I know,” Lula said, grabbing his arms. “We’ll put him in his casket. Get his legs and help me heave ho.”

“Caskets are heavy. We’ll never be able to get it into the Jeep.”

“There’s a rolling casket carrying thing by the door. It’s what they use at funerals. It raises and lowers.”

“Okay, but if it doesn’t work you’re just going to have to deal with the screaming.”

“Deal,” Lula said, “but I’m not watching him shrivel up and turn into a cat turd. Soon as he starts to smoke I’m outta there.”

We dropped Ziggy into the casket, and I closed and locked the lid. I rolled the gurney over, we hefted the casket onto it, and we rolled the whole deal to the front of the garage.

“I’ll wait here,” Lula said. “You back the Jeep up to the door.”

I ran to the Jeep and collapsed the backseat so there was more room for the casket. I backed the SUV up to the door, Lula powered the door up, and we loaded the casket in.

“It don’t fit,” Lula said.

The rear end of the casket was hanging a couple feet over the bumper, but I didn’t care. I’d come this far. I was taking Ziggy in. I’d leave the cargo door open and drive slow.

I took Liberty to Broad and drove toward the center of the city. The car behind me was keeping his distance.

“Maybe you should have hung a red flag on Ziggy’s doom box,” Lula said.

“Maybe I should have blindfolded him, so he couldn’t tell it was day or night and chucked him into the backseat.”

I cruised through Hamilton and stopped for a light, focusing on the traffic ahead. I heard some scraping sounds and then a shriek. I turned and saw Ziggy jump out of the Jeep and run down a side street, waving his arms and screaming.

“What the hell?” Lula said. “I saw you lock the lid.”

“It must have had a release on the inside.”

I took a right and drove toward the screams. We had our windows down, listening, and the screams stopped.

“Uh oh,” Lula said. “Cat turd.”

“He probably went inside a building.”

“Sure,” Lula said. “That’s probably it. Do you want to get out and search for him?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.” She swiveled and looked behind her. “What are we gonna do with his casket?”

“I guess I’ll return it to the funeral home.”

“You notice how people are staring at us? It’s like they never seen a casket hanging out of a Jeep before.”

I retraced my route down Broad to Liberty. I drove past the funeral home and backed into the driveway leading to the garage. The casket carrier was missing and the garage doors were closed.

“Now what?” Lula asked.

“Now we remove the casket from Ranger’s Jeep with as much dignity as we can manage, and then we get the heck out of here.”

“What if someone sees us and wants to know what we’re doing?”

“We’ll say Ziggy wanted to go for a ride, but decided to walk home.”

“That’s good,” Lula said. “That sounds like it’s true.”

“It’s sort of true.”

“Fuckin’ A.”

We hauled the casket out of the Jeep, set it down in front of a garage door, scurried back into the SUV, and took off.

TWENTY-NINE

I WAS TRYING to get Lula back to the bonds office, but I was inching along Hamilton, caught in the traffic jam created by the bad boys bus. I dropped her a block early, and I cut into the Burg, circled around, and came back to Hamilton on the other side of the gridlock. This had the additional benefit of saving me another pass by the seven-foot, double D cup Stephanie.

Ten minutes later I stepped out of the elevator in my apartment building and spotted Dave sitting in front of my door. There were two grocery bags on the floor next to him, and he was holding flowers.

He stood when he saw me. “I brought you flowers.”

I looked down at the bags. “And groceries?”

“Yeah. I thought I’d take a chance on you coming home hungry. I got off work, and I drove past the supermarket and felt inspired.”

I took the flowers and unlocked my door. “What’s on the menu?”

“Salad, scalloped potatoes, and lamb chops. You’re going to be in charge of the scalloped potatoes.”

“I’m not wearing the apron.”

“Too bad.” He unpacked the bags and set everything out on the counter. “You’re not living up to the fantasy.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“Twirlers had reputations,” Dave said.

“What kind of reputations?”

“Good with a baton.”

Oh God, I could just feel the rhino hanging over me.

“Here’s the deal,” I told him. “I have two men in my life who carry guns. You don’t want to make them angry. You can cook but you can’t flirt. No double entendres. No more staring at my chest. No twirler fantasies.”

“I’m not giving up the twirler fantasies,” Dave said, “but I’ll substitute Alberta Zaremba for you.” He searched around and came up with the cutting board. “I’m going to fix the lamb chops. You can peel the potatoes and cut them into slices about an eighth of an inch thick.”

When I was almost done cutting, and he looked over my shoulder to check my progress.

“Perfect,” he said. “It’s too bad we didn’t know each other better when we were in high school.”

He was way too close. I could feel his breath on my neck, and the brush of his chest against my back when he leaned in.

“You’re too close,” I said. “Remember the men with the guns?”

He took a step back, and I cut the last slice. “Now what? Do I put them in the casserole dish?”

“Yes, but you need to butter it first.”

He took a stick of butter from the fridge and put it on the counter. He added butter, milk, and already-shredded Swiss cheese.

“Butter the dish, layer the potatoes, dot with small chunks of butter, sprinkle with the shredded cheese, and add another layer,” he said.

“Okeydokey.”

I sprinkled the last of the cheese on the potatoes and stood back to admire my work, thinking it looked pretty darn good.

“What’s next?” I asked him.

He took a beat to answer. “Milk.”

Thank goodness. For a single irrational moment I was afraid he was going to tear my clothes off. And I might have a hard time defending myself. He had height and weight on me, and he wasn’t in great shape, but he wasn’t in terrible shape either.

He added milk to the potatoes and slid the dish into the oven. “I have the salad and lamb chops ready to go. The only thing left is the wine.”

“What do we do with the wine?”

“We drink it until the potatoes are done.”

I accepted a glass of wine, and the lock tumbled on the front door. There were only two people besides me who could unlock my door. Morelli had a key. And Ranger had skills normal law-abiding citizens didn’t usually possess. I knew it was Morelli because I could hear Bob panting on the other side of the door.

The door opened, and Bob rushed in, stopped short of Dave, and did his happy dance. Bob loved everyone. Especially people with food in their hand.

“Hope I’m not interrupting something,” Morelli said, pulling a dog biscuit out of his pocket, tossing it into the living room to distract Bob.

“Nope,” I told him. “Dave stopped by to make dinner. And I’m sure we have enough for you and Bob. I made scalloped potatoes almost all by myself.” I went to the oven and opened the door. “Look!”

Morelli looked into the oven and grinned. “I love scalloped potatoes.” He wrapped an arm around me and kissed me on the temple. A big smackeroo kiss Dave couldn’t ignore. “Nice of you to help Steph with the cooking,” he said to Dave.

This was the equivalent to Bob lifting his leg on his favorite bush, marking his territory. Morelli had me firmly plastered to his side. He took my wine for a test drive, found it lacking, and got a beer from the fridge.

“How’s it going?” Morelli said to Dave. “I hear you’re working for your uncle.”

“It fills in the empty spaces,” Dave said. “What’s new in your life?”

“Murder,” Morelli said. “Someone is giving Trenton bad statistics. If this keeps up we’ll be the new murder capital.” He took a pull on his beer. “There was a home invasion and double murder in the projects last night.”

“Robbery? Domestic violence?” I asked.

“Don’t know. I’m not the primary.”

Dave took his lamb chops out of the refrigerator and put them on the counter. “How were they killed?”

“Shot.”

“Messy,” Dave said.

THIRTY

MORELLI WAS KICKED BACK on the couch, shoes off, working the channel changer. Bob was squished onto the couch on one side of Morelli, and I was on the other. The dirty dishes were in the dishwasher. The few leftovers were in the refrigerator. Dave had declined an invitation to watch a rerun of Bowling for Dollars and had gone his way.

“This is the life,” Morelli said. “A fantastic home-cooked meal, and now relaxing in front of the television. And later, some romance.”

Oh boy. More romance. And the bladder infection was back. “What do you think of Dave?”

“He makes a mean lamb chop.”

“Besides that.”

“He has superior social skills. Probably was on the fast track professionally before he got caught up in someone’s get-rich-quick scheme.”

Bob got up, turned around twice, and squeezed himself back into the space between Morelli and the end of the couch.

The doorbell rang, and I went to answer, half afraid it was Dave returning. I peeked out the security peephole and saw that it was Regina Bugle. Obviously she’d gotten bonded out a second time.

“What?” I called through the door.

“I want to talk.”

“Can you phone it in?”

“No.”

I didn’t see a gun in her hand, so I opened the door. Regina bent down, picked up a pie, and smushed it into my face.

“Bitch,” she said. “The next thing to hit your face will be my bumper.” And she flounced off, down the hall, into the elevator.

Morelli strolled up behind me. “Yum, dessert.” He swiped some pie off me. “Lemon meringue!”

“I need to take a shower.”

“How’s the bladder infection?”

“It’s back,” I told him. Along with a huge load of guilt. The vordo was taking its toll. And Lula’s plan wasn’t working. I was more conflicted than ever.

Bob trotted in and ate the pie off the floor.

“Bob and I are going to split,” Morelli said. “There’s a poker game at Mooch’s house tonight.”

• • •

Saturday morning Morelli called to say he was spending the day helping his brother Anthony move from one side of the Burg to the other, into a larger house. Anthony and his wife were a baby factory.

Before the office burned down Connie usually worked a half-day on Saturday, but Saturdays were now hit or miss. And since the bus was being renovated I suspected Connie would be at Point Pleasant playing SKILLO today.

When Vinnie has bad guys out there in the wind I work seven days a week. The only bad guy in the wind right now was Ziggy, and I was thinking the money I’d make from bringing him in wasn’t worth any more attempts at running down a screaming vampire.

It was almost nine o’clock and I was slumping around in a ratty T-shirt that used to be Morelli’s, navy sweats, and fuzzy pink slippers. I’d cleaned Rex’s cage and given him fresh food and water. I was on my second cup of coffee. I’d eaten the left-over lamb chop. I was debating between scrubbing the toilet or going back to bed. And my phone rang.

“I just got a call from Emma Brewer,” my mother said. “She’s so excited about you and Dave.”

“Emma?”

“His mother. She said you’ve been seeing each other.”

“I let him use my kitchen.”

“Two days in a row! Did he make you lamb chops? Emma said his specialty is lamb chops.”

“Yeah, he makes great lamb chops. Morelli was here, and he loved them.”

“You let Joseph Morelli interfere with your date?”

“It wasn’t a date.”

“Stephanie, you have a chance with this nice young man. You should get your hair done. Get a manicure. I think he’s interested. It’s going nowhere with Morelli. You’ll never get him to marry you. I thought it would be nice if I invited the Brewers to dinner,” my mother said. “You and Dave, and Emma and Herb, and …”

“No! Do not do that. Dave and I are just friends. In fact we’re barely friends.”

“That’s not what I hear from Emma. I think he’s taken with you.”

“Gosh, I’d really like to talk more, but I was in the middle of scrubbing my toilet. I’ve got to go. Things to do.”

And I hung up. And then as penance for all the lusting I’d been doing, and for hanging up on my mother, and for not liking Dave more, I scrubbed the entire bathroom.

An hour later I was showered and dressed in my usual jeans, sneakers, and T-shirt, and I was standing just outside my apartment building’s back door. I did a quick scan for Regina Bugle’s Lexus, and when I didn’t see it I crossed to my borrowed Jeep.

I got within a couple feet of the Jeep and realized someone was behind the wheel. My first reaction was confusion. My second was that this was not good. The man behind the wheel was in his early sixties. He was wearing a collared knit shirt, his eyes were open and fixed, his head was twisted at an odd angle, and there were rope burns on his neck. The note pinned to his shirt read FOR STEPHANIE.

THIRTY-ONE

I PUT MY HAND OUT to steady myself and immediately pulled it back, not wanting to touch the Jeep. I stumbled back, my heart knocking around in my chest, and I walked on unsteady legs to the security of the lobby. I called Morelli and Ranger, and I stayed in the lobby until a Rangeman security car arrived three minutes later. A Trenton police car arrived two minutes after that.

Ranger and Morelli rolled in a couple minutes after the squad car. They parked, glanced over at me, and went directly to the car with the murder victim. They stood hands on hips, talking to the two men who were the first on the scene.

Ranger and Morelli were professionals and they had a professional relationship. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they liked each other, but they’d worked together before and almost always managed to be civil. Morelli thought Ranger was a wild card. And he was right. Ranger thought Morelli was a good cop. And he was right.

A uniform cordoned off the area with crime scene tape. The M.E. pulled in and parked. There were two EMT trucks idling at the edge of the lot. I’d stayed close to the back door, and one of the Rangeman guys had taken a position two feet from me, standing at parade rest. No doubt in my mind he’d take a bullet for me rather than face Ranger over a dead Stephanie. I waited at the door until Ranger and Morelli walked back to me. My teeth had stopped chattering, and I was moving from scared to angry. I had enough going on in my life without this.

“It’s Gordon Kulicki,” Morelli said to me. “By our best guess this happened somewhere around two in the morning. You’ve seen the note. Did you know Kulicki?”

“No. Did he have ties to Dugan?”

“He was Dugan’s banker. And they played poker together every Thursday night. Dugan, Lucarelli, Kulicki, Sam Grip, and a couple floaters.”

I watched the forensic photographer work around the Jeep. “Sam Grip should take a vacation far, far away.”

“Sam Grip hasn’t been seen in weeks,” Morelli said.

“Strangling someone and then breaking their neck seems like a lot of work,” I said. “Why doesn’t this guy just shoot his victims?”

“He could be leaving a calling card,” Morelli said. “Or Dave could have the answer. Shooting is messy. If your victim doesn’t bleed there’s not as much cleanup. Either way, these aren’t crimes of passion. These are planned executions.”

“And I’m involved.”

The line of Morelli’s mouth was tight. “Yeah.”

I looked over at Ranger. “Sorry about your Jeep. Who won the pool?”

“Technically you didn’t destroy it,” Ranger said. “One of my men will bring you a replacement.”

Ranger left to go back to Rangeman, and Morelli was silent until Ranger was in his car.

“Before Nick Alpha got sent to prison he was in business with Lou Dugan,” Morelli finally said. “Mostly prostitution and running numbers. Nick was paroled the week before Dugan disappeared. I spoke to someone who knows Nick, and he said Nick never got over his brother’s death. He said Nick came out of prison a wack job.”

“So now what?”

“I’m going to do my cop thing, and I’m going to talk to Nick, but I have no reason to take any action. I don’t suppose you’d consider going on that vacation far far away?”

“I’ll think about it. Why did you wait for Ranger to leave before talking to me about Nick Alpha?”

“I was afraid Ranger would make Nick Alpha disappear and never be seen again.”

“Good thinking.”

A shiny black Shelby GT350 slid to a stop beside us, and a Rangeman guy got out, handed me the keys, and was picked up by another Rangeman vehicle.

Morelli shook his head. “I don’t believe he’s giving you a Shelby. Do you have any idea what this car costs?”

“It’s just a loaner,” I said.

“Someday I’m going to find out where all his cars come from. It has to be illegal.”

The M.E. whistled and waved at Morelli.

“I have to go,” Morelli said. “I’ll get back to you later. Try to stay safe.”

I got behind the wheel of the Shelby and cruised out of the lot. The car was sweet, and I was tempted to keep driving until I got to the Pacific Ocean, but I restrained myself and headed for Rangeman instead. I swung into the Burg to avoid bus traffic, exited onto Broad, and called Ranger to tell him I was on my way.

