Explosive Eighteen

  “It was locked,” I said to Ranger.

  “So you shot it?”

  “Actually, Lula shot it.”

  Ranger pushed it open, and we went into Joyce’s yard. I closed and locked the gate behind us, and Ranger tried the back door. Locked. He removed a slim case from one of the pockets in his cargo pants, selected a tool, opened the door, and Joyce’s security alarm went off. He pulled me into the house and locked the door.

  “Start working your way through the house while I watch for the police,” Ranger said. “You probably have ten to fifteen minutes.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we hide and wait. There are no signs of forced entry into the house, so the police will walk around, look in windows, test the doors, and leave, probably.”

  I started in the kitchen, going through cupboards and drawers, snooping in the refrigerator, trying to ignore the alarm. I’d just finished the kitchen when Ranger signaled that the police were here. He pulled me into a broom closet and closed the door.

  It was pitch-black in the closet. The alarm timed out, and the house went silent.

  “How will we know when the police leave?” I asked Ranger.

  “There was a Rangeman car in the area. I have them watching a couple blocks away, and they’ll call when the police leave.”

  His arms were around me, holding me close against him. He was warm, and his breathing was even. Mine was more ragged.

  “There’s something hard poking into me,” I said.

  He shifted slightly. “It’s my gun.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You could check it out.”

  Tempting, but I didn’t want to encourage anything that might lead to nudity and compromising positions should the police decide to break into the house and open the door to the closet. Although, the longer I was pressed against him, the less I cared about the police.

  Here’s the thing about Ranger. He leads a dangerous lifestyle. He’s scarred from past life choices, and he’s dealing with serious issues. I have no idea what those issues are, because Ranger holds them private. I suspect no one will ever know what drives Ranger. What I know with certainty is that I’ll never be more than a loving amusement for him. He’ll care for me as best he can, but I’ll never be his priority. I’ve come to believe his priority is to repair his karma. And I respect that. It’s a noble priority. Problem is, while he’s repairing his karma, I’m lusting after his body. Morelli is a wonderful lover. He’s fun. He’s satisfying. He’s super sexy. Ranger is magic.

  Ranger’s phone rang, giving the all clear. I moved to open the closet door, and he tightened his hold on me. His mouth skimmed along my neck. His hand slid under my shirt to my breast. And he kissed me.

  “That’s not your gun, is it?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said. “It’s not my gun.”

  When I finally tumbled out of the closet, I was missing some critical pieces of clothing, but I was feeling much more relaxed.

  “Finish your search,” Ranger said. “The Rangeman car will let us know if the police return.”

  We went through the rest of the house, and just before we left, I checked out the garage. No car.

  “What does this mean?” I asked Ranger.

  “No way to know, but the junkyard will have a log of cars taken in. Connie can probably get her cousin to go through the log. Did you report the found driver’s license to the police?”

  “Yes. I told Morelli.”

  “Then I’m sure he’s there with a cadaver dog. He’s an idiot, but he’s a good cop.”

  “Why is he an idiot?”

  “He lets me get close to you.” Ranger glanced at his watch. “I have to go.”

  We set the alarm off again when we opened the door to leave. No problem. We’d be long gone by the time the police returned.

  • • •

  My car and Hal were waiting for me when Ranger dropped me off at the coffee shop.

  “Your car was parked at Quaker Bridge Mall,” Hal said. “The big guy was in the mall somewhere. We looked in the food court, but we couldn’t find him, so we brought the car back here. Problem is, there’s no key.”

  “I have an extra key at home.”

  “Great,” Hal said. “Give me a minute, and I’ll get the car running for you. You can take it from there.”

  I didn’t see Connie in the coffee shop, so I waited for Hal to roll the engine over, thanked him, and drove home. I was on Hamilton when my phone rang.

  “Hi,” Buggy said. “Boy, I’m real sorry, but someone stole your car. I parked it in a good spot where it wouldn’t get any dings, and it’s not there anymore. There’s just a empty space. You should report it to the police or something.”

  “I have the car. A friend found it at the mall and brought it back to me. Where are you now?”

  “I’m still at the mall.”

  “I thought you were going to the drugstore.”

  “I changed my mind,” he said. “I needed new sneakers.”

  “Stay where you are, and I’ll come pick you up and give you a ride home.”

  “Okay. I’ll be at the food court entrance.”

  I raced back to my apartment, picked up my extra key, and took off for the mall. I cut over to Route 1 and made a plan. I couldn’t stun him, so I probably wouldn’t be able to cuff him. I’d just get him in the car and drive him to the police station. I’d pull into the back drop-off and let the police wrestle him out of the front seat. If he got unruly, I’d go to the nearest fast-food drive-thru and distract him with a bag of burgers.

  I took the mall exit, cruised through the lot, and idled at the food court entrance. No Buggy. I hung there for five minutes. Still no Buggy. Probably got tired of waiting. I parked and ran inside to see if I could spot him in the food court. No luck. I got soft-serve ice cream, vanilla and chocolate swirl, and returned to the lot.

  No car. My car was gone. I punched Buggy’s number into my cell phone.

