To the Nines

  “I have this for you. The new information is that I will go to the papers if you do not find Samuel Singh. I will ruin you. How does it look for my Nonnie? People will talk. And he owes me two weeks' rent. Who will pay that?”

  “Of course we'll find him,” Vinnie said. “I've got my best man looking for Singh. And Stephanie's helping him.”

  “You are a boil on the backside of your profession,” Mrs. Apusenja said. And she left.

  “How many years have I been in this business? A lot of years, right?” Vinnie asked. “And I'm good at it. I'm good at writing bond. I do a service for the community. Does the honest law-​abiding taxpayer have to pay my salary? No. Does the city of Trenton have to hire cops to go find their scofflaws? No. All because of me. I go get the scumbags at no cost to the general population. I risk my neck!”

  Connie and Lula and I raised our eyebrows.

  “Well, okay, I risk Stephanie's neck,” Vinnie said. “But it's all in the family, right?”

  “Yeesh,” Lula said.

  “I should have let Sebring write the damn visa bond,” Vinnie said. “What was I thinking?”

  Les Sebring was Vinnie s competitor. There were several bail bonds offices in the Trenton area, but Sebring's agency was the largest.

  “So what are you doing standing here?” Vinnie asked, flapping his arms. “Go find him, for crissake.” Vinnie looked around and sniffed the air. “What's that smell? It smells like roast leg of lamb.”

  “It was my afternoon snack,” Lula said. “I got it delivered from the Greek deli. I'm on the all-​you-​can-​eat meat diet. I didn't eat the whole leg, though. I don't want to go overboard.”

  “Yeah,” Connie said. “She only ate half a leg.”

  Vinnie stepped back into his office and closed and locked the door.

  “Sounds like we should go find this guy,” Lula said.

  I'd like nothing better than to find Samuel Singh, but I didn't know how. And worse, I was having a hard time focusing on the hunt. I couldn't get Lillian Paressi out of my head. I kept seeing her marching into the Blue Bird, angrily clutching the flowers. Red rose, white carnation. The note was innocuous. Nothing to get angry over. So the flowers had to be part of a continuing harassment. And surely she talked to someone about it. I was hoping Carl Rosen was that someone.

  “Earth to Stephanie,” Lula said. “You got any ideas?”

  “No.”

  “Me, either,” Lula said. “I think this diet's clogging things up inside me. This isn't a creative thinker's diet. You need Cheez Doodles to do that shit. And birthday cake. The kind with the lard icing and the big pink and yellow icing roses.”

  Connie and I looked at Lula.

  “Not that I'm gonna eat anything like that ever again,”

  Lula said. “I was just saying that's why I haven't got any good ideas.”

  Since we were all out of how-​to-​find-​Singh ideas, I asked Lula if she'd give me a ride so I could move my car to Joe's house.

  “Hell yeah,” Lula said. “I could use some air. It's too nice to be inside on a day like today. And besides, it smells like leg of lamb in here. This office needs some ventilation.”

  We were half a block down Hamilton when Lula looked in her rearview mirror. “I think we're being followed. That black SUV pulled out right after us and now he's sitting on our bumper.”

  “It's Tank. Ranger thinks I need a baby-​sitter.”

  Lula took another look. “He's fine. He's not as hot as Ranger. But he's fine all the same. I wouldn't mind having my way with him.”

  “I thought you had a new boyfriend?”

  “Don't mean I can't think someone else is fine. I'm just going steady, girl. I'm not dead.”

  In a couple minutes we were at my apartment building and Lula parked in the lot, beside the Escape.

  “I think you should go up to your apartment just to check it out and shit,” Lula said. “I could go with you and I bet King Kong over there'll go, too. And I'd get a chance to see him up close.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I should probably see if everything's okay, anyway.”

  We all got out of our cars and walked to the back door. Tank is about six foot six and is built like ... a tank. He hasn't an ounce of fat on him. He wears his hair in a Marine buzz cut. He was dressed in desert cammies.

  We climbed the stairs and walked down the hall. Tank took the key from me and opened the door. He was the first to step through. He looked around and he motioned us in.

  It was cool and quiet inside. No flowers. No photos. No killers. I gathered together some clean shirts and underwear and we left.

  “I'd forgotten about Tank following me,” I said to Lula. “He can chauffeur me around if you want to get back to the office.”

  “What are you, crazy? If I go back there I'll have to file. And Vinnies there. Vinnie creeps me out these days. All he does is mope around, worrying about Samuel Singh. It's unnatural. Vinnie's usually out having a nooner with a goat. I hate having him just hang around the office.”

