To The Nines

To The Nines

Janet Evanovich

CHAPTER 1

MY NAME IS Stephanie Plum and I was born and raised in the Chambersburg section of Trenton, where the top male activities are scarfing pastries and pork rinds and growing love handles. The pastry and pork rind scarfing I've seen firsthand. The love handle growing happens over time. Thank God for small favors.

The first guy I saw up close and personal was Joe Morelli. Morelli put an end to my virgin status and showed me a body that was masculine perfection… smooth and muscular and sexy. Back then Morelli thought a long-term commitment was twenty minutes. I was one of thousands who got to admire Morelli's best parts as he pulled his pants up and headed for the door.

Morelli has been in and out of my life since then. He's currently in and he's improved with age, butt included.

So the sight of a naked ass isn't exactly new to me, but the one I was presently watching took the cake. Punky Balog had an ass like Winnie the Pooh… big and fat and furry. Sad to say, that was where the similarity ended because, unlike Pooh Bear, there was nothing endearing or cuddly about Punky Balog.

I knew about Punky's ass because I was in my new sunshine yellow Ford Escape, sitting across from Punky's dilapidated row house, and Punky had his huge Pooh butt plastered against his second-story window. My sometime partner, Lula, was riding shotgun for me and Lula and I were staring up at the butt in open-mouthed horror.

Punky slid his butt side to side on the pane and Lula and I gave a collective, upper lip curled back eeyeuuw!

"Think he knows we're out here," Lula said. "Think maybe he's trying to tell us something."

Lula and I work for my bail bonds agent cousin, Vincent Plum. Vinnie's office is on Hamilton Avenue, his big plate-glass front window looking into the Burg. He's not the world's best bonds agent. And he's not the worst. Truth is, he'd probably be a better bondsman if he wasn't saddled with Lula and me. I do fugitive apprehension for Vinnie and I have a lot more luck than skill. Lula mostly does filing. Lula hasn't got luck or skill. The thing Lula has going for her is the ability to tolerate Vinnie. Lula's a plus-size black woman in a size-seven white world and Lula's had a lot of practice at pulling attitude.

Punky turned and gave us a wave with his Johnson.

"That's just so sad," Lula said. "What do men think of? If you had a lumpy little wanger like that, would you go waving it in public?" Punky was dancing now, jumping around, wanger flopping, doodles bouncing.

"Holy crap," Lula said. "He's gonna rupture something."

"It's gotta be uncomfortable."

"I'm glad we forgot the binoculars. I wouldn't want to see this up close."

I didn't even want to see it from a distance.

"When I was a ho I used to keep myself from getting grossed out by pretending men's privates were Muppets," Lula said. "This guy looks like an anteater Muppet. See the little tuft of hair on the anteater head and then there's the thing the anteater snuffs up ants with… except ol' Funky here's gotta get real close to the ants on account of his snuffer isn't real big. Punky's got a pinky."

Lula was a ho in a previous life. One night while plying her trade she had a near-death experience and decided to change everything but her wardrobe. Not even a near-death experience could get Lula out of spandex. She was currently wearing a skintight hot pink miniskirt and a tiger-print top that made her boobs look like big round over-inflated balloons. It was early June and midmorning and the Jersey air wasn't cooking yet, so Lula had a yellow angora sweater over the tiger top.

"Hold on," Lula said. "I think his snuffer is growing."

This produced another eeyeuuw from us.

"Maybe I should shoot him," Lula said.

"No shooting!" I felt the need to discourage Lula from hauling out her Glock, but truth was, it seemed like it'd be a public service to take a potshot at Funky.

"How bad do we want this guy?" Lula asked.

"If I don't bring him in, I don't get paid. If I don't get paid, I don't have rent money. If I don't have rent money, I get kicked out of my apartment and have to move in with my parents."

"So we want him real bad."

"Real bad."

"And he's wanted for what?"

"Grand theft auto."

"At least it's not armed robbery. I'm gonna be hoping the only weapon he's got, he's holding in his hand right now… on account of it don't look like much of a threat to me."

"I guess we should go do it."

"I'm ready to rock 'n' roll," Lula said. "I'm ready to kick some Punky butt. I'm ready to do the job."

I turned the key in the ignition. "I'm going to drop you at the corner so you can cut through the back and take the back door. Make sure you have your walkie-talkie on so I can let you know when I'm coming in."

"Roger, that."

"And no shooting, no breaking doors down, no Dirty Harry imitations."

"You can count on me."

Three minutes later, Lula reported she was in place. I parked the Escape two houses down, walked to Punky's front door, and rang the bell. No one responded so I rang a second time. I gave the door a solid rap with my fist and shouted, "Bond enforcement! Open the door!"

I heard shouting carrying over from the backyard, a door crashing open and slamming shut, and then more muffled shouting. I called Lula on the talkie, but got no response. A moment later the front door opened to the house next to me and Lula stomped out.

"Hey, so excuse me," she yelled at the woman behind her. "So I got the wrong door. It could happen, you know. We're under a lot of pressure when we're making these dangerous apprehensions."

The woman glared at Lula and slammed and locked her door shut.

"Must have miscounted houses," Lula said to me. "I sort of let myself in through the wrong door."

"You weren't supposed to open any door."

"Yeah, but I heard someone moving around inside. Guess that's 'cause it was the neighbor lady's house, huh? So what's going on? How come you're not in yet?"

"He hasn't opened the door."

Lula took a step back and looked up. "That's because he's still mooning you."

I followed Lula's line of sight. She was right. Punky had his ass to the window again.

"Hey," Lula yelled up. "Get your fat ass off the window and get down here! We're trying to do some bond enforcement!"

An old man and an old woman came out of the house across the street and settled themselves on their front stoop to watch.

"Are you going to shoot him?" the old man wanted to know.

"I don't hardly ever get allowed to shoot anybody," Lula told him.

"That's darn disappointing," the man said. "How about kicking the door down?"

Lula gave the man one of her hand-on-hip get real looks. "Kick the door down? Do I look like I could kick a door down in these shoes? These are Via Spigas. You don't go around kicking down doors in Via Spigas. These are classy shoes. I paid a shit-load of money for these shoes and I'm not sticking them through some cheap-ass door."

Everyone looked at me. I was wearing jeans, a T-shirt topped by a black jeans jacket, and CAT boots. CAT boots could definitely kick down a door, but they'd have to be on someone else's foot because door kicking was a skill I lacked.

"You girls need to watch more television," the old man said. "You need to be more like those Charlie's Angels. Nothing stopped them girls. They could kick doors down in all kinds of shoes."

"Anyways, you don't need to kick the door in," the old woman said. "Punky never locks it."

I tried the door and, sure enough, it was unlocked.

"Sort of takes the fun out of it," Lula said, looking past the door into Punky's house.

This is the part where if we were Charlie's Angels we'd get into crouched positions, holding our guns in two hands in front of us, and we'd hunt down Punky. This didn't work for us because I left my gun home, in the cookie jar on my kitchen counter, and Lula'd fall over if she tried to do the crouch thing in her Via Spigas.

"Hey Punky," I yelled up the stairs, "put some clothes on and come down here. I need to talk to you."

"No way."

"If you don't get down here, I'm going to send Lula up to get you."

Lula's eyes got wide and she mouthed, Me? Why me?

"Come up here and get me," Punky said. "I have a surprise for you."

Lula pulled a Glock out of her handbag and gave it over to me. "You should take this on account of you're gonna be the one going up the stairs first and you might need it. You know how I hate surprises."

"I don't want the gun. I don't like guns."

"Take the gun."

"I don't want the gun," I told her.

"Take the gun!"

Yeesh. "Okay, okay. Give me the stupid gun."

I got to the top of the stairs and I peeked around the corner, down the hall.

"Here I come, ready or not," Punky sang out. And then he jumped from behind a bedroom door and stood spread eagle in full view. "Ta-dahhhh."

He was buck naked and slick as a greased pig. Lula and I swallowed hard and we both took a step backward.

"What have you got all over you?" I asked.

"Vaseline. Head to toe and extra heavy in the cracks and crevices." He was smiling ear to ear. "You want to take me in, you have to wrestle with me."

"How about we just shoot you," Lula said.

"You can't shoot me. I'm not armed."

"Here's the plan," I said to Lula. "We cuff him and put him in leg irons and then we wrap him in a blanket so he doesn't get my car greasy."

"I'm not touching him," Lula said. "Not only is he an ugly naked motherfucker, but he's a dry cleaning bill waiting to happen. I'm not ruining this top. I'll never find another top like this. It's genuine fake tiger. And Lord knows what he'd do to rabbit."

I reached for him with the cuffs. "Give me your hand."

"Make me," he said, waggling his butt. "Come get me, sweetie pie."

Lula looked over at me. "You sure you don't want me to shoot him?"

I took my jacket off and snatched at his wrist, but I couldn't hold tight. After three attempts I had Vaseline up to my elbow, and Punky was skipping around going, "… Nah, nah, nah. Kiss my can, you can't catch me, I'm the Vaseline man."

"This guy's in the red zone on the Breathalyzer," Lula said. "Think he might also be missing a few marbles in his greased-up jug head."

"I'm crazy like a fox," Punky said. "If you can't catch hold of me, you can't take me in. If you can't take me in, I don't go to jail."

"If I don't take you in, I don't pay my rent and I get kicked out of my apartment," I told Punky, lunging for him, swearing when he slid away from me.

"This here's embarrassing," Lula said. "I can't believe you're trying to grab this funky fat man."

"It's my job. And you could help! Take the damn top off if you don't want it to get ruined."

"Yeah, take your top off, momma. I've got plenty of extra Vaseline for you," Punky sang out.

Punky turned away from me, I gave him a good hard kick to the back of his knee, and he crashed to the floor. I threw myself on top of him and yelled to Lula to cuff him. She managed to get both cuffs on and my cell phone chirped.

It was my Grandma Mazur on the phone. When my Grandpa Mazur cashed in his two-dollar chips and moved on to the High Rollers' Suite in the sky, my Grandma Mazur moved in with my parents.

"Your mother's locked herself in the bathroom and she won't come out," Grandma said. "She's been in there for an hour and a half. It's the menopause. Your mother was always so sensible until the menopause hit."

"She's probably taking a bath."

"That's what I thought at first, but she's never in there this long. I went up and yelled and banged on the door just now and there's no answer. For all I know, she's dead. She could have had a heart attack and drowned in the tub."

"Omigod."

"Anyways, I thought you could get over here and unlock the door like you did last time when your sister locked herself in the bathroom."

At Christmastime my sister Valerie locked herself in the bathroom with a pregnancy test kit. The test kit kept turning up positive, and if I was Valerie I would have wanted to spend the rest of my life locked in the bathroom, too.

"I wasn't the one who unlocked the door," I told Grandma. "I was the one who climbed onto the roof over the back stoop and went in through the window."

"Well, whatever you did, you better get over here and do it again. Your father's off somewhere and your sister's out. I'd shoot the lock off, but last time I tried to do that the bullet ricocheted off the doorknob and took out a table lamp."

"Are you sure this is an emergency? I'm sort of in the middle of something."

"Hard to tell what's an emergency in this house anymore."

My parents lived in a small three-bedroom, one-bathroom house that was bursting at the seams with my mom and dad, my grandma, my recently divorced, very pregnant sister, and her two kids. Emergencies tended to blend with the normal.

"Hang tight," I told Grandma. "I'm not far away. I'll be there in a couple minutes."

Lula looked down at Punky. "What are we gonna do with him?"

"We're going to take him with us."

"The hell you are," Punky said. "I'm not getting up. I'm not going anywhere."

"I don't have time to mess with this," I said to Lula. "You stay here and baby-sit and I'll send Vinnie over to do the pickup."

"You're in trouble now," Lula said to Punky. "I bet Vinnie likes greased-up fat men. People tell me Vinnie used to be romantically involved with a duck. I bet he's gonna think you're just fine."

I hustled down the stairs and out the front door to the Escape. I called Vinnie on the way to my parents' house and gave him the word on Punky.

"What are you, nuts?" Vinnie yelled at me. "I'm not gonna go out to pick up some greased-up naked guy. I write bonds. I don't do pickups. Read my lips… you're the pickup person."

"Fine. Then you go to my parents' house and get my mother out of the bathroom."

"All right, all right, I'll do your pickup, but it's come to a sad state of affairs when I'm the normal member of this family."

I couldn't argue with that one.

Grandma Mazur was waiting for me when I pulled to the curb. "She's still in there," Grandma said. "She won't talk to me or nothing."

I ran up the stairs and tried the door. Locked. I knocked. No answer. I yelled to my mother. Still no response. Damn. I ran down the stairs out to the garage and got a step ladder. I put the ladder up to the back stoop and climbed onto the small shingled roof that attached to the back of the house and gave me access to the bathroom window. I looked inside.

My mom was in the tub with earphones on, eyes closed, knees sticking out of the water like two smooth pink islands. I rapped on the window, and my mom opened her eyes and gave a shriek. She grabbed for the towel and continued to scream for a good sixty seconds. Finally she blinked, snapped her mouth shut, pointed straight-armed to the bathroom door, and mouthed the word go.

I scuttled off the roof, down the ladder, and slunk back to the house and up the stairs, followed by Grandma Mazur.

My mother was at the bathroom door, wrapped in a towel, waiting. "What the hell were you doing?" she yelled. "You scared the crap out of me. Dammit. Can't I even relax in the tub?"

Grandma Mazur and I were speechless, standing rooted to the spot, our mouths open, our eyes wide. My mom never cursed. My mom was the practical, calming influence on the family. My mom went to church. My mom never said crap.

"It's the change," Grandma said.

"It is not the change," my mother shouted. "I am not menopausal. I just want a half hour alone. Is that too much to ask? A crappy half hour!"

"You were in there for an hour and a half," Grandma said. "I thought you might have had a heart attack. You wouldn't answer me."

"I was listening to music. I didn't hear you. I had the headset on."

"I can see that now," Grandma said. "Maybe I should try that sometime."

My mother leaned forward and took a closer look at my shirt. "What on earth do you have all over you? It's in your hair and on your shirt and you have big grease stains on your jeans. It looks like… Vaseline."

"I was in the middle of a capture when Grandma called."

My mother did an eye roll. "I don't want to know the details. Not ever. And you should be sure to pre-treat when you get home or you're never going to get that stuff out."

Ten minutes later I was pushing through the front door to Vinnie's office. Connie Rosolli, Vinnie's office manager and guard dog, was behind her desk, newspaper in hand. Connie was a couple years older than me, an inch or two shorter, and had me by three cup sizes. She was wearing a blood red V-neck sweater that showed a lot of cleavage. Her nails and her lips matched the sweater.

There were two women occupying the chairs in front of Connie's desk. Both women were dark-skinned and wearing traditional Indian dress. The older woman was a size up from Lula. Lula is packed solid, like a giant bratwurst. The woman sitting across from Connie was loose flab with rolls of fat cascading between the halter top and the long skirt of her sari. Her black hair was tied in a knot low on her neck and shot through with gray. The younger woman was slim and I guessed slightly younger than me. Late twenties, maybe. They both were perched on the edges of their seats, hands tightly clasped in their laps.

"We've got trouble," Connie said to me. "There's an article in the paper today about Vinnie."

"It's not another duck incident, is it?" I asked.

"It's about the visa bond Vinnie wrote for Samuel Singh. Singh is here on a three-month work visa and Vinnie wrote a bond insuring Singh would leave when his visa was up. A visa bond is a new thing, so the papers making a big deal about it."

Connie handed me the paper and I looked at the photo accompanying the feature. Two slim, shifty-looking men with slicked-back black hair, smiling. Singh was from India, his complexion darker, his frame smaller than Vinnie's. Both men looked like they regularly conned old ladies out of their life savings. Two Indian women stood in the background, behind Vinnie and Singh. The women in the photo were the women sitting in front of Connie.

"This is Mrs. Apusenja and her daughter Nonnie," Connie said. "Mrs. Apusenja rented a room to Samuel Singh."

Mrs. Apusenja and her daughter were staring at me, not sure what to do or say about the globs of goo in my hair and gunked into my clothes.

"And this is Stephanie Plum," Connie told the Apusenjas. "She's one of our bond enforcement agents. She's not usually this… greasy." Connie squinted at me. "What the hell have you got all over you?"

"Vaseline. Balog was covered with it. I had to wrestle him down."

"This looks sexual to me," Mrs. Apusenja said. "I am a moral women. I do not want to become involved with this." She clapped her hands to her head. "Look at me. I have my ears covered. I am not hearing this filth."

"There's no filth," I shouted at her. "There was this guy I had to bring in and he was covered in Vaseline…"

"Lalalalalalala," Mrs. Apusenja sang.

Connie and I rolled our eyes.

Nonnie pulled her mother's hand away from her head. "Listen to these people," she said to her mother. "We need them to help us."

Mrs. Apusenja stopped singing and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Mrs. Apusenja is here because Singh's disappeared," Connie said.

"This is true," Mrs. Apusenja said. "We are very worried. He was an exemplary young man."

I skimmed the article. Samuel Singh's bond was up in a week. If Vinnie couldn't produce Singh in a week's time, he was going to look like an idiot.

"We think something terrible happened to him," Nonnie said. "He just disappeared. Poof."

The mother nodded in agreement. "Samuel has been staying with us while working in this country. My family is very close to Samuel Singh's family in India. It's a very good family. Nonnie and Samuel were to be married, in fact. She was to travel to India with Samuel to meet his mother and father. We have a ticket for the plane."

"How long has Samuel been gone?" Connie asked.

"Five days," Nonnie said. "He left for work and he never returned. We asked his employer and they said Samuel didn't show up that day. We came here because we hoped Mr. Plum would be able to help us find Samuel."

"Have you checked Samuel's room to see if anything is missing?" I asked. "Clothes? Passport?"

"Everything seems to be there."

"Have you reported his disappearance to the police?"

"We have not. Do you think we should do that?"

"No," Connie said, voice just a tad too shrill, hitting Vinnie's cell phone number on her speed dial.

"We've got a situation here," Connie said to Vinnie. "Mrs. Apusenja is in the office. Samuel Singh has gone missing."

At two in the morning when the weather is ideal and the lights are all perfectly timed, it takes twenty minutes to drive from the police station to the bail bonds office. Today, at two in the afternoon, under an overcast sky, Vinnie made the run in twelve minutes.

Ranger, Vinnie's top gun, had ambled in a couple minutes earlier at Vinnie's request. He was dressed in his usual black. His dark brown hair was pulled back from his face and tied into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck. His jacket looked suspiciously like Kevlar and I knew from experience it hid a gun. Ranger was always armed. And Ranger was always dangerous. His age was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five and his skin was the color of a mocha latte. The story goes that Ranger had been Special Forces before signing on with Vinnie to do bond enforcement. He had a lot of muscle and a skill level somewhere between Batman and Rambo.