“I want to take another look at the video of the guy dumping the body,” I told him.

“Use your key fob to get into my apartment,” he said. “I’ll be away from Rangeman for most of the day. The video is on a disk in my right top drawer.”

I made my way through the center of town, turned right onto a side street, and fobbed my way into the Rangeman garage. I took the elevator to the seventh floor and let myself into Ranger’s lair. Entering his apartment is always a sensual experience. His masculine energy dominates the space. Ella maintains order and civility. Ranger regulates air pressure.

I found the disk and plugged it into Ranger’s computer. I took a relaxing breath, cleared my mind, and ran the video. The feeling of familiarity was so strong it was suffocating. This wasn’t someone from my distant past. This was someone I knew. I was hoping I’d watch the video, and it would clearly be Nick Alpha, but it wasn’t that simple. I just didn’t know. It didn’t feel any more like Alpha than a slew of men I frequently encountered.

I mentally plugged a variety of men into the video. Vinnie was too short. Albert Klaughn was too short. My father not athletic enough. Ranger and Morelli were possibilities, although not so much Ranger. Ranger’s movements were too fluid, his posture more military. Mooner was a possibility. Sally Sweet was a possibility. My friend Eddie Gazarra could fit. Tank was too big. There were several cops and members of Ranger’s team that might fit. Mooch Morelli. My cousin Kenny might fit. Joe Juniak was too big. I watched the tape one last time and ejected it. This doesn’t mean it isn’t Nick Alpha, I thought, but it doesn’t convince me it is.

The plan for the new security system was still on the dining room table. I finished reviewing it and added a few more suggestions to my previous comments. I thought about leaving a sexy note for Ranger, but worried Ella might find it, so I scraped the note idea.

I grabbed a bottle of water and an egg salad sandwich out of Ranger’s refrigerator and took the elevator to the Shelby. I drove to Hamilton and parked behind the bus. Mooner was sitting in a lawn chair he’d placed on the sidewalk. A couple large plastic trash containers filled with black shag carpet were also on the sidewalk.

“How goes it?” Mooner asked.

“A madman is sending me dead people, a crazy woman wants to run me over, I need to catch a guy who thinks he’s a vampire, and I have the vordo.”

“Excellent,” Mooner said.

I looked at the empty lot and tried to visualize the killer driving the car in and dragging the body out.

“Did you kill Juki Beck?” I asked him.

“I don’t think so,” Mooner said, “but heck, what do I know?”

I turned my attention to the bus. The seven-foot Stephanie on the sidewalk side had something dripping off her face and boobs.

“What happened to the bus?” I asked Mooner.

“A little old lady came by. She was dressed all in black, and she threw a bunch of eggs at you. Then she started laughing this real crazy laugh. It was like witch cackle. And then she put her finger to her eye, spit on the sidewalk, and left. Freaked me out, dude.”

Okay, so Morelli was fun and sexy and smart and handsome. It might not be enough to compensate for the fact that he came with an evil grandmother. Maybe my mother was right, and I should consider Dave. I was pretty sure his grandparents were dead.

I gave Mooner the peace sign, and I returned to the Shelby and ate my sandwich and drank my water. I looked at my hair in the rearview mirror and wondered if my mother was right. Maybe I needed some sprucing up. Especially now that I was riding around in the Shelby. I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to have Mr. Alexander sprinkle in some blond highlights.

• • •

I definitely had to capture Ziggy. I’d had the highlights put in, and then it was like something snapped in my brain. Not only did I have a manicure and pedicure … I went on a shopping spree. Once my toes were painted pink and pretty I had to go all the way.

I rolled into my apartment building parking lot and was relieved to find it back to normal. No emergency vehicles, no crime scene tape, no car with a dead guy in it. I let myself into my apartment, said hello to Rex, and went directly to my bedroom. I dropped the bags and flopped spread-eagle on my bed. Deep breaths, I told myself, this is a simple panic attack. No big deal. Everyone has them. All you have to do is drag Ziggy back to jail, get your capture money from Connie, and you can pay your credit card bill. And there’s a possibility that the clothes will look terrible on you, and you’ll take them back. Just because they looked good in the store doesn’t mean they’ll look good now.

I sat up and dumped the clothes out on the bed. Semi-dressy red dress with a low scoop neck and swirly skirt, and spike-heeled red shoes. I tried them on and twirled in front of my bathroom mirror. I looked fabulous. No way was I taking them back.

I changed back into jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers, took my notepad to the dining room table, and listed out all the places I might find Ziggy. I had a lot of evening activities, but his house and Maronelli’s were the only two daytime leads. No point spinning my wheels looking for Ziggy now, I thought. I’d go after him tonight.

I opened my laptop and plugged Nick Alpha into some of the search programs we used to find people. Bad enough I was sitting here waiting for Regina Bugle to run me over, I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for the next dead body delivery … or worse, discover the next dead body was mine.

From what I could get online, Nick was currently without wife. He’d been married twice and divorced twice. He had two adult children by the first wife and none by the second. He had no recent credit activity and no current address. His parole officer would have an address, but I didn’t have access to his parole officer.

I called Connie because Connie had access to almost everything, one way or another.

“What’s all that noise?” I asked her. “Are you having a party? I can hardly hear you over the music.”

“It’s the television. I have it cranked up to drown out my mother’s humming.”

“I need information on Nick Alpha.”

“What?”

“Nick Alpha,” I yelled into the phone. “I ran him through the basic programs, but nothing current turned up. I’m looking for a home address. Does he have a car? And is he working?”

“I’ll make some phone calls and get back to you.”

I hung up, and there was a knock on my door. There was a time when this would have generated happy excitement that I had a visitor. That time was in the past, and a knock on the door now conjured visions of Regina Bugle, a big lumpy guy in a Frankenstein mask, and Dave Brewer. I crept to the door and looked out the peephole, and sure enough, it was Dave. He had a bottle of wine and a grocery bag. Yes, he was reliably nice. Yes, he was a good cook. No, I did not want him in my apartment. I held my breath and tiptoed away.

Ten minutes later I rechecked the peephole. Dave was still there. I retreated to my bedroom and folded the clean laundry that had been sitting in my laundry basket all week. I made my bed. I brushed my teeth. I went back and looked out the peephole. Dave was still there. Criminy. What did it take to get rid of this guy?

I very quietly made myself a peanut butter sandwich and washed it down with a beer. I checked my email. I admired my toes. I fell asleep at the dining room table and awoke with a start when the phone rang.

“Thank goodness you’re home,” Grandma Mazur said. “This is an emergency. I was supposed to go to the funeral parlor tonight with Lucille Ticker, and she just called and said her hemorrhoids were acting up, and she’s staying home. I need a ride real bad. Your mother is at some church function, and your father is at the lodge doing whatever it is he does there. The viewing starts in ten minutes, and it’s going to be the event of the year. Lou Dugan is laid out.”

Viewings weren’t high on my list of favorite things to do, but Lou Dugan’s viewing could be worthwhile. There was a chance Nick Alpha would be there. What better place to confront a killer than at his victim’s viewing?

“I’m on my way,” I told grandma.

I ran into my bedroom and made a quick wardrobe change into black heels, a black pencil skirt, and a white wrap shirt. God forbid my mother found out I went to a viewing in jeans and a T-shirt. Dave was still in the hall when I burst out the door.

“Omigosh,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I knocked, but no one answered.”

“I must have been in the shower. Sorry, but I have to go. I’m late picking Grandma up.”

“I could go in and cook,” Dave said.

“Here’s the thing, Dave. This isn’t working. You need to find a different twirler.”

“I don’t want a different twirler.”

I rolled my eyes, grunted, and locked my door. “Gotta go,” I said. And I hustled down the hall and into the elevator.

He took the stairs, and we reached the lobby at the same time.

“It’s Morelli, right?” Dave said. “Morelli doesn’t want you spending time with me.”

I crossed the lot and unlocked the Shelby. “Morelli doesn’t care. You’re not a threat. And besides, Morelli would trade me in for a lamb chop.”

“New car?” Dave asked.

“Yeah. Someone dumped a dead guy in my SUV.”

“It’s hard to keep up with your cars.”

I got behind the wheel, locked my doors, waved good-bye to Dave, and drove out of the lot. I felt kind of bad leaving him standing there with his wine and his grocery bag, but honestly I didn’t know what else to do with him. He wasn’t paying attention.

Grandma was waiting for me at the curb. She was wearing a cherry red dress with a matching jacket, little black heels, and a pearl necklace, and she was holding her big black leather purse. Grandma carried a .45 long barrel, and it didn’t fit into a more dainty purse. Her lipstick matched her dress, and her hair was perfectly curled.

I pulled up next to her, and she got in.

“This is a beaut of a car,” she said, buckling her seat belt. “I bet this car belongs to Ranger.”

“Yep.”

“It’s a shame he doesn’t want to marry you. He’d get my vote. He’s sexy as all get out, and he’s got badass cars.”

“Do you like him better than Dave?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I like Dave okay, but I’d take sex over cooking any day of the week. You can buy a burger, but it’s not every day you find a man with a package like Ranger. And I’m not talking about what you’re thinking, although I noticed, and it looks pretty good. I’m talking about the whole package from his sideburns on down. He’s hot. And I think he’s smart. He’s made a success of himself.”

“He has baggage,” I said. “He’s not willing to take on more.”

“Then I guess I’d go with the guy who can cook.”

“What about Morelli?”

“He’s okay. He’s hot, too, but I don’t see you making much progress there.”

I pulled into the funeral home lot, but there were no spaces left. I let Grandma out and found a parking place a block away. Everyone was here to see Lou Dugan. I walked back to the funeral home and made my way through the crush of people on the porch, through the open doors, and into the lobby. I worked my way through the crowd, head down to minimize social contact, breathing shallow to minimize the smell of funeral flowers and senior citizens.

Someone snagged my elbow, and I was forced to pick my head up. It was Mrs. Gooley. I went to school with her daughter Grace.

“Stephanie Plum!” she said. “I haven’t seen you in years, but I read about you in the paper. Remember when you burned this funeral home down? That was something.”

“It was an accident.”

“I hear you were the one to discover poor Lou, God rest his soul.”

“Actually he was dug up by a backhoe. I got there a little later.”

“Is it true he was reaching up, trying to get out of his grave?”

“You’ll have to excuse me,” I said, easing away. “I’m trying to find Grandma.”

A sign advertised the Dugan viewing in slumber room number one. This was big time. Not everyone got to have a viewing in slumber room number one. It was the largest room and was located directly off the lobby.

I inched my way through the mob to slumber room one and was stopped at the door by two women I didn’t recognize.

“Omigosh,” the one said. “You’re Stephanie Plum. You were right there when Lou tried to climb out of his grave. What was it like?”

“He didn’t try to climb out of his grave,” I said.

An older woman joined the group. “Are you Stephanie Plum?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“You look a little like the picture on the bus, except for your chest.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I said.

THIRTY-TWO

I PUSHED INTO the funeral home viewing room and took a position on the back wall. I couldn’t see Grandma, but I knew she would be working her way up to the casket. And when she finally got up there she’d be in a snit because it was closed. It didn’t matter what was left of the deceased, Grandma wanted to see it. She figured if she made the effort to come out and got all dressed up, she at least deserved a peek.

I’d hoped to find Nick Alpha here, or at least someone who might be associated with him, but people were too smashed together. It was impossible to circulate through the room, and I couldn’t see over the heads of the people standing in front of me. My hope was that it would clear out a little toward the end of the viewing time.

There were no chairs and standing in the heels was getting old. Temperature in the room had to be hovering around ninety, and I could feel my hair frizzing. I checked my iPhone for text messages. One from Connie telling me she was waiting for a reply from Alpha’s parole officer. Mr. Mikowitz came over to tell me he thought I looked good on the bus. His nose was red, he smelled heavily of Jim Beam, and his pink scalp was sweating under his five-strand comb-over. I thanked him for the compliment, and he moved on.

I could hear a disturbance going on in the front of the room by the casket, and a funeral home attendant in a black suit moved toward it. I assumed this was Grandma trying to get the lid up. I’d been through this before, and I wasn’t stepping in unless a free-for-all broke out, or I heard gunshot.

Someone jostled against me, I looked around, and I locked eyes with Nick Alpha.

“The whole time I was in prison I lived for the day when I’d get out and set things right for Jimmy,” he said, leaning in close, talking low. “I’m going to kill you just like you killed my little brother, but I’m going to let you worry about it for a while. Not too much longer, but for a while. It won’t be the first time I’ve had to kill someone, but it’s going to be the most enjoyable.”

His eyes were cold and his mouth was set hard. He stepped back and disappeared into the sea of mourners, snoops, and partygoers.

Sometimes you want to be careful what you wish for because you might get it. I’d wanted to talk to Nick Alpha, and now not so much. At least he wanted me to worry a little. That meant he probably wouldn’t kill me on my way out of the funeral home, so everything was good. And if he was the guy who was killing everyone else, he’d choke me first. I liked my odds with that better than getting shot. In my mind I played out a scenario where I stabbed the assailant in the leg with my nail file and was able to foil the choking.

The black-suited funeral director moved people out of his way, and escorted Grandma over to me. “Take her home,” he said. “Please.”

“I’m not going until I get a cookie,” Grandma said. “I always like to have a cookie after I’ve paid my respects.”

The funeral director gave me a five-dollar bill. “Buy her a cookie. Buy her a whole box of cookies. Just get her out of here.”

“You better be nice to me,” Grandma said to the director. “I’m old, and I’m going to die soon, and I got my eye on the deluxe slumber bed with the mahogany carvings. I’m going out first class.”

The director sagged a little. “I’d like to count on that, but life is cruel, and I can’t imagine you leaving us anytime in the near future.”

I took Grandma by the elbow and helped steer her out of the viewing room. We made a fast detour to the cookie table, she wrapped three in a napkin and put them in her purse, and we hustled to the car.

“What did you do this time?” I asked her when we were on the way home.

“I didn’t do anything. I was a perfect lady.”

“You must have done something.”

“I might have tried to get the lid up, but it was nailed closed, and then I sort of knocked over a vase of flowers onto the dearly departed’s wife, and she got a little wet.”

“A little wet?”

“She got real wet. It was a big vase. She looked like she’d been left out in the rain all day. And it would never have happened if they hadn’t nailed the lid down.”

“The man was nothing but rotted bones.”

“Yeah, but you got to see him. I don’t know why I couldn’t get to see him. I wanted to see what his rotted bones looked like.”

I dropped Grandma off and made sure she got into the house, and then I drove to the end of the block and turned out of the Burg, into Morelli’s neighborhood. I drove to his house and idled. His SUV wasn’t there. No lights on. I could call him, but I was half afraid he’d be on a date. The very thought gave me a knot in my stomach. But then lately almost everything in my life gave me a knot.

I continued on home, parked, and took the elevator to the second floor. I stepped out of the elevator and saw Dave. He was sitting on the floor, his back to my door.

“Hi,” he said, standing, retrieving his wine and grocery bag.

“What the heck are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you?”

“Why?”

“I feel like cooking.”

I blew out a sigh and opened my door. “Does the word ‘stalker’ mean anything to you?”

“Do you have a stalker?”

“You! You’re turning into a stalker.”

He unpacked his groceries and hunted for the corkscrew. “I’m not a stalker. Stalkers don’t cook dinner.”

I poured myself a glass of wine. “What are we having?”

“Pasta. I’m going to make a light sauce with fresh vegetables and herbs. I have a loaf of French bread and cheese for you to grate.”