  Tank smiled at the part about the nooner, but he didn't say anything. He got into his shiny black SUV. Lula got into her red Firebird. And I got into my yellow Escape. And we all motored off to Joe's house.

  Lula parked behind me and immediately got out of her car. “Are you going in?” she asked. “I hope you're going in because I've never been in Morelli's house. I'm dying to see the inside. What's the decor? Modern? Traditional? Colonial?”

  “Mostly Pizza Hut with a splash of Aunt Rose.”

  I opened the door and Bob rushed out at us, nose twitching, eyes wild. He looked from Tank to Lula to me and then his head swung back to Lula and he gave a loud woof.

  “What the ...” Lula said.

  Bob gave another woof, chomped down on Lulas purse, ripped it out of her hand, and took off out the door down the street.

  “Hey,” Lula yelled. “Come back with that! That's my purse.” She looked to Tank. “Do something. I paid good money for that purse.”

  Tank whistled, but Bob paid no attention. Bob was at the end of the block, tearing the purse to shreds. We jogged down to Bob and found him gnawing on a pork chop.

  “That was my snack,” Lula said. “It was barbecue. I was looking forward to that pork chop.”

  I took Bob by the collar and dragged him back to Morelli's house.

  “I'm on a diet,” Lula explained to Tank. “The fat just melts away on this diet, but you've gotta eat lots of pork chops.”

  I locked Bob in the house and Lula and I drove back to the office with Tank following.

  “That was sort of embarrassing,” Lula said. “It's hard to explain a pork chop in your purse.”

  “Sorry it all got destroyed.”

  “Yeah, I really wanted that pork chop. I don't care so much about the bag. I bought the bag from Ray Smiley, out of the back of his Pontiac. It was one of those things that accidentally fell off a truck.” Lulas eyes got bigger. “Hey, we should make a stopover at the mall. I could get a new purse and then just for the hell of it we could go into Victoria's Secret and see if Tank follows us in. That's how you tell what a man's really made of. It's one thing for a man to be big and brave and kill a spider. Any man could do that. Trailin' after a woman when she's shopping for thongs and push-​up bras is a whole other category of man. And then if you want to see how far von can go with it, you ask him to carry one of those little pink bags they give you.”

  I've never been shopping with Ranger so I can't say how he'd do with the Victorias Secret test. Morelli flunked hands down. Morelli takes off for soft-​serve ice cream when I head for Victoria's Secret.

  “No time,” I told Lula. “Ranger's picking me up at five o'clock.” And Ranger doesn't like to be kept waiting.

  At precisely five, I saw Ranger's truck ease to a stop in front of the bonds office. I grabbed my bag and my jacket and I went out to meet him. The instant I got in beside Ranger I saw Tank peel away and take off.

  “I thought he was supposed
to be guarding my body,” I said to Ranger.

  Ranger looked at me with dark eyes. “It's my turn to guard your body, babe.”

  Oh boy.

  Ever since I could remember I've loved adventure stories and heroes. I guess that's true for all kids. And maybe all adults, too. My best friend Mary Lou Molnar and I would choose up roles when we were kids. I'd be Snake Eyes from GI Joe or Inspector Gadget or Han Solo. I'd run through the neighbors' yards, shouting, Thundercats, ho! And Mary Lou would follow after me, living her own fantasy as Smurfette or Wendy Darling or Marcia Brady. Mary Lou always had a good sense of gender and of her own abilities. Mary Lou's fantasies were close to the reality of her life. I, on the other hand, have never been able to merge the reality with the fantasy. In my mind, I'm still Snake Eyes. In truth, I'm closer to Lucy Ricardo. I don't have a lot of the skills I should have as a crime fighter. I'm not good with guns and I've never found the time to take self-​defense. The only black belt in my closet is a narrow snakeskin with a gold buckle.

  “Tell me about Bart Cone,” I said to Ranger. “Was his house filled with florist bills? Photos of murdered women? Body parts in the freezer?”

  “None of the above. He has the minimum furniture. A bed, a chair, a table, a desk. No computer on the desk. No television. He had two books at bedside. Into Thin Air. And a nuts and bolts catalogue. It didn't look to me like he'd cracked the spine on Into Thin Air.”

  “Sounds like his wife had a good divorce lawyer.”

  “Cone had minimum food in the refrigerator. His medicine chest was filled with antidepressants and sleeping pills.”

  “Do you think he's crazy?”

  “I think he has no life. I think he's the job.”

  “Like us.”

  Ranger looked over at me. “You have a life. You shop for shoes. You eat Butterscotch Krimpets. You have a hamster, half ownership of a dog, thirty percent of a cop. And you have a scary family.”