A while ago Ranger and I spent the night together. We were in an uneasy alliance now, working as a team when necessary, avoiding contact or conversation that would lead to a repeat sexual encounter. At least I was avoiding a repeat encounter. Ranger was his usual silent mysterious self, his thoughts unknown, his attitude provocative.

He'd looked me over before taking a chair. "Vaseline?" he asked.

"I am thinking it must be something sexual," Mrs. Apusenja said. "No one has told me otherwise. I am thinking this one must be a slut."

"I am not a slut," I said. "I had to capture a guy who was all greased up and some of the gunk rubbed off on me."

The back door burst open and Vinnie came in like gang-busters, followed by Lula.

"Talk to me," Vinnie said to Connie.

"Not much to tell. You remember Mrs. Apusenja and her daughter Nonnie. Samuel Singh rented a room in the Apusenja house and they were at the photo session last week. They haven't seen him in five days."

"Christ," Vinnie said. "National print coverage on this. A week to go. And this sonovabitch goes missing. Why didn't he just come over to my house and feed me rat poison? It would have been an easier death."

"We think there might be foul play involved," Nonnie said.

Vinnie made a halfhearted effort to squash a grimace. "Yeah, right. Give me a refresher course on Samuel Singh. What was his normal routine?" Vinnie had the file in his hand, flipping pages, mumbling as he read. "It says here he worked at TriBro Tech. He was in the quality control department."

"During the week Samuel would be at work from seven-thirty to five. Every night he would stay home and watch television or spend time on his computer. Even on weekends he would spend most of his time on the computer," Nonnie said.

"There is a word to call him," Mrs. Apusenja said. "I can never remember."

"Geek," Nonnie said, not looking all that happy about it.

"Yes! That's it. He was a computer geek."

"Did he have friends? Relatives in the area?" Vinnie asked.

"There were people at his workplace that he spoke of but he didn't spend time with them socially."

"Did he have enemies? Debts?"

Nonnie shook her head no. "He never spoke of debts or enemies."

"Drugs?" Vinnie asked.

"No. And he would drink alcohol only on special occasions."

"How about criminal activity? Was he involved with anyone shady?"

"Certainly not."

Ranger was impassive in his corner, watching the women. Nonnie was leaning forward in her chair, uncomfortable with the situation. Mama Apusenja had her lips pressed tight together, her head tipped slightly, not favorably impressed with what she was seeing.

"Anything else?" Vinnie asked.

Nonnie fidgeted in her seat. Her eyes dropped to the purse in her lap. "My little dog," Nonnie finally said. "My little dog is missing." She opened her purse and extracted a photo. "His name is Boo because he is so white. Like a ghost. He disappeared when Samuel vanished. He was in the backyard, which is fenced, and he disappeared."

We all looked at the photo of Nonnie and Boo. Boo was a small cocker spaniel and poodle mix with black button eyes in a fluffy white face. Boo was a cockapoo.

I felt something tug inside me for the dog. The black button eyes reminded me of my hamster, Rex. I remembered the times when I'd been worried about Rex, and I felt the same sharp stab of concern for the little dog.

"Do you get along okay with your neighbors?" Vinnie asked. "Have you asked any of them if they've seen the dog?"

"No one has seen Boo."

"We must leave now," Mrs. Apusenja said, glancing at her watch. "Nonnie needs to get back to work."

Vinnie saw them to the door and watched them cross the street to their car. "There they go," Vinnie said. "Hell's message bearers." He shook his head. "I was having such a good day. Everyone was saying how good I looked in the picture. Everyone was congratulating me because I was doing something about visa enforcement. Okay, so I took a few comments when I dragged a naked, greased-up fat guy into the station, but I could handle that." He gave his head another shake. "This I can't handle. This has to get fixed. I can't afford to lose this guy. Either we find this guy, dead or alive, or we're all unemployed. If I can't enforce this visa bond after all the publicity, I'm going to have to change my name, move to Scottsdale, Arizona, and sell used cars." Vinnie focused on Ranger. "You can find him, right?"

The corners of Ranger's mouth tipped up a fraction of an inch. This was the Ranger equivalent of a smile.

"I'm gonna take that as a yes," Vinnie said.

"I'll need help," Ranger told him. "And we'll need to work out the fee."

"Fine. Whatever. You can have Stephanie."

Ranger cut his eyes to me and the smile widened ever so slightly – the sort of smile you see on a man when he's presented with an unexpected piece of pie.

CHAPTER 2

CONNIE HANDED A stack of papers over to Ranger. "Here's everything we have," she said. "A copy of the bond agreement, photo, background information. I'll check the hospitals and the morgue, and I'll run a full investigative report. I should have some of it tomorrow."

This was the information age. Sign up with a service, tap a few keys on the computer, and within seconds facts start pouring in& all the names on the family tree, employment records, credit history, a chronology of home addresses. If you pay enough and search hard enough it's possible to access medical secrets and marital infidelities.

Ranger read through the Singh file and then looked at me. "Are you available?"

Connie fanned herself and Lula bit into her lower lip.

I blew out a sigh. This apprehension was going to create problems. My involvement with Trenton cop Joe Morelli was on the fast track again. Joe and I had a long, strange history and we probably loved each other. Neither of us felt marriage was the answer right now. It was one of the few things we agreed on. Morelli hated my job and I wasn't crazy about his grandmother. And Morelli and I had clashing views on Ranger's acceptability as a partner. We both agreed Ranger was dangerous and a shade off normal. Morelli wanted me to stay far away from Ranger. I thought six to ten inches was sufficient.

"What's the plan?" I asked Ranger.

"I'll take the neighborhood. You talk to Singh's employer, TriBro Tech. TriBro should be cooperative. They put the money up for the visa bond."

I snapped him a salute. "Okeydokey," I said. "Don't forget about the dog."

The almost smile returned to Ranger's mouth. "No stone unturned," he said.

"Hey," I said, "dogs are people, too."

The truth was, I didn't give a hoot about Samuel Singh. I know that's not a great attitude, but I was stuck with it. And I certainly didn't care about Mrs. Apusenja. Mrs. Apusenja was a bridge troll. Nonnie and the dog seemed like they needed help. And the dog pushed a button on me that triggered a rush of protective feelings. Go figure that. I really wanted to find the dog.

Ranger took off and I headed for home to degrease before questioning Singh's boss. I live in a three-story brick apartment building that houses the newly wed and the nearly dead& and me. The building lacks a lot of amenities, but the price is right and I can get pizza delivered. I parked in the lot, took the stairs to the second floor, and was surprised to find my apartment door unlocked. I stuck my head in and yelled, "Anybody home?"

"Yeah, it's me," Morelli yelled back from the bedroom. "I'm missing a set of keys. I thought maybe I left them here last night."

"I put them in the cookie jar for safekeeping."

Morelli walked into the kitchen, lifted the lid on the cookie jar, and removed his keys. Morelli looked like a real badass& lean and hard in a black T-shirt, washed-out jeans that fit him great across the butt, and new running shoes. He wore his gun at his hip, out of sight under a lightweight jacket. His hair was dark and his eyes were dark and he looked like he frequently traveled through places where men's hearts were dark.

"I'm not surprised to find the thirty-eight in here," he said. "But what's with the box of condoms?"

"They're for an emergency. Like the gun."

He pocketed the keys and looked me over. "You get into a fight with the guy who owns the lube gun at Midas?"

"Punky Balog. He thought if he was greased up and naked I wouldn't take him in."

"Hah," Morelli said. "Greased up and naked is your specialty. Are you done for the day?"

"No. I came home to get cleaned. Did you see the article about Vinnie and the visa bond?"

"Yeah."

"Samuel Singh, the bondee, is missing."

Morelli grinned. "That's fun."

No one wanted to see Vinnie selling used cars in Scottsdale, but we all enjoyed watching him sweat. Vinnie sat on a rotting branch of my family tree. Only a couple roaches from my Aunt Tootle's kitchen sat lower than Vinnie. He was a pervert, a con man, and a paranoid grouch. And in spite of all that (or maybe because of it) he was liked. He was Jersey. How can you not like Jersey?

"As soon as I change my clothes I'm going out to talk to Singh's boss," I told Morelli.

"I'm surprised Vinnie didn't give this to Ranger."

Our eyes locked for a long moment while I searched for a reply, thinking a fib might be the way to go.

"Shit, Stephanie," Morelli finally said, hands on hips, hard set to his mouth. "Don't tell me you're working with Ranger again."

Morelli and I were legitimately separated when I slept with Ranger. When Morelli and I got back together, he never asked and I never told. Still, the suspicion was there and the association rankled. And beyond the suspicion, there was a very real concern that Ranger sometimes operated a tad too far left of the law. "It's my job," I told Morelli.

"The guy's nuts. He doesn't have an address. The address on his driver's license is an empty lot. And I think he kills people."

"I'm pretty sure he only kills bad guys."

"That makes me feel a lot better."

I didn't actually know if Ranger killed people. Truth is, no one knows much about Ranger. The only thing I know for sure is that he's a primo bounty hunter. And he's the sort of lover who could make a woman forget she values commitment.

"I have to take a shower," I told Morelli.

"Need help?"

"No! I want to talk to Singh's employer, TriBro Tech. It's on the other side of Route One and I want to get there before the workday ends."

"I think I'm getting turned on by the Vaseline," Morelli said.

Everything turns Morelli on. "Go to work! Catch a drug dealer or something."

"I'll hold the thought for tonight," Morelli said. "Maybe you should come home and take a nap after TriBro." And he left.

Twenty minutes later, I was out the door. My clean hair was pulled into a pony tail. I was wearing sandals, a short black skirt, and a white sweater with a low scoop neck. I had pepper spray in my purse, just in case. I couldn't match Connie in the cleavage department, but thanks to Victoria's Secret I was making the most of what I had.

TriBro was located in a light industrial park just east of the city. I cut across town, picked up Route 1, and counted off two exits. I took the off-ramp directly into the complex, located B Street, and parked in TriBro's lot. The structure in front of me was single story, cinderblock construction, brick front, sign to the right of the front door. TriBro Tech.

The reception area was utilitarian. Industrial-grade charcoal carpet, commercial-grade dark wood furniture, overhead fluorescent lighting. Large fake potted plant by the door. Very orderly. Very clean. The woman behind the desk was professionally friendly. I introduced myself and asked to speak to Singh's superior.

A man appeared in an open doorway behind the woman. "I'm Andrew Cone," he said. "Perhaps I can help you."

He was mid-forties, average height, slim build, seriously thinning brown hair, amiable brown eyes. He wore a blue dress shirt, one button open at the throat, sleeves neatly rolled. Khaki slacks. He ushered me into his office and directed me to a chair across from his desk. His office was tastefully decorated. He had a World's Best Dad coffee mug on his desk and framed photos in his bookcase. The photos were of two little boys and a blond woman. They were at the beach. They were dressed for a party. They were hugging a small spotted dog.

"I'm looking for Samuel Singh," I told Andrew Cone, passing him a business card.

He smiled at me with slightly raised eyebrows. "Bond enforcement? What's a nice girl like you doing in a tough job like that?"

"Paying the rent, mostly."

"And Singh skipped out on you?"

"Not yet. He has another week left on his visa. This is routine monitoring."

Cone wagged his finger at me. "That's a fib. Singh's landlord and her daughter were here earlier. They haven't seen Singh in five days. And neither have we. Singh didn't show up for work last Wednesday and we haven't seen or heard from him since. I read the article in today's paper. Unfortunate timing."

"Do you have any idea where he might be?"

"No, but I don't think it's any place good. He didn't pick up his paycheck on Friday. Usually, only the dead and the deported don't show up for their paycheck."

"Did he have a locker here? Any friends I might talk to?"

"No locker. I've asked around, but I didn't come up with much. The general opinion is that Singh's likeable enough, but a loner."

I looked around the office. No clues as to the nature of Tri-Bro's business. "So what sort of business is this? And what did Singh do for you?"

"TriBro makes very specific parts for slot machines. My father and his two brothers started the business in fifty-two, and now it's owned by me and my two brothers, Bart and Clyde. My mother had hopes for a large family and thought it would simplify things to name her children alphabetically. I have two sisters. Diane and Evelyn."

"Your parents stopped at five?"

"They divorced after five. I think it was the stress of living in a house with one bathroom and five kids."

I felt myself smiling. I liked Andrew Cone. He was a pleasant guy and he had a sense of humor. "And Singh?"

"Singh was a techie, working in quality control. We hired him to temporarily fill in for a woman who was out on maternity leave."

"Do you think his disappearance could be work related?"

"Are you asking if the Mob rubbed him out?"

"That would be part of the question."

"We're actually a pretty boring little cog in the casino wheel," Cone said. "I don't think the Mob would be interested in Singh's contribution to gambling."

"Terrorist connection?"

Cone grinned and tipped back in his chair. "Not likely. From what I hear, Singh was addicted to American television and junk food and would give his life to protect the country that spawned the Egg McMuffin."

"Did you know him personally?"

"Only as boss to employee. This is a small company. Bart and Clyde and I know everyone who works here, but we don't necessarily socialize with the people on the line."

Raised voices carried in to us.

"My brothers," Andrew said. "No volume control."

A slightly younger, balder version of Andrew stuck his head in the doorway. "We got a problem." He looked my way. "And you would be who?"

I gave him my card.

"Bond enforcement?"

A third face appeared in the doorway. This face was round and cherubic with eyes peering out from behind wire-rimmed glasses. The face came with a chubby body dressed in homeboy jeans, a Buzz Lightyear sweatshirt that had been washed almost to oblivion and beyond, and ratty sneakers.

"You're a bounty hunter, right?" the baby-faced guy said. "Do you have a gun?"

"No gun."

"They always have guns on television."

"I left my gun home."

"I bet you don't need one. I bet you're real sneaky. You just sneak up to someone and bam, you've got him in handcuffs, right?"

"Right."

"Are you going to handcuff someone here?"

"Not today."

"My brothers," Andrew said, gesturing to the two men. "Bart and Clyde Cone."

Bart was wearing a black dress shirt, black slacks, and black loafers. Black Bart.

"If you're here about Samuel Singh, we have nothing to say on the matter," Bart said. "He was very briefly in our employ."

"Did you know him personally?"

"I did not. And I'm afraid I have to speak to my brother privately. We have a problem on the line."

Clyde leaned close to me. Friendly. "There's always a problem on the line," he said, smiling, not caring much. "Shits always breaking. Gizmos and stuff like that." His eyes got wide. "How about a taser? Have you ever used a taser?"

Bart pressed his lips together and threw Clyde a dark look.

The look rolled off Clyde. "I never met a bounty hunter before," Clyde said, his breath steaming his glasses.

I'd hoped for more information from TriBro. The name of a friend or enemy would have been helpful. Some knowledge of travel plans would have been nice. What I got was a vague idea of the nature of Singh's job and a dinner invitation from Clyde Cone, who I suspected was only interested in my stun gun.

I declined the dinner invitation and I rolled out of the lot. Ranger was working the Apusenjas' neighborhood. I didn't want to step on Ranger's toes, but I worried that Boo the cockapoo wasn't a priority for him. It was getting to be late afternoon. I could cut across town and do a quick drive around, looking for Boo, and then I'd be in a good position to mooch dinner from my mom.

I called Morelli and told him the plan. "You can mooch dinner, too," I said.

"Last time I ate dinner at your parents' house your sister threw up three times and your grandmother fell asleep in her mashed potatoes."

"And?"

"And I'd like to mooch dinner, but I have to work late. I swear to God, I really do have to work late."

Nonnie and Mama Apusenja lived a quarter mile from my parents' house, in a neighborhood that was very similar to the Burg. Houses were narrow, two stories, set on narrow lots. The Apusenja house was a two-toned clapboard, painted a bilious green on the top and chocolate brown on the bottom. A ten-year-old burgundy Ford Escort was parked curbside. The small backyard was fenced. I couldn't see all the yard, but what I could see didn't contain a dog. I cruised four blocks without a Boo sighting. Also, no Ranger sighting. I turned a corner and my cell phone chirped.

"Yo," Ranger said.

"Yo yourself," I told him. "Do you have Singh in leg irons?"

"Singh is nowhere to be found."

"And the dog?"

A couple beats of silence. "What's with you and the dog?"

"I don't know. I just have these dog feelings."

"Not a good sign, babe. Next thing you'll be adopting cats. And then one day you'll get all choked up when you walk down the baby food aisle in the supermarket. And you know what happens after that…"

"What?"

"You'll be punching holes in Morelli's condoms."

I would like to think the scenario was funny, but I was afraid it might be true. "I visited with the people at TriBro," I told Ranger. "I didn't come away with anything useful."

I caught a familiar reflection in my rearview mirror. Ranger in his truck. How he always managed to find me was part of the mystery.

Ranger flashed his lights to make sure I saw him. "Let's talk to the Apusenjas," he said.

We drove around the block to Sully Street, parked behind the burgundy Escort, and walked to the door together.

Mama Apusenja answered. She was still in the sari and her fat rolls made me think of the Michelin tire guy.

"Well," she said to me, with a head wag. "I see you've cleaned yourself up. You must be a terrible burden to your mother. I am feeling so sorry for her not to have a proper daughter."

I narrowed my eyes and opened my mouth to speak and Ranger leaned into me and rested a hand on my shoulder. Probably he thought I was going to do something rash, like call Mrs. Apusenja a fat cow. And in fact he was right. Fat cow was on the tip of my tongue.

"I thought it might be helpful to see Singh's room," Ranger said to Mrs. Apusenja.

"Will you be bringing this one in with you?"

Rangers grip on me tightened. "This one's name is Stephanie," Ranger said pleasantly. "And yes, she'll be coming with me."

"I suppose it will be all right," Mrs. Apusenja said grudgingly "I will expect you to be careful. I keep a very nice house." She stepped back from the door and motioned us in to the living room. "This is the formal parlor," she said proudly "And beyond that is the dining room. And then the kitchen."

Ranger and I stood speechless for a moment, taking it all in. The house was filled to the bursting with overstuffed furniture, end tables, lamps, trinkets, dried flowers, faded photos, stacks of magazines and bowls of fake fruit. And elephants. There were ceramic elephants, elaborate elephant couch pillows, elephant clocks, foot stools, and planters. Elephants aside, there was no dominant style or color. It was a garage sale waiting to happen.

I watched Ranger scan the room and I suspected he was doing a mental grimace. It would be easy to miss a note in the mess. For that matter, it would be easy to miss Singh. He could be slouched in a chair somewhere and never be noticed.

Mrs. Apusenja led the way upstairs, across the short hallway to a small bedroom. She was wearing pink rubber flip-flops that slapped against her heels and hit the floor at an angle so her heel was always half off the shoe. Her toenails were massive, painted a virulent shimmering purple. I was directly behind her and from my angle her ass looked to be about three feet across.

"This is Samuel's room," she said, gesturing to the open door. "It's so sad that it's empty. He was such a nice young man. So polite. Very respectful." She said this cutting a look back at me, sending the message that she knew I had none of those wonderful qualities.