  “Yuh,” Buggy said.

  “Did you take my car again?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “You need to bring it back. I have no way to get home.”

  “I’m going to the movies.”

  “This is really rotten of you,” I said. “Out of the goodness of my heart, I volunteered to come get you, and now you’ve stolen my car.”

  “I didn’t steal it. I only borrowed it.”

  “Bring it back!”

  “What?” Buggy said. “I can’t hear you. Must be bad reception.”

  The line went dead.

  “Jeez Louise!” I yelled. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” I thunked the heel of my hand against my forehead so hard I almost lost my ice cream. “I hate him,” I said. “He should rot in hell.”

  An elderly woman walked out of the mall and cut a wide path around me, murmuring about drugs and young people.

  “Sorry,” I called after her. “Someone stole my car.”

  Get a grip, I told myself. It’s just a car. It wasn’t even a good car. That wasn’t the issue, of course. The issue was that I got outsmarted by a moron.

  I found a bench by the mall entrance and ate my ice cream. No way was I calling Ranger. It was too embarrassing. I couldn’t call Lula. She was sick. Connie was busy looking for a temporary office. I didn’t want to slow that process. If I called my mother, I’d get the Why Don’t You Have a Nice Job in a Bank lecture. I could walk, but it would take me all day, and I’d probably get hit by a truck on the highway. A cab would be expensive.

  I was sitting on the bench debating all this when Grandma and Annie Hart walked out of the mall.

  “For goodness sakes,” Grandma said, spotting me. “Are you sitting here waiting for a criminal?”

  “More or less,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Annie took me shopping to get bowling shoes, on account of I got my Social Security check.”

  Grandma drove with a lead foot and had lost her license several years back after racking up a bu
nch of speeding tickets. So Grandma was now dependent on other, more sane drivers for transportation.

  “I’m having car problems,” I said. “Can I hitch a ride with you?”

  “Of course,” Annie said. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you anyway.”

  “What’s it this time?” Grandma asked me. “Did your car get blown up, smashed by a garbage truck, or stolen?”

  I followed them into the parking lot. “Stolen. Don’t tell my mother.”

  Annie’s eyes widened. “Did you report it to the police?”

  “Not yet,” I told her. “I’ll wait to see if it’s returned.”

  “This happens to her a lot,” Grandma said to Annie. “It’s no big deal. We got a extra Buick in the garage she can use.”

  We all climbed into Annie’s red Jetta, and Annie drove out of the parking lot onto Route 1.

  “I’m going to be smokin’ in these shoes,” Grandma said, opening the box, looking at her new shoes. “Next month, I’m getting my own ball.”

  “It’s important to have the proper equipment,” Annie said.

  “You should take up bowling,” Grandma said to me. “There are some hot men at the bowling alley. It could be just what a young divorcée like you needs.”

  “I have enough hot men in my life already,” I said. “In fact, I have one too many.”

  “You should make a decision,” Annie said. “I’m sure in your heart you know your true love. Just go with your heart.”

  It wasn’t that easy. My heart was confused. My brain didn’t want either of the men in my life. And my hooha wanted both of them!

  “I could make a potion up for you that would simplify everything,” Annie said.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’d rather not get involved with potions.”

  “They’re perfectly safe,” Annie said. “We’re very high tech in our potion making now. I’m even a member of the APMA. American Potion Makers Association.”

  “Maybe I should take up making potions,” Grandma said. “I’ve been thinking about coming out of retirement. Potions might be a good business to get into. How do you join that APMA?”

  “You can join online,” Annie said. “Just go to their website.”

  “Is it just love potions?” Grandma wanted to know. “Or can you make all kinds of potions?”

  “I specialize in love potions,” Annie said. “But potions can solve a wide range of issues.”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Grandma said. “I want to have a good specialty.”

  • • •

  By the time Grandma and I got dropped off at my parents’ house, it was after five o’clock, and I could smell chicken frying all the way out to the street. My original intention had been to zip into the house, get the key to the Buick, and track down Buggy. Now that I was smelling my mom’s fried chicken, I was having second thoughts. I could stay for dinner and go after Buggy later. In fact, the heck with capturing Buggy today. Better to go after him tomorrow with a fully charged stun gun.

  Grandma hustled into the house and went straight to the kitchen. “We found Stephanie at the mall,” she said to my mother. “She’s going to have dinner with us.”

  My mother was at the stove, turning pieces of chicken in her big fry pan. “I’m trying a new recipe. I found it in a magazine. And there’s mashed potatoes and green beans. And before I forget, there were two men here looking for you. They said they were FBI.”

  My heart stopped beating for a moment. “Did they give their names?”

  “One was named Lancer and the other was Slasher,” my mother said. “They seemed nice. Very polite. I told them I didn’t know where you were, and they went away.”

  “What’s that about?” Grandma asked. “Are you tracking down some famous criminal? I bet it’s someone on the Ten Most Wanted list.”

  “It’s a misunderstanding,” I said. “If there was someone in the area on the Ten Most Wanted list, Ranger would get that job, not me. I’ll catch up with them tomorrow.”