“I don’t have a cheese grater. I buy cheese already grated. Actually I don’t do that either. I eat out when I want pasta. I only eat in when I want peanut butter.”

“I bought you a cheese grater. It’s in the bag.”

“Why do you have to cook? Did you have a bad day?”

He rinsed tomatoes and set them on the counter. “I had a good day. Successful. I feel energized.” He looked over at me. “How was your day?”

“Same ol’, same ol’. Dead guy in my car. Death threat at the funeral home. Stalker in my hall.”

“I heard about the dead guy. Gordon Kulicki, right?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

He poured olive oil into my large fry pan and put heat under it. “That had to be what … scary?”

I kicked my heels off. “Yeah. Scary.”

He chopped onion and dumped it into the hot oil. “You don’t look scared.”

“It’s been a long day.” I found my big pot, filled it with water, and set it on a burner. “And after a while I guess you get used to scary. Scary gets to be the new normal.”

“That’s disappointing. I thought I’d be the big, strong guy coming here to comfort poor scared little you.”

“Too late.” I looked at the sauce he was making. “How much longer until dinner?”

“Half hour.”

“I’m going to take a fast shower. I smell like funeral home.”

I locked the bathroom door, got undressed, and stepped into the shower. After a lot of soap, shampoo, and hot water I emerged without so much as a hint of carnations. I wrapped a towel around myself and was about to dry my hair when there was some jiggling at the doorknob, the knob turned, and the Dave walked in totally naked.

I shrieked and grabbed at my towel. “Get out!”

“Don’t play coy,” he said. “We’re both adults.”

He reached for me, and I hit him in the face with the hair dryer. His eyes glazed over, and he crashed to the floor. Out cold. Bleeding from the nose. His Mr. Hopeful looking less perky by the second.

I grabbed his feet and dragged him through my apartment to the front door, being careful not to get blood on the carpet. I opened the door and dragged him into the hall. I ran to my bedroom, scooped up his clothes, ran back to the door, and threw his clothes out. Then I locked and bolted the door and looked at him through the peephole. If he didn’t come around in the next couple minutes I’d call 911.

“Why me?” I said.

After a moment Dave’s eyes fluttered open, and he moaned a little. He put his hand to his face and gingerly touched what used to be his nose. He lay there for a couple more beats, collecting himself, probably waiting for the cobwebs to clear. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and looked at my door, and I instinctively jumped back. I squelched a nervous whimper and did an internal eye roll. He couldn’t see me. The door was locked. Not like the bathroom that could be opened by sticking a straightened paper clip into the lock. This door had a security chain, two deadbolts, and a door lock.

I returned to the peephole and saw Dave was getting dressed. The blood was still dripping from his nose onto the hall carpet, but it seemed to be slacking off. Great. No need for the EMTs. I padded back to my bedroom, pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, and took one last look at the peephole. No Dave. Hooray. I went to the kitchen and freshened my wine. The pasta was cooked and draining in a colander. The sauce was in the fry pan. No sense wasting it. I fixed a plate for myself, grated some cheese over it with my new grater, and ate it in front of the television. Isn’t it strange how sometimes bad things can turn out good. When you add everything up it was a pretty horrible day, but it ended with great pasta.

• • •

Sunday morning Dillon Ruddick, the building super, was in the hall with a steamer, getting the bloodstain out of the carpet. Dillon was my age and an all-around nice guy. Not rocket scientist material, but he could change a lightbulb with the best of them, and he was cute in a sloppy kind of way.

I opened my door and handed Dillon a cup of coffee. “Sorry about the blood.”

“What was it this time? No one reported gunfire.”

“I hit a guy in the face with a hair dryer.”

“Whoa,” Dillon said.

“It wasn’t my fault,” I told him.

“Maybe we should lay down some linoleum here. It would make things easier for clean up.”

Needless to say, this wasn’t the first time I had bloodstains in front of my door.

I pulled the door closed behind me and locked it. “Gotta go. Things to do.”

“No doubt,” Dillon said.

The sun was shining, and it was a perfect seventy-five degrees. I stepped out of the building and did a fast check for Bugle’s black Lexus. No Lexus in sight so I crossed to the Shelby. There didn’t appear to be anyone behind the wheel. So far so good. I cautiously approached the car and looked inside. No dead body. Yea!

Late last night Connie texted me information on Nick Alpha, plus a new address for Ziggy. According to Connie’s source, Ziggy moved his casket into Leonard Ginder’s house. I knew the house. It sat on the edge of the Burg, and it was a wreck. Leonard had a good job at the Personal Products plant on Route 1, but they downsized his part of the production line, and he got laid off. He’s been out of work for over a year, and his house is in foreclosure. His wife left months ago. Rumor has it she ran off with her Zumba instructor. I wasn’t sure if Leonard was still living in his house, or if Ziggy was squatting.

I drove down Hamilton, past Mooner’s bus. I didn’t see Mooner, and there were no cars or trucks parked curbside. Traffic was light. Trenton was off-pace. Sunday morning was a time for church and doughnuts and lounging around, watching cartoons.

Lula was waiting for me in front of the coffee shop. She was on the sidewalk with a giant coffee in one hand and a Super Soaker water gun in the other. She was dressed down in pink yoga pants, a matching pink tank top, and matching pink sneakers. Everything was detailed with silver glitter, and the spider hairdo was splashed with pink highlights.

I waited for her to settle into the Shelby, and I asked the obvious question. “What’s with the Super Soaker?”

“I had a stroke of genius when you called me this morning. I said what do I have to do to protect myself from the vampire? And the answer that came to me was holy water! I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner.”

“You have the Super Soaker filled with holy water?”

“Yeah. I sucked it out of the church. You know that bird-bath thing they got right up front?”

“The baptismal font?”

“That’s it. They got it filled with holy water, free for the taking.”

“Brilliant,” I said to Lula.

She tapped her head with her finger. “No grass growin’ here.”

I wound my way through the Burg to Leonard’s house on Meecham Street. The house screamed neglect, from the unkempt front yard to the rotted window frames and disintegrating asbestos shingle roof. Shades were drawn on all the windows. The houses on either side were more respectable with fresh paint and tidy lawns. Clearly their owners hadn’t been downsized. There were no garages or driveways on this street, so houses had cars parked in front … with the exception of Leonard’s house. Leonard’s car had been repossessed. Bad for Leonard. Good for me. Lots of room for the Shelby.

“So how do you want to do this?” Lula asked.

“Connie said there’s no phone or electric going into the house. Doesn’t look like Leonard has a cell phone either. That means we can’t call him to see if he’s in there. We could try talking to the neighbors, but I don’t want to turn this into a production.”

“Least we don’t have to worry about Ziggy sneaking away. It’s real sunny today. Ziggy’s not gonna want to go outside. And if he does go outside we’ll hear him screaming and see him smokin’.”

Lula and I got out of the car and walked up to the front door. I knocked once. No one answered. I put my ear to the door. Silence.

“I bet Leonard isn’t here, and Ziggy’s asleep in his forever box,” Lula whispered.

I should be so lucky.

I put my hand to the knob and turned. Not locked. I opened the door and stepped inside. I had cuffs tucked into the back of my jeans, my stun gun in my sweatshirt pocket, and pepper spray in my other pocket. I took a moment to let my eyes adjust to the dark interior. The house felt abandoned. The front room had been stripped of furniture.

Lula took a big sniff and raised the Super Soaker. “I smell vampire.”

I cut my eyes to Lula. “You’re a nut.”

“Well I smell something.”

“Mold.”

“Yeah. I smell moldy vampire.”

We crept into the dining room and found the casket. The rest of the room was bare. The casket lid was up, and Ziggy was asleep inside, arms crossed over his chest like the living dead.

“Lord protect me,” Lula said. And before I realized what she was about to do, she gave Ziggy a blast with the Super Soaker.

Ziggy sat up and shook his head, spraying water. “What the Sam Hill?”

Lula gave him another shot, and Ziggy sprang out of the casket and latched on to her.

“He’s going for my neck,” she yelled. “Get him off. Get him off.”

Lula was slapping at Ziggy, and Ziggy was making sucking sounds in the vicinity of her neck. I grabbed Ziggy by the back of his shirt and yanked him off Lula.

“Stop sucking,” I said to Ziggy. “You’re not a vampire. Get over it.”

“It’s a curse,” Ziggy said. “I can’t help it.”

I clapped a cuff on one wrist and after some wrestling managed to get the second one secured.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said to Ziggy. “We are going to walk out the front door like normal people, and we are going to get into my car. None of us are going to turn into screaming maniacs.”

“Is it sunny?” Ziggy asked. “It looks like it might be sunny.”

“Lordy, lordy,” Lula said. “I’m closin’ my eyes and I’m stoppin’ up my ears. Look how pale he is. You ever see anybody that white? He’s gonna fry up to nothing.”

“He didn’t get fried when he ran down the street two days ago,” I said.

“I was running fast,” Ziggy said. “I think I was running between the sunbeams.”

Lula bobbed her head. “I heard vampires were speedy like that.”

“Is Leonard living here, too?” I asked Ziggy.

“No. They made him get out. He’s living in a cardboard box in the Pine Barrens. I just figured it was a shame to let the house sit empty like this. And I didn’t count on you finding me again.”

I had Ziggy by the elbow, and I was herding him through the living room. I opened the front door and Ziggy gasped.

“I can’t go out there,” he said. “It’s certain death.”

“It’s death if you don’t,” I told him. “If you don’t get in the car, I’m going to bludgeon you with the Super Soaker.”

“God might not like that … being it’s filled with holy water,” Lula said.

I muscled Ziggy out the door, into the sunshine, and he started shrieking.

“Eeeeeeeee!”

“I knew it,” Lula said. “He’s smoking. He’s melting. I can’t look no more.”

Ziggy was running around in circles, hands cuffed behind his back, not knowing where to go. He lost his balance, toppled over, and lay there in the mangy front yard, unable to right himself.

“Eeeeeee! Eeeeee!.” He stopped to catch his breath, and he looked down at himself. “Hunh,” he said. “I’m still alive.”

“Maybe it was the holy water I squirted on him,” Lula said. “Maybe it gave him divine protection.”

I hoisted Ziggy to his feet. “News flash. He’s not a vampire. Never was. Never will be. End of story.”

I marched Ziggy to the Shelby and stuffed him into the backseat.

“I still feel a little like a vampire,” Ziggy said.

Lula buckled her seat belt. “Maybe you’re one of them hybrids. Like you’re a vampire only not so much.”

“Yeah, that could be it,” Ziggy said.

I drove to the police station and checked Ziggy in with the docket lieutenant.

“Now that we know you’re not a hundred percent vampire you should stop trying to suck necks,” I said to Ziggy.

“I’ll try,” Ziggy said, “but it’s a hard habit to break.”

THIRTY-THREE

LULA WAS WAITING for me in the car when I left the police station. I got behind the wheel and looked over at her. “Are you sweating? Your arms and your chest are all wet.”

“It’s holy water from the Super Soaker. I thought it would help with my vampire issue.”

“What issue is that?”

“My teeth. I can feel the one growing. I’m surprised you didn’t notice it’s longer than the others.”

Lula pulled her lips back and showed me her teeth. The incisors might have been a tiny bit long, but I couldn’t say if it was recent. I never paid much attention to her teeth.

“It looks like a normal tooth,” I said to Lula.

“It don’t feel normal. And I’m all out of holy water. I need to refill the Super Soaker. You gotta take me back to the church. Saint Joachim is just a couple blocks away.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s Sunday afternoon. There could be a baptism going on. They might need their water.”

“I need their water,” Lula shrieked. “I’m growin’ teeth here. This is serious. I need more holy water.”

Jeez Louise. It was like I was in the middle of an epidemic of crazy people. I drove to the church and parked on the street.

“I’m waiting here,” I told Lula, “and if I see you come barreling out of there with a priest chasing you, I’m taking off and you’re on your own.”

“I don’t think I should go in,” Lula said. “I think I might be too far gone. You’re gonna have to get the water for me.”

“Oh no. No, no, no.”

A tear streaked down Lula’s cheek. “I’m turning into a vampire,” she said, sobbing. “My tooth is killing me. It’s growing more by the minute. I don’t want to be a vampire. I don’t even like watching vampires on television. And I’m not reading no more of them vampire books either.”

“For the love of Pete, just give me the stupid Super Soaker.”

I took the water gun and slunk into the church with it. Two women were quietly praying. One was head bowed in a middle pew. The other was more toward the front. I went to the baptismal font and stared down at it. I had no idea how the heck Lula had sucked up the water. The font was too small for the Super Soaker. I made the sign of the cross, asked for forgiveness, and went to the ladies room and filled the Super Soaker from the extra large sink in the handicap stall.

I was about to leave the church when Morelli’s Grandma Bella walked in.

“You!” she said. “What you doing here?”

My knees went weak, and I felt all the air squeeze out of my lungs. “Praying,” I said.

“I never see you here before.”

“I like to come when no one else is here.” Holy Mother, I was fibbing in church.

“Me, too,” Bella said. “I like when God can pay attention. You a good girl to go to church. I take the vordo off you.” She looked at the Super Soaker. “What that?”

“It’s a present for my niece. I wanted it blessed.”

Bella spit on it. “It got my blessing now, too. I give it good luck.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Bella turned and walked down the center aisle toward the altar, and I somehow managed to make my legs take me to my car. I handed the Super Soaker over to Lula, plopped onto the driver’s seat, and rested my forehead on the steering wheel.

“I need a moment,” I said. “And don’t squirt yourself in the car. I don’t want Ranger’s car all wet.”

• • •

I dropped Lula off at the coffee shop, continued on to Morelli’s house, and parked behind his SUV. I went to the door, knocked once, and let myself in. Bob galloped at me, attempted a sliding stop, and crashed into my legs. I ruffled his ears and scratched his back, and Morelli ambled in from the kitchen.

“Long time no see,” Morelli said.

“Almost two days.”

“Seems longer.”

“I ran into your grandmother today, and she took the spell off me.”

“Is this the pimple spell?”

I dropped my bag on the coffee table. “No. The vordo spell.”

“Its hard to keep track of all the spells.” He pulled me close and kissed me. “Are you still drinking cranberry juice?”

“No.”

“That’s the best news I’ve had all day.” He kissed me just below my ear, my neck, my shoulder. “I missed you last night.”

“I rode by but you weren’t home.”

“It was late when I left Anthony. It took forever to get him settled in his new house.” He kissed me again. “I don’t suppose you’d want to go upstairs and take a nap?”

“A nap?”

Morelli grinned. “I was trying to be subtle.”

I had my arms around him, and he felt good against me, but I wasn’t in the mood for a nap. Usually by the time Morelli worked his way down to my shoulder I was getting warm. Today I felt nothing. Too many other things on my mind, I thought.

“Maybe we can nap later. I have things to do this afternoon,” I said.

“Like what?”

“I took Grandma to Lou Dugan’s viewing last night, and Nick Alpha was there. He’s really crazy. He said he was going to even the score for Jimmy. He said he was going to kill me, and that it wouldn’t be the first time he killed someone, but it was going to be the most enjoyable.”

I felt the muscles tense in Morelli’s back, and his eyes changed from soft and sexy to hard cop eyes. “He actually said that to you?”

“Yes. So I’m going after him. If I can prove he killed Lou Dugan and his poker partners, I can get him taken off the street.”

“It’s not a given that he’s the killer.”

“No, but it’s worth investigating.”

