To the Nines

  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 Mar-​silio'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 Mar-​silio'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 Scrags. 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.”

  Stephanie Plum 9 - To The Nines

  Chapter Eight

  Mrs. Apusenja was sitting in the office when Ranger dropped me off. She was on the couch, arms crossed over her chest, lips pressed tightly together.

  She jumped up when I walked in and pointed her finger at me. “You!” Mrs. Apusenja said. “What do you do all day? Do you look for Samuel Singh? Do you look for poor little Boo? Where are they? Why haven't you found them?”

  Connie rolled her eyes.

  “Hunh,” Lula said from behind a file cabinet.

  “I've only been looking for a couple days ...” I said.

  “This is the fourth day. Do you know what I think? I think you don't know what you're doing. I want someone new on the case. I demand someone new.”

  We all looked at the door to Vinnie's inner office. It was closed and locked. There was silence behind the door.

  Connie got up and rapped on the door. No response. “Hey,” Connie yelled. “Mrs. Apusenja wants to talk to you. Open the door!”

  The door still didn't open.

  Connie returned to her desk, got a key from the middle drawer, and went back and opened Vinnie's door. “Guess you didn't hear me,” Connie said, standing hand on hip, looking in at Vinnie. “Mrs. Apusenja wants to talk to you.”

  Vinnie came to the door and smiled an oily smile out at Mrs. Apusenja. “Nice to see you again,” he said. “Do you have some new information for us?”