Ranger and I stepped inside the room and I was hit with a wave of claustrophobia. The double bed was neatly made, covered with a green, yellow, and purple-flowered quilted bedspread that shouted yikes. The curtains matched the bedspread and hung over seasick green sheers. The walls were plastered with outdated calendars and thumb-tacked posters, subjects ranging from Winnie the Pooh to Springsteen, the Starship Enterprise, and Albert Einstein. There was a night-stand beside the bed and a small desk and rickety chair wedged between the bed and the wall.

"You see, it's such a nice room," Mrs. Apusenja said. "He was lucky to have this room. We have a room in the basement that we also rent out on occasion, but we gave Samuel this room because I knew he would be a suitor for Nonnie."

Ranger rifled through the nightstand and desk drawers. "Was Samuel unhappy about anything?"

"No. He was very happy. Why would he be unhappy? He had everything. We even allowed him kitchen privileges."

"Have you notified his family of his disappearance?"

"I have. I thought perhaps he was suddenly called home, but they have heard nothing from him."

Ranger moved on to the desk. He opened the middle drawer and extracted Singh's passport. "New York is his only entry."

"This was his first time away from home," Mrs. Apusenja said. "He was a good boy. He was not one of those good-for-nothing wanderers. He came here to make money for his family in India."

Ranger returned the passport to the drawer and continued his search. He abandoned the desk and went to the closet. "What's missing from the room?" Ranger asked Mrs. Apusenja. "What did Singh take with him?"

"So far as I know, just the clothes he was wearing. And his backpack, of course."

Ranger turned to look at her. "Do you know what he carried in his backpack?"

"His computer. He was never without his computer. It was a laptop. It always went to work with him. Samuel was very smart. That's how he got such a good job. He said he got his job over the Internet."

"Do you know his email address?" I asked.

"No. I don't know anything about that. We don't own a computer. We have no need for such a thing."

"How did Samuel get to work?" Ranger asked.

"He drove himself."

"Has his car been found?"

"No. He just drove away in the car and that was the last we saw of him and the car. It was a gray Nissan Sentra& an older model."

Ranger did a quick search of the bathroom and Nonnie's room and we all moved downstairs to search the kitchen.

We were still in the kitchen when Nonnie came home.

"Have you found Boo?" Nonnie asked.

"Not yet," I said. "Sorry."

"It's difficult to concentrate on my work with him missing like this," Nonnie said.

"Nonnie is a manicurist at Classy Nails in the mall," Mrs. Apusenja said. "She is one of their most popular girls."

"I never skimp on the top coat," Nonnie said. "That's the secret to a superior manicure."

It was a few minutes after six when Ranger and I left the Apusenjas. There was still time to make dinner at my parents' house, but I was losing enthusiasm for the experience. I was thinking I'd had enough chaos for one day. I was thinking maybe what I wanted to do was get take-out pizza and go home and watch a bad movie.

Ranger lounged against my car, arms crossed over his chest. "What do you think?"

"Nonnie never asked about Singh. She only asked about Boo."

"Not exactly the distraught fiancée," Ranger said.

"If we believe everything we hear, we've got a nice geeky guy who got himself engaged and disappeared along with the dog."

"The dog could be a coincidence."

"I don't think so. My Spidey Sense tells me the disappearances are related."

Ranger grinned at me. "Your Spidey Sense tell you anything else?"

"Is that a mocking grin?"

"It's the grin of a man who loves you, babe."

My heart skipped around a little and I got warm in places only Morelli should be warming. "Love?"

"There's all kinds of love," Ranger said. "This kind doesn't come with a ring attached."

"Nice, but you avoided answering my question about the mocking grin."

He gave my ponytail a playful tug.

"I'm going back to TriBro tomorrow," I said. "I'll make a pest of myself. Find out about the Internet job search. Talk to coworkers. If it's anything other than a random murder, I should be able to get a lead."

I decided against the family dinner and instead I stopped at Pino's on the way home. I slid the Pino's pizza box onto my kitchen counter, kicked my shoes off, and got a beer out of the fridge. I punched the message button on my machine and listened to my messages while I ate.

"Stephanie? It's your mother. Hello? Are you there?" Disconnect.

Second message. "Bad news. I'm gonna punk out on lunch tomorrow. The kids are sick." It was my best friend, Mary Lou. Mary Lou and I grew up together. We went to school together and we were married within months of each other. Mary Lou's marriage stuck and she had a pack of kids. My marriage lasted about twenty minutes and ended in a screaming divorce.

The third message was from Vinnie. "What are you doing at home listening to this dumb machine? Why aren't you out looking for Singh? I'm dying here, for crissake. Do something!"

And my mother again. "I didn't want anything the first time. You don't have to call me back."

I erased the messages and dropped a tiny piece of pizza into Rex's cage. Rex is my hamster roommate. He lives in a glass aquarium in my kitchen and sleeps in a Campbell's tomato soup can. Rex rushed out of his soup can, shoved the pizza into his cheek pouch, and scurried back to the can. Quality pet time.

I carted the pizza box, the beer, and my purse into the living room, flopped onto the couch, powered up the television, and found a Seinfeld rerun. A couple months ago I entered the computer age and bought myself an Apple iBook. I keep the iBook on my coffee table so I can check my mail and watch television at the same time. Am I a multi-tasker, or what?

I opened the iBook and signed on. I deleted the junk mail advertising Viagra, mortgage rates, and porn sites. A single message was left. It was from Andrew Cone. If I can be of any further help, don't hesitate to call.

The phone jarred me awake at 7:00 A.M.

"Something just came across my desk that I thought you might want to see," Morelli said. "I'm at the station and I have a few things to do and then I'll come over."

I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom. I did the shower thing and the hair thing and a half-assed job at the makeup thing. I got dressed in my usual uniform of T-shirt and jeans and felt ready to face the day. I made coffee and treated myself to a strawberry Pop Tart, feeling righteous because I'd resisted the S'mores Pop Tart. Best to have fruit for breakfast, right? I gave a corner of the Pop Tart to Rex and sipped my coffee.

I was pouring myself a second cup of coffee when Morelli arrived. He backed me against a wall, made certain there were no spaces between us, and he kissed me. His pager buzzed and he did some inventive cussing.

"Trouble?" I asked.

He looked at the display. "The usual crap." He stepped back and pulled a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. "I knew there was some sort of mess associated with TriBro, so I ran a search for you. It turned up this newspaper article from two years ago."

I took the paper from Morelli and read the headline. "Bart Cone Charged in Paressi Slaying." The article went on to say that hikers had stumbled over the body of Lillian Paressi just hours after Paressi had been killed with a single shot to the head at close range. The murder had occurred in a wooded area just north of Washington's Crossing State Park. Cone had been spotted leaving the scene and police claimed to have physical evidence linking Cone to the murder.

"What happened?" I asked Morelli.

"He was released. The witness who reported Cone fleeing from the scene recanted part of his story. And the physical evidence tested out negative. Cone had been carrying a twenty-two when the police picked him up for questioning. Paressi had been shot with a twenty-two, but ballistics ruled out Cones gun as the murder weapon. And there wasn't a DNA match-up. Paressi had been sexually assaulted after her death and the DNA didn't match to Cone.

"As I remember, the guys assigned to the case still thought Cone killed Paressi. They just couldn't get anything to stick on him. And the case has never been solved."

"Was there a motive?"

"No motive. They were never able to develop a connection between Paressi and Cone."

"Bart Cone isn't exactly Mr. Nice Guy, but it's hard to see him as a killer."

"Killers come in all sizes," Morelli said.

CHAPTER 3

MORELLI WALKED ME to my car, gave me a dismissive kiss on the forehead, and told me to be careful. He was driving a Piece Of Shit cop car that was parked next to my Ford. It was a Crown Vic that probably had originally been dark blue, but had now faded to a color that defied description. Paint was scraped off the right rear, and part of the back bumper was ripped away. A Kojak light was rolling around on the floor in the back.

"Nice car," I said to Morelli.

"Yeah, I had a hard choice to make between this and the Ferrari." He angled into the Vic, cranked it over, and rolled out of the lot.

It was early morning, but already the day was heating up. I could hear the drone of traffic, not far off on Hamilton. The sky was murky above me and I felt the rasp of ozone in the back of my throat. As the day wore on cars, chemical plants, and backyard barbecues would make their contribution to the stew that cooked over Jersey. Fancy-pants wimps in L.A. rated their pollution and curtailed activity. In Jersey we just call it air and get on with life. If you're born in Jersey, you know how to rise to a challenge. Bring on the Mob. Bring on bad air. Bring on taxes and obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and macaroni at every meal. Nothing defeats us in Jersey.

First thing on my activities list was a drive around the Apusenja neighborhood, keeping my eyes peeled for Boo and Singh. Sometimes missing persons turned up surprisingly close to home. They moved in with neighbors, hid out in garages, and sometimes turned up dead in a Dumpster.

Neither Boo nor Singh showed up after fifteen minutes of searching, so I headed across town to Route 1 and TriBro.

I still didn't have a clear idea of TriBro's product. Parts for slot machines. What did that mean? Gears? Handles? Bells and whistles? Not that it mattered. What mattered was squeezing a lead out of someone.

Black Bart hadn't been impressed with my charm or cleavage. I didn't think I'd get a lot of help from him. Clyde was eager, but not real bright. Andrew seemed like my best shot. I took the turnoff to TriBro and called Andrew on my cell phone.

"Guess what?" I said. "I'm in the neighborhood. Can I take a couple more minutes of your time?"

"Absolutely."

Absolutely was a good answer. Very positive. No sign of annoyance. No lecherous side remark. Professional. Andrew was definitely the brother of choice.

I parked in the lot, entered the lobby, and was immediately directed to Andrew's office. More good luck. No Bart or Clyde to slow me down. I took a chair across from Andrew and thanked him for seeing me.

"TriBro has an interest in finding Singh," he said. "We signed for the visa bond. If Singh skips, TriBro pays the bill."

"Do you have other employees on work visas?"

"Not now, but we have in the past. And I have to tell you, Singh isn't the first to disappear."

I felt my eyebrows raise.

"It's nothing suspicious," Andrew said. "In fact, I find it understandable. If I was in a similar position I might disappear, too. These men come to work for three months and are seduced by the potential for success. Everything is within their reach… rental movies, burgers, designer jeans, a new car, microwave popcorn, and frozen waffles. I have some sympathy for their flight, but at the same time TriBro can't keep absorbing bond losses. If this sort of thing continues we'll have to stop using visa workers. And that would be a shame, because they make very good temporary employees."

"Singh must have had some friends on the job. I'd like to talk to them."

Andrew Cone sat through a couple beats of silence, his eyes holding mine, his thoughts private, his expression guarded. "Why don't we put you undercover," he finally said. "I can give you Singh's job for a day. We haven't filled it yet."

"I'm not even sure what you make here."

"We make little things. Machine-tooled gears and locks. Singh's job primarily consisted of measuring minutia. Each part we supply must be perfect. The first day onboard you wouldn't be expected to know much." He reached for his phone and his mouth tipped into a small smile. "Let's see how good you are at bluffing."

Ten minutes later I was a genuine bogus TriBro employee, following after Andrew, learning about TriBro Tech. The gears and locks that composed the bulk of TriBro's product were made at workstations housed in a large warehouse-type facility adjoining the reception area and offices. The far end of the warehouse was divided off into a long room where the quality control work was done. Windows looked into the interior. In the entire facility there were no windows looking out. The quality control area consisted of a series of cubbies with built-in tables, shelves, and cabinets. The tables held an odd assortment of weights, measures, machine torture devices, and chemicals. A single worker occupied each of the tables. There were seven people in the quality control area. And there was one unoccupied table. Singh's table.

Andrew introduced me to the area supervisor, Ann Klimmer, and returned to his office. Ann took me table by table and introduced me to the rest of the team. The women were in their thirties and forties. There were two men. One of the men was Asian. Singh would have gravitated to the Asian, I thought. But the women would warm to me faster.

After the introductions and an overview lecture on the operation, I was partnered with Jane Locarelli. Jane looked like she'd just rolled off an embalming table. She was late forties, rail thin, and drained of color. Even her hair was faded. She spoke in a monotone, never making eye contact, her words slightly slurred as if the effort of speech was too much to manage.

"I've worked here for thirty-one years," she said. "I started working for the senior Cones. Right out of high school."

No wonder she looked like a walking cadaver. Thirty-one years under fluorescent lights, measuring and torturing little metal doohickeys. Jeez.

Jane hitched herself up onto a stool and selected a small gear from a huge barrel of small gears. "We do two kinds of testing here. We do random testing of new product." She sent me an apologetic grimace. "I'm afraid that's a little tedious." She displayed the gear she held in her hand. "And we test parts which have failed and been returned. That sort of testing is much more interesting. Unfortunately, today we're testing new product."

Jane carefully measured each part of the gear and examined it under a microscope for flaws. When she was done, she reached into the barrel and selected another gear. I had to bite back a groan. Two gears down. Three thousand gears to go.

"I heard Singh didn't show up for work one day," I said, going for casual curious. "Was he unhappy with the job?"

"Not sure," Jane said, concentrating on the new gear. "He wasn't very talkative." After extensive measuring, she decided the gear was okay and went on to a third.

"Would you like to try one?" she asked.

"Sure."

She handed the gear over and showed me how to measure.

"Looks good to me," I said after doing the measuring thing.

"No," she said, "it's off on one side. See the little burr on the edge of the one cog?" Jane took the gear from me, filed the side, and measured again. "Maybe you should just watch a while longer," she said.

I watched Jane do four more gears and my eyes glazed over and some drool oozed from between my lips. I quietly slid from my stool and moved to the next cubicle.

Dolly Freedman was also testing new gears. Dolly would drink some coffee and measure. Then she'd drink more coffee and perform another test. She was as thin and as pale as Jane, but not as lifeless. She was cranked on coffee. "This is such a bullshit job," Dolly said to me. She looked around. "Anyone watching?" she asked. Then she took a handful of gears and dumped them into the perfect gear bucket. "They looked good to me," she said. Then she drank more coffee.

"I'm going to be doing Samuel Singh's job," I told her. "Do you know what happened to him? I heard he just didn't show up for work one day."

"Yeah, that's what I heard, too. No one's said much about him. He was real quiet. Carried his computer around and spent all his breaks on the computer."

"Playing computer games?"

"No. He was always plugged into a phone line. Surfing. Doing email. Real secretive about it, too. If someone came over to him he'd close up the computer. Probably was on some porno site. He looked like the type."

"Slimy?"

"Male. I keep protection in my desk for those types." She opened her top desk drawer to show me her canister of pepper spray.

I continued to move around the room, saving Edgar, the Asian guy, for last. Several of the women thought Singh looked unhappy. Alice Louise thought he might be secretly gay. No one could fault his work habits. He arrived on time and he did his barrel. No one knew he was engaged. No one had any idea where he lived or what he did in his spare time, other than surf the Net. Everyone had seen the newspaper article and thought Vinnie looked like a weasel.

I called Ranger at noon.

"Yo," Ranger said.

"Just checking in."

"How are the folks at TriBro?"

"Not giving me a lot, but it's still early."

"Go get 'em, babe." And he disconnected.

I drifted over to Edgar's table mid-afternoon. Edgar was dropping acid on a small metal bar with threads at either end. One drop at a time. Drip, wait, and measure. Drip, wait, and measure. Drip, wait, and measure. There had to be a thousand bars waiting to be tortured. Nothing was happening. This job made watching grass grow look exciting.

"We're testing a new alloy," Edgar said.

"This seems more interesting than the gear measuring."

"Only for the first two million bars. After that, it's pretty routine."

"Why do you keep this job?"

"Benefits."

"Health insurance?"

"Gambling. If the product fails, one of us goes to Vegas as a tech rep. And the products fail all the time."

"What's a tech rep?"

"A technical representative. You know, a repairman."

"Did Singh ever go to Vegas?"

"Once."

"And you?"

"On an average, once a month. Failure is usually stress related. And that's my area of expertise."

"Did Singh like Vegas?"

"Why are you so interested in Singh?" Edgar asked.

"I'm taking over his job."

"If you were taking over his job you'd be sitting at his desk doing measurements. Instead, you're floating around, talking to everyone. I think you're looking for Singh."

A point for Edgar. "Okay, suppose I am looking for Singh. Would you know where to find him?"

"No, but I'd know where to start looking. The day before he disappeared he was in the lunch room calling all the McDonald's places, asking if a guy named Howie worked there. It was pretty strange. He was all excited. And it was the first time I'd ever seen him make a call."

I looked through the window, into the manufacturing area, and I caught Bart Cone's eye. He was examining a machine, standing with three other men. He glanced up and saw me talking to Edgar.

"That's not a happy face," Edgar said, his attention shifting to Bart.

"Does he ever have a happy face?"

"Yeah, I saw him smile once when he ran over a toad in the parking lot."

Bart made a wait here gesture to the men at the machine and marched across the work floor to the test area. He wrenched the door open and asked me to follow him out to the offices. I took my purse since it was the end of the day and there wasn't much chance I'd be returning.

Bart was once again dressed in black. His expression was menacing. I followed him into an office that smelled like metal shavings and was a cluttered mess of stacked catalogues and spare parts collected in tattered cardboard boxes. His desk was large, the top heaped with loose papers, disposable coffee cups, more spare parts, a multiline phone, and a workstation computer.

"What the hell were you doing in there?" Bart asked, looking like a guy who might have murdered Lillian Paressi. "I thought I made it clear that we had nothing to tell you about Singh."

"Your brother feels otherwise. He suggested I work undercover for a day."

Bart snatched at his phone and punched a key on speed dial. "What's the deal with Ms. Plum?" he asked. "I found her in the test area." His expression darkened at Andrews answer. He gave a terse reply, returned the handset to the cradle, and glared at me. "I don't care what my brother told you, I'm going to give you good advice and God help you if you don't follow it. Stay out of my factory."

"Sure," I said. "Okeydokey." And I left. I might be a little slow sometimes, but I'm not totally stupid. I know a genuinely scary dude when I see one. And Bart was a genuinely scary dude.

My cell phone rang as I was pulling out of the lot.

"Stephanie? It's your mother."

As if I wouldn't recognize her voice.

"We're having a nice chicken for dinner tonight."

My unmarried sister was nine months pregnant, living with my parents, and had turned into the hormone queen. I'd have to endure Valerie's mood swings to get to the chicken dinner. Valerie's boyfriend, Albert Kloughn, would most likely be there, too. Kloughn was also Valerie's boss and the father of her unborn baby. Kloughn was a struggling lawyer, and he was practically living at the house, trying to get Valerie to marry him. Not to mention Valerie's two little girls by a previous marriage who were nice kids, but added to the bedlam potential.

"Mashed potatoes with gravy," my mother said, sensing my hesitation, sweetening the offer.