“I agree. I’m not going to order you to stay away from Nick Alpha because giving you orders never works, but I would feel much more comfortable if you let me do the investigating.”

“Sure,” I said. “Investigate to your heart’s content.”

Morelli narrowed his eyes. “That was too easy.”

I shrugged. “I have better things to do.”

“Such as?”

“Catch bad guys who have gone FTA. And shop for sexy lingerie.”

“You’re playing me,” Morelli said. “If you’re going to put yourself in danger at least don’t do it alone.”

• • •

I left Morelli and stopped at the coffee shop to read through Connie’s text message one more time. I bought a Frappuccino and a giant chocolate chip cookie and took them to a bistro table toward the front. Connie had texted me an address for Alpha. According to her source he owned a dry-cleaning business on the first block of Stark, and he was living above it. She wasn’t able to get a personal phone or cell phone.

I was familiar with the first block of Stark. Most buildings were three stories and built shortly after WWII. They were redbrick turned dark with age and grime. Ground-floor units were commercial. Bars, groceries, a pawnshop, a tattoo parlor, hair salon, a storefront church. This first block was relatively stable and reasonably safe, unless Nick Alpha was out and about and trying to kill me.

I’d never had reason to notice the dry cleaner. I vaguely remembered that it was in the middle of the block. I knew it backed up to a service alley, as did almost all businesses on Stark. I wanted to snoop around the building and assess the possibility of getting into Alpha’s apartment to look for a Frankenstein mask. I realize this was a little illegal, but I didn’t see where I had a choice. I couldn’t sit around and wait for Alpha to decide it was time to strangle me.

I finished my cookie and my Frappuccino and was about to leave when Mooner walked in.

“Yo, dudette,” Mooner said to me.

“Is the bus done?”

“Negative. This is like a process. I mean you can’t rush an artiste like Uncle Jimmy.” He waved at the girl behind the counter. “Make me something mellow,” he said to her. “I’m feeling pumpkin.”

I hung my bag on my shoulder and gathered my trash. “Gotta go.”

“That’s cool. Where are we going?”

“I have to check some things out.”

“Excellent. Checking things out is like more than orange. It’s like one of my specialties.”

“Pumpkin up,” the counter girl shouted.

Here’s the thing about Mooner. Half the time I didn’t know what the heck he was saying, but I always knew what he was talking about. He paid for his pumpkin drink and ambled back to me, looking like he was ready to go check things out. Don’t get me wrong. I like Mooner. He’s a little eccentric, but he’s a good guy. Problem is he’s like a puppy that’s only ninety percent housebroken. There’s always the potential for piddle on the carpet. Figuratively speaking.

“I’m just going over to Stark,” I told him. “It’ll be boring.”

“Awesome.”

I blew out a sigh. Sometimes it’s best to give up and go with it. “Okay then,” I said. “Let’s roll.”

I turned up Stark and cruised past Kan Klean dry cleaners. Standard two plate-glass windows on either side of the front door. A roll-down security gate was in place. Kan Klean was closed on Sunday. A side door accessed the two floors above the dry cleaner. Connie said Alpha lived on the second floor. The third floor was a rental unit occupied by someone named Jesus Cervaz. I drove around the block and took the service road. Alpha’s building had a small parking area behind it, an enclosed area for garbage cans, and a back door that looked like it only led to the dry cleaner. A Kan Klean van and a silver Camry were parked in the lot. The second and third floor had rear access onto exterior stairs.

There were rear-facing windows in the apartments, but you’d have to be Spiderman to get to them. The rear doors were solid, without windows.

“What are we looking at?” Mooner asked.

“Real estate.”

“Are you like buying?”

“No. Breaking and entering.”

“Excellent.”

I returned to Stark and drove past Alpha’s address one more time. A man stepped out of a bar two doors down and bent his head to light a cigarette. It was Nick Alpha.

“Dude,” Mooner said. “It’s The Twizzler.”

“Twizzler?”

“That’s what we call him. The dude loves Twizzlers.”

“How do you know him?”

“He’s in my bowling league. He took Billy Silks place last month when Silky broke his thumb. Turns out it’s real hard to bowl with a broken thumb.”

“I didn’t know you bowled.”

“Every Sunday night. I got a shirt with my name on it. Walter.”

“Does Twizzler have his name on his shirt?”

“No. He hasn’t got an official shirt. He’s just a stand-in for Silky.”

“So he’ll be bowling with you tonight?”

“Yeah, man. When you commit to a league you show up. It’s like a responsibility, you know?”

It’s almost always better to be lucky than to be good. By a stroke of dumb luck I just found out when Nick Alpha will be out of his apartment.

I took Mooner back to the bus and drove home on autopilot. It was one thing to know Alpha would be out of his apartment. It was a whole other deal to get inside. And there was always the possibility the Twizzler would get a stomach flu in the middle of a frame and go home. Ranger would get me in and keep me safe, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to involve Ranger.

I parked in my building’s lot and walked to the back door. I was halfway there when I heard the car coming. It was crazy Regina Bugle in her black Lexus, bearing down on me. I jumped behind Mr. Moyner’s Buick, and the Lexus careened off, and circled around. I ran flat out and made it into the building just as Regina was about to mow me down. She stopped short, gave me the finger, and sped away.

Mental note. Next time remember to look for Regina Bugle. I trudged up the stairs to the second floor and peeked into the hall. Thank goodness, no Dave. I let myself into my apartment and got the last beer out of the fridge. Rex came out of his soup can to say hello, and I dropped a couple Fruit Loops into his cage.

“It wasn’t a completely awful day,” I told Rex. “I brought Ziggy in and now I can pay off my credit card. And Grandma Bella took the vordo off me.”

I ate Fruit Loops out of the box with my beer, and I went to my computer. I checked my email, and I looked through Craigslist for possible jobs that wouldn’t get me killed. Almost everything on Craigslist paid more than I was currently making, but my qualifications were sketchy. I had a college degree in liberal arts. That and a dollar could get me a soda.

THIRTY-FOUR

AT EIGHT O’CLOCK I called Ranger. “Are you busy?” I asked him.

“Is this about vordo?”

“No. This is about breaking into Nick Alpha’s apartment to look for a Frankenstein mask.”

“If I don’t do this with you, are you going alone?”

“Yes.”

There was a beat of silence and I suspected Ranger was thinking about sighing.

“When and where?” he asked.

“Now. First block of Stark.”

“Park in the garage. We’ll take a fleet car.”

Ranger was waiting for me when I pulled into Rangeman twenty minutes later. He was wearing a black SEALs ball cap, a black T-shirt, black windbreaker, black cargo pants, and black cross-trainers. I knew from past experience he’d be carrying a sidearm, an ankle gun, and a knife.

He pulled me to him and kissed me, and I had a ripple of panic when I didn’t feel anything. First Morelli and now Ranger. No belly heat. No tingles in private places. No desire. Nothing.

“Babe,” Ranger said. “Do we have a problem?”

“Bella removed the vordo curse, and I think she might have removed too much.”

“Too bad,” Ranger said, opening the door to his Cayenne. “It would have been interesting to see what you could do in an SUV.”

Fifteen minutes later we drove past Kan Klean. Lights were off in the building’s second- and third-floor windows. There was moderate traffic on the street. Teens hung in groups in doorways and in front of the pizza parlor.

We turned at the corner, took the service road, and idled behind the Kan Klean van. There were no other cars in the small lot. No light shining from back windows. No street lights or exterior porch lighting. Ranger parked on the shoulder one door down, we walked back to the Kan Klean building, climbed the stairs, and Ranger tried the door. Locked. He worked at it for a moment, and the door opened. One of his many talents. We stepped inside and closed the door behind us. No alarm sounded. There were no blinking diodes on a control panel suggesting a silent alarm. Ranger clicked a penlight on and flicked it around the room. I did the same.

We systematically moved through the apartment, beginning with the small eat-in kitchen. We were looking for anything that would tie Alpha to the killings. The mask, the jumpsuit, clothesline, notes, personal items removed from the victims, dates marked on a calendar, car keys. We didn’t find anything in the kitchen, so we went to the living room.

The living room was filled with guy furniture. A flat-screen television, a big leather couch, and two leather recliners in front of the television. The coffee table in front of the couch was loaded with newspapers, two cardboard boxes filled with file folders, a take-out pizza box, empty beer cans, a box of Sugar Smacks, and a giant bag of Funyuns. We each took a file box and picked our way through.

“He used Bobby Lucarelli for some of his transactions prior to his time in jail,” Ranger said. “I don’t see anything else of interest.”

I returned my file box to the coffee table. “Nothing here. Miscellaneous receipts.”

We had a bathroom and two bedrooms to go. The first bedroom was standard fare. Rumpled bed. Dirty clothes on the floor. A dresser with man junk on it. Keys, a watch, a couple empty beer cans, a couple girlie magazines, an open box of condoms. There was a clock radio and more girlie mags on the single nightstand. A small armchair with a flowery print had been shoved into a corner. We didn’t find anything incriminating in the closet or dresser. Nothing under the bed. Nothing incriminating in the bathroom.

Ranger stood in the doorway to the second bedroom and flashed the penlight at the middle of the room. “Nice,” he said, his light shining on a monster of a freestanding safe. “They had to bring this in with a skyhook.”

“Seems excessive for a Stark Street dry-cleaning operation.”

He toed the door open. “It’s not locked. And it’s empty.”

I looked in. “No Frankenstein mask.”

Ranger went still. “Someone’s on the back stairs.”

I froze and a moment later a door creaked open. I heard footsteps in the kitchen. Men’s voices. The door slammed shut. The footsteps and voices moved through the kitchen. They were walking in our direction. Ranger pulled me into a closet, wrapped an arm around me and closed the closet door. It was completely black in the closet. I was smashed into Ranger, and I could feel his heart beating against my back. His heartbeat was even. Normal. Mine was racing. A slim bar of light appeared at the bottom of the closet door. The light had been switched on in the room.

“Now what?” one of the men said.

“Now we put the bags in the safe.”

“Do we need to count it?”

“No. It’s already been counted. Just shove the bags in.”

The closet door muffled sound, but I heard a thud and some scuffling.

“Close the door and lock it,” one of the men said. “Then we can watch TV until Nick comes home.”

The bar of light disappeared from the bottom of the door and the men left the room. A couple beats later the television droned from the living room.

“What are we going to do?” I whispered to Ranger.

Ranger’s voice was low, his lips skimming across my ear. “We’re going to stay here until either all of them leave or Nick goes to bed.”

“That could take hours!”

“Yeah,” Ranger said, his hand sliding up to my breast.

“Stop that!”

“I liked you better when you had vordo.”

“You’re not suggesting we do it in this tiny closet with two men watching television in the next room, are you?”

“It’d be limiting,” Ranger said, “but at least you wouldn’t have your ass on the horn.”

After what seemed like three days but was closer to an hour, Nick Alpha came home. He stomped around in the kitchen, moved to the living room, and talked to the guys watching television. I caught a few words, but for the most part the conversation was lost to me. The television was silenced, and a short time later a door slammed shut. And a few minutes after that a toilet flushed.

“I’m going to take that as a good sign,” Ranger said.

We waited a while longer, and Ranger cracked the door. The apartment was dark and silent. Ranger took my hand, and we ever so quietly crept out of the bedroom, down the hall, and out of the apartment. We were down the stairs, running for the car when Alpha’s door crashed open, and Alpha fired off a shot at us. He was firing at sound and not sight, and his shot went wild. He squeezed off a second and third at the Cayenne, but we were already in motion, racing to the side street.

“Light sleeper,” Ranger said.

“What do you suppose he had in the safe?”

“Money from something illegal. The possibilities are endless.”

“Do we care?” I asked.

“No.”

“Do you think he’s the killer?”

“No. He’s the right height, and he was involved with some of the victims, but he feels wrong. I think he’s a gun guy. I don’t see him strangling four people.”

I hated the idea that Alpha might not be the killer. If he wasn’t the killer I had to add him to the list of people who were out to get me. Now the list would be Nick Alpha, The Killer, Regina Bugle, and possibly Dave. Although I didn’t actually know if The Killer wanted to eliminate me. Maybe he just enjoyed creeping me out. That was a comforting thought. If it was true, it meant only two people wanted to kill me for sure. It wasn’t clear what Dave’s plans were at this point.

Ranger drove through town and pulled into his building’s garage. He parked and turned to me. “Would you like to come upstairs?”

“Thanks for asking, but I think I’ll head home.”

“Still not feeling the vordo?”

“The vordo is gone.”

In the beginning it was a huge relief, but now I was starting to worry. I’d just been locked in a dark closet with Ranger for an hour, and I’d felt nothing. It was like the dead zone down there.

“I don’t need vordo, babe,” Ranger said.

Possibly true, but I didn’t want to find out. What if he was wrong, and I’d never be the same again? I was going with the head-in-the-sand program tonight.

“Rain check,” I told him.

A half hour later I was idling in my parking lot. I’d driven around and didn’t see Regina Bugle lurking anywhere. Dave’s parents’ car wasn’t here, and I didn’t know if Dave had his own. Probably he wasn’t driving anyway. I was pretty sure I broke his nose, and his eyes would be all swollen shut. I parked, ran across the lot to the safety of the building, took the stairs, and cautiously checked out my hall. No Dave. Yea!

Most of the bloodstain was gone from the carpet, and Dillon left the coffee cup sitting by my door. I took the cup inside, locked and bolted my door, and said hello to Rex. I poked around in the refrigerator, but it was pretty much empty. No more beer. No more leftovers. I finished off the box of Fruit Loops and went to bed.

• • •

Monday morning, a little before eight o’clock, I dragged myself out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen. I stared at the empty shelves in the refrigerator and went through the cupboards. No milk. No coffee. No cereal. I shuffled out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. I took a shower, got dressed in my usual uniform of jeans and girlie T-shirt, and went back to the kitchen to see if food had magically appeared. The doorbell rang and without thinking I opened the door to Dave Brewer.

Brewer had two black eyes and a Band-Aid across his nose, and he was holding a grocery bag and a bag from the coffee shop.

“I brought you breakfast,” he said.

I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know whether I should get my gun out of the cookie jar on the counter and shoot him, or apologize for breaking his nose.

He moved past me, put the bags down, pulled out a large coffee, and handed it to me. “I thought I’d make an omelet. And I got fresh croissants from the bakery.”

“I don’t want an omelet.”

“Have you already eaten breakfast?”

“No.”

“Then you want an omelet. I make an awesome omelette,” Dave said.

“Aren’t you mad that I broke your nose?”

He found the fry pan, put it on the stove, and added oil. “I guess I was out of line. I read the cues wrong.”

“I’m happy to have the coffee, but I don’t want you in my kitchen,” I told him.

He stood hands on hips and looked at me. “Why not?”

“You make me uncomfortable.”

He got the cutting board out and chopped onion, ham, and red pepper. “You have to be more specific than that.”

“I already have a boyfriend, and I don’t want another one.”

“Morelli? You’ve been fooling around with him since you were in kindergarten, and your mother says it’s not going anywhere. We think you need someone new.”

“Maybe, but it’s not you.”

He dumped the chopped stuff into the hot oil and stirred it around. “Why isn’t it me? I’m very likable. I’m attractive. I’m really good in bed. You wouldn’t know because you’ve never given me a chance, but I know what I’m doing.”

What is it with men? They all think they’re great in bed and women want to see them naked. It’s like some genetic chromosome thing.

“You’re a nice guy. And you’re right … you’re likable and attractive. You should look around. I’m sure you won’t have any problem finding a girlfriend.”

