Tricky Twenty-Two

  “About tonight,” I said. “What sort of date is this?”

  “Bodyguard detail for one of my better clients. He and his wife have been getting death threats. I have men watching their house, but they’re going out tonight, and I need someone to stay close to the wife.”

  “Where are they going?”

  “Viewing at the funeral home on Hamilton.”

  “I need the red dress for that?”

  “The red dress is for me,” Ranger said. “I like the red dress.”

  •••

  Mike’s Burger Place was a single-room diner with a couple scarred wood tables and some rickety chairs. It smelled like a bacon burger, and I could feel the grease in the air coating my skin, soaking into my hair. No customers. It wasn’t a lunch place. It would be packed at five o’clock with people getting takeout. A skinny sick-looking guy stood behind the counter. His white T-shirt was stained with God-knows-what, and he had a spatula in his hand.

  “What can I get you?” he asked.

  “Information,” Ranger said. “I’m looking for Billy.”

  “Yeah, me too,” the guy said. “I’m filling in two shifts on this crap job because Billy took off.”

  “Do you know where he is?” Ranger asked.

  “No. Don’t care. What I know is he isn’t here.”

  We got outside, and I put my fingertip to the pimple. It felt like it was growing, feeding on the grease.

  “Babe,” Ranger said.

  Babe means many things from Ranger. This was the first time it was a comment on a pimple.

  I blew out a sigh. “I’m under a lot of stress.”

  Ranger’s mouth curved into the hint of a smile.

  “No, I don’t need help relieving my stress,” I said to him.

  He opened the passenger side door for me. “I’ll drive past Lula’s house on the way to the bonds office, and I’ll have my men do tours down K Street.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Have you called the office to see if she’s there?”

  “I called Connie while you were in the apartment building. Connie hasn’t heard from her.”

  “She hasn’t been gone very long.”

  “I know, but she left without her egg salad,” I said to Ranger. “Lula might abandon me, but she’d never drive off without her lunch.”

  “Maybe something better came along.”

  FIVE

  CONNIE WAS ON the phone when I walked into the office. She hung up and looked over at me. “Have you heard from Lula?”

  “No.” I put the deli bag on Connie’s desk. “It’s like she vanished into thin air. Left without her lunch.”

  Vinnie stuck his head out of his inner office. “Do I smell egg salad?”

  “It’s Lula’s lunch,” I said.

  “So where’s Lula?” he asked.

  Connie and I did a shoulder shrug.

  “Don’t know,” I said.

  Vinnie is like a cartoon character of a bail bondsman. Slicked-back hair, body like a weasel’s, pointy-toed shoes, skinny pants, and shiny shirts. He keeps a vodka bottle in his bottom desk drawer, next to his gun.

  “Where’d you get the egg salad?” he asked.

  “The deli on K Street.”

  Vinnie ventured out of his office far enough to look in the lunch bag.

  “Is this potato salad?” he asked.

  “Yeah, and macaroni.”

  “Anybody want any of this?”

  “Not me,” Connie said.

  “Nope,” I said. “Me either.”

  “Hello, lunch,” Vinnie said, and he took the bag into his office and closed and locked his door.

  “Any luck with Globovic?” Connie asked.

  “I’m going back this afternoon to talk to his girlfriend.”

  Vinnie yelled from inside his office. “Where’s my dessert? There’s no dessert here.”

  “How do you keep from shooting him?” I asked Connie.

  “I embezzle money from his bank account. It’s pretty satisfying.”

  When most people say things like that it’s a joke. I suspected Connie was serious. And I’m sure she deserves whatever she steals.

  “I’m going back to Kiltman,” I said. “Let me know if you hear from Lula.”

  It took three tries to get my car to crank over, but I finally chugged down the street. I watched for the red Firebird as I drove across town. I tried to convince myself that Lula was at a shoe sale or all-you-can-eat sausage bar, but I wasn’t having a lot of success. There was a knot in my stomach and a hollow feeling in my chest.