  I set the table and wandered into the living room to say hello to my dad.

  “Look at this,” he said, gesturing to the television. “There’s more on that guy who got stuffed into the garbage can. They’re saying now they think he was drugged before he was snuffed and stuffed into the can. It’s not official or anything, but that’s what a security guard said. And I guess there’s a woman involved.”

  “A woman?”

  “They’re referring to her as a person of interest. You know what that means. The kiss of death. The person of interest is always the killer.”

  I hated to think that was true, since I might be the person of interest.

  My grandmother joined us. “Are you talking about the garbage can killer? I heard the dead guy was a doctor in the army, and he might have been a spy when he was over there in Afghanistan.” She sucked on her dentures. “That spying catches up to you. One minute you’re a spy, and next thing, you’re dead in a garbage can. Unless you’re James Bond. Nothing stops him. He’s balls to the wall.”

  My father hunkered deeper into his chair and turned the volume up on the television.

  “Shut the television off!” my mother yelled from the dining room. “It’s too loud, and dinner’s ready.”

  I took my seat at the table, and my phone rang.

  “I’m at the junkyard,” Morelli said. “The dog found a body, but we haven’t been able to view it. We haven’t got a big enough can opener.”

  “Only one body?”

  “So far. The dog’s still working. Where are you?”

  “I’m having dinner at my parents’ house. My mom made fried chicken.”

  “Oh man, that’s cruel. I love your mom’s fried chicken.”

  “I’ll bring some back to my apartment for you.”

  “This could take a while,” Morelli said.

  “Whatever.”

  “Who was that?” Grandma asked when I hung up. “Was that Ranger?”

  “No. It was Morelli.”

  “It’s hard to keep up with it all,” Grandma said. “I don’t know how you do it. You’re married, and then you’re not married, and then you’re saving chicken for Morelli.”

  I couldn’t keep up with it, either. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.

  “You need Annie to help you,” Grandma said. “She’s real smart. She’s fixing up everyone at bowling. She even had a man in mind for me, but I told her he was too old. I don’t want some flabby, wrinkled codger to take care of. I want a young stud with a nice firm behind.”

  My mother refilled her wineglass and my father put his fork down and hit his head on the table. BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG.

  “Go for it,” I said to Grandma.

  “I’m not so old,” Grandma said. “There’s parts of me don’t sit as high as they used to, but I’ve got some miles left.”

  My father pantomimed stabbing himself in the eye with his fork.

  Okay, so my family’s a little dysfunctional. It’s not like they’re dangerous. At least we all sit down and have dinner together. Plus, by Jersey standards, we’re pretty much normal.

  NINE

  MY FATHER WAS SETTLED IN, watching sitcom reruns, when I left. My mother and grandmother were at the small kitchen table enjoying a ritual glass of port, celebrating the return of order and cleanliness in the kitchen. And I departed in the powder blue and white ’53 Buick that was kept in the garage for emergencies. Sitting on the seat beside me was a doggy bag that included fried chicken, soft little dinner rolls from the bakery, a jar of pickled beets, half a homemade apple pie, and a bottle of red table wine. The wine had been sent along, I’m sure, with the hopes that I might have a romantic evening with Morelli and make a grandchild. So much the better if I got married first.

  I drove past the Bugkowski house out of morbid curiosity to see if my car was there. Not only wasn’t the car parked at the curb, but the house was dark. No one home. Probably, Big Buggy took his parents for a drive in his new RAV4.


  Twenty minutes later, I rolled into the lot to my apartment building and did another car check. No RAV4. No black Lincoln Town Car. No green SUV that belonged to Morelli. No megabucks shiny black Ranger car. I found a space close to the building’s back door, parked, and locked up. I took the elevator to the second floor, walked down the hall, and listened at my door. All was quiet. I let myself in, kicked the door closed, and a swarthy guy with lots of curly black hair jumped out of the kitchen at me. He was holding a huge knife, and his dark eyes were narrowed.

  “I want photograph,” he said. “Give it to me, or I kill you big-time. I make you very painful.”

  I grabbed the bottle of wine from the doggy bag, hit the guy in the face with it as hard as I could, his eyes rolled back, and he crashed to the floor. I’d acted totally on instinct and was as surprised as he was that he got knocked out. I put a hand to the wall to steady myself and took a couple deep breaths. It felt icky to have the guy in my apartment, so I cuffed him and dragged him into the hall. I returned to my apartment and closed and locked the door in case there was a partner lurking somewhere.

  I retrieved my Smith & Wesson from the cookie jar and walked through my apartment looking in closets and under the bed, finding dust bunnies but no more swarthy guys. I went back to the kitchen and called Bill Berger.

  “There was a nasty-looking guy in my apartment when I came home just now,” I told him. “He had a big knife, and he said he’d kill me if I didn’t give him the photograph.”

  “And?” Berger asked.

  “I hit him in the face with a bottle of table wine and knocked him out.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s in the hall.”

  There was a beat of silence. “What’s he doing in the hall?”

  “I didn’t want him in my apartment, so I dragged him into the hall.”