He cracked a bunch of eggs into a bowl and whipped them up. “I was voted Mr. Popularity in high school.”

“I remember.”

How the heck was I going to get him out of my apartment? It seemed excessively mean to break his nose a second time.

“And I was captain of the football team.”

“Yeah.” Stun gun, I thought. I could stun gun him.

He stirred the sizzling ham and onion around, poured the egg in, and grated some cheddar cheese. The whole kitchen smelled fabulous. I sipped my coffee and thought it wouldn’t hurt to eat first and then stun gun him.

He took two plates from the cupboard and put a croissant on each plate. He fussed with his omelet, added the cheese, and folded the omelet over. “If I’d had more time I could have made bacon or breakfast sausages,” he said, taking the pan off the stove, dividing the omelet in half. “This is healthier anyway. I don’t want a fat girlfriend.”

“I’m not your girlfriend.”

“Not yet.”

I was definitely going to stun gun him. And I was going to enjoy it. He slid half the omelet onto my plate, and we took our breakfast to the dining room table. I gobbled everything down and drained my coffee cup.

“Delicious,” I said.

“If you let me stay overnight I could make waffles in the morning. I have a killer waffle recipe.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I found my stun gun, walked behind Dave, and gave him a double dose of volts. He slumped off the chair, and I grabbed him before he fell on his face. I didn’t care a lot if he broke his nose again, but I didn’t want more blood on the carpet. I dragged him out to the hall, grabbed my bag and sweatshirt, locked my apartment door, and took the stairs to the lobby.

I searched the parking lot for a black Lexus. None in sight, so I ran to the Shelby and took off. I called Dillon and asked him to check for a body laid out in front of my door.

“He should be okay in a few minutes,” I said to Dillon. “He had a dizzy spell. Maybe you can help him get to his car. Just make sure he doesn’t talk you into letting him into my apartment.”

“Okeydokey,” Dillon said. “No problemo.”

I hung up with Dillon and called Morelli.

“I have some information on Nick Alpha,” I said to Morelli. “He’s living in an apartment over his dry-cleaning business on Stark, and he has a safe in his second bedroom, and I’m pretty sure the safe is filled with bags of money. I don’t think it came from dry cleaning.”

“I’ll pass the information on,” Morelli said. “Don’t ever tell me how you found this out.”

I drove down Hamilton to the bonds office lot. Mooner’s bus and Connie’s car were parked curbside. No Vinnie. No Lula. I parked behind Connie, and let myself into the bus. The walls and the ceiling were upholstered in cream microfiber. The floor was tan Berber carpet. Countertops were pale green faux marble Formica. No more Death Star. Mooner was watching television with his sunglasses on. Connie was working at her computer.

“This is great,” I said, sitting in a club chair. “Uncle Jimmy did a good job.”

“What is butter!” Mooner yelled at the television.

Connie looked at me. “The bus is better, but it isn’t perfect. It’s still got Mooner.”

“That’s because he owns it,” I told her. “Where is everyone?”

“Vinnie is downtown bonding someone out, and Lula is at the dentist.”

“Did she say what was wrong?”

“No. She left a message on my cell. I have a vision of her getting her fangs ground down.”

That dragged a grimace out of both of us.

“What did you do over the weekend?” Connie asked. “Anything interesting?”

“I took Grandma to Lou Dugan’s viewing Saturday night, and Nick Alpha was there.”

“I’m not surprised. They were business partners before Nick got sent to prison. Dugan was part owner of the gym on Stark Street where Benito Ramirez trained.”

I told her about the conversation at the viewing.

Connie’s eyes got wide. “He said he was going to kill you?”

“Yeah. And he said he’d killed before.”

“Did you tell Morelli?”

“He’s going to talk to Nick, but I’m not sure how effective that’ll be.”

“Do you think Nick was serious about killing you?”

I nodded my head. “Yeah, I think he was serious. He had a lot of time in prison to work himself up over Jimmy’s death. Morelli will do what he can as a cop, but I need to go proactive. It occurred to me that Nick could have killed Dugan, Lucarelli, Beck, and Kulicki. If I can prove it, I can have him sent away forever, and I won’t have to worry about him killing me.”

“He knew Dugan, Lucarelli, and Kulicki,” Connie said. “He could have had something against them. Timing is right. Alpha got out of prison just before the killings started.”

“I broke into his apartment last night, but I couldn’t find any evidence.”

“That doesn’t mean Alpha didn’t kill those people.”

I helped myself to coffee and returned to my chair. “True, but Ranger doesn’t think Alpha feels right. He thinks Alpha is a shooter, and all the victims were strangled with their neck’s broken. So if Ranger’s right, I have to get something else on Nick Alpha. I’m sure he’s dirty. I just have to find out what he’s into right now.”

“I’m sure I can get answers for you,” Connie said. “The difficulty will be proving it.”

“If I can tell the police exactly where to look, they can set something up. After I get things in motion I can lock myself in my apartment and not go out until Alpha’s put away.”

“What about Ranger? I’m sure he’d take care of Alpha for you.”

“Ranger is working off enough bad karma. I don’t want to add to the burden.”

Connie put her headset on. “Let me make some phone calls.”

THIRTY-FIVE

I WENT TO THE BACK of the bus and watched Jeopardy reruns with Mooner for an hour while Connie researched crime.

“I could like do this,” Mooner said. “I could rule Jeopardy.” He sat forward. “What is Sri Lanka! Ancient Greek history for $200.”

I abandoned Jeopardy and looked in on Connie.

“I have a couple leads,” Connie said. “Alpha was sent away for running numbers and extortion. Apparently he’s back in the extortion business and there are some Stark Street businessmen who aren’t happy about it.”

“And they’re talking?”

“Not to police, but in the community.”

“Can I convince them to talk to the police?”

“Not until you get Alpha taken off the street for something else. There’s a lot of fear. He came out of prison crazy angry.”

“Is there something else?”

“Cockfighting.”

“Get out!”

“Word is he’s running cockfights somewhere Monday and Thursday nights. And cockfights are a felony. My source didn’t know where the fights were taking place, but I ran property tax records and Nick Alpha owns five Stark Street properties.” Connie handed me a note card with the addresses. “One is under his name and four as NAA LLC.”

The door to the bus opened, and Vinnie climbed the stairs and handed Connie a file. “Business is booming. I’m bonding out guys who are telling me they’re going FTA so the hooters girls will come get them.” He pointed his finger at me. “You’re gonna either need a boob job or a really serious push-up bra.”

I looked down at myself. I liked my boobs just the way they were. They weren’t too big, and they weren’t too small. They were a perfect handful for Morelli.

“You’re an idiot,” I said to Vinnie.

“Yeah,” Vinnie said. “But I’m your idiot boss. What are you doing here? Don’t you have anything better to do? Why aren’t you out chasing bad guys?”

“I caught all the bad guys.”

“What about the flyers?”

“We hung them all.”

“I’ll give you five bucks if you wash my car,” Vinnie said.

I was tempted to take it. I could use the money.

“What is Queen Elizabeth!” Mooner yelled at the television.

“Christ,” Vinnie said. “Is he watching Jeopardy again? Lock him in the can with Donkey Kong. I got work to do.”

“Do you know anything about cockfights?” I asked Vinnie.

“Like what do you want to know?”

“I want to know if there are any around?”

“Is the pope Catholic?”

“Do you know where they’re held?”

“No. They’re not my thing. I like the ponies. I imagine the cockfights move around. They’re illegal. What’s your interest? Not a lot of women into cockfighting. As your cousin I would advise you not to go alone. Even if you’re armed you don’t want to go alone. I hear it’s a rough crowd.”

There was a rap on the door, and Morelli stuck his head in. “Good morning,” he said. “I need to talk to Stephanie.”

I stepped out, and we walked away from the bus.

“It looks like we found the last poker player,” Morelli said.

“Sam Grip?”

“Probably. The body wasn’t in good shape. It was stuffed into the trunk of his car, and a ballpark guess is he was killed in the same time frame as Lou Dugan and Bobby Lucarelli. The car was found early this morning. It was parked in a scrubby section of woods in the Pine Barrens, and it attracted attention because there were about forty buzzards sitting on it and another hundred circling overhead. Apparently they’d been circling for days and someone finally investigated.”

“Ick. Was Sam addressed to me?”

“No. No note. They’re sending a helicopter out to do a flyover. I’m guessing they’ll find the rest of the cars in the same area.”

“Why did the killer hide the cars? Why didn’t he just leave them with the bodies?”

Morelli shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“Sounds like standard operating procedure for the mob. They bury people in the Pine Barrens all the time. I bet Nick Alpha’s prints are all over the car.”

“I don’t know if you can categorize Nick Alpha as mob,” Morelli said. “Most of the Trenton mob guys are in their nineties.”

“Work with me here,” I said. “I need to pin something on Alpha.”

Morelli dragged me up against him and kissed me. “Try to stay out of trouble,” he said. “I have to go.”

I watched him walk to his car, and I thought I felt a small stirring of feeling down in the dead zone. Maybe it wasn’t dead after all. Maybe it had just been resting.

I opened the door to the bus and called to Connie. “I’m taking off,” I said. “I want to check out the addresses.”

“Take someone with you,” she said. “Two of those addresses were on upper Stark.”

“I don’t have anyone. I’ll be fine.”

“Take Mooner. Please.”

I looked in at her. “You just want to get rid of him.”

“I can’t take it anymore. If he yells one more answer I’m going to rip his lungs out.”

I gave up a sigh. “I’ll take him with me.”

“This is like a new role for me,” Mooner said, buckling himself into the Shelby. “Who would think we’d be partners. It’s like fucking awesome. I’m like psyched.”

“We’re just going to ride down Stark and look at some real estate.” I gave him the card with the addresses. “When we get to Stark you can read the numbers off to me.”

“I could read them better if I had a burger.”

I hit the drive-thru at Cluck-in-a-Bucket, and we got chicken burgers and fries.

“This is an excellent job,” Mooner said, eating his last fry. “This is almost as good as distributing pharmaceuticals.”

The only property in Alpha’s name was the dry cleaner, and I didn’t think that had good cockfighting potential. The second address was a slum rooming house. A three-floor walk-up on the edge of no-man’s-land. The last two were warehouses at the blighted end of Stark. One was designated as Gimple’s Moving and Storage, and the other looked unused. They were on the same block but opposite sides of the street.

I turned at the corner and took the service alley behind Gimple’s. There were two roll-up garage doors, one loading dock, and a back door. I didn’t know much about cockfighting, but I thought this looked like a possibility. I idled behind Gimple’s and called Connie.

“Is Gimple’s Moving and Storage real?” I asked her.

“It’s a legitimate business with a phone number, but it’s probably fronting for something, and I don’t know what that is.”

I drove to the other side of Stark and cruised past the warehouse that looked empty. Broken windows on the second floor in the rear. Brick exterior covered with graffiti. Four rusted, dented roll-up garage doors. One keyed exterior door.

“What do you think?” I asked Mooner.

“About what?”

“Business opportunities in these two buildings.”

“I like this one.”

“Why?”

“I could like park my bus here, dude. There’s room. No garbage cans or crapola.”

He was right. The parking area was garbage free. Not normal for Stark Street. Stark Street was like the city dump. Beer cans, whiskey bottles, food wrappers, broken televisions, fire gutted mattresses, used and reused drug paraphernalia all collected here in gutters, doorways, against sides of buildings, and in alleys. A patch of debris-free rutted blacktop meant someone was working to keep the area clear.

“Try the back door,” I said to Mooner.

Mooner ambled over and opened the door. “It’s empty, man. Totally.”

I motioned for him to get back into the car. I drove past the other warehouse one last time and left the neighborhood.

“That was bold,” Mooner said. “What’s our next adventure?”

I didn’t have any more adventures, but I knew Connie would be disappointed if I brought him back too soon.

“I think we should go to Holy Cow for ice cream,” I said.

“Cool.”

I picked Holy Cow because it was in Hamilton Township, and it would use up almost an hour. I got a single dip of Jersey mud, and Mooner couldn’t make up his mind. He stood in front of the display case, eyes glazed, lips moving as he silently read the choices.

Morelli called me, and I stepped outside to talk.

“They found three of the other cars,” Morelli said. “They’re going in on foot tomorrow to look for the fourth.”

“Were there more bodies? Did they find anything inside the cars?”

“I’m told the cars were empty.”

“Did you know Nick Alpha is running cockfights?”

“I heard about the cockfights. I didn’t know Alpha was involved.” There was a beat of silence. “You aren’t getting involved in this, are you?”

“No. Of course not. Cockfighting is disgusting.”

“Next time I fall in love it’s going to be with someone who isn’t an expert at fibbing.”

“You’re in love with me?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“I did, but it’s nice to hear.”

“Scares the hell out of me,” Morelli said. And he hung up.

I finished my ice cream and went inside. Mooner was still standing transfixed in front of the counter.

“Give him a scoop of chocolate, a scoop of strawberry, a scoop of coffee, and a scoop of butter pecan,” I said to the girl.

“Fuckin’ A,” Mooner said, smiling wide, and rocked back on his heels.

• • •

Lula was in the bus when we got back.

“I had a abscess,” she said. “That’s why I thought my tooth was growing. The dentist says it’s common to feel like that.”

“So you’re not turning into a vampire,” Connie said.

“Well, I might be, but I don’t have fangs. And I’m feeling much better now that I had the root canal. ’Course, I’m packed full of drugs, so that could have something to do with it.” Lula looked around. “This is nice. It don’t have personality like before, but it don’t feel like the sun died either.”

“Anything for me?” I asked Connie.

“No. None of the new bondees have come up to trial yet. They’ll start next week, and I imagine they won’t all show up for court. Vinnie bonded out some real losers. How did it go on Stark Street?”

“The two warehouses are possibilities.”

Lula snapped to attention. “Stark Street? Warehouses? Did I miss something?”

I filled Lula in on the cockfighting and my plan to get Nick Alpha sent back to jail so he couldn’t kill me.

“That’s a good plan,” Lula said. “He belongs in jail anyway what with doing cruelty to animals. I don’t have patience with people mistreating animals. And I like chickens.”

“Especially when they’re hacked up into pieces and fried,” Connie said.

“Yeah, but that’s a different kind of chicken,” Lula said. “Those are nasty bald, eating chickens. They’re not the Little Red Hen.”

“Eating chickens aren’t bald,” I said.

“I seen them in the supermarket,” Lula said. “And they’re bald.”

“Dude,” Mooner said from the back of the bus. “Something’s wrong with my television. I can’t get it to go on.”

“Imagine that,” Connie said. “Maybe the satellite is behind a cloud.”

“What happens next?” Lula asked. “Are the cops gonna bust up the cockfight tonight?”

“I have to pin down the location before I make the call. And I want to make sure Alpha is there. I don’t want to shut down the operation and not have Alpha involved.”

Lula nodded. “I see what you’re saying. So I’m thinking we’re going out to a cockfight tonight. I gotta put some thought to this. I don’t know if I got a cockfighting outfit at home. I might have to go shopping.”

“I’m not actually going to the cockfight. I’m going to hang around and follow Alpha when he goes out. Then when I’m sure he’s at the cockfight I’ll call Morelli.”

“I could live with that,” Lula said. “What time you want to meet up?”

“Are you sure you feel okay to do this?”

“Hell, yeah. I’m almost a hundred percent.”