"Gee, I sort of have things to do," I said.

"Pineapple upside-down cake for dessert," my mother said, pulling out the big gun. "Extra whipped cream." And she knew she had me. I'd never in my life turned down pineapple upside-down cake.

I looked at my watch. "I'm about twenty minutes away. I'll be a couple minutes late. Start without me."

Everyone was at the table when I arrived.

My sister, Valerie, was pushed back about a foot and a half to accommodate her beach ball belly. A couple weeks ago she'd started using the belly like a shelf, balancing her plate on it, tucking her napkin into the neck of her shirt, catching spilled food on her huge swollen breasts. She'd gained seventy pounds with the baby and she was all big boobs and double chins and ham hock arms. Unheard of for Valerie, who previous to her divorce had been the perfect daughter, resembling the serene and slim Virgin Mary in every way, with the possible exception of virginity and hair style. The hair was Meg Ryan.

Albert Kloughn was at her side, his face round and pink, his scalp gleaming under his thinning sandy hair. He was watching Valerie with unabashed awe and affection. Kloughn wasn't a subtle guy. He hadn't any idea how to hide an emotion. Probably he wasn't great in a courtroom, but he was always fun at the dinner table. And he was surprisingly endearing in an oddball way.

Valerie's two girls from her first and only marriage, Angie and Mary Alice, were on the edges of their seats, hoping for a fun disaster… like Grandma Mazur setting the tablecloth on fire or Albert Kloughn spilling hot coffee into his lap.

Grandma Mazur was happily sipping her second glass of wine. My mom was at the head of the table, all business, daring anyone to find fault with the chicken. And my dad shoveled food into his mouth and acknowledged me with a grunt.

"I read in the paper where aliens from a different galaxy are buying up all the good real estate in Albany," Grandma said.

"They'll get hit hard with taxes," Kloughn told her. "They'd be better to buy real estate in Florida or Texas."

My father never raised his head, but his eyes slid first to Kloughn and then to my grandmother. He muttered something that was too low to carry. I suspected it was in the area of good grief.

My father is retired from the post office and now he drives a cab part-time. When my grandmother came to live with my parents, my mother stopped storing the rat poison in the garage. Not that my father would actually take to poisoning my grandmother, but why tempt fate? Better to store the rat poison at cousin Betty's house.

"If I was an alien I'd rather live in Florida anyway," Grandma said. "Florida has Disney World. What's Albany got?"

Valerie looked like she was ready to drop the baby on the dining room floor. "Get me a gun," Valerie said. "If I don't go into labor soon I'm going to shoot myself. And pass the gravy. Pass it now."

My mother jumped to her feet and handed the gravy boat to Valerie. "Sometimes the contractions are hardly noticeable in the beginning," my mother said. "Do you think you could be having hardly noticeable contractions?"

Valerie's attention was fully focused on the gravy. She poured gravy on everything… vegetables, applesauce, chicken, dressing, and a heap of rolls. "I love gravy," she said, spooning the overflow into her mouth, eating the gravy like soup. "I dream about gravy."

"It's a little high in saturated fats," Kloughn said.

Valerie glanced sideways at Kloughn. "You're not going to lecture me on my diet, are you?"

Kloughn sat up straight in his seat, his eyes wide and birdlike. "Me? No, honest, I wouldn't do anything like that. I like fat women. Just the other day I was thinking how fat women were soft. Nothing I like better than big, soft, squishy pillows of fat."

He was nodding his balding head, trying hard, running down dark roads of panic.

"Look at me. I'm nice and fat, too. I'm like the Doughboy. Go ahead, poke my stomach. I'm just like the Doughboy," Kloughn said.

"Omigod," my sister wailed. "You think I'm fat." She went into open-mouthed sobbing and the plate slid from her stomach and crashed onto the floor.

Kloughn bent to retrieve the plate and farted. "That wasn't me," he said.

"Maybe it was me," Grandma said. "Sometimes they sneak out. Did I fart?" she asked everyone.

My eyes inadvertently went to the kitchen door.

"Don't even think about it," my mother said. "We're all in this together. Anyone sneaks out the back way, they answer to me."

When the table was cleared and the dishes were done, I made my move to leave.

"I need to talk to you," my mother said, following me out of the house to stand curbside, where we had privacy.

The bottom of the sun had sunk into the Krienski's asbestos shingle roof, a sure sign that the day was ending. Kids ran in packs, burning off the last of their energy. Parents and grandparents sat on small front porches. The air was dead still, heavy with the promise of a hot tomorrow. Inside my parents' house, my father and grandmother sat glued to the television. The muffled rise and fall of a sitcom laugh track escaped the house and joined the mix of street noise.

"I'm worried about your sister," my mother said. "What's to become of her? A baby due in two weeks and no husband. She should marry Albert. You have to talk to her."

"No way! One minute she's all smiley face and crying because she loves me so much and then next thing I know she's grumpy. I want the old Valerie back. The one with no personality. And besides, I'm not exactly an expert at marriage. Look at me… I can't even figure out my own life."

"I'm not asking a lot. I just want you to talk to her. Get her to understand that she's having a baby."

"Mom, she knows she's having a baby. She's as big as a Volkswagen. She's already done it twice before."

"Yes, but both times she did it in California. It's not the same. And she had a husband then. And a house."

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. "This is about the house, right?"

"I feel like the old lady who lived in a shoe. Remember the rhyme? She had so many children she didn't know what to do? One more person in this house and we're going to have to sleep in shifts. Your father's talking about renting a Porta Potti for the backyard. And it's not just the house. This is the Burg. Women don't go off and have babies without husbands here. Every time I go to the grocery, I meet someone who wants to know when Valerie is getting married."

I thought this was a good deal. It used to be that people wanted to know when I was getting married.

"She's in the kitchen eating the rest of the cake," my mother said. "She's probably got it topped with gravy. You could go in and talk to her. Tell her Albert Kloughn is a good man."

"Valerie doesn't want to hear this from me."

"What's it going to take?" my mother wanted to know. "German chocolate torte?"

The German chocolate torte took hours to make. My mother hated to make the German chocolate torte.

"German chocolate torte and a leg of lamb. That's my best offer," she said.

"Boy, you're really serious."

My mother grabbed me by the front of my shirt. "I'm desperate! I'm on the window ledge on the fortieth floor and I'm looking down."

I did an eye roll and a sigh and I trudged back into the house, into the kitchen. Sure enough, Valerie was at the small kitchen table, snarfing down cake.

"Mom wants me to talk to you," I said.

"Not now. I'm busy. I'm eating for two, you know."

Two elephants. "Mom thinks you should marry Kloughn."

Valerie forked off a huge piece and shoved it into her mouth. "Kloughn's boring. Would you marry Kloughn?"

"No, but then I won't even marry Morelli."

"I want to marry Ranger. Ranger is hot."

I couldn't deny it. Ranger was hot. "I don't think Ranger's the marrying type," I said. "And there would be a lot of things to consider. For instance, I think once in a while he might kill people."

"Yeah, but not random, right?"

"Probably not random."

Valerie was scraping at the leftover smudges of whipped cream. "So that would be okay. Nobody's perfect."

"Okay, then," I said. "Good talk. I'll pass this on to Mom."

"It isn't as if I'm anti-marriage," Valerie said, eyeing the grease and drippings left in the roasting pan.

I backed out of the kitchen and ran into my mom.

"Well?" she asked.

"Valerie's thinking about it. And the good news is… she's not anti-marriage."

Streetlights were on when I cruised into my parking lot. A dog barked in a nearby neighborhood of single-family homes, and I thought of Boo. Mrs. Apusenja told Ranger and me that she'd tacked lost dog signs up at local businesses and at street corners. The signs had a photo of the dog and offered a small reward, but there'd been no takers.

Tomorrow I'd track down Howie. It was my Spidey Sense again. I had a feeling Howie was important. Singh had been trying to call him. It had to mean something, right?

I let myself into my apartment and said howdy to Rex. I checked my phone messages. Three in all.

The first was from Joe. "Hey, cupcake." That was it. That was the whole message.

The second was from Ranger. "Yo." Ranger made Joe look like a chatterbox.

The third was a hang-up.

I ambled into the living room, slouched onto the couch, and grabbed for the remote. A splash of color caught my eye from across the room. The color was coming from a vase of red roses and white carnations, sitting on an end table. The flowers hadn't been there this morning. A white envelope was propped against the vase.

My first thought was that someone had broken into my apartment. Ranger and Morelli did this on a regular basis, but they'd never left me flowers, and I was pretty certain they hadn't left them this time, either. I did a quick backtrack to the kitchen with my heart beating way too hard and too fast in my chest. I took my gun out of the brown bear cookie jar and started creeping through my apartment. There were only two rooms left unseen. Bedroom and bath. I looked into the bathroom. No creepy deranged killers lurking behind the shower curtain. None on the toilet. The bedroom was also monster free.

I shoved the gun under the waistband of my jeans and returned to the flowers. There was a message printed on the outside of the white envelope. Tag. You're it. I had no idea what this meant. I opened the envelope and removed three photos. It took a moment for the images to register. I clapped a hand to my mouth when I figured it out. They were pictures of a gunshot victim. A woman. Shot between the eyes. The photos were close-ups that were too tight in to reveal the woman's identity. One photo showed part of an eyebrow and an open sightless eye. The other two recorded the destruction to the back of her head, the exit point.

I dropped the photos, ran to the phone, and dialed Joe.

"Someone broke into my apartment," I said. "And they left me flowers and some ph-ph-photos. Should I call the police?"

"Honey, I am the police."

"So I'm covered. Okay, just checking."

"Do you want me to come over?"

"Yes. Drive fast."

CHAPTER 4

MORELLI STOOD HANDS on hips, starring at the flowers on the table and the photos still spread out on the floor. "It's like you have a sign on your door welcoming nuts and stalkers to walk in. Everyone breaks into your apartment. I've never seen anything like it. You have three top-of-the-line locks on your door and it doesn't deter anyone." He glanced over at me. "Your door was locked, right?"

"Yes. It was locked." Yeesh. "Do you think this is serious?"

Morelli looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. "Someone broke into your apartment and left you gunshot pictures. Don't you think it's serious?"

"I'm completely freaked out, but I was really hoping you'd tell me I was overreacting. I was going for the outside chance that you'd think this was someone's idea of a joke."

"I hate this," Morelli said. "Why can't I have a girlfriend who has normal problems… like breaking a fingernail or missing a period or falling in love with a lesbian?"

"Now what?" I asked.

"Now I call this in and get a couple guys out here to collect evidence and maybe look for prints. Do you have any idea what this is about?"

"No idea at all. Not a clue. Nothing."

The phone rang and I went to the kitchen to answer it.

"I definitely think it might work between Ranger and me," Valerie said. "You're pals with him. You could fix me up."

"Valerie, you're nine months pregnant. This isn't a good time for a fix-up."

"You think I should wait until after I deliver?"

"I think you should wait until never."

Valerie did a big sigh and disconnected.

Ranger on a fix-up date. Can you see this?

"You're smiling," Morelli said.

"Valerie wants to get fixed up with Ranger."

Now Morelli was smiling. "I like it. Wear body armor when you tell Ranger." Morelli opened the refrigerator, took out a piece of leftover pizza, and ate it cold. "I think it would be smart to get you out of this apartment. I don't know what this is about, but I'm not comfortable ignoring it."

"And I would go where?"

"You'd go home with me, cupcake. And there'd be benefits."

"Such as?"

"I'd warm up your pizza."

Morelli lived in a two-story row house he inherited from his Aunt Rose. It was about a half mile from my parents' house with an almost identical floor plan. Rooms were stacked one behind the other& living room, dining room, kitchen. There were three bedrooms and a bath upstairs. Morelli had added a half bath downstairs. He was slowly claiming the house as his own. The wood floors were all newly sanded and varnished, but Aunt Roses filmy old-fashioned curtains remained. I liked the mix and in an odd way would be sorry to see the house turn over entirely to Joe. There was something comforting about the curtains enduring beyond Aunt Rose. A tombstone is okay, but curtains are so much more personal.

We stood on the small front porch and Morelli cautioned me as he unlocked his door. "Brace yourself," he said. "Bob hasn't seen you in a couple days. I don't want you knocked on your ass in front of the neighbors."

Bob was a big scruffy red-haired dog that Morelli and I shared. Technically I suppose it was Morelli's dog. Bob had originally come to live with me, but in the end had chosen Morelli. One of those guy things, I guess.

Morelli opened the door and Bob bounded out, catching me at chest level. What Bob lacked in manners he made up for in enthusiasm. I hugged him to me and gave him some big loud kisses. Bob endured this for a beat and then turned tail and hurled himself back inside, galloping from one end of the house to the other with ears flapping and tongue flopping.

A half hour later I was all settled in with my car parked at the curb behind Morelli's truck, my clothes in the guest room closet, and Rex's hamster cage sitting on Morelli's kitchen counter.

"I bet you're tired," Morelli said, flipping the lights off in the kitchen. "I bet you can't wait to get into bed."

I gave him a sideways look.

He slung an arm around my shoulders and steered me in the direction of the stairs. "I bet you're so tired you don't even want to bother getting into pajamas. In fact, you might need some help getting out of all these clothes."

"And you're volunteering for the job?"

He kissed me at the nape of my neck. "Am I a good guy, or what?"

I WOKE UP in a tangle of sheets and nothing else. Sunlight was streaming through Morelli's bedroom window and I could hear the shower running in the bathroom. Bob was at the foot of the bed, watching me with big brown Bob eyes, probably trying to decide if I was food. Depending on Bob's mood, food could be most anything… a chair, dirt, shoes, a cardboard box, a box of prunes, a table leg, a leg of lamb. Some foods sat better with Bob than others. You didn't want to be too close after he ate a box of prunes.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and trudged downstairs, hair uncombed, following the smell of coffee brewing. A note on the counter told me Bob had been fed and walked. Morelli was better at this cohabitation stuff than I was. Morelli was invigorated by sex. An orgasm for Morelli was like taking a vitamin pill. The more orgasms he had, the sharper he got. I'm the opposite. For me, an orgasm is like a shot of Valium. A night with Morelli and the next morning I'm a big contented cow.

I was coffee mug in hand, debating the merits of toast versus cereal, when Morelli's doorbell rang. I scuffed to the door with Bob close on my heels and I opened the door to Morelli's mother and grandmother.

The Morelli men are all charming and handsome. And with the exception of Joe, they're all worthless drunks and womanizers. They die in barroom fights, kill themselves in car crashes, and explode their livers. The Morelli women hold the family together, ruling with an iron hand, spotting a fib a mile away. Joe's mother was a revered and respected pillar of the community. Joe's Grandma Bella sent a chill down the spine and into the heart of all who crossed her path.

"Ah-hah!" Grandma Bella said. "I knew it. I knew they were living together in sin. I had a vision. It came to me last night."

Two doors down Mrs. Friolli stuck her head out her front door so she didn't miss anything. I was guessing Grandma Bella's vision came to her last night after Mrs. Friolli called her.

"How nice to see you," I said to the women. "What a nice surprise." I turned and shrieked up the stairs. "Joe! Get down here!"

It was always a shock to stand next to Mrs. Morelli and realize she was only five foot, four inches in her chunky two-inch-heeled shoes. She was a dominant and fearful force in a room. Her snapping black eyes could spot a speck of dust at twenty paces. She was a fierce guardian of her family and sat at the head of the table of the large Morelli tribe. She'd been widowed a lot of years and had never shown any interest in trying marriage a second time. Once around with a Morelli man was more than enough for most women.

Grandma Bella was half a head shorter than Joe's mom, but no less fearsome. She kept her white hair pulled into a bun, tied at the nape of her narrow chicken neck. She wore somber black dresses and sensible shoes. And some people believed she had the ability to cast a spell. Grown men scurried for cover when she turned her pale old woman's eye on them or pointed her boney finger in their direction.

"This is a temporary arrangement," I told Mrs. Morelli and Bella. "I had to leave my apartment for a couple days and Joe was nice enough to let me stay here."

"Hah!" Bella said, "I know your type. You take advantage of my grandson's good nature and the next thing you know, you've seduced him and you're pregnant. I know these things. I see them in my visions."

Jeez. I hoped these visions weren't too graphic. I didn't like the idea of being naked and woman-on-top in Bella's home movies.

"It's not like that," I said. "I'm not going to get pregnant."

I felt Joe move in behind me.

"What's up?" Joe asked his mother and grandmother.

"I had a vision," Bella said. "I knew she was here."

"Lucky me," Joe said. And he ruffled my hair.

"I see babies," Bella said. "Mark my words, this one is pregnant."

"That would be nice," Joe said, "but I don't think so. You're getting your visions confused. Stephanie's sister is pregnant. Right kitchen, wrong pot."

My breath stuck in my chest. Did he say it would be nice if I was pregnant?

When Joe left for work I ran a computer check on McDonald's franchises in the area. I started dialing the numbers that turned up, asking for Howie, and I got a hit on the third McDonalds. Yes, I was told, a guy named Howie worked there. He would be in at ten.

It was early so I packed off in my happy yellow car and I checked in at the office before cutting across town to look for Howie.

"Anything happening?" I asked Connie.

"Vinnie's at the pokey, writing bail. Lula hasn't come in yet."

"Yes she has," Lula said, bustling through the door, big tote bag on her shoulder, take-out coffee in one hand, brown grocery bag in the other. "I had to stop at the store on account of I need special food. There's a new man in my life and I've decided I'm too much woman for him, so I'm losing some weight. I'm gonna turn myself into a supermodel. I'm gonna lose about a hundred pounds.

"It'll be easy because I joined FatBusters last night. I got everything I need to lose weight now. I got a notebook to write in every time I eat something. And I got a FatBusters book that tells me how to do it all. Every single food's got a number assigned to it. All you gotta do is add up those numbers and make sure you don't go over your limit. Like my limit is twenty-nine."

Lula set the bag on the floor, plopped herself down on the couch, and took out a small notepad. "Okay, here I go," she said. "This here's my first entry in my notebook. This here's the beginning of a new way of life."

Connie and I exchanged glances.

"Oh boy," Connie said.

"I know I've tried diets in the past and they haven't worked out, but this is different," Lula said. "This one's realistic. That's what they say in the pamphlet. It's not like that last diet where all I could eat was bananas." She paged through her FatBusters book. "Let's see how I'm doing. No points for coffee."

"Wait a minute," I said. "You never get plain coffee. I bet that's a caramel mochaccino you're drinking. I bet that's at least four points."

Lula narrowed her eyes at me. "It says here coffee's got no points and that's what I'm writing. I'm not getting involved with all that detail bullshit."

"You have anything else for breakfast?" Connie asked.

"I had a egg. Let's see what an egg's gonna cost me. Two points."

I looked over her shoulder at the book. "Did you cook that egg yourself? Or did you get it on one of those fast-food breakfast sandwiches with sausage and cheese?"