  I parked in a lot attached to the student center and walked to the front entrance. It was a big building containing a small theater, a food court, a gallery for student art, and a bunch of offices. The student paper was located in one of the second-floor office spaces. Every inch of the room was cluttered with stacks of papers, office machines, some utilitarian desks, and mismatched chairs. Two women were at a desk, studying something on a laptop.

  “Julie Ruley?” I asked.

  “That’s me,” one of the women said.

  Julie Ruley was about five four with straight blond hair parted in the middle and tucked back behind her ears. No makeup. Oversized T-shirt. Jeans. Ratty sneakers. Glossy black polish on nails cut short. Hard to tell if she was Malibu Barbie under the T-shirt, and I didn’t see any tattoos.

  “Would it be possible to speak to you in private?” I asked her.

  “Sure,” she said, rising out of her chair. “We can talk in the hall.”

  I found a quiet spot against the wall and introduced myself.

  “It’s all bogus,” Julie said. “Mintner is out to close Zeta, and he’s using Gobbles to do it. Mintner asked Gobbles to stop by his house, and when Gobbles got there Mintner was nuts. Gobbles said Mintner was yelling about the evil stuff going on at Zeta. Totally out of control.”

  “What about the baseball bat?”

  “Gobbles was on his way home from playing ball with some friends. He had a bat and a mitt with him.”

  “That’s not the way the police report reads. Mintner said his living room was trashed and Gobbles broke his arm.”

  “Gobbles said Mintner was on a rant and fell over the ottoman. Maybe that’s how his arm got broken. Gobbles left after Mintner fell. I believe Gobbles,” Julie said. “He’s never lied to me. And I don’t like Dean Mintner. No one likes him.”

  “Why is Gobbles in hiding? Why didn’t he show up for his court date?”

  “He thinks everything is stacked against him. And I think he’s right. People are going to believe Dean Mintner.”

  “Still, he should check in with the court. We can get him bonded out again. Right now he’s considered a felon, and that’s not a good thing.”

  “I’ll pass it along if I hear from him.”

  I gave her my card, and returned to my car. There was a note under the windshield wiper.

  Stop hunting Gobbles or else.

  P.S. Zeta rules!!

  I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone I recognized from the fraternity. No one seemed to be watching me. No big deal, I thought. I’d been threatened by psychopathic serial killers, mutant gangbangers, and Morelli’s crazy Sicilian grandmother. This hardly registered on my fright meter.

  I settled myself behind the wheel, and texted Connie and asked her to get me information on Julie Ruley. With any luck she lived off campus and was harboring Gobbles.

  I hadn’t heard anything from Ranger or Connie about Lula, so I called Morelli.

  “I’m worried about Lula,” I told him. “I went into the deli on K Street for lunch, and when I came out she was gone.”

  “And?”

  “She left without her egg salad.”

  “I could see where that would be worrisome.”

  “I’m serious. I had an FTA in the backseat of Lula’s Firebird. She’s not answering her phone, and she’s not at the office. I have Ranger’s men looking for her, but they haven’t turned up anything. I thought you
might keep your eyes open for her.”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “You called Ranger before me?” Morelli asked.

  “I needed a ride.”

  “Your father drives a cab.”

  “Jeez Louise. I’m reporting a missing person, okay?”

  “It hasn’t been twenty-four hours since I suggested we back off a little on our relationship and already you’re with Ranger.”

  “I work with the man. I have a professional relationship with him.”

  “I love you, but you give me acid reflux,” Morelli said.

  “Yeah, well, you gave me a pimple.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Morelli gave a bark of laughter. “I’ll pass the word on Lula. Let me know if she turns up.”

  I thunked my forehead on the steering wheel. My life was a mess. A car drove by, and someone in the backseat threw an egg at me and yelled “Zeta!” It splattered against my driver’s side window and oozed down into the door. I looked at my watch and wondered if it was too early to start drinking. A glass of wine or a beer. Just one. Maybe two at the most. Reality check. I’m not good at drinking. I get very happy and then I fall asleep. Since I had to work with Ranger that night, I thought I should delay drinking. Donuts would be a better way to go. A dozen donuts would significantly improve my day.