This wasn’t something that filled me with confidence. When Lula and I operated at a full hundred percent we weren’t all that great. Almost a hundred percent was getting into Three Stooges territory.

“You need a different car,” Connie said. “You’ll be noticed in the Shelby. Lula’s Firebird isn’t any better.”

“I can get a car,” Lula said. “I’ll borrow my cousin Ernie’s car. He’s got a piece of crap SUV. It’ll blend right in on Stark Street.”

I got into the Shelby, drove to my apartment building, and stopped at the entrance to the lot. I was afraid to park. Regina Bugle could be there. Even worse, Dave could be there. And if they weren’t there now, they might be there when I wanted to leave, and I’d be trapped inside my apartment.

I turned around and idled on a side street, running through my options. I could drop in on Morelli, but there would be complications. I didn’t want to involve Morelli in this stage of the Nick Alpha saga. And he wouldn’t want me to go to Stark Street. There would also be complications if I dropped in on Ranger. Mostly related to vordo or the lack thereof. The bonds bus felt claustrophobic. The new décor was much better, but it was still Mooner’s bus. And I was afraid to go to the mall for fear of falling under the influence of another red dress. That left my parents’ house.

I got there early and sat in the kitchen, watching my mother assemble dinner. I always offered to help, and my mother almost always declined. She’d been doing this for a lot of years, and she had her own rhythm. My grandmother was tuned into the rhythm and pitched in as needed.

“I heard they found Sam Grip,” Grandma said.

There was no need for a newspaper or the Internet in the Burg. News traveled at the speed of light the old-fashioned way … over the back fence and in line at the deli.

I got a soda out of the refrigerator. “He was in his car in the Pine Barrens.”

“I hear Skooter Berkower is real worried. He played poker with those guys sometimes. That whole poker group is getting wiped out. Somebody don’t like poker players. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it’s someone’s wife doing this. Probably one of those guys lost a lot of money and some wife wigged out.”

That would be a decent theory except for the two bodies addressed to me.

“Or maybe it’s Joyce Barnhardt trying to get attention,” Grandma said. “I wouldn’t put it past her. You know how she loves to be in the spotlight.”

I drank some soda and recapped the bottle. “Killing five people seems extreme, even for Joyce.”

“I suppose,” Grandma said. “This sure is a mystery.”

“That’s a lot of potatoes you’re mashing,” I said to my mother.

My mother added a big glob of butter to the potatoes. “We have a lot of people for dinner. Valerie and Albert are coming with the children.”

My sister Valerie has two children by her disastrous first marriage, and two with her second husband Albert Klaughn. I love my sister and Albert, and I especially love the kids, but it’s half a bottle of Advil when you get them all into my parents’ small house.

“We’re gonna need rubber walls if you ever get married and have kids,” Grandma said to me. “I don’t know how we could fit any more people in here, and Dave looks like the kind who’d want a big family.”

“Dave isn’t in the picture.”

“I hear different,” Grandma said. “It’s all over town about you and Dave.”

I traded my soda in for a glass of wine. If I had to deal with Valerie and the kids and talk about Dave, I was going to need alcohol.

THIRTY-SIX

“JEEZ,” LULA SAID when I met her by the bonds bus. “You look worse than me, and I just had root canal.”

“I had dinner with my parents and Valerie and Albert and the kids. The dinner was fine. And it was nice to spend time with Valerie and the girls, but the conversation kept coming back to Dave Brewer and me.”

“And?”

“And I’m not interested in him. I don’t want to date him. I don’t want him cooking in my kitchen.”

Lula did a raised eyebrow. “You don’t want him cooking in your kitchen?”

“Okay, maybe I want him cooking in my kitchen. The problem is he won’t stay in the kitchen. He wanders.”

“Hunh,” Lula said.

I put my hand up. “Let me revise that statement. I don’t even want him in my kitchen. Yes, he makes great food. Is it worth it? No. And I can’t discourage him. He doesn’t take hints. He doesn’t listen. I broke his nose, for crying out loud. And he came back to make breakfast.”

“How’d you break his nose?”

“I hit him in the face with a hair dryer.”

“Good one,” Lula said.

We were on the sidewalk, standing by an old junker SUV. It looked like it might be black under the grime, and there was some rust creeping up from the undercarriage.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met your cousin Ernie,” I said to Lula.

“Ernie works for the roads department, patching potholes. It’s not a bad job except he always smells like asphalt, and he got hit a couple times.”

We saddled up in the SUV, and Lula drove to Stark Street. We cruised past the dry cleaner, turned at the corner, and rolled down the alley. Lula stopped just short of Alpha’s building and killed the engine. Lights were on in the second-floor windows, and there was a dark-colored Mercedes sedan parked next to the dry-cleaning van.

A little before nine o’clock Alpha’s back door opened, lights were switched off in the apartment, and Alpha walked down the exterior stairs and got into the Mercedes.

“We’re in business,” Lula said.

Lula crept along behind Alpha, lights off, until Alpha took the corner and turned onto Stark. She flipped her lights on and followed two cars back. Alpha drove the length of Stark, circled the block to the alley, and pulled into the parking lot to the empty warehouse. Lula cut her lights and idled at the corner. A garage door rolled up and Alpha drove in. We waited a moment, and two more cars appeared and drove into the warehouse.

“They’re using the warehouse like a parking garage,” I said to Lula. “Pretty clever. This way the cars don’t attract attention, and no one knows an event is going on.”

“Where are they gonna have the cockfight if they park here? Is there an upstairs?”

“No. This building is all one level. It’s just a high-ceiling warehouse, but Alpha owns the warehouse across the street. I’m betting these guys are all going across the street.”

Lula backed out of the alley and hung at the corner of Stark. Alpha and two men walked out of the front door to the parking garage, crossed the street, and disappeared inside the second warehouse.

“Are we good, or what?” Lula said. “We found the cockfight.”

“We found something. We don’t actually know if it’s the cockfight.”

Lula crossed Stark and took the side street but wasn’t able to go down the alley. The entrance to the alley was blocked off by a moving van. We drove around the block and found the other alley entrance was also blocked.

“I hate this,” Lula said. “This drives me nuts. You know how Grandma Mazur’s gotta look inside the casket? That’s how this is. I drove all the way up Stark Street, and now I can’t get down this stupid alley. They got a lot of nerve blocking the alley off so we can’t go down. How’re we supposed to know if there’s a cockfight going on in there?”

Lula pulled to the curb and parked. “I’m going down that alley. They can’t keep me out. I got rights.”

“Wait! It’s not safe.” Crap. Lula was out of the car, huffing her way down the alley. I snatched the keys from the ignition and ran after her.

The alley was dark. Streetlights got shot out in this part of town and never replaced. What was the point? Halfway down the block a narrow band of light spilled out of the back of Alpha’s warehouse.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said to Lula. “These people are scary.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s Stark Street!”

“Yeah, but I want to see what’s going on. It must be something good if they’ve got the alley blocked off.”

“They’ve got it blocked because they’re doing something illegal. It’s the cockfight, or they’re unloading a hijacked truck, or they’re murdering people.”

“I bet it’s the cockfight,” Lula said. “I’ve never seen a cockfight. Not that I want to. It sounds disgusting, but it’s like a train wreck. You gotta look, right? Maybe it’s the vampire coming out in me.”

The bar of light was coming from the open back door to the warehouse. A couple vans were parked in the small adjacent lot. The vans were unoccupied, and no one was lurking by the door. Everyone was inside the warehouse.

“I bet if we looked in those vans we’d find feathers,” Lula said. “This here’s V.I.P. parking. And that open door’s practically an invitation for us to go in.”

Male voices rumbled out from the warehouse interior.

“Going in would be a bad idea,” I said to Lula. “There are men with guns and killer birds in there.”

Lula tiptoed up to the door. “We don’t know that for sure. People could be blowing this cockfighting thing way out of proportion.” She peeked inside and sucked in air. “It’s the little red hen! Except I guess it’s a rooster. And there’s a big shiny black rooster. And a bunch of cages I can’t see into.”

“Great. That’s exactly what I need to know. I’m calling this in.”

I stepped away from the warehouse, pressed myself against the side of a building where shadows were deep, and dialed police dispatch. I disconnected and realized Lula was nowhere to be seen.

I heard a scream from inside the building. It was followed by screeching and crowing, and a lot of shouting. And Lula burst out the door. Two roosters half ran, half flew past me and disappeared into the night. A third bird was attached to Lula.

“Vampire rooster!” Lula yelled.

She was batting at the bird, and the bird was squawking and flapping his wings and pecking at Lula. She managed to knock the bird off her head, and the bird turned and attacked the men coming out the door.

There was a lot of cussing and yelling and more squawking, and Lula and I took off at a dead run. We ran down the alley and hooked a left at the side street. We stopped and bent to catch our breath. I didn’t hear footsteps. No one seemed to be running after us. There was a lot of angry shouting back by the warehouse, and someone flicked a flashlight beam across the alley.

Lula straightened up and looked around. “Didn’t we park the car here?”

The junker SUV was gone. This car stealing stuff was getting old.

“It’s a wonder anyone is ever able to get home in this neighborhood,” Lula said. “You leave your car for two minutes and the car fairy comes and takes it.”

Lula’s giant spider hairdo had been rearranged by the rooster and was now more rat’s nest. She was wearing a black leather bustier, a denim skirt that barely covered her ass, and over-the-knee black leather boots with four-inch spike heels. I imagined the outfit came from her S&M ho collection.

We were standing pretty much on the corner of Stark and Sidney. A red tricked-out Grand Cherokee pulled up to us, the passenger window slid down, and a guy leaned out at us.

“Hey bitch,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Go away,” Lula said. “We’re busy here.”

“You don’t look busy. You look like you’re waitin’ to do me.”

“My cousin Ernie isn’t gonna like this,” Lula said to me. “How’s he gonna get to work tomorrow?”

The Cherokee doors opened and two scrawny guys in too big clothes got out and strutted over to Lula.

“You look like a workin’ bitch,” the one guy said. “How come you don’t wanna work me?”

“I’m retired,” Lula said. “Take a hike.”

“I’ll hike right up your fat lady ass,” the guy said.

Lula turned on him, eyes narrowed. “Did you call me fat? ’Cause you don’t want to do that. You don’t want to mess with me. I just lost Ernie’s car. And I just had root canal, and my meds are wearin’ off, and I’m feelin’ mean as a snake. I’m a woman on the edge right now, you punk ass, little pencil dick.”

“I ain’t no pencil dick. You want to see my dick?”

He unzipped his big baggy pants, and Lula tagged both of them with her stun gun.

“Hunh,” Lula said. She looked down at the two guys sprawled on the sidewalk, and then she looked over at their SUV. “I think we just got a car.”

“No way! That’s grand theft auto.”

“You want to stay here and wait for a bus?”

Good point.

We scrambled into the Cherokee with Lula behind the wheel, and we took off. Two police cars passed us going in the opposite direction. Lights flashing. No siren. Most likely en route to the cockfight.

“What happened in the warehouse?” I asked Lula.

“There wasn’t anybody in the back room, so I went in to look at the chickens, and right off one of them was acting real friendly. He was looking at me with his head sort of tilted, and he was making clucking sounds like the Little Red Hen would make. And I figured he wanted me to pet him, so I opened the door to his cage just a little to get my hand in, and next thing he busted out and attacked me. It was Ziggy all over again. And then when I was trying to get him off my head, I knocked into a stack of cages, and they fell over and broke apart, and the chickens all came rushing out. There was demon chickens all over the place, squawkin’ and clawin’ at each other. It was a chicken nightmare. I won’t be able to sleep tonight thinkin’ about them chickens. And now they’re runnin’ around loose, peckin’ the eyes out of people. ’Course it’s Stark Street so those chickens are gonna have to duke it out with the drugged-up nutcases and hungry people lookin’ for chicken parts.”

We rode in silence after that, thinking our own thoughts about the Stark Street chickens. Lula drove through the center of the city, turned onto Hamilton, and parked behind my Shelby.

“What are you going to do with this SUV?” I asked her.

“I’m gonna give it to Ernie. Seems only fair he gets this car since someone stole his.”

“But this is a stolen car. We stole it!”

“And?”

There comes a point in conversation with Lula where it’s best to drop back and punt.

“Okay then,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Hope your tooth feels better.”

“Yep. Happy trails,” Lula said.

I drove home on autopilot, talking to myself, my mind alternating between numb mush and episodes of panic.

“I hate when people want to kill me,” I said out loud to myself. “It makes my stomach feel weird. And I worry about Rex. Who would take care of him if I got murdered? I don’t even have a will. And do you know why I haven’t got a will? It’s because I don’t have anything to leave anyone. How pathetic is that?”

I pulled into the lot to my apartment building and parked next to Mr. Molnar’s blue Accord. I was halfway to the building’s back door, worrying about a Dave Brewer appearance, when I heard someone behind me gun a car engine. Regina! I jumped to safety, and she roared past me, sideswiping a beater Dodge that belonged to Mrs. Gonzoles’s loser son. One more dent in the Dodge wasn’t going to get noticed. I sprinted to the building while Regina circled, and I made it inside before she reached me on the second pass.

I took a deep breath and told myself things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Regina would get tired of trying to run me over, Nick Alpha would get arrested, Dave would eventually move on, and one of these days my reproductive system would get back to normal. I took the stairs and thought about Ranger naked, but I wasn’t in a swoon by the time I reached the second floor, so clearly I had a way to go on the path to sexual recovery. At least Dave wasn’t lurking in the hall when I peeked out from the stairwell.

THIRTY-SEVEN

MY CELL PHONE woke me up from a restless sleep.

“I’m at your door. I forgot my key.” Morelli said. “I’ve been knocking and ringing your doorbell. Where are you?”

“I’m here. Hang on.” I dragged myself out of bed and let Morelli in. “What time is it?” I asked him.

“It’s eight o’clock.” He set a bag and a container of coffee on my kitchen counter. “I brought you breakfast. I’m taking off for south Jersey. I want to see the crime scene before it gets dismantled. I’ll probably be gone for most of the day. I was hoping you could walk Bob around noon.”

“Sure.”

He gave me something halfway between a smile and a grimace. “You look like you had a rough night.”

“I had a horrible night. I couldn’t sleep. And when I did fall asleep I had awful dreams.”

“Let me take a guess. The dreams were about chickens.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Did Alpha get arrested?”

Morelli opened my coffee for me. “No. By the time the police got to the warehouse the evidence was scattered over a ten-mile radius.”

I looked in the bag and pulled out a container of orange juice and a bagel with cream cheese. “Thanks for bringing me breakfast. This was really nice of you.”

“Yeah, I’m a nice guy.”

He hooked his finger into the neckline of my cotton knit pajama top, looked inside at my breasts, and gave a small sigh.

“So near and yet so far,” he said.

He kissed me and left.

I dropped a chunk of bagel into Rex’s cage, and I ate the rest. I drank the orange juice and took the coffee into my bedroom to drink while I dressed.

A half hour later I was at the bonds bus.

“Where’s Lula?” I asked Connie.

“She said she’d be in late. Something about her hair.”

“It looks like the cockfighting isn’t going to get Alpha off the street. I’m going to need another angle.”

“I’m sure he’s involved in a lot of bad stuff, but the only other thing I know for sure is the security racket.”

“Do you have store owners’ names?”

“The first three blocks of Stark Street are controlled by Alpha. If a store is open and operating they’re paying for protection. If it’s burned to the ground, they aren’t.”

“That’s pretty straightforward. Would I have any luck if I approached the people who had their store torched?”