"It was on a sausage and cheese sandwich. But I didn't eat it all."

"How much didn't you eat?"

Lula flapped her arms. "Okay, I ate it all."

"That's got to be at least ten points."

"Hunh," Lula said. "Well, I still got a lot of points left for the rest of the day. I got nineteen points left."

"What's in the grocery bag?"

"Vegetables. You don't get any points for vegetables, so you can eat as much as you want."

"I didn't know you were a big vegetable eater," Connie said.

"I like beans when you put them in a pan with some bacon. And I like broccoli… except it's got to have cheese sauce on it."

"Bacon and cheese sauce might up your points," Connie said.

"Yeah, I'm gonna have to wean myself off the bacon and cheese sauce if I want to get to supermodel weight."

"I'm heading out to look for a guy named Howie. Supposedly he and Singh were buddies," I said to Connie. "Anything new come in that I should know about?"

"We got a new skip this morning, but Vinnie doesn't want anyone working on anything other than Singh. Vinnie's in a state over this Singh thing."

"Maybe I should go look for Howie with you," Lula said. "If I stay here I'll file all day and filing makes me hungry. I don't know if I got enough vegetables for a full day of filing."

"Bad idea. Howie works at a fast-food place. You have no willpower when it comes to that stuff."

"No problemo. I'm a changed woman. And anyway, I got my fill of fast food for the day. I had a good fast-food breakfast."

A half hour later, Lula and I parked in the McDonald's lot. Lula had gone through a bunch of celery and was halfway into a bag of carrots.

"This isn't doing much for me," she said, "but I guess you gotta sacrifice if you want to be a supermodel."

"Maybe you should wait in the car."

"Hell no, I'm not missing out on the questioning. This could be an important lead. This Howie guy and Singh are supposed to be friends, right?"

"I don't know if they're friends. I just know Singh tried to find Howie the day before he disappeared."

"Let's do it."

As soon as I was through the door to the restaurant I spotted Howie. He was working a register and he looked to be in his early twenties. He was dark-skinned and slim. Pakistani, maybe. I knew he was Howie because he was wearing a name tag. Howie P.

"Yes?" he asked, smiling. "What will it be?"

I slid a card across to him and introduced myself. "I'm looking for Samuel Singh," I said. "I understand you're friends."

He went immobile for a moment while he held my card. He appeared to be studying it, but I had a suspicion his mind wasn't keeping up with his eyes.

"You are mistaken. I do not know Samuel Singh," he finally said, "but what would you like to order?"

"Actually, I'd just like to talk to you. Perhaps on your next break?"

"That would be my lunchtime at one o'clock. But you must order now. It is a rule."

There was a big guy standing behind me. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, scruffy cutoffs, and mud-clogged grungy boots.

"Gripes, lady," he said. "You think we got all day? Give him your order. I gotta get back to work."

Lula turned and looked at him and he moved to another register. "Hunh," Lula said.

"I must take your order," Howie said.

"Fine. Great. I'll have a cheeseburger, a large fries, a Coke, and an apple pie."

"Maybe some chicken nuggets," Lula said.

"No nuggets," I told Howie. "What about Samuel Singh?"

"First, you must pay me for your food."

I shoved a twenty at him. "Do you know where Singh is?"

"I do not. I am telling you I do not know him. Would you like extra ketchup packets with this cheeseburger? I have extra ketchup packets to give at my discretion."

"Yeah, extra ketchup would be great."

"If it was me, I would have gotten some chicken nuggets," Lula said. "Always good to have nuggets."

"You're not eating this, remember?"

"Well, maybe I could have had a nugget."

I took my bag of food. "You have my card. Call me if you think of anything," I said to Howie. "I'll try to stop back at one."

Howie nodded and smiled. "Yes. Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you for eating at McDonalds."

"He was nice and polite," Lula said when we got back to the car, "but he didn't give us a lot." She looked at the bag of food. "Boy, that smells good. I can smell the fries. Wonder how many points it would cost me to eat a French fry?"

"No one can eat just one French fry."

"I bet supermodels eat just one French fry."

I didn't like the way Lula was looking at the bag. Her eyes were too wide and sort of bugged out of her head. "I'm going to throw this food away," I said. "I got it so I could talk to Howie. We don't really need this food."

"It's a sin to throw food away," Lula said. "There's children starving in Africa. They'd be happy to get this food. God's gonna come get you if you throw that food away."

"First off, we're not in Africa, so I can't give this food to any of those starving kids. Second, neither of us needs this food. So God's just going to have to understand."

"I think you might be blaspheming God."

"I'm not blaspheming God." But just in case, I did a mental genuflect and asked for forgiveness. Guilt and fear remain long after blind belief.

"Give me that food bag," Lula said. "I'm going to save your immortal soul."

"No! Remember the supermodel. Have some carrots."

"I hate those fucking carrots. Give me that bag!"

"Stop it," I said. "You're getting scary."

"I need that burger. I'm outta control."

No shit. I was afraid if I didn't get rid of the bag Lula would squash me like a bug. I eyed the distance between me and the trash receptacle and I was pretty sure I could out-sprint Lula, so I took off at a run.

"Hey!" she yelled. "You come back here." And then she pounded after me.

I reached the trash and shoved the bag in. Lula knocked me out of the way, took the top off the trash receptacle, and retrieved the bag of food.

"This here's good as new," she said, testing a couple French fries." She closed her eyes. "Oh man, they just made these fresh. And they got a lot of salt. I love it when they got a lot of salt."

I took a couple fries from the box. She was right. They were great fries. We finished the fries, Lula broke the cheese burger in half, and we ate the cheeseburger. Then we each ate half of the apple pie.

"Would have been nice to have some nuggets," Lula said.

"You're a nut."

"It's not my fault. That was a bogus diet. I can't go around eating plain-ass vegetables all day. I'll get weak and die."

"Wouldn't want that to happen."

"Hell no," Lula said.

We went back to the car and I called Ranger. "Having any luck?" I asked him.

"I found someone who saw Singh with the dog the day after it disappeared. It looks like Singh ran as opposed to getting himself whacked. And you were right, he took the dog with him."

"Any idea why he might want to disappear?"

"The future mother-in-law would do it for me."

"Anything else?"

"No. Have you got something?"

"I have a guy who says he doesn't know Singh, but I don't believe him." And I have horrific photos of a dead woman. Best to wait until I'm alone with Ranger to tell him about the horrific photos. Lula isn't always great at keeping a secret and Morelli asked me not to share the details.

"Later," Ranger said.

I called Connie next. "I need an address for a guy named Howie P. He works at the McDonald's on Lincoln Avenue. See if you can get his address out of the manager."

Five minutes later Connie got back to me with the address.

"This is the deal," I said to Lula. "We're going to check out Howie's apartment. We are not going to break in. You accidentally smash a window or bust down a door, and I swear I'll never take you on a case with me again."

"Hunh," Lula said. "When did I ever bust down a door?"

"Two days ago. And it was the wrong door."

"I didn't bust that door. I just tapped it open."

HOWIE LIVED IN a hard times neighborhood a short distance from his job. He rented two rooms in a house that was originally designed to contain one family and now was home to seven. Paint peeled off the clapboard siding, and window ledges rotted in the sun. The small yard was hard-packed dirt, the perimeter marked by chain-link fencing. A fringe of weed clung to life at the base of the fence.

Lula and I stood in the dark, musty foyer and ran through the names on the mailboxes. Howie was 3B. Sonji Kluchari was 3A.

"Hey, I know her," Lula said. "Back when I was a ho. She worked the corner across from me. If she's living in three A you can bet there's eight other people in there with her. She's a scabby ol' crackhead, doing whatever she has to so she can get her next fix."

"How old is she?"

"She's my age," Lula said. "And I'm not saying how old I am, but it's twenty-something."

We climbed the stairs to the second-floor landing, which was illuminated by a bare twenty-watt bulb hanging from a ceiling cord, and then we went to the third floor, which clearly had been the attic. The third-floor landing was small and dark and smelled like rot. There were two doors. Someone had scrawled 3A and 3B on the doors with black magic marker.

We knocked on 3B. No answer. I tried the door. Locked.

"Hunh," Lula said. "Looks flimsy. Too bad you got all these rules about breaking things. I bet I could lean on this door and it'd fall down."

That was a good possibility. Lula wasn't a small woman.

I turned and knocked on 3A. I knocked louder the second time and the door opened and Sonji peered out at us. She was bloodless white with red-rimmed eyes and yellow straw hair. She was rail thin and I would have put her age closer to fifty than twenty. Not easy being a crackhead ho.

Sonji stared at Lula, recognition struggling through the dope haze.

"Girl," Lula said. "You look like shit."

"Oh yeah," Sonji said, flat-voiced, dull-eyed. "Now I remember. Lula. How you doin', you big ugly ho."

"I'm not a ho anymore," Lula said. "I'm working for a bail bondsman and we're looking for a scrawny little Indian guy. His name's Samuel Singh and he might know Howie."

"Howie?"

"The guy across the hall from you."

I showed Sonji a photo of Singh.

"I don't know," she said. "These guys all look the same to me."

"Anybody living over there besides Howie?" I asked her.

"Not that I know. From what I can tell, Howie's not exactly Mr. Social. Maybe Singh came over once… or somebody who looked like him. Don't think anybody but Howie's living there. But hell, what do I know?"

I gave Sonji my card and a twenty. "Give me a call if you see Singh."

Sonji disappeared behind her closed door and Lula and I trudged down the stairs. We went outside, walked around the building to the backyard, and looked up at Howie's single window.

"Could be me living here," Lula said. "I still got some pain from what that maniac Ramirez did to me, but turned out it was a favor. He stopped me from being a ho. When I got out of the hospital I knew I had to change my life. God works in strange ways."

Benito Ramirez was an insane boxer who loved inflicting pain. He'd beaten Lula to within an inch of her life and tied her to my fire escape. I found her body, bloody and battered. Ramirez wanted the beating to serve as a lesson for Lula and for me.

I thought getting brutalized like that was a pretty harsh wake-up call.

"So what do you think?" Lula asked. "You think Singh could be hiding out up there?"

It was possible. But it was a long shot. There were a million reasons why Singh could have been looking for Howie. And for that matter, I wasn't even sure I had the right guy. There were a lot of McDonald's around. Singh could have been calling McDonald's in Hong Kong for all I knew.

I'd been keeping watch for the gray Sentra, but it hadn't surfaced. It could be in a nearby garage. Or it could be in Mexico. A rusted fire escape precariously clung to the back of the building. The ladder had been dropped and hung just a few inches from the ground. "I could go up the fire escape," I said. "Then I could look in the window."

"Now you're the nut. That things falling apart. No way I'm going up that rusted-out piece of junk."

I grabbed a rail and pulled. The rail held tight. "It's in better shape than it looks," I said. "It'll hold me."

"Maybe. But it sure as hell won't hold me."

Only one of us needed to go anyway. I'd be up and down in a couple minutes. And I'd be able to see if there was any indication of Singh or the dog. "You need to stay on the ground and do lookout anyway," I told Lula.

CHAPTER 5

NOTHING VENTURED, nothing gained. I went hand over hand up the ladder and pulled myself onto the first level. I climbed the second ladder, steadied myself on the third-floor platform, and looked into Howie's window. Howie lived directly under the roof. There were rafters where the ceiling should be and the floor was chipped linoleum. Howie had a sofa that was lumpy and faded, but looked comfy in a dilapidated sort of way. He had a small television and a card table and two metal folding chairs. That was the extent of his furniture. A sink hung on a far wall. A half refrigerator had been placed beside the sink. There were two wood shelves over the refrigerator. Howie had stacked two plates, two bowls, and two mugs on one of the shelves. The other shelf held condiments, a couple boxes of cereal, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of chips.

When you come right down to it, this is really all anyone needs, isn't it? A television and a bag of chips.

I could see the front door and a doorway leading to another room, but the second room wasn't visible. The bedroom, obviously. I tried the window, but it was either locked or painted shut.

"Coming down," I said to Lula. "No dog biscuits on the kitchen shelf." I put my foot on the ladder and it disintegrated in a shower of rust flakes and chunks of broken metal. The chunks of metal crashed onto the second-floor platform and the whole thing pulled away from the building, and with more of a sigh than a screech the entire bottom half of the fire escape landed on the ground in front of Lula.

"Hunh," Lula said.

I looked down at Lula. Too far to jump. The only way off the platform was through Howie's apartment.

"Are you coming down soon?" Lula asked. "I'm getting hungry."

"I don't want to break his window."

"You got any other choices?"

I dialed Ranger on my cell phone.

"I'm sort of stuck," I told Ranger.

Ten minutes later, Ranger opened Howie's apartment door, crossed the room, unlocked and raised the window, and looked out at the mangled mess of metal on the ground. He raised his eyes to mine and the almost smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. "Good job, Destructo."

"It wasn't my fault."

He dragged me through the window, into the apartment. "It never is."

"I wanted to see if there were any signs that Singh or the dog had been here. I don't have much to tie Howie to Singh, but once I get past Howie I have nothing."

Ranger closed and locked the window. "I don't see any boxes of dog biscuits."

"Poor little Boo." The instant I said it I knew it was a mistake. I clapped my hand over my mouth and looked at Ranger.

"I could help you with these maternal urges," Ranger said.

"Get me pregnant?"

"I was going to suggest a visit to the animal shelter." He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me close. "But I could get you pregnant if that's what you really want."

"Nice of you to want to help," I said, "but I think I'll pass on both offers."

"Good decision." He released my shirt. "Let's take a look at the rest of the apartment."

We moved from the living room to the bedroom and found more clutter, but no evidence of Singh or Boo. Howie had placed a double mattress on the floor and covered it with an inexpensive quilt. There were two cardboard boxes filled with neatly folded pants and shirts and underwear. The poor man's dresser. No closet in the room. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling. It was the only light source. A laptop computer with a cracked screen was on the floor near the only outlet.

I looked around. "No bathroom."

"There's a common bathroom on the second floor."

Yikes. Howie shares a bathroom with the scabby ho and her crackhead friends. I tried to remember if he used gloves when he handled my food.

"Spartan," I said to Ranger.

"Adequate," Ranger said. He looked down at the mattress.

"I don't think Howie's been sharing his apartment with anyone lately."

I was feeling a little panicky about being alone in a room with a mattress and Ranger, so I scooted out of the room and out of Howie's apartment. Ranger followed and closed and locked Howie's door. We descended the stairs in silence.

Ranger was smiling when we got to the front foyer. Not the half smile, either. This was a full-on smile.

I narrowed my eyes at the smile. "What?"

"It's always fun to see you get worried about a mattress."

Lula hustled over. "So what's going on?" Lula asked. "You find anything up there? Any dog hairs in the bedroom?"

"Nothing. It was clean," I told her.

Lula turned her attention to Ranger. "I didn't hear you breaking any doors down."

"It wasn't necessary to break the door down."

"How'd you do it then? You use a pick? You use some electronic gizmo? I wish I could open doors like you."

"I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," Ranger said.

It was an old line, but it was worrisome when Ranger said it.

"Hunh," Lula said.

"Tell me about Boo and Singh," I said to Ranger. "Who saw them. Where were they?"

"A kid working the drive-through window at Cluck in a Bucket saw him. He remembered Singh and the dog because the dog was barking and jumping around. He said Singh got a bucket of chicken and two strawberry shakes and the dog ate two pieces of chicken before Singh got the window rolled up to drive off."

"Guess he was hungry."

"Speaking of hungry," Lula said. "We haven't had lunch yet."

"We just had a cheeseburger," I told her.

"We shared it. That don't count. If you share, it's a snack."

"I want to go back to talk to Howie at one o'clock. Can you wait until then?"

"I guess. What are we going to do in the meantime?"

"I want to wander around the neighborhood. Maybe snoop in a few garages."

Lula looked up and down the street. "You're going to snoop in this neighborhood? You got a gun on you?"

Ranger reached behind him, under his shirt, and pulled out a .38. He pulled my T-shirt out of my jeans and he shoved the .38 under my waistband and draped my shirt over the gun. The gun was warm with his body heat and his fingers had been even warmer sliding across my belly.

"Thanks," I said, trying to keep my voice from cracking.

He curled his hand around my neck and kissed me lightly on the lips. "Be careful." And he was gone. Off to make the world a better place in his shiny new black Porsche.

"He had his hand in your pants and he kissed you," Lula said. "I'm wetting myself."

"It wasn't like that. He gave me a gun."

"Girl, he gave you more than a gun. I tell you, he ever put his hand in my pants I'll stop breathing and faint dead away. He is so hot." Lula did some fanning motions with her hand. "I'm getting flashes. I think I'm sweating. Look at me. Am I sweating?"

"It's ninety degrees out," I said. "Everyone's sweating."

"It's not ninety," Lula said. "I just saw the temperature on the bank building. It's only seventy-eight."

"Feels like ninety."

"Ain't that the truth," Lula said.

An alley ran behind the houses. Cars were parked in the alley and garages opened to the alley. Lula and I walked to the end of the block and then cut down the alley, peering into filthy garage windows, cracking garage doors to look inside. Most of the garages were used for storage. A few were empty. None contained a gray Nissan. We walked three more blocks and three more alleys. No dog. No car. No Singh.

IT WAS 1:15 when I parked in the McDonalds lot. Lula went inside to order and I walked to the outdoor seating area where Howie was eating lunch.

Howie was hunched over his tray, concentrating on his burger, attempting invisibility.

"Hey," I said, sitting across from him. "Nice day."

He nodded his head without making eye contact. "Yes."

"Tell me about Samuel."

"There is nothing to tell you," he said.

"He called you at work last week."

"You are mistaken." He had his fists balled and his head down. He gestured for emphasis and knocked his empty soda cup over. We both reached for the cup. Howie caught it first and set it straight. "You must stop bothering me now," he said. "Please."

"Samuel is missing," I said to Howie. "I'm trying to find him."

For the first time, Howie picked his head up and looked at me. "Missing?"

"He disappeared the day after he called you."

For a fleeting moment Howie looked relieved. "I know nothing," he repeated, dropping his eyes again.

"What's the deal?" I asked Howie. "Did you owe him money? Did you go out with his girlfriend?"

"No. None of those things. I truly do not know him." Howie's eyes darted from one side of the lot to the other. "I must go inside now. I do not like associating with the customers. Americans are a crazy people. Only the games are good. The American games are righteous."

I looked around. I didn't see any crazy people& but then, I'm from Jersey. I'm used to crazy.

"Why do you think Americans are crazy?"

"They are very demanding. Not enough fries in the box. The fries are not hot enough. The sandwich is wrapped wrong. I cannot control these things. I do not wrap the sandwiches. And they are very loud when they tell you about the wrappings. All day people are shouting at me. 'Go faster. Go faster. Give me this. Give me that.' Wanting an Egg McMuffin at eleven o'clock when it is a rule you cannot have an Egg McMuffin past ten-thirty."