  “You think I only have thirty percent of Morelli?”

  “I think you have as much as he can give anyone right now.”

  “How about you?” I asked. “How much can you give?”

  Ranger kept his eyes on the road. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “So I've been told.”

  It was close to 5:30 when we reached the apartment house on Market. Ranger pulled into the driveway and parked in a small lot to the rear of the house. We took the back entrance and went directly to the second floor. We knocked on Carl Rosen's door. No one answered. Ranger crossed the hall and knocked on 2A. A woman in her fifties opened the door and peered out.

  “We're looking for Carl Rosen,” Ranger said. “I don't suppose you've seen him.”

  “No,” the woman said. “I haven't seen him, but he's usually home by now. Sorry.”

  The woman slipped back into her apartment. Her door closed and three locks tumbled into place. Ranger paced away from the door, called Tank, and asked him to run a basic information check on Rosen. Three minutes later the information came back. Carl Rosen worked at the hospital. He drove a '94 blue Honda Civic. He was unmarried. Tank also had previous addresses and jobs and a list of relatives. Ranger disconnected and knocked one more time on Rosen s door. When no one answered, Ranger slid a slim tool into the lock and opened the door. He left me outside to do lookout and he disappeared into the apartment.

  Ten minutes later, Ranger walked out of the apartment and locked the door behind him. “I can't remember the last time I broke into so many places and found so little,” Ranger said. “Not even a computer. Just the power cord plugged into the wall. Either Rosen takes his laptop with him to work or else someone's gone through his apartment in front of us.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now we wait.”

  I called Morelli and told him I'd be late. I was thinking an hour maybe, but we were still waiting at nine o'clock. We were sitting on the floor outside Rosen's apartment, backs to the wall, legs outstretched.

  “My ass is asleep,” I said to Ranger.

  “And you'd like me to do something about it?” Ranger asked.

  “Just making conversation.”

  “There are a lot of reasons why Rosen might not be home yet, but I have a bad feeling in my gut that this isn't going to turn out good,” Ranger said.

  “How much longer do you want to sit here?” '

  “Let's give him until ten.”

  “Okay,” Morelli said, “tell me again. You were doing what with Ranger?”

  “We wanted to talk to Carl Rosen, but he never came home.” I told Morelli about the waitress at the Blue Bird and how she remembered about the flowers.

  “Christ,” Morelli said. “That never came out in any of the investigation. I've read through the file. Carl Rosen was questioned, along with everyone else in that apartment building, but no one ever said anything about flowers.”

  “I guess they didn't think it related.”

  “Tomorrow morning I'll talk to Ollie. He was the principal on the case.”

  Oh great. Blubber-​butt Ollie. The Bain of my existence. The guy who once tried to arrest me for impersonating a bounty hunter.

  It was late. And I was tired. I'd done nothing for hours and it had sapped my energy. Spending time with Ranger was an odd experience. I was always aware of the sexual pull, magnified by the silence that surrounded him. The attraction had changed since we'd had the one night together. We knew the power of it now. We set boundaries after that night. His were different from mine. My boundaries were physical and Rangers were emotional. I still knew almost nothing about him. And I suspected it would always be that way.

  I had one task left before going to bed. I needed to check my email. Not a pleasant experience anymore. I knew there'd be a message from the killer. I had a terrible feeling of dread that it would be about Carl Rosen.

  I tapped my code into AOL and waited for my mail to appear. A chill slid along my spine when I saw the subject line tally ho.

  Dear prey, the email began, so sorry you couldn't get to talk to Carl, but that might have ruined the hunt. Alas, it's necessary to eliminate participants. After all, this is a survival game, isn't it?

  Morelli was reading over my shoulder. “Doesn't sound good for Carl.”

  “This guy thinks he's playing a game.”

  “Have you run across any paranoid schizophrenics lately? Any completely wacko nut cases?”

  “My path is littered with them. Have you guys had any luck tracking the emails?”

  “No. Hiding the origin of an email requires some sophistication, but it's possible. The Mercer County Prosecutors Office is working with us. We'll see what we can do with this new one. I'm going to confiscate your computer for a while.”

  “Were you able to locate the flower source?”

  “They didn't come from any of the local florists. This guy probably picked them up at a supermarket. We have notices up in all the supermarket lunchrooms for checkers to watch for red roses and white carnations going out. We've dusted your apartment for prints, but nothing worthwhile came up.”

  “This is very creepy.”

  “Yeah,” Morelli said. “Let's go to bed and I'll take your mind off your problems.”