“If you could find them … and they were alive and functioning beyond a vegetative state.”

“Jeez.”

Mooner was on the couch, doing the Jumble. “Uncle Black,” he said.

I turned toward him. “Who’s Uncle Black?”

“He owns a comic book store on the second block of Stark. Uncle Black’s Books. He had to raise his prices to cover his payments, but then like the payments got raised. It’s a vicious cycle, dude. Uncle Black’s an unhappy man.”

“I need to talk to Uncle Black,” I said.

“You gotta be comic book worthy, or Uncle Black won’t talk to you. He’s focused. He’s got like comic book laserness. He’s like the comic book guru.”

“Wonderful. I’m the no-talent guru who’s going to get him off the hook to Nick Alpha. Let’s go.”

There wasn’t a lot of traffic on Stark at this time of the morning, and I was able to park in front of Uncle Black’s Books. I locked the Shelby, set the alarm, and followed Mooner into the store. Black’s Books was a small, dusty space, crammed with tables holding thousands of collectible comics in boards and plastic bags. The comics were in alphabetical order according to category. Lots of Spiderman, Superman, X-men. Not so many Betty and Veronica and Casper. Lots of comics I’d never seen.

“Whoa,” Mooner said, obviously gobstruck by a comic in a special display. “ ‘The Creeper versus the Human Firefly.’ Awesome, dude. Fucking awesome.”

“Maybe we should buy that one,” I said to him. “Would that break the ice with Uncle Black? How much is it?”

“Forty-five dollars.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s a comic book! I’ve bought cars for forty-five dollars.”

“But dude, it’s The Creeper.”

I looked around. “Is that Uncle Black behind the counter?”

“Affirmative.”

Uncle Black was white. Really white. As if he hadn’t been out from under the fluorescent lights in a long, long time. He was slim and maybe 5?5?. In his early forties. Mousey brown hair that needed a cutting. Dressed in vintage clothes from the fifties. I suspected the vintage look wasn’t intentional.

“Moonman,” he said. “Wassup?”

“I brought the dudette,” Mooner said. “She’s like cool. She’s Bus Girl.”

“She doesn’t look like Bus Girl. Bus Girl has big hooters and golden clothes. She needs to come back when she looks like Bus Girl, and maybe Uncle Black will talk to her.”

I gave Uncle Black my card. “I need to talk to you about the protection you’re paying.”

Uncle Black tore the card up and threw it into the air like confetti. “Uncle Black will not pay one more penny to protection. And Uncle Black will only talk to Bus Girl when she’s appropriately dressed.”

“Bus Girl is a digital creation of her sick cousin,” I said to Uncle Black.

Uncle Black’s eyes narrowed and his upper lip curled back. “Uncle Black hates digital. Digital is the work of the devil.” He bent below the counter and came up with a shotgun. “Get out of my store you spawn of Satan!”

Mooner and I scurried out of the store and ran halfway down the street before we remembered the Shelby sitting in front of Black’s Books.

I was at the corner, wondering if it was safe to sneak back and retrieve the car, and a black sedan slid to a stop and double-parked beside the Shelby. Two guys who looked like bad business got out of the car and walked into the comic book store. There was a shotgun blast, and the two guys ran out of the store. One of them stumbled and was scooped up and stuffed into the black sedan by the second guy. The second guy sighted what looked like a missile launcher on the roof of the Shelby and phooonf, he fired something off into Black’s.

There was a small explosion inside the store, the black sedan laid down rubber and sped away, and then there was a large explosion. BAROOOM. The front windows to Black’s blew out, and bits and pieces of comic books floated in the air like giant dust motes. Fire licked out the open windows and black smoke billowed into the street and was swept skyward.

My initial reaction was shocked paralysis. I stood rooted to the spot, mouth open, eyes wide. When my heart resumed beating I thought about the people who might be trapped inside. No hope for Uncle Black, but there were two floors above him.

“What’s on the second and third floor?” I asked Mooner.

“Storage. I was up there once. It’s like where comic books go to sleep.”

People were gathering in the street, keeping a good distance from the fire. There was a third explosion, and flames shot out the door and ignited the Shelby. The car alarm went off, a fireball rose around the car, and the car exploded. Everyone backed up.

“Dude,” Mooner said.

I felt my cell phone buzz, and I looked at the screen. Ranger.

“Your GPS just went blank,” Ranger said when I answered.

“The car exploded.”

There was a beat of silence. “Rafael won the pool,” Ranger said. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll send someone.”

Two cop cars and a fire truck rolled down Stark. A second fire truck rumbled in. Firemen went to work, and Mooner and I stood for a few minutes, watching the Shelby burn out.

“I’m guessing Uncle Black didn’t make his protection payment on time,” I said to Mooner.

“Comic book people are fearless,” Mooner said.

I saw two Rangeman vehicles stop half a block away. They couldn’t get closer. I waved, and we walked the distance.

Hal was on the sidewalk, waiting with the key to a gleaming new black Ford Escort. “I hope this is okay,” he said. “Ranger said to take one from the fleet.”

“This is perfect. Thank you. Sorry you didn’t win the pool.”

Hal grinned. “I was twelve hours off. I didn’t think the Shelby would last this long.” He opened the door to the Escort for me. “You’re not going to believe this, but I swear a rooster ran across the road right in front of us when we were coming down Stark.”

I blew out a sigh, got into the Escort, and drove to the bonds bus. Lula was doing nail polish repair when I walked in. She was wearing a lemon yellow spandex dress and four-inch black platform heels, and her hair was a big puffball of neon green.

“Is that your real hair?” I asked her.

“No way. This here’s a wig. We had to do surgery on some of my hair since the chicken from hell got into it. Was that another new car you just drove up in? What happened to the Shelby?”

“Exploded.”

“Shit happens,” Lula said.

“That would lead me to believe it didn’t go well with Uncle Black,” Connie said.

“Also exploded,” I told her.

“It was a tragedy,” Mooner said. “They blew up a Creeper comic in primo condition, man. Someone should pay.”

“People will be scared after this,” Connie said. “No one’s going to be talking on Stark Street.”

“What’s all down the front of you?” Lula asked me.

“Chocolate ice cream. Mooner lost his mellow over the Creeper demise, so we stopped for ice cream to calm him down.” I glanced at my shirt. “I needed calming down, too.”

My phone buzzed and my parents’ number popped up. No way was I talking to my mother. She’d ferret the car explosion out of me, and she’d want to talk about Dave, and God help me if she found out about the chickens. I’d need more ice cream.

“I’m going home,” I said to Connie. “I need a new shirt.”

The good thing about always wrecking cars, is that at least for a while no one knew what I was driving. I parked in my lot and thought chances were good I wouldn’t find a dead body in the Escort when I returned. I let myself into my apartment, went straight to the bedroom, flopped onto the bed, and covered my head with a pillow.

I woke up to a phone ringing.

“I’ve been calling and calling,” my mother said. “Where were you that you couldn’t answer?”

“It was in my bag. I didn’t hear it.”

“Well thank goodness I finally got you. Everyone will be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Everyone?”

“The dinner party. I told you about it days ago. Emma and Herb Brewer and Dave. Emma said everyone was very excited to get the invitation.”

“Not everyone,” I said. “I’m not excited. I’m horrified. I’m not interested in Dave, and I don’t want to have dinner with his parents.”

“I made chicken Parmesan.”

“I can’t come. I have plans. I have to work.”

“I know when you’re fibbing Stephanie Plum. I went to all this trouble just for you, so you could spend some time with a nice man. A man who could give you a future. A family. The least you can do is make an effort. I even made pineapple upside-down cake.”

I was screwed. A major load of guilt plus pineapple upside-down cake.

“And for goodness sakes,” my mother said, “wear something nice. Please don’t wear jeans and a T-shirt.”

I pulled the T-shirt over my head and looked around. Lots of dirty clothes. Not many clean ones. The new red dress was hanging in the front of the closet. It was the easy choice.

Grandma was waiting when I parked in the driveway behind my dad’s car. “Don’t you look pretty,” Grandma said. “I read somewhere that men like women who wear red. It’s supposed to be one of them things that gets a man in a state.”

From my experience it didn’t take much to get a man in a state.

“Dave might even propose when he sees you in this dress,” Grandma said. “This dress is a man catcher.”

I didn’t want to catch any more men. I wanted to eat chicken Parm and go home and put the pillow over my head again. I watched a silver Honda Accord roll down the street and park behind my car, and I was relieved to be one step closer to dinner. Dave was driving. It looked like his dad was sitting alongside him, and his mom was in the back. Dave got out, ran around the car, and retrieved a party platter from the backseat.

All the blood drained from my head and pooled in my feet. I put a hand out to steady myself and forced myself to breathe. Put a rubber Frankenstein mask and a padded coverall on Dave and you had Juki Beck’s killer. It was an instant gut reaction. There was something about Dave’s posture and the way he moved when he rounded the car that clicked in my brain. The next thing that clicked in my brain was disbelief. There was no way it could be Dave, right?

“Omigosh,” Grandma said when she saw Dave. “What the heck happened to you?”

His eyes were less swollen, but they were still pretty ugly. Black with tinges of green. And he still had the Band-Aid across his nose.

“I took an elbow to the nose in a football game,” Dave said. “No big deal.”

“You always were an athlete,” Grandma said, ushering everyone into the living room.

Emma and Herb Brewer were in their late fifties. They were pleasant-looking people, tastefully dressed, seemingly happy. Hard to believe they’d spawn a killer. Hard to believe nudnik Dave would strangle someone.

“What a lovely home,” Emma said.

My father stood from his chair and nodded hello. He’d been coerced into abandoning his Tony Soprano–collared knit shirt in favor of a buttoned-down dress shirt. This signified a major social event. The buttoned-down dress shirt was usually reserved for Christmas, Easter, and funerals.

Dave handed me the party platter, our eyes met for a long moment, and I had an irrational stab of fear that he knew I suspected him of murder. I placed the platter on the table and made an effort to pull myself together. There was no hard evidence that suggested Dave was the killer, I told myself. I usually had good intuition, but it was only intuition after all, and it wasn’t infallible. And in this case it felt ridiculous.

“The antipasto looks great,” I said. “Did you put the platter together?”

“We picked it up at Giovichinni’s.” Dave moved close beside me, his breath soft against my ear. “That’s a killer dress.”

I felt my scalp prickle and my heart skipped a beat. “Killer? W-what do you mean by that?”

“Think about it,” Dave said. And he winked at me.

My mother brought the chicken Parmesan to the table, and I took my usual seat to my dad’s left. Dave chose the seat next to me.

“Dave came over and made the most wonderful meal for us the other night,” Grandma said to Emma Brewer. “He even made chocolate cake.”

“It’s always been his way to relax,” Emma said. “When he was a little boy he made up his own brownie recipe. The more stress he had, the more he needed to cook.”

I wondered how much cooking it took to mitigate murdering five people.

Grandma helped herself to spaghetti. “I’m surprised he don’t do all the cooking for you.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “He makes too much of a mess. There’s dirty dishes everywhere.”

“That’s a man for you,” Grandma said. “Always making a mess.”

“Not always,” Dave said. “Sometimes we know how to avoid making a mess. For instance, the bail bonds lot killer broke his victim’s necks. No bloody mess.”

“That’s terrible,” Grandma said. “I don’t know how a person could do that.”

“Probably like working in a slaughterhouse,” Dave said. “After you kill the first hundred cows it starts to feel like just another day on the job.”

“Have you ever worked in a slaughterhouse?” my father asked him.

“No. But I worked in a bank. There are similarities.”

“David, that is not funny,” his mother said.

“How do you know the killer is a man?” Grandma asked Dave. “It could be a woman.”

Dave wrapped his hand around my neck. “You need some muscle to break a neck.” He applied pressure and rocked me slightly side to side. “I don’t think a woman would have the strength. And from what I’ve read, Lou Dugan wasn’t a lightweight like Stephanie.”

The instant I got home I was going to call Morelli. And then I was going to make sure my gun was loaded.

“The hand,” I said to Dave. “Remove it.”

He released my neck and reached for his wineglass. “Just making a point.”

I jostled against him and some of his wine slopped over onto his shirt.

“Omigosh,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

Okay, it was childish, but he wasn’t the only one who could make a point. Although looking at it in retrospect it was probably not a good idea to piss off a guy I suspected of being a serial killer. I would have been more worried if he’d shot his victims. I didn’t think he could strangle all of us at the dinner table. Still, my heart was tap dancing in my chest, and my stomach was producing acid at a record rate. Maybe I’d go from my parents’ house directly to Morelli’s. He bought Maalox by the gallon jug, and I could tell him about Dave.

Everyone sat for a moment in openmouthed horror, staring at the purple stains on Dave’s shirt.

His mother dug in her purse for a stain remover stick, and my mother ran to get the Spray ’n Wash.

An hour and a half later we waved good-bye to Emma, Herb, and Dave.

“Except for when you spilled Dave’s wine, that went pretty good,” Grandma said.

My mother rolled her eyes. “He tried to kiss Stephanie good-bye, and she kicked him.”

“It was an accident,” I said.

“I don’t like him,” my father said.

My mother was hands on hips. “He’s a nice young man. Why don’t you like him?”

“I don’t need a reason,” my father said. “I just don’t like him. And I don’t like this shirt, either. I hate this shirt.”

I hung my bag on my shoulder and left my parents’ house.

THIRTY-EIGHT

I DROVE THE SHORT DISTANCE to Morelli’s house, parked behind his green SUV, and used my key to open his door.

Morelli was on the couch, watching a Two and a Half Men rerun. He looked me up and down and smiled. “Is it Christmas morning?”

“Not nearly,” I said. “I have raging heartburn. I stopped for whatever it is you’re currently using.”

He pointed to a large bottle of Tums on the coffee table. “My reflux was doing great until someone started gifting you murder victims.”

I reached for the Tums. “You want to have more reason for reflux? I just had dinner with Dave.”

“Again? In that dress?”

“The dress is a whole long, complicated story that has nothing to do with Dave. Except that he told me it was a killer dress.”

“It is,” Morelli said. “It’s a killer dress.”

“He said it like it had special meaning. And he winked at me.”

“Any man in his right mind would wink at you in this dress.”

“He said think about it.”

“I have the feeling I’m missing an important ingredient in this conversation.”

I told him how I watched the video and thought I recognized the killer. And how tonight I had the revelation that it was Dave when I saw him run around the car. And then Dave pretended to choke me at the dinner table.

“Interesting and creepy, but not exactly damning evidence,” Morelli said. “And we need to take into consideration that the man is willing to teach you to cook.”

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

“I’m taking it very seriously. I’ve gone through half a jug of Tums since Gordon Kulicki turned up dead. It’s just that Dave seems an unlikely killer. What’s his motive?”

“Finding out his motive is on your side of the division of labor. I already did my part. I recognized him in the video.”

Morelli nodded. “Recognizing him in the video is good. What was it you saw? A tattoo? A scar? Did you recognize his shoes?”

“It was just a feeling. It was the way he moved.”

“This is like going out in the field with a clairvoyant.”

“Does that ever work?”

“Sometimes,” Morelli said. “How comfortable do you feel with this? On a scale of one to ten with ten being a positive identification … how would you rate this?”

“If I was rating gut instinct it would be a nine. When I temper that with rational thought it goes way down. Maybe to a five or six.”

“Five or six is still pretty strong.”

“I would much rather Nick Alpha turned out to be the killer.”