"I hate that rule."

Howie gathered his wrappers onto his tray. "And another thing. Americans ask too many questions. How many grams of fat are in a cheeseburger? Are the onions real? What do I know? The onions come in a bag. Do I look like the onion man to you?"

He stood at his seat and took his tray in two hands. "You should leave me alone now. I am done talking to you. If you continue to stalk me, I will report you to the authorities."

"I'm not stalking you. This isn't stalking. This is asking a couple questions."

There was a momentary lull in the ambient traffic noise. I heard something go pop pop. Howie's eyes got wide, his mouth opened, the tray slid from his hands and crashed to the concrete patio. Howie's knees buckled and he collapsed without uttering a word.

A woman screamed behind me and I was on my feet, thinking, He's been shot, help him, take cover, do something! My mind was racing, but my body wasn't responding. I was paralyzed by the unfathomable horror of the moment, staring down at Howie's unblinking eyes, mesmerized by the small hole in the middle of his forehead, by the pool of blood that widened under him. Just a moment ago I was talking to him and now he was dead. It didn't seem possible.

People were scrambling and shouting around me. I didn't see anyone with a gun. No one in the lot had a gun in his hand. I didn't see anyone armed on the road or in the building. Howie seemed to be the only victim.

Lula ran to me with a big bag of food in one hand and a large chocolate shake in her other hand. "Holy crap," she said, eyes bugged out, looking down at Howie. "Holy moly. Holy Jesus and Joseph. Holy cow."

I eased away from the body, not wanting to crowd Howie, needing some distance from the shooting. I wanted to make time stand still, to back up ten minutes and change the course of events. I wanted to blink and have Howie still be alive.

SIRENS SCREAMED ON the highway behind us and Lula furiously sucked on the shake. "I can't get anything up this freakin' straw," she shrieked. "Why do they give you a straw if you can't suck anything up it? Why don't they give you a goddamn spoon? Why do they make these things so freakin' thick anyways? Shakes aren't supposed to be solid. This here's like trying to suck up a fish sandwich.

"And don't think I'm hysterical, either," Lula said. "I don't get hysterical. You ever see me hysterical before? This here's transference. I read about it in a magazine. It's when you get upset about one thing only you're really upset about something else. And it's different from hysterical. And even if I was hysterical, which I'm not, I'd have a perfect right. This guy got shot dead in front of you. If you'd have moved an inch to the left you probably would have lost an ear. And he's dead. Look at him. He's dead! I hate dead."

I grimaced at Lula. "Good thing you're not hysterical."

"You bet your sweet ass," Lula said.

A Trenton PD blue and white angled to a stop, lights flashing. Seconds later, another blue and white pulled in. Carl Costanza was riding shotgun in the second car. He rolled his eyes when he saw me and reached for the radio. Calling Joe, I thought. His partner, Big Dog, ambled over.

"Holy crap," Big Dog said when he saw Howie. "Holy moly." He looked over at me and winced. "Did you shoot him?"

"No!"

"I got to get out of here," Lula said. "Cops and dead people give me diarrhea. Anybody wants to talk to me, they can send me a letter. I didn't see anything anyway. I was getting extra sauce for my chicken nuggets. I don't suppose you'd want to give me your car keys?" she asked me. "I'm starting to feel transference coming on again. I need a doughnut, Calm me down."

Costanza was pushing people around, laying out crime scene tape. An EMS truck arrived, followed by a plainclothes cop car and Morelli's POS. Morelli jogged over to me. "Are you okay?"

"Pretty much. I'm a little rattled."

"No bullet holes?"

"Not in me. Howie wasn't so lucky."

Morelli looked down at Howie. "You didn't shoot him, did you? Tell me you didn't shoot him."

"I didn't shoot him. I never even carry a gun!"

Morelli dropped his eyes to my waist. "Looks to me like you're carrying one now."

Shit. I'd forgotten about the gun.

"Well, I almost never carry a gun," I said, doing my best to smooth out the bulge in my T-shirt. I looked around to see if anyone else noticed. "Maybe I should lose the gun," I said to Morelli. "There might be a problem."

"Besides carrying concealed without a permit?"

"It might not be registered."

"Let me guess. Ranger gave you the gun." Morelli stared down at his feet and shook his head. He muttered something indiscernible, possibly in Italian. I opened my mouth to speak and he held a hand up. "Don't say anything," he said, "I'm working hard here. Notice I'm not ranting over the fact that not only are you partners with Ranger, but you were stupid enough to take a gun from him."

I waited patiently. When Morelli mutters in Italian it's a good idea to give him some room.

"Okay," he said, "this is what we're going to do. We're going to walk over to my car. You're going to get in, take the gun out of your goddamn pants, and slide the gun under the front seat. Then you're going to tell me what happened."

AN HOUR LATER,

An hour later, I was still sitting in the car, waiting for Morelli to leave the scene, when my cell phone rang.

It was my mother. "I heard you shot someone," she said. "You've got to stop shooting people. Elaine Minardi's daughter never shoots anyone. Lucille Rice's daughter never shoots anyone. Why do I have to be the one to have a daughter who shoots people?"

"I didn't shoot anyone."

"Then you can come to dinner."

"Sure."

"That was too easy," my mother said. "Something's wrong. Omigod, you really did shoot someone, didn't you?"

"I didn't shoot anyone," I yelled at her. And I disconnected.

Morelli opened the driver's side door and angled himself behind the wheel. "Your mother?"

I sagged in the seat. "This is turning into a really long day. I told my mother I'd show up for dinner."

"Let's go over this one more time," Morelli said.

"One of Singh's coworkers told me Singh tried to make a phone call to Howie the day before he disappeared. I questioned Howie just now and he denied knowing Singh. I'm pretty sure he was lying. And when I told him Singh was missing I could swear he looked relieved. He ended the interview by telling me Americans are crazy. He stood to go inside and pop pop… he was dead."

"Only two shots."

"That's all I heard."

"Anything else?"

"Off the record?"

"Oh boy," Joe said. "I hate when a conversation with you starts like that."

"I happened to accidentally wander into Howie's apartment this morning."

"I don't want to hear this," Morelli said. "They're going to go to Howie's apartment and dust for prints and you're going to be all over the place."

I chewed on my lower lip. Unfortunate timing. Who knew Howie would get killed?

Morelli raised eyebrows in question. "So?"

"The apartment is clean," I told him. "No sign that Singh's been there. No diary detailing secret activities. No hastily scribbled notes that someone wanted him dead. No evidence of drugs. No weapons."

"It could have been a random shooting," Morelli said. "This isn't a great neighborhood."

"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Yeah."

Not for a single second did either of us believe that to be true. Deep inside I knew Howie's death was tied to Singh and to me. That he was killed in my presence wasn't a good thing.

Morelli's eyes softened and he ran a fingertip along my jaw line. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah. I'm okay." And I was& sort of. My hands had stopped shaking and the pain in my chest was subsiding. But I knew that somewhere hiding in my head were sad thoughts of Howie. The sadness would creep forward and I would cram it back into crevices thick with brain gunk. I'm a firm believer in the value of denial. Anger, passion, and fear spill out of me in real time. Sadness I save until the edge dulls. Someday three months from now I'll stroll down the cereal aisle of a supermarket and burst into tears for Howie, a man I didn't even know, for crissake. I'll stand in front of the cereal boxes and blow my nose and blink the tears out of my eyes so no one realizes I'm an emotional idiot. I mean, what about Howie's life? What was it like? Then I'll think about Howie's death and I'll go hollow inside. And then I'll go to the freezer section and get a tub of coffee-flavored Haagen-Dazs ice cream and eat it all.

Morelli turned the engine over and chugged out of the lot. "I'll take you back to the office so you can get your car. I have paperwork to do at the station. If I'm not home by five-thirty, go to dinner without me. I'll catch up with you as soon as I can."

LULA AND CONNIE weren't looking happy when I got to the office.

"We only have a couple days left before everyone finds out Singh's skipped," Connie said. "Vinnie's freaking. He's locked in his office with a bottle of gin and the real estate section from the Scottsdale paper."

"I don't need this cranky shit he's pulling, either," Lula said. "I had a bad day. I didn't lose any weight and the guy we wanted to talk to got dead. And every time I think about poor ol' Howie I get hungry on account of I'm a comfort eater. I relieve my stress with comfort food."

"You've eaten everything but the desk," Connie said. "It'd be cheaper to get you addicted to drugs."

Vinnie stuck his head out his office door. "You get one crappy lead and he gets himself killed," Vinnie yelled at me. "What's with that?" And he pulled his head back into his office and slammed the door shut.

"See, that's what I mean," Lula said. "Makes me want some macaroni and cheese."

Vinnie stuck his head out of his office again. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to say that. I meant to say… uh, I'm glad you're not hurt."

We all went silent, thinking about how awful it actually had been. And how it could have been worse.

"The world's a crazy place," Lula finally said.

I needed to get out and do something to take my mind off Howie. My car keys were lying on Connie's desk. I pocketed the keys and gave my shoulder bag a hitch up. "I'm heading out to talk to the Apusenjas. Nonnie should be getting home from work soon."

"I'll go with you," Lula said. "I'm not letting you go out alone."

Nonnie was home when I arrived. She answered the door on my second knock and peered out at me, first surprised, then cautiously happy. "Did you find him?" she asked. "Did you find Boo?"

"I haven't found him, but I have something I'd like to run by you. Did Samuel ever mention a man named Howie?"

"No. I've never heard him speak of Howie."

"Samuel was on the computer all the time. Did you ever get a chance to see what he was doing? Did he get mail? Do you think he might have gotten email from Howie?"

"I saw a mail from work one time. Samuel was at the kitchen table. He sometimes preferred to sit there because his room was small. I came to the kitchen for a glass of tea and I passed behind him. He was typing a letter to someone named Susan. The letter was nothing, really. It only said thank you for the help. Samuel said it was work related. That is the only time I have seen any of his computer mails."

"Did he ever get mail from the post office?"

"He received a few letters from his parents in India. My mother would know more of that. She collects the mail. Would you like to talk to my mother?"

"No!"

"Who is that?" Mrs. Apusenja called from the hall.

Lula and I put our heads down and took a deep breath.

"It is two women from the bonds agency," Nonnie said.

Mrs. Apusenja rumbled to the door and elbowed Nonnie aside. "What do you want? Have you found Samuel?"

"I had a couple questions to ask Nonnie," I said.

"Where is the man named Ranger?" Mrs. Apusenja said. "I can tell you are just his worthless assistant. And who is this fat woman with you?"

"Hunh," Lula said. "There was a time when I would have kicked your nasty ass for calling me fat, but I'm on a diet to be a supermodel and I'm above all that now."

"Such language," Mrs. Apusenja said. "Just as I would expect from sluts."

"Hey, watch who you're calling a slut," Lula said. "You're starting to get on my nerves."

"Get off my porch," Mrs. Apusenja said. And she shoved Lula.

"Hunh," Lula said. And she gave Mrs. Apusenja a shot to the shoulder that rocked her back on her heels.

"Disrespectful whore," Mrs. Apusenja said to Lula. And she slapped her.

This was where I took two steps back.

Lula grabbed Mrs. Apusenja by the hair and the two of them stumbled off the porch to the small front yard. There was a lot of bitch slapping and name calling and hair pulling. Nonnie was shouting for them to stop and I had my stun gun in my hand just in case it looked like Lula was going to lose.

An old lady tottered out of the house next door and turned her garden hose on Lula and Mrs. Apusenja. Lula and Mrs. Apusenja broke apart sputtering. Mrs. Apusenja turned tail and scuttled into her house, her soaked sari leaving a trail of water behind her that looked like slug slime.

The old lady shut the water off at the spigot on her front porch. "That was fun," she said. And she disappeared into her house.

Lula squished to the car and climbed in. "I could have taken her if I'd had more time," Lula said.

I dropped Lula off at the office and drove on autopilot to Hamilton and eased into the stream of traffic. Hamilton is full of lights and small businesses. It's a road that leads to everything and everywhere and at this time of the day it was clogged with cars going nowhere. I turned from Hamilton, cut through a couple side streets, and swung into my apartment building lot. I parked and looked up at my building and realized I'd driven myself to the wrong place. I wasn't living here these days. I was living with Morelli. I thunked my head on the steering wheel. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."

I was on the third thunk when the passenger side door swung open and Ranger took the seat next to me. "You should be careful," Ranger said. "You'll shake something loose in there."

"I didn't see you in the lot when I pulled in," I said. "Were you waiting for me to come home?"

"I followed you, babe. I picked you up a block from the office. You should check your mirrors once in a while. Could have been a bad guy on your tail."

"And you're a good guy?"

Ranger smiled. "Are you parked here for any special reason? I thought you moved in with Morelli."

"Navigation error. My mind wasn't on my driving."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

"The shooting?"

"Yeah," Ranger said. "And anything else I should know about."

I told him about the shooting and then I told him about the flowers and the photos.

"I could keep you safer than Morelli," Ranger said.

I believed him. But I would also be more restricted. Ranger would lock me up in a safe house and keep a guard with me 24-7. Ranger had a small army of guys working for him who made Marine commandos look like a bunch of sissies.

"I'm okay for now. Is there any word on the street about Bart Cone? Like does he rape and murder women?"

"The street doesn't talk about Bart Cone. The street doesn't even know Bart Cone. The Cone brothers run a tight factory and pay their bills on time. I had Tank ask around. The only interesting thing he turned up was the murder inquiry. Two months after the police dropped Bart as a suspect, Bart's wife left him. He's the nuts-and-bolts guy at the factory. Has an engineering degree from MIT. Smart. Serious. Private. The direct opposite of Clyde, who spends most of his day reading comic books and gets together several times a week with his friends to play Magic."

"Magic?"

"It's one of those role-playing card games."

"Like Dungeons and Dragons?"

"Similar. Andrew is the people person. Manages the human resources side of the business. He's been married for ten years. Has two kids, ages seven and nine." Rangers pager went off and he checked the readout. "Do you have any candidates for the flowers and photos?"

"I've made my share of enemies since I've had this job. No one stands out. Bart Cone crossed my mind. The business with the murder is hard to ignore even though the charge didn't stick. And the break-in occurred right after I was at the factory. Sort of a strange set of coincidences. If he's the nuts-and-bolts guy maybe he knows how to open locks."

"Don't go walking in the woods with him," Ranger said. And he was gone.

CHAPTER 6

I OPENED THE front door to Morelli's house and Bob exploded out at me. He knocked me to one side, took the concrete and brick stairs in a single bound, and ran up the street. He stopped and turned and ran back full speed. He got to Morelli's property line, applied the brakes, hunched, and pooped.

Lesson number one when cohabitating with a man and a dog: Never be the first to arrive home.

I went to the backyard, got the snow shovel from the shed, and used the shovel to flip the poop into the street. Then I sat on the stoop and waited for a car to run over the poop. Two cars drove by, but both of them avoided the poop. I gave a sigh of resignation, went into the kitchen, got a plastic baggie, scooped the poop up off the street, and threw it into the garbage. Sometimes you just can't catch a break.

Bob looked like he still had lots of energy, so I snapped the leash on him and we took off. The sun was warm on my back and Joe's neighborhood felt comfortable. I knew a lot of the people who lived here. It was an older population consisting of parents and grandparents of kids who went to school with me. From time to time a house would turn over to the new generation and a stroller or baby swing would appear on the porch. Sometimes I'd look at the strollers and my biological clock would tick so loud in my head and my heart it would blur my vision, but more often than not there were days like today when I came home to a load of fresh poop and babies didn't seem all that alluring.

Bob and I went for a nice long walk and we were on our way home. Two people, Mrs. Herrel and Mrs. Gudge, popped out of their houses to ask if it was true that I shot someone today. Word travels fast in the Burg and its surrounding neighborhoods. Story accuracy isn't always a top priority.

I crossed the street and saw a car pull to the curb in front of Joe's house half a block away. There were two women in the car. Joe's mother and grandmother. Damn. I'd rather face Howie's killer. I had a moment of indecision, wondering if I was spotted, if it was too late to sneak off. Joe's mother got out of the car, our eyes caught, and my fate was sealed.

By the time Bob and I got to Joe's house, Grandma Bella was out of the car and on the sidewalk beside Joe's mother.

"I had a vision," Grandma Bella said.

"I didn't shoot anyone," I told her.

"You were dead in my vision," Grandma Bella said. "Cold as stone. The blood drained from your lifeless body. I saw you go into the ground."

My jaw went slack and the world lost focus for a moment.

"Don't pay attention to her," Joe's mother said. "She has these visions all the time." Mrs. Morelli gave me a loaf of bread in its white paper bakery bag. "I came over to give Joe this bread. Its fresh baked from Italian Peoples. Joe likes it in the morning with his coffee."

"I saw you in the box," Grandma Bella said. "I saw them close the lid and put you in the ground." Bella was doing a bang-up job of creeping me out. This wasn't a good time to tell me I was going to die. I was working hard not to get overwhelmed by the shooting, the photos, and flowers.

"Stop that," Joe's mother said to Bella. "You're scaring her."

"Mark my words," Bella said, shaking her finger at me. The two women got back into the car and drove off. I took Bob and the bread into the house. I gave Bob fresh water and a bowl filled with dog crunchies. I sliced the end off the bread and ate it with strawberry jam.

A tear slid out of my eye and rolled down my cheek. I didn't want to give in to the tear, so I wiped it away and looked in at Rex. Rex was sleeping, of course. "Hey!" I said real loud into the cage. Still no movement. I dropped a chunk of the bread and jam a couple inches away from the soup can. The soup can vibrated a little and Rex backed out. He stood blinking in the light for a moment, whiskers whirring, nose twitching. He scurried over to the bread, ate all the jam, shoved the remaining bread into his cheek pouch, and scuttled back into his soup can.

I checked the phone machine. No messages. I opened my iBook, went online, and my screen filled with more of the penis enlargement, hot chicks with horses, get out of debt ads.

"We can send a man to the moon, but we can't find a way to stop junk mail!" I yelled at the computer.

I calmed myself and deleted the garbage. I was left with one piece of mail. No subject in the subject line. The body of the letter was short: Did you like my flowers? Were you impressed with my marksmanship this afternoon?

My stomach went hot and sick and my vision got cobwebby. I put my head between my legs until the ringing stopped in my ears and I was able to breathe again.

This was from Howie's killer. He knew my email address. Not that my email address was a secret. It was printed on my business cards. Still, the message was chilling and eerily invasive. It tied the flowers and the photos to the shooting. It was a message from a madman.

I typed back to him. Who are you?

Seconds later, my message was returned as undeliverable.

I saved the email to show to Morelli and I shut down.

"My day is in the toilet," I told Bob. "I'm taking a shower. Don't let any maniacs in the house." I stood up as tall as I could and I made sure my voice was steady. The bravado was partly for Bob and partly for me. Sometimes if I acted brave, I almost became a little brave. And just in case Bob fell asleep on the job, I went to the closet in Morelli's room, helped myself to his spare gun, and took it into the bathroom with me.