  I hit a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru and started working on the donuts in the parking lot. By the time I got home there were six left in the box, and I didn’t want to see another donut ever again. Not ever. Perhaps a Boston Kreme, but that was it.

  I live in a modest apartment building on the fringe of Trenton proper. It’s ten minutes from the bonds office, ten minutes from my parents’ house, and fifty years out of date. It’s a solid three-story building with cheap aluminum windows and an unreliable elevator. My second-floor apartment looks out at the parking lot at the rear of the building. Not exactly scenic, but I have a front-row seat for the occasional dumpster fire.

  I was feeling sick from the donuts so I took the stairs, thinking exercise would help. I let myself into my apartment, dropped a morsel of a maple glazed into Rex’s cage, and set the rest of the donuts on the counter. Rex rushed over to the piece of donut, stuffed it into his cheek, and hustled it back to his soup can home.

  I have a very small area when you first enter my apartment that I like to call my foyer, but probably that’s too grand a name for the space. I have a small, practical kitchen, a living room that sort of combines with my dining room, a bedroom, and a retro bath. Retro is another way of saying that my bathroom is really old and ugly.

  My dining room serves as my office. I’d inherited the table and chairs from a distant relative. No one else in the family had wanted them. They were nothing I would intentionally buy, but for free they were fine. Rectangular table. Six chairs. Brown wood.

  I’m not any kind of cook, and I eat most of my meals standing over the sink, so using the table as a desk wasn’t a hardship. I sat down, opened my laptop, and downloaded the new file from Connie.

  Julie Ruley was in her senior year at Kiltman. Her parents were divorced. One brother, two years younger. He was enrolled at Penn State. Her mother and stepfather live in South River. Julie’s current local address was 2121 Banyan Street. Connie had a side note informing me that this was not on campus.

  I checked Banyan out on Google Maps and saw that it was within walking distance of the school. The aerial view told me 2121 Banyan was a large house in a residential neighborhood. Most likely subdivided into student apartments.

  Morelli called my cellphone.

  “Lula turned up,” he said.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s okay, but the people she was with are a mess. The story I have is that she was at the curb in front of the deli and two idiots got in with guns drawn and told her to drive. Turns out they’d just robbed the Korean grocery two doors down from the deli. I guess they thought Lula’s Firebird was a step up from the stolen Kia they’d been driving.”

  “Where did they take her?”

  “Chop shop in Camden.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yep. Big mistake. Originally it seems these morons just wanted to get away. The plan had been to acquire enough money to get a bus ticket to Texas, where they’d steal enough money to buy themselves a car wash. They told Lula to take them to the Camden bus station, but then they got to thinking they could make more on the Firebird than they stole from the grocery.”

  “Lula loves her Firebird.”

  “That’s an understatement. I’m not sure how she managed it, but when they got to Camden and ordered her out of the car, she disarmed the guy in the front and beat the crap out of the two of them. They were happy to see the police arrive.”

  “Why Camden?”

  “They didn’t want to leave from Trenton. Too easy to track.”

  “Brilliant.”

  “Yeah,” Morelli said.

  “Where is she now?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. The Camden police released her about an hour ago.”

  “The FTA? Billy Bacon?”

  “Ran off while Lula was trashing the other two guys.” There was a moment of silence. “How’s the pimple?” he finally asked.

  “It’s holding its own. How’s the heartburn?”

  “Not good.”

  •••

  It was almost five o’clock when I opened my door to Lula. She was minus the pink angora sweater, her poison green tank top was smudged, and her hair was less than perfect.

  “You’re not gonna believe my day,” Lula said. “Where’s my egg salad?”

  “Vinnie ate it.”

  “Say what?”

  “I was worried about you when you disappeared. Why didn’t you call?”

  “I got kidnapped and one of the idiots took my cellphone. What do you mean Vinnie ate my egg salad?”