“I’m not going to discount Alpha, but it wouldn’t hurt to dig around in Dave’s life.”

“How do we begin?”

“There’s no we. This is a police investigation.”

“I didn’t come over here to talk to a cop. I came here to talk to …”

I stopped because I didn’t know what to call Morelli. Friend sounded lame. Boyfriend was too high school. We weren’t engaged, married, or living together.

“I don’t even know what to call you,” I said, hands in the air. “What kind of a relationship is this?”

“It’s a relationship that sucks. Who had the brilliant idea we should be free to date?”

“You did.”

“I don’t think so,” Morelli said.

“I distinctly remember. You said we needed to explore other possibilities.”

Morelli reached for the Tums. He shook out two for himself and two for me.

“How’d it go in south Jersey?” I asked him.

“We found the fifth car. We also found a sixth that had been torched. It looks like there might be the remains of two bodies in the torched car.”

“More poker players?”

“No one else is missing. The guys who only played occasionally are all accounted for.”

“Maybe it’s an unrelated car.”

“Hard to believe. It was found in the same area.”

I held my hand out. “Give me two more Tums for the road. I have to go home.”

“You don’t have to go home.”

“I’m getting a headache. I need to go home and put a pillow over my face.”

“Will that help?”

“It worked this afternoon.”

He gave me the bottle of Tums. “Take the whole bottle. I’ve got more. You know where to find me when the headache goes away.”

• • •

It was dark when I reached the lot to my apartment building. I rode around looking for Regina’s car, Dave’s parents’ car, and Nick Alpha’s car. I didn’t see any of them, so I parked and crossed to the back door. I was talking to myself again, getting into the elevator.

“This is getting old,” I said. “I’m tired of looking for people who want to kill me. It’s exhausting. And what am I supposed to do with Morelli, and my missing sex drive, and my job that’s not bringing in any money?”

I popped a couple more Tums, rode to the second floor, and unlocked my door. I stepped in, closed and locked the door, and realized Dave was in my kitchen.

“Surprise,” he said.

I turned to leave, and he put himself between me and the door.

I stepped away from him and narrowed my eyes. “Get out.”

“I just got here.”

“How did you get in?”

“I took a key out of the drawer last time I was here cooking.”

I walked into the kitchen and took the lid off the cookie jar. No gun.

“I have the gun,” he said. “Not that I need it.”

I threw the lid at him, and he ducked away. I grabbed the cookie jar and whacked him on the side of his head. He staggered back, and pulled himself together.

“You should stop hitting me,” he said, snatching the cookie jar out of my hand, throwing it across the room. “What did I ever do to you?”

“For starters you broke into my apartment.”

“I didn’t break in. I walked in. I have a key … like Morelli.”

“I gave Morelli a key, and you stole yours.”

“That’s not all I’m stealing. I’m stealing you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just like Morelli stole my girl back in high school. I took her to the prom and Morelli took her to bed. She was wearing my class ring and my corsage. She was my date, and he seduced her in the school parking lot.”

“He seduced every girl in the school in the parking lot. And one in a bakery. You can’t take it personally.”

“The hell I can’t. I’ve got his girl now. And I’m going to even the score.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Dead or alive,” Dave said. “Your choice.”

Okay, that was scary. I was doing pretty good up to that point, but that took my breath away.

“You killed Lou Dugan, didn’t you?”

He grinned. “I’ve been waiting for you to figure it out. I ran around the car just for you tonight. I knew you’d watched the tape from the crime scene. Pretty cool, right? And the bodies I addressed to you. Did that freak Morelli out?”

“Yeah.”

He gave a bark of laughter. “I’ve had really crapola luck lately. My life hasn’t been a lot of fun. Lost my house, my dog, my car, and my job. Lost my wife, but good riddance to that one. Went to jail for a while. Not a good experience. And to add insult to injury I had to move in with my parents. So I’m feeling pretty down. I’m working at a shit job. Had to kill my cousin to get it. Plus I’m busting ass killing all those fucking poker players. And one day, like a gift from God, my mother presents me with you. She meets your mother in the checkout line at the market, and it’s ordained from that moment on that you’re mine. And life is fun again.”

“Has it occurred to you that you might be crazy?”

“I don’t feel crazy.”

“You killed five people!”

“Actually it was seven. No wait, there were two in Georgia. Nine.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“No. It was easy. I guess I just have a talent for killing people. I’m good at it. I snap their necks. No blood. Okay, sometimes they spit up a little, but it’s not like getting shot.”

I’d faced down my share of crazy killers, but never someone this cold. I did my best to keep it together. I didn’t think Dave was the sort of guy who would respond well to drama. “Ick!”

“The hard part is getting rid of them. I buried the two in Georgia in a cornfield. No one’s found them. I drove my cousin and her boyfriend down to the Pine Barrens and set the car on fire. I was worried about DNA, but honestly I don’t think DNA is all it’s cracked up to be.”

“You did it to get a job?”

“Yeah. Smart, right? Not only did I get her job, but she’d lifted money from the company safe, and I got the money, too.”

“And Lou Dugan?”

“I was sort of in business with Dugan. I went to school with his son, and I was over to his house a lot when I was a kid. When I moved to Georgia I stayed in touch with Lou. He was a sharp businessman. I learned a lot from him. I was making foreclosures at the bank, and Lou saw a way to make money on them. I’d foreclose on some loser’s house, and Dugan would buy it for way under market value through one of his holding companies. And then we figured out how we could get creative, and by manipulating some paperwork we could snatch houses right out from under people. Problem was we yanked a mortgage from some whiner who didn’t just roll over when he lost his house.”

“That’s when you went to jail?”

“I was only in jail until my bail bond was set. I got out and started cleaning house. I got rid of the two men under me who knew what was going on. They could have testified, and I would have been sent away for a long, long time.”

“The cornfield?”

“Yeah. And then Lou got nervous. I got my kickback from him in cash, but he was sitting there with all these hot properties in his holding companies.”

“Do you still have the money?”

“The lawyers have the money. Trial lawyers and divorce lawyers. I should have been a lawyer. The only money I have came from the stash my cousin stole.”

“So you killed Lou because he was nervous?”

“He’d transferred a load of money into a Buenos Aires bank, and he was getting ready to disappear. Asked me to drive him to the airport. He was taking a red-eye. I had a feeling he was going to kill me, so I killed him first.”

“Just like that.”

“Yep. Came up behind him, choked him, and broke his neck. And then I had the same stupid body problem. I was driving him around in his car, thinking it was like that movie Weekend at Bernie’s. And I drive down Hamilton Avenue and see the backhoe sitting out in the bonds office lot. It’s three in the morning. No traffic. As dark as a witch’s heart. And there’s a backhoe waiting to dig a grave.

“My mistake was that I didn’t dig it deep enough. I buried Lucarelli deeper, but they found him anyway. Then I decided to have some fun with Juki and Kulicki. I knew the security people installed video. What did you think of the Frankenstein mask? Good touch, right?”

“I understand why you killed Dugan. I don’t get the other murders.”

“I had to clean house. Lucarelli was the lawyer who processed all the paper, and Kulicki moved a lot of the transactions through his bank. Sam Grip worked for Dugan and knew everything. Grip knew when Dugan passed gas. Juki was sleeping with Grip, and she knew everything he knew. The whole thing is just so fucking complicated. Who would have thought? It’s like a sweater that starts to unravel. I mean, I can’t kill people fast enough.”

“So it didn’t have anything to do with the poker game?”

“What poker game?”

“They all played poker together. Except for Juki.”

“I didn’t know that,” Dave said.

This is why we didn’t connect the dots to Dave, I thought. We were in the right neighborhood, but we were on the wrong road.

“What about the cars?” I asked him.

“When I kill someone I like to leave my car out of it to cut back on the DNA potential. After I burned Francie’s car I realized burning a car produces a lot of smoke that could attract attention, so I stopped burning cars. And after I drove the car into the woods and burned it I had no way to get home. So I started using one of Harry’s moving vans to drive the car to the car graveyard. I’d just drive the victim’s car in, close the van doors, and drive the car out when I got to the barrens. The more you know, the more impressed you are, right? Morelli’s no match for me. I’ve been making him look like an idiot.”

“Why did you leave Sam Grip in the trunk?”

“I was in a rush. I killed him in the afternoon, and I was making pot roast for dinner.”

I popped two more Tums. I’d been saving the big question for last. “So are you done killing now?”

“That depends on you,” Dave said. He took a white envelope from his jacket pocket. FOR STEPHANIE was written on the outside of the envelope. “This will get us to Thailand. The plane leaves at six o’clock tomorrow morning. We can stay at an airport hotel tonight, have some fun, I’ll snap a couple intimate pictures of you for Morelli, and we’ll start a new life together. Or I can kill you now, have some fun with you after you’re dead, and go to Thailand by myself.”

“That’s gross.”

Dave shrugged. “Life is gross.”

He’d been calm through all of this, showing some animation when he talked about the killings, showing some checked anger when he mentioned Morelli. I’d been working hard to contain my fear and revulsion, and I think I was successful. My plan was to do whatever I could to buy time, and look for an opportunity to make an escape. I suspected he had only one ticket to Thailand. He’d kill me on the road or at the airport hotel. He knew it was only a matter of time before forensics discovered it was Francie in the trashed car. And Francie was the clue to his undoing. So Dave was anxious to get out of town. He wanted to complete his revenge on Morelli, but he was feeling pressured.

“I’ve never seen Thailand,” I said, taking the envelope.

“Smart girl.”

“Let me throw some things in a suitcase, and I’ll be ready to go.”

“Not necessary. I have a bag already packed for you. The rest you can buy when we land.”

“I need my makeup.”

“You need nothing. Get your purse. And just so you know, I’m capable of shooting you if it becomes necessary.” He wrapped his hand around my neck and moved me to the door. “Behave yourself,” he said, guiding me out the door and down the hall to the elevator.

His hand never left my neck, and I could feel his fingers gripping hard. The elevator doors opened, and he walked me through the empty lobby.

“We’ll take my car,” he said. “Third row, toward the back of the lot.”

“Does your mother know you’re going to Thailand?”

“No. No one knows.”

He pushed me forward, out the lobby door, onto the short sidewalk that led to the parking area.

“Why Thailand?” I asked him.

“Why not?”

We were halfway across the lot when a stocky guy stepped from behind a parked car. He came into the light, and I saw it was Nick Alpha.

“I don’t know who you are,” he said to Dave, “but you need to step away. I have business with Ms. Plum.”

“Your business will have to wait,” Dave said.

Alpha drew a gun. “My business won’t wait.”

Dave took my gun out of his pocket and aimed it at Alpha. “I don’t give a crap about your business. I got here first.”

I could feel Dave’s fingers tighten around my neck. I could barely breathe. I had two guys fighting over who was going to kill me. Could my life possibly get any worse?

“Put the gun down,” Alpha said.

Dave narrowed his eyes. “You put your gun down.”

I heard a car engine catch from the back of the lot, and I caught a glimpse of the black Lexus as it crept forward, out of its parking space. And here comes the rhinoceros, I thought. Now three people were trying to kill me. This had to be some sort of record.

The tires on the Lexus chirped when the accelerator went down to the floorboard, and the car jumped into motion. Dave turned toward the sound, loosening his grip enough for me to jump clear. A fraction of a second later there was a round of gunfire and the sickening thud of a car slamming into a body. The Lexus careened around a row of cars and roared away. I peeked out from behind Mr. Molnar’s Chrysler and saw both men lying motionless on the pavement.

I suppose I should have gone to see if I could help them, but I didn’t. I ran back to the building, up the stairs, and down the hall as fast as I could in my red spike heels. I was shaking so bad I had double vision, and I had to two-hand the key to get it into the lock to open my door. I rushed inside, flipped the deadbolts, and bent at the waist to breathe. I was gasping for air and sobbing, and I dialed two wrong numbers before I was able to tap in 911. I reported the gunfire and car massacre, disconnected, and called Morelli and Ranger.

Sirens wailed in the distance, and red and blue strobe lights flashed against my window as cop cars and EMTs swept into my lot. I went to the window and looked down. It was dark and difficult to see, but I could make out the two bodies on the pavement. When I saw Morelli’s SUV and Ranger’s Porsche pull into the lot I took the stairs to the lobby.

THIRTY-NINE

IT WAS A GLORIOUS MORNING. The sun was shining. The air quality was in the breathable range. And I was alive. The emergency vehicles, cops, reporters, coroners, and gawkers were gone from my parking lot. The pimple had disappeared from my forehead. And the vordo was back with a vengeance. I felt like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. I wanted to throw my head back, and sing, and twirl around with my arms stretched wide.

Alpha had shot and killed Dave. And Regina was in jail, charged with vehicular homicide, in the death of Alpha. Off-hand I couldn’t think of anyone who was alive and free and wanted to kill me.

I’d showered, done the whole blow-dry thing with my hair, and gotten dressed in my favorite T-shirt and jeans. My cupboards were bare, and I was ravishingly hungry, so I drove to my parents’ house where there would be eggs, bacon, coffee, juice, and Danish pastries.

I parked at the curb, and saw Grandma come to the door before I reached the porch.

“He seemed like such a nice young man,” Grandma said, opening the door to me. “We heard first thing this morning, and we couldn’t believe it. Your mother went straight to the ironing basket.”

I followed Grandma to the kitchen, said hello to my mom, and poured myself a cup of coffee.

“Are you hungry?” Grandma asked me. “Do you need breakfast?”

“I’m famished!”

Grandma pulled eggs and bacon out of the refrigerator. “We got coffee cake on the table, and I’ll get an omelet started for you.”

My mother’s eyes were glazed, her face registering complete disbelief, her arm mechanically moving the iron over the sleeve of my father’s dress shirt. “He seemed like such a nice young man,” she said. “I was sure he was the one. He came from such a good family.”

“Captain of the football team,” Grandma said, laying the bacon out in the big fry pan.

Bang, bang, bang on the front door. “Yoohoo!”

It was Lula.

“I was on my way to your apartment, and you drove right past,” Lula said to me. “So I hooked a U-turn. When it turned out you didn’t go to the office, I figured you were headed here.” She looked over at the kitchen table. “Coffee cake!”

“Help yourself,” Grandma said. “We got bacon and eggs coming up.”

Lula sat at the table and cut a piece of cake. “I heard all about last night. It was on the morning news. And I have to tell you it was a shocker. Dave seemed like such a nice guy. Who would have thought a demented killer could make pork chops like that. And now he’s dead, and there’s no more pork chops.”

“It’s a cryin’ shame,” Grandma said.

“Fuckin’ A,” Lula said. “Oops, ’scuse my language, but the news was real upsetting.”

I sat opposite Lula at the little table and sipped my coffee.

“You don’t look too disturbed,” Lula said to me. “I would have thought you’d have a eye twitch, or something.”

“Nope. I woke up feeling terrific.”

“Huh,” Lula said. “Now that I’m paying attention, you got a glow to you. I bet you got some last night.”

“Nope again. I just feel relieved.”

“It had to be scary when you were with Dave,” Lula said.

I nodded. “He threatened to kill me if I didn’t go to Thailand with him.”

“I saw a show on the travel channel about Thailand,” Grandma said. “It’s a vacation destination.”

Lula cut herself another piece of cake. “It’s supposed to be real nice there. I wouldn’t mind going to Thailand. ’Course I wouldn’t go with a man who gave me a ultimatum like that. That baloney don’t work with me.”

My mother sighed and shook her head. “He was so polite. And he had such good table manners.”