GRANDMA MAZUR WAS waiting at the door when I pulled up. "What do you think of my new hair?" she asked.

It was punk rock star red and stuck out in little spikes. "I think it's fun," I told Grandma.

"It brings out the color of my eyes."

"And it's flattering to your skin tone." Definitely drags attention away from the liver spots.

"It's a wig," she said. "I got it at the mall today. Me and Mabel Burlew went shopping. I just got home. I missed all the excitement when everybody thought you shot someone again."

Albert Kloughn came in behind me. "What about shooting someone? Do you need a lawyer? I'd give you a real good rate. Business has been a little slow. I don't know why. It's not like I'm not a good lawyer. I went to school and everything."

"I don't need a lawyer," I told him.

"Too bad. I could use a high-profile case. That's what really helps your practice to take off. You gotta win something big."

"What do you think of my hair?" Grandma asked Kloughn.

"It's nice," he said. "I like it. It's real natural looking."

"It's a wig," Grandma said. "I got it at the mall."

"Maybe that's what I should get," Kloughn said. "Maybe I'd get more cases if I had more hair. A lot of people don't like bald men. Not that I'm bald, but it's starting to get thin." He smoothed his hand over his few remaining strands of hair. "You probably didn't notice that it was thin, but I can tell when the light hits it just right."

"You should try that chemical stuff you pour on your head," Grandma said. "My friend Lois Grizen uses it and she grew some hair. Only problem was she used it at night and it rubbed off on her pillow and got on her face and now she has to shave twice a day."

My father looked up from his paper. "I always wondered what was wrong with her. I saw her in the deli last week and she looked like Wolf man. I thought she had a sex change."

"I have everything on the table," my mother said. "Come now before it gets cold. The bread will go stale."

Valerie was already at the table with her plate filled. My mother had put out an antipasto platter, fresh bread from Peoples, and a pan of sausage-and-cheese lasagna. Nine-year-old Angie, the perfect child and an exact replica of Valerie at that age, sat hands folded, patiently waiting for food to be passed. Her seven-year-old sister, Mary Alice, thundered down the stairs and galloped into the room. Mary Alice has for some time now been convinced she's a horse. Outwardly she has all the characteristics of a little girl, but I'm beginning to wonder if there's more to the horse thing than meets the eye.

"Blackie tinkled in my bedroom," Mary Alice said. "And I had to clean it up. That's why I'm late. Blackie couldn't help it. He's just a baby horse and he doesn't know any better."

"Blackie's a new horse, isn't he?" Grandma asked.

"Yep. He came to play with me just today," Mary Alice said.

"It was nice of you to clean it up," Grandma said.

"Next time you should put his nose in it," Kloughn said. "I heard that works sometimes."

Valerie impatiently looked around the table. She folded her hands and bowed her head. "Thank God for this food," Valerie said. And she dug in.

We all crossed ourselves, mumbled thank God, and started passing dishes.

There was a rap on the front door, the door opened, and Joe strolled in. "Is there room for me?" he asked. My mother beamed. "Of course," she said. "There's always room for you. I set an extra plate just in case you could make it."

There was a time when my mother warned me about Joe. Stay away from the Morelli boys, my mother would say. They can't be trusted. They're all sex fiends. And no Morelli man will ever amount to anything. A while back my mother had decided Joe was the exception to the rule and that somehow, in spite of genetic disadvantage, he'd actually managed to grow up. He was financially and professionally stable. And he could be trusted. Okay, so he was still a sex fiend, but at least he was a monogamous sex fiend. And most important, my mother had come to think that Joe was her best, and possibly only, shot at getting me off the streets and respectably married.

Grandma shoveled a wedge of lasagna onto her plate. "I've got to get the facts straight on the shooting," she said, "Mitchell Farber just got laid out and Mabel and me are going to his viewing at Stiva's funeral parlor right after dinner, and people are gonna be on me like white on rice."

"There's not much to tell," I said. "Lula and I stopped for lunch and the man eating across from me was shot. No one knows why, but it's not a great neighborhood. It was probably just one of those things."

"One of those things!" my mother said. "Accidentally dinging your car door with a shopping cart is one of those things, Having someone shot right in front of you is not one of those things. Why were you in such a bad neighborhood? Can't you find a decent place to have lunch? What were you thinking?"

"I bet there's more to it than that," Grandma said. "I bet you were after a bad guy. Were you packin' heat?"

"No. I wasn't armed. I was just having lunch."

"You aren't giving me a lot to work with here," Grandma said.

Kloughn turned to Morelli. "Were you there?"

"Yep."

"Boy, it must be something to be a cop. You get to do all lands of cool stuff. And you're always in the middle of everything. Right there where the action is."

Joe forked off a piece of lasagna.

"So what do you think about Stephanie being there? I mean, she was sitting right across from this guy, right? How far away? Two feet? Three feet?"

Morelli sent me a sideways glance and then looked back at Kloughn. "Three feet."

"And you're not freaked? If it was me, I'd be freaked. But hey, I guess that's the way it is with cops and bounty hunters. Always in the middle of the shooting."

"I'm never in the middle of the shooting," Joe said. "I'm plainclothes. I investigate. The only time my life is in danger is when I'm with Stephanie."

"How about last week?" Grandma asked. "I heard from Loretta Beeber that you were almost killed in some big shoot-out. Loretta said you had to jump out of Terry Gilman's second-story bedroom window."

I swiveled in my seat and faced Joe and he froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. There'd been rumors about Joe and Terry Gilman all through high school. Not that a rumor linking Morelli to a woman was unusual. But Gilman was different. She was a cool blonde with ties to the Mob and an ongoing relationship with Morelli. Morelli swore the relationship was professional and I believed him. That isn't to say that I liked it. It bore a disturbing parallel to my relationship with Ranger. And I knew that as hard as I tried to ignore the chemistry between Ranger and me, it still simmered below the surface.

I narrowed my eyes just a tiny bit and leaned forward, invading Morelli's space. "You jumped out of Terry Gilman's window?"

"I told you."

"You didn't tell me. I would have remembered."

"It was the day you wanted to go out for pizza and I said I had to work."

"And?"

"And that was it. I told you I had to work. Can we discuss this later?"

"I wouldn't put up with that," Valerie said, working the lasagna around in her mouth, grabbing a meat-and-cheese roll-up from the antipasto tray. "I ever get married again, I want full disclosure. I don't want any of this 'I have to work, honey' baloney. I want all the answers up front, in detail. You don't keep your eyes open and next thing your husband's in the coat closet with the baby-sitter."

Unfortunately, Valerie was speaking from firsthand experience.

"I've never jumped out of a window," Kloughn said. "I thought people just did that in the movies. You're the first person I've ever met who jumped out of a window," he said to Morelli. "And a bedroom window, too. Did you have your clothes on?"

"Yeah," Morelli said. "I had my clothes on."

"How about your shoes? Did you have your shoes on?"

"Yes. I had my shoes on."

I almost felt sorry for Morelli. He was making a major effort not to lose his temper. A younger Morelli would have broken a chair over Kloughn's head.

"I heard Terry didn't hardly have anything on," Grandma said. "Loretta's sister lives right across from Terry Gilman and she said she saw the whole thing and Terry was wearing a flimsy little nightie. Loretta's sister said even from across the street you could see right through the nightie and she thinks Terry got a boob job because Terry's boobs were perfect. Loretta's sister said there was a big to-do with the police showing up on account of all the shooting."

I tried to control my eyebrows from jumping halfway up my forehead. "Nightie? Shooting?"

"Loretta's sister was the one who called the police," Joe said. "And there wasn't a lot of shooting. A gun accidentally discharged."

"And the nightie?"

The anger disappeared and Morelli tried unsuccessfully to stifle a smile. "It wasn't exactly a nightie. She was wearing one of those camisole tops and a thong."

"No kidding!" Kloughn said. "And you could see through it, right? I bet you could see through it."

"That does it," I said, standing at my seat, throwing my napkin onto the table. "I'm out of here." I stomped out of the dining room into the foyer and stopped with my hand on the door. "What did you make for dessert?" I yelled to my mother.

"Chocolate cake."

I wheeled around and flounced off to the kitchen. I cut a good-size wedge from the cake, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and swept out of the house. Okay, so I was acting like an idiot. At least I was an idiot with cake.

I took to the road and drove off, spewing indignation and self-righteous fury. I was still fuming when I reached Joe's house. I sat there for a couple beats, considering my predicament. My clothes and my hamster were in the house. Not to mention my safety and great sex. Problem was, there was all this& emotion. I know emotion covers a lot of ground, but I couldn't hang a better name on my feelings. Wounded might be in the ballpark. I was stung that Morelli couldn't keep from smiling when he thought back to Gilman in her thong and camisole. Gilman and her perfect boobs. Unh. Mental head slap.

I opened the aluminum foil and ate the chocolate cake with my fingers. When in doubt, eat some cake. Halfway through the cake I started to feel better. Okay, I said to myself, now that we have some calm, let's take a look at what happened here.

To begin with, I was a big fat hypocrite. I was all bent out of shape over Morelli and Gilman when I had the exact same situation going on between Ranger and me. These are working relationships, I told myself. Get over it. Grow up. Have some trust here.

Okay, so now I've yelled at myself. Anything else going on? Jealousy? Jealousy didn't feel like a fit. Insecurity? Bingo. Insecurity was a match. I didn't have a lot of insecurity. Just enough insecurity to surface at times of mental health breakdown. And I was definitely having a mental health breakdown. The denial thing wasn't working for me.

I put the car in gear and drove to my apartment building. I wouldn't stay long, I decided. I'd just go in and retrieve a few things& like my dignity, maybe.

I parked in the lot, shoved the door open, and swung from behind the wheel. I beeped the car locked with the remote and headed for the back door to my building. I was halfway across the lot when I heard a sound behind me. Phunf. I felt something sting my right shoulder blade and heat swept through my upper body. The world went gray, then black. I put my hand out to steady myself and felt myself slide away.

I WAS SWIMMING in suffocating blackness, unable to surface. Voices only partially penetrated. Words were garbled. I ordered myself to open my eyes. Open them. Open them!

Suddenly there was daylight. The images were blurred, but the voices snapped into focus. The voices were calling my name.

"Stephanie?"

I blinked a couple times, clearing my vision, recognizing Morelli. My first words were, "What the fuck?"

"How do you feel?" Morelli asked.

"Like I've been hit by a truck."

A guy I didn't know was bending over me, opposite Joe. A paramedic. I had a blood pressure cuff on and the paramedic was listening.

"She's looking better," he said.

I was on the ground in the parking lot and Joe and the paramedic brought me up to sitting. An EMS truck idled not far off. There was a lot of equipment beside me. Oxygen, stretcher, medical emergency kit. A couple Trenton cops stood hands on hips. A small crowd was gathered behind the cops.

"We should take her to St. Francis to have her checked by a doctor," the medic said. "They might want to keep her overnight."

"What happened?" I asked Morelli.

"Someone shot you in the back with a tranquilizer dart. The impact was partially absorbed by your jacket, but you got enough tranq to knock you out."

"Am I okay?"

"Yeah," Morelli said. "I think you're okay. More than I can say for me. I just had three heart attacks."

"I don't want to go to St. Francis. I want to go home… wherever that is."

The medic looked over at Morelli. "Your call."

"I'll take responsibility," Morelli said. "Help me get her to her feet."

I walked around for a couple minutes on shaky legs. I was feeling really crappy, but I didn't want to broadcast it. I didn't want to overnight in the hospital. They take your clothes away and hide them and make you sleep in one of those cotton gowns that your ass hangs out of. "Jeez," I said. "What was I shot with, an elephant gun?"

Morelli had the dart in a plastic evidence bag in his pocket. He held the bag out for me to see. "Looks to me to be more large dog size."

"Oh great. I was shot with a dog dart. That doesn't even make good bar conversation."

Morelli eased me into his truck. "We'll leave your car here. I don't think we want to put you behind the wheel yet."

I wasn't going to argue. I was developing a monster headache.

There was a single red rose on the dash. A square white card in a plastic evidence bag had been placed beside the rose.

Morelli gestured at the rose. "That was left on your windshield." He reached across and took the card and turned it so I could read the message. You should be more careful. If you make it too easy, the fun will be gone.

"This is creepy," I said. "This is definitely psycho."

"It started right after you became involved with Singh," Morelli said.

"Do you think it's Bart Cone?"

"He'd be on the list, but I'm not convinced he's the one. I can't see him leaving roses. Bart Cone doesn't strike me as a man who has a flare for the dramatic."

I wanted it to be Bart Cone. He was an easy mark. I had a fantasy scenario going in my head. Stephanie and Lula break into Bart's home, find the tranquilizer gun stashed beside the gun that killed Howie, and call the police. The police immediately arrest Bart. And Stephanie lives happily ever after. Needless to say, the fantasy scenario didn't include Stephanie doing time for illegal entry. "This has moved way beyond my comfort zone," I said to Morelli. "If I wasn't shot full of tranquilizer you'd be seeing some first-rate hysteria."

Morelli left-turned out of the lot. "What were you doing here, anyway?"

"I was returning to my apartment because you liked looking at Gilman in her thong."

"Shit," Morelli said. "You're such a girl."

I closed my eyes and rested my head on the seat back. "You're lucky I'm drugged."

"Did you notice anything unusual when you parked? A strange car? A paranoid schizophrenic lurking in the shadows?"

"Nothing. I wasn't looking. I was making the most of my indignation."

By the time we reached Morelli's house the sun was low in the sky and the night insects were singing. I looked down the street, more from comfort than fear. Hard to believe anything bad could happen on Morelli's street. Mrs. Brodsky was sitting on her porch and Aunt Rose's second-story curtains, filmy behind the glass, floated like a protective charm. Morelli's neighborhood felt benign. Of course, none of that stopped Morelli from doing his cop thing. He'd been checking his tail all the way over, making sure we weren't followed. He parked and helped me out of the truck, hustling me into the house, partially shielding me with his body.

"I appreciate the effort," I said, sinking onto his couch. "But I hate when you put yourself in danger to protect me."

Bob climbed up next to me, leaving no room for Morelli. Bob had a piece of dog biscuit stuck to his head.

"How does he always get food stuck to him?" I asked Morelli.

"I don't know," Morelli said. "It's a Bob mystery. I think stuff falls out of his mouth and he rolls in it, but I'm not sure."

"About Gilman&" I said.

"I can't talk about Gilman. It's police business."

"This isn't one of those James Bond things where you sleep with Gilman to get information out of her, is it?"

Morelli slouched into a chair and clicked the television on. "No. This is one of those Trenton cop things where we threaten and bribe Gilman to get information out of her." He found a ball game, adjusted the sound, and turned to me. "So are you sleeping with me tonight?"

"Yes. But I have a headache." I closed my eyes and tried to relax. "Omigosh!" I said, my eyes popping open. "I forgot to tell you. I have an email from Howie's killer and it links the killing and the flowers."

MORELLI WAS LONG gone by the time I dragged myself out of bed. I shuffled into the bathroom, took a shower, dressed in jeans and T-shirt, and found my way to the kitchen. I got coffee brewing and put a couple slices of bread in the toaster while I drank my orange juice and checked my email. I suspected there would be a message from the killer. I wasn't disappointed. Now the hunter is the hunted, the email read. How does it feel? Does it excite you? Are you prepared to die? Bob was sitting beside me, waiting for bread crumbs to fall out of my mouth.

"I'm not excited," I told Bob. "I'm scared." The words echoed in the kitchen and made my breath catch in my chest. I didn't like the way the words sounded and decided not to say them out loud again. I decided to give denial another chance. Some thoughts are best kept silent. That's not to say I was going to ignore being scared. I was going to try very, very hard to be very, very careful.

I signed off and called Morelli and told him about the latest email. Then I called Lula and asked her to pick me up. I wanted to go back to TriBro and my car was still parked in my apartment building lot. I needed a ride. And I needed a partner. I wasn't going to stay inside, hiding in a closet, but in all honesty I didn't want to go out alone.

Ten minutes later, Lula rolled to a stop in front of Morelli's house. Lula drove a big ol' red Firebird that had a sound system that could shake the fillings loose in your teeth. The front door to Joe's house was closed and locked and I was in the kitchen in the back of the house& and I knew Lula had arrived because Shady's bass was giving me heart arrhythmia.

"You don't look so good," Lula said when I got into the car. "You got big bags under your eyes. And your eyes are all bloodshot. You must have really had a good time last night to look this bad this morning."

"I was shot with a tranquilizer dart last night and I had a killer hangover from it until about four this morning."

"Get out! What were you doing getting shot with a tranquilizer dart?"

"I wasn't doing anything. I was walking from my car to my apartment building and someone shot me in the back."

"Get out! Did you find out who did it?"

"No. The police are investigating."

"I bet it was Joyce Earnhardt. Joyce would do something like that, trying to even the score for all the times we zapped her with the stun gun and you let Bob poop on her front lawn."

Joyce Earnhardt. I'd forgotten about Joyce Earnhardt. She'd be a prime contender, too, except for the Howie shooting. Joyce wasn't a killer.

I went to school with Joyce and she'd made my life a misery. Joyce publicized secrets. When she didn't have a secret she fabricated stories and started rumors. I wasn't the only one singled out, but I was a favorite target. A while back, Vinnie hired Joyce to do some apprehension work and once again Joyce and I crossed paths.

"I don't think it's Joyce," I told Lula. "I think the tranq incident is related to the Howie shooting."

"Get out!"

If Lula said get out one more time I was going to choke her until her tongue turned blue and fell out of her head.

"And you're probably in danger when you hang with me," I told Lula. "I'd understand if you wanted to bail."

"Are you shitting me? Danger's my middle name."

CHAPTER 7

WE WERE OUT of Joe's neighborhood and moving across town. Lula had Eminem cranked up. He was rapping about trailer park girls and how they go round the outside, and I was wondering what the heck that meant. I'm a white girl from Trenton. I don't know these things. I need a rap cheat sheet.

I was checking the rearview mirror now. I didn't want a second dart between the shoulder blades. It was time to be vigilant. I had no indication that the creep who was stalking me knew I was living with Joe. And I was riding in Lula's car. So maybe today would be uneventful.

We hit Route 1 and I noticed there was a cooler on the backseat. "Are you still on the diet?" I asked. "Is the cooler filled with vegetables?"

"Hell no. That was a bogus diet. You could waste away and die on that diet. I'm on a new diet. This here's the all-protein diet that I'm on. I'm going to be a supermodel in no time on this diet. All I have to do is stay away from the carbs. Carbohydrates are the enemy. I can eat all the meat and eggs and cheese I want, but I can't eat any bread or starch or any of that shit. Like, I can have a burger but I can't eat the roll. And I can only eat the cheese and grease on the pizza. Can't eat the crust."