  “I brought the stuff from the deli back to the office and Vinnie ate it.”

  “He got some nerve. I was looking forward to that egg salad.”

  “We can get more tomorrow.”

  Lula’s attention moved to the box on the counter. “Is that donuts I see?”

  “Help yourself.”

  Lula took a jelly donut. “I’m about starved. First off I got kidnapped and they wanted to go to Camden.” She shook her head. “Camden. Like I haven’t anything better to do than to drive to Camden. And then when we got to Camden they said I should get out and walk home on account of they were taking my Firebird to a chop shop. Okay, I get that they need money to start up a business. Not that I’m saying it’s the right thing to do or anything. But you don’t take a acetylene torch to a red Firebird. It’s not done. And I just had it detailed.”

  “Morelli said you trashed them.”

  “I might have got carried away in the moment. It’s the protective nature in me needing to protect my Firebird.”

  Lula finished the jelly donut and took a chocolate covered.

  “And Billy Bacon got away?” I asked her.

  “Yup. He took advantage of the situation and ran like a rabbit, handcuffs and all. I drove around looking for him after the police got done talking to me, but I couldn’t find him. So what did you do with the rest of the day? Did you find Globovic?”

  “I talked to his girlfriend. I’m sure she knows where he is. I might go back with Ranger tonight and look around.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me. You mind if I take the rest of these donuts home?”

  “They’re yours.”

  SIX

  FOR THE VIEWING I settled on skinny black slacks, a dressy white T-shirt with a scoop neck, and a fitted short red jacket. The outfit had the advantage of looking good with black ballet flats, which would be excellent for chasing down a killer if the occasion arose. I had my gun in my purse, but I hadn’t been able to find any bullets. With any luck, Ranger would never know about the bullets.

  I was downstairs waiting at seven o’clock when
Ranger pulled up in a black Porsche Cayenne. It was his personal fleet car. Very luxe but equipped with ankle restraints bolted onto the backseat floor in case he had to transport a bad guy.

  “Babe,” Ranger said as I slid in next to him. “Didn’t want to risk the red dress?”

  “Mrs. Kranski and Mrs. Rundig will most likely be at this viewing. They would call my mother and tell her I was at the viewing wearing a tight red dress with cleavage, and then my mother would head straight for the Jim Beam bottle. Bad enough that I’m going to be there with you. That’s worth two Advil.”

  “I thought your mother liked me.”

  “My grandmother likes you. My mother worries that you might be related to Satan.”

  The funeral home is on the edge of the Burg, short for Chambersburg. Originally the Burg was a mob enclave, but most of the mob has now moved on to classier neighborhoods. The factory workers, bus drivers, plumbers, cops, and government worker bees remain. I grew up in the Burg, and my parents still live there. Houses are modest. Bars are plentiful. Crime is low. Gossip is rampant. The funeral home is the Burg equivalent to a country club. It’s free entertainment for everyone but the immediate family of the deceased.

  People in the Burg go to viewings for the cookies, not for the dead guy in Slumber Room No. 2. The building was originally a large Victorian-style home with a wraparound porch. Thirty years ago it was sold to the Stiva family and converted into a mortuary. It’s since changed hands, but people still refer to it as Stiva’s.

  We drove to the funeral home and Ranger parked in a space reserved for him.

  “Who’s the deceased?” I asked.

  “Harry Getz. Someone drilled two holes in him. Looks like it happened when he opened his front door to someone. Initially it went down as armed robbery, but nothing was stolen, and Getz had a lot of enemies. I think Morelli is the principal on it. We’ll be providing security for Harry’s business partner, Doug Linken, and his wife, Monica.”

  “Hard feelings with the family?”

  “Hard feelings with everyone. Getz and Linken owned a construction business, G&L Builds. Mostly commercial properties. Strip malls. And they had some smaller businesses that were associated with the construction. G&L Builds overextended and imploded. There was a lot of ugly finger-pointing and name-calling, and it’s going through a contentious bankruptcy. A lot of people are going to get shortchanged.”