"How about doughnuts?"

"Doughnuts are gonna be a problem. Don't think there's anything I can eat on a doughnut."

"So what's in the cooler?"

"Meat. I got ribs and rotisserie chicken and a pound of crispy bacon. I can eat meat until I grow a tail and moo. This is the best diet. I can eat things on this diet that I haven't been able to eat in years."

"Like what?"

"Like bacon."

"You always eat bacon."

"Yeah, but I feel guilty. It's the guilt that puts the weight on."

Lula turned into the industrial park and wound around some until she came to TriBro.

"Now what?" she asked. "You want me to go on in with you? Or you want me to stay here and guard the chicken?"

"Guard the chicken?"

"Okay, so I'm gonna eat the chicken. That's the good part of this diet. You eat all the time. You could shove pork roast and leg of lamb down your throat all day long and it's okay. Long as you don't have biscuits with it. I had a steak for breakfast. A whole steak. And then I had a couple eggs. Is that a diet, or what?"

"Sounds a little screwy."

"That's what I thought at first, but I bought a book that explains it all and now I can see where it makes sense."

"Keep your eyes open while you're guarding the chicken. I shouldn't be more than a half hour. Call me on my cell if you see anyone suspicious in the lot."

"You mean like someone setting up a dart gun?"

"Yeah. That would be worth a phone call."

I'd gotten in touch with Andrew first thing this morning, before leaving the house. I told him I needed some information and he said he'd be happy to help. Andrew, the people person. Hopefully I could get to him without crossing paths with Bart. I hated to admit it, but I was afraid of Bart.

I did a brisk walk across the lot to the building entrance and hurried through the large glass door. The woman at the desk smiled and waved me through to Andrews office. I thanked her on a whoosh of expelled air. I'd just had two bad parking lot experiences and many of my body functions, like breathing, now stopped when I set foot on parking lot pavement.

Andrew stood and smiled when I entered his office. "You didn't say much on the phone. How's the Singh search going?"

"We're making progress. I'm looking for a woman named Susan. I was hoping you could check through your employee list and pull out the Susans."

"Susan is a pretty common name. What's the connection to Singh?"

"It's vague. She's just a name that turned up and I thought I should check it through."

Andrew turned to his computer, typed in a series of commands, and the screen filled with the employee database. Then it executed a search for all Susans.

"We employ eight Susans," he finally said. "When I set the age at forty or below, I'm left with five Susans. I'll give you a printout and you can talk to them if you want. All are married. None work in Singh's department, but he would have had a chance to mingle with the general population during breaks and at lunch. We're a relatively small company. Everyone knows everyone else."

Clyde appeared in the open doorway. He was wearing a faded Star Trek T-shirt and new black jeans that were pooled around his ankles. Scruffy sneakers peaked out from under the jeans. He had a can of Dr Pepper in one hand and a bag of Cheez Doodles in the other. He had a Betty Boop tattoo on his chunky left arm.

"Hey, Stephanie Plum," Clyde said. "I was taking a break and I heard you were here. What's up? Anything exciting going on? Did you find Samuel Singh?"

"I haven't found Singh, but I'm working on it." My eyes strayed to Betty Boop.

Clyde grinned and looked down at Betty. "It's a fake. I got it last night. I'm too chicken to get a real one."

"Stephanie has a list of people she'd like to talk to," Andrew said. "Do you have time to take her around?"

"You bet. Sure I do. Is this part of the investigation? How do you want me to act? Should I be casual?"

"Yeah," I said. "You should be casual."

Clyde reminded me a lot of Bob with the unruly hair and goofy enthusiasm.

"These are all Susans," Clyde said, looking at the list. "That's a lead, right? Some woman named Susan knows where Singh is hiding. Or maybe some woman named Susan bumped Singh off! Am I close? Am I getting warm?"

"Its nothing that dramatic," I told Clyde. "It was just a name that popped up as a possible friend."

"I know all these women," Clyde said, leading me out of Andrews office. "I can tell you all about them. The first Susan is real nice. She has two kids and a beagle. And the beagle's always at the vet. I think her whole paycheck goes to the vet. The dog eats everything. One time he was real sick and they x-rayed him and found out he had a stomach full of loose change. Her husband works here, too. He's in shipping. They live in Ewing. They just bought a house there. I haven't seen the house, but I think it's one of those little tract houses."

Clyde was right about the first Susan. She was very nice. But she only knew Singh from a distance. And the same was true for the other four Susans. And I believed them all. None of the Susans seemed like girlfriend material. None of them looked like sharpshooters or killers. They all looked like they might send roses and carnations.

"Those are all the Susans," Clyde said. "None of them worked out, huh? Do you have any other leads? Any clues we could work on next?"

"Nope. That's it for now."

"How about lunch?"

"Gee, sorry. I have a friend waiting for me in the parking lot." Thank God.

"I'm a pretty interesting guy, you know," he said. "I have a lot going on." His eyes got round. "You haven't seen my office yet. You have to see my office."

I glanced at my watch. "It's getting late…"

"My office is right here." He galloped down the hall and opened the door to his office. "Look at this."

I followed him and stepped into his office. One wall was floor-to-ceiling shelves and the shelves were filled with action figures. Star Trek, professional wrestlers, GI Joe characters, Star Wars, Spawn, about two hundred Simpsons figures.

"Is this an awesome collection, or what?" he asked.

"It's fun."

"And I collect comic books, too. Mostly action comics. I have a whole stack of original Spider-Man McFarlanes. Man, I wish I could draw like him."

I looked around the room. Large old wooden partner's desk with desk chair, computer with oversize LCD monitor, trash basket filled with squashed Dr Pepper cans, framed poster of Barbarella behind the desk, single chair in front of the desk, dog-eared comics piled high on the chair seat. None of the catalogues and product samples I saw in Bart's office.

"So," I said, "what's your part in the business?"

Clyde giggled. "I don't have one. Nobody trusts me to do anything. Now, on the surface that might seem a little insulting, but if you examine it more closely you see that I have a good deal. I collect a paycheck for staying out of the way! How good is that?"

"Does it get boring? Do you have to sit here all day?"

"Yeah, I guess sometimes it's a little boring. But everyone's nice to me and I get to do all the things I like. I can play with my action figures and read comics and play games on the computer. It isn't like I'm mentally retarded… it's just that I screw up a lot. The truth is, I'm not real interested in making thingamabobs."

"What would you like to do?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I'd like to be Spider-Man."

Too bad Clyde wasn't older. He'd be perfect for Grandma Mazur.

Lula was sound asleep with the driver's seat tipped back when I returned to the car. I jumped in and locked my door and nudged Lula.

"Hey," I said. "You're supposed to be on lookout."

Lula sat up and stretched. "There wasn't anything to see. And I got sleepy after eating all that chicken. I ate the whole thing. I even ate the skin. I love skin. And you know how all other diets tell you not to eat the skin? Well, guess what? I'm doing the skin diet now, girlfriend."

"That's great. Let's get out of here."

"Something happen in there to make you in such a rush to take off?"

"Just feeling antsy."

"Fine by me. Where we going next?"

I didn't know. I was out of leads. Out of ideas. Out of courage. "Let's go back to the office."

LULA AND I saw the black truck simultaneously. It was parked in front of Vinnie's office. It was a new Dodge Ram. It didn't have a speck of dust on it. It had bug lights on the cab, oversize tires, and a license plate that was probably made in someone's basement. Ranger drove a variety of cars. All of them were black. All were new. All were expensive. And all were of dubious origin. The Ram was his favorite.

"Be still my beating heart," Lula said. "Does my hair look okay? Am I starting to drool?"

I wasn't nearly so excited. I suspected he was waiting for me. And I worried that it wasn't going to be a good conversation.

I followed Lula into the office. Connie was at her desk, head down, furiously shuffling papers. Vinnie's door was closed. Ranger was slouched in a chair, elbows on the arms, fingers steepled in front of him, his eyes dark and intense, watching us.

I smiled at Ranger. "Yo," I said.

He smiled back but he didn't yo.

"We're just checking in," I said to Connie, leaning on the front of her desk. "Do you have anything for me?"

"I have slaps piling up on my desk," Connie said, "but Vinnie doesn't want anyone even looking at them until Singh is found."

"No calls? No messages?"

Ranger unfolded himself and crossed the room, standing close behind me, sucking me into his force field. "We need to talk."

A flash of heat rippled through my stomach. Ranger always evoked a mixture of emotion. Usually that mixture was attraction followed by a mental eye roll.

"Sure," I said.

"Now. Outside."

Lula scurried behind the file cabinets and Connie bent into the nonsense paper shuffling. No one wanted to get caught in the line of fire when Ranger was in a mood. I followed Ranger out the door to the sidewalk and stood blinking in the sun.

"Get into the truck," Ranger said. "I feel like driving."

"I don't think so."

The line of his mouth tightened.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Do you want a full itinerary?"

"I don't want to get locked up in a safe house."

"I'd love to lock you up in a safe house, babe, but that wasn't my plan for the day."

"Promise? Cross your heart and hope to die?"

There was a slight narrowing of his eyes. Ranger wasn't feeling playful. "I guess you have to decide if it's more dangerous to be in the truck with me or to stand out here as a potential target for the sniper."

I stared at Ranger for a beat.

"Well?" he asked.

"I'm thinking."

"Christ," Ranger said, "get in the damn truck."

I climbed into the truck and Ranger drove two blocks down Hamilton and turned into the Burg. He wound through the Burg and parked on Roebling in front of Marsilio's restaurant.

"I thought you wanted to drive," I said.

"That was the original plan, but you smell like rotisserie chicken and it's making me hungry."

"It's from Lula. She's on this diet where she eats meat all day."

Bobby V. met us at the door and gave us a table in the back room. The Burg is famous for its restaurants. They're stuck all over the place in the neighborhood, between houses, next to Betty's bridal shop and Rosalie's beauty parlor. Most are small. All are family affairs. And the food is always great. I'm not sure where Bobby V. fits in the scheme of things at Marsilio's, but he's always on hand to direct traffic and shmooze. He's a snappy dresser, he's got a handful of rings and a full head of wavy silver hair, and he looks like he wouldn't have much trouble breaking someone's nose. If you're in bad with Bobby V. don't even bother showing up, because you won't get a table.

Ranger sat back in his chair, took a moment to scan the menu, and ordered. I didn't need the menu. I always got the fettuccini Alfredo with sausage. And then because I didn't want to die, I got some red wine to help unclog my arteries.

"Okay," Ranger said when we were alone. "Talk to me."

I filled him in on the shooting, the dart, the email. "And what really has me freaked is that Joe's grandma saw me dead in one of her visions," I said, an involuntary shiver ripping through me.

Ranger was motionless. Face impassive.

"Every lead I get ends up in the toilet," I told him.

"Well, you must be doing something right. Someone wants to kill you. That's always a good sign."

I guess that was one way of looking at it. "Problem is, I'm not ready to die."

Ranger looked at the food in front of me. Noodles and sausage in cheese and cream sauce. "Babe," he said.

Ranger's plate held a chicken breast and grilled vegetables. He was hot, but he didn't know much about eating.

"Where are you now?" Ranger wanted to know. "Do you have any more leads to follow?"

"No leads. I'm out of ideas."

"Any gut instincts?"

"I don't think Singh's dead. I think he's hiding. And I think the freak who's stalking me is directly or indirectly associated with TriBro."

"If you had to take a guess, could you pull a name out of a hat?"

"Bart Cone is the obvious."

Ranger made a phone call and asked for the file on Bart Cone. In my mind I imagined the call going into the nerve center of the Bat Cave. No one knows the source of Rangers cars, clients, or cash. He operates a number of businesses which are security related. And he employs a bunch of men who have skills not normally found outside a prison population. His right-hand man is named Tank and the name says it all.

Tank walked into the restaurant twenty minutes later with a manila envelope. He smiled and nodded a hello to me. He helped himself to a slice of Italian bread. And he left.

Ranger and I read through the material, finding few surprises. Bart was divorced and living alone in a townhouse north of the city. He had no recorded debts. He paid his credit cards and his mortgage on time. He drove a two-year-old black BMW sedan. The packet included several newspaper clippings on the murder trial and a profile on the murdered woman.

Lillian Paressi was twenty-six years old at the time of her death. She had brown hair and blue eyes and from the photo in the paper she looked to be of average build. She was pretty in a girl-next-door way, with curly shoulder-length hair and a nice smile. She was unmarried, living alone in an apartment on Market just two blocks from the Blue Bird luncheonette, where she'd worked as a waitress.

In a very general sort of way I suppose she resembled me. Not a good thought to have when investigating an unsolved murder that had serial killer potential. But then half the women in the Burg fit that same description, so probably there was no reason for me to be alarmed.

Ranger reached over and tucked a brown curl behind my ear. "She looks a little like you, babe," Ranger said. "You want to be careful."

Super.

Ranger looked at my pasta dish. I'd eaten everything but one noodle. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

"I don't want to get fat," I told him.

"And that noodle would do it?"

I narrowed my eyes. "What's your point?"

"Do you have room for dessert?"

I sighed. I always had room for dessert.

"You're going to have dessert at the Blue Bird luncheonette," Ranger said. "I bet they have good pie. And while you're eating the pie you can talk to the waitress. Maybe she knew Paressi."

Halfway across town I rechecked the reflection in my side mirror for the fourth time. "I'm pretty sure we're being followed by a black SUV," I said.

"Tank."

"Tank's following us?"

"Tank's following you."

Ordinarily I'd be annoyed at the invasion of privacy, but right now I was thinking privacy was overrated and it wasn't a bad idea to have a bodyguard.

The Blue Bird sat cheek to jowl with several small businesses on Second Avenue. This wasn't the most prosperous part of town, but it wasn't the worst, either. Most of the businesses were family owned and operated. The yellow brick storefronts were free of graffiti and bullet holes. Rents were reasonable and encouraged low-profit businesses: a shoe repair shop, a small hardware store, a vintage clothing store, a used book store. And the Blue Bird luncheonette.

The Blue Bird was approximately the size of a double-wide railroad car. There was a short counter with eight stools, a pastry display case and cash register. Booths stretched along the far wall. The linoleum was black-and-white checkerboard and the walls were bluebird blue.

We took a booth and looked at the menu. There was the usual fare of burgers and tuna melts and pie. I ordered lemon meringue and Ranger ordered coffee, black.

"Excuse me?" I said, palms down on the Formica tabletop. "Coffee? I thought we came here for pie."

"I don't eat the kind of pie they serve here."

I felt a flash of heat go through my stomach. I knew firsthand the kind of pie Ranger liked.

The waitress stood with pencil poised over her pad. She was late fifties with bleached blond hair piled high on her head, heavily mascaraed eyes, perfectly arched crayoned-on eyebrows, and iridescent white lipstick. She had big boobs barely contained in a white T-shirt, her hips were slim in a black spandex miniskirt, and she was wearing black orthopedic shoes.

"Honey, we got all kinds of pie," she said to Ranger.

Ranger cut his eyes to her and she took a step backward. "But then maybe not," she said.

"I'm not usually in this neighborhood," I told the waitress, "but my little sister knew a girl who used to work here. And she always said the food was real good. Maybe you knew my sister's friend. Lillian Paressi."

"Oh honey, I sure did. She was a sweetheart. Didn't have an enemy. Everyone loved Lillian. That was a terrible thing that happened to her. She was killed on her day off. I couldn't believe it when I heard. And they never caught the guy who did it. They had a suspect for a while, but it didn't turn out. I tell you, if I knew who killed Lillian he'd never come to trial."

"Actually, I lied about my sister," I said. "We're investigating Lillian's murder. There've been some new developments."

"I figured," the waitress said. "You get to be a good judge of people with a job like this and Rambo's got FED written all over him. A local cop would have ordered pie."

Ranger looked at me and winked and I almost fell off my seat. It was the first time he'd ever winked at me. Somehow Ranger and winking didn't go together.

"Did Lillian have a boyfriend?" I asked.

"Nothing serious. She was going out with this one guy, but they broke up. She hadn't seen him for a couple months. His name was Bailey Scrugs. You don't forget a name like Bailey Scrugs. The cops talked to him early on. So far as I know she wasn't dating anyone when she was killed. She was real depressed after breaking up with Scrugs and she spent a lot of time on her computer. Chat rooms and stuff.

"Do you want to know what I think? I think it was one of them random killings. Some nut saw her out walking in the woods. The world's full of nuts."

"I know this all happened a while ago," I said. "But try to think back. Was Lillian ever worried? Scared? Upset? Anything unusual happen to her?" Like was she ever shot with a tranquilizer dart?

"The police asked me all those same questions. At the time I couldn't think of anything to tell them. But there was something that popped into my head months later. I couldn't decide if I should go tell someone. It was sort of an odd thing and all that time had passed, so I ended up keeping it to myself."

"What was it?" I asked.

"This is probably stupid, but a couple days before she was killed someone left a red rose and a white carnation on her car. Stuck them under her windshield wiper with a card. And the card said have a nice day. Lillian was kind of upset about it. She brought them in here and threw them away. I guess that's why it bothered me when I remembered. She didn't say anything more about them, like who they were from or anything. Do you think the flowers might have been important?"

"Hard to say," Ranger told her.

"You should talk to her neighbor," the waitress said to us. "Carl. I don't remember his last name. They were real good friends. Nothing romantic. Just good friends."

I ate my pie and Ranger drank his coffee. Neither of us said anything until we were out of the cafe and into his truck.

"Shit," I said. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit."

"I have a house in Maine," Ranger said. "It's nice there at this time of year."

It was a tempting offer. "Is there an outlet mall nearby? Is it close to a Cheesecake Factory? A Chili's?"

"Babe, it's a safe house. It's on a lake in the woods."

Oh boy. Bears, black flies, rabid raccoons, and spiders. "Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass. Just tell Tank to stick close to me."

Ranger put the truck in gear, turned at the corner, drove two blocks down Market, and parked in front of an old Victorian clapboard house. The front door was unlocked and led to a small foyer. There were six mailboxes lined up on the wall. Beyond the mailboxes, a hand-carved mahogany railing followed a broad staircase to the second and third floors. The carpet was threadbare and the wall covering was faded and had begun to peel at the corners, but the foyer and staircase were clean. An air freshener had been plugged into a baseboard outlet and spewed lemony freshness that mingled with the natural mustiness of the house.

We ran through the names on the mailboxes and found Carl Rosen. Apartment 2B. We both knew chances weren't good that he'd be in, but we took the stairs and knocked on his door. No answer. We knocked on the door across the hall. No answer there, either.

We could get Carl Rosen's work address easy enough, but most people were reluctant to talk in their work environment. Better to wait a couple hours and catch him at home.

"Now what?" I asked Ranger.

"I want to go through Bart Cone's house. It'll be easier to do alone, so I'm taking you back to the office. You should be safe there. I'll pick you up at five and we'll try Rosen again."