Tricky Twenty-Two

  We walked to the front of the building. A black Rangeman SUV pulled up, and the Linkens got out. Ranger introduced me, and we all walked into the funeral home together.

  Doug Linken was a nice-looking man in his early sixties. He was wearing a dark gray suit, white shirt, and gray and black striped tie. Monica Linken looked younger than her husband, but she’d probably had work done, so it was hard to tell her age. And she looked like she spent time at the gym. Blond hair pulled back at the nape of her neck. Simple black suit. Massive diamond studs in her ears. Bright red lipstick. I thought if she hocked the earrings she might be able to get the business back on its feet.

  There were three slumber rooms occupied. Harry Getz had the place of honor in Slumber Room No. 1. It was the largest viewing room and got awarded to the newly departed who was expected to draw the biggest crowd. A controversial murder would only be trumped by a decapitation or fraternal lodge Grand Bigwig, and there were currently neither of those in residence.

  The lobby was filled with the usual freeloaders and gawkers. My Grandma Mazur was one of them. A hush fell over the crowd when we entered, and they parted, like when Moses showed up at the Red Sea, to let us make our way to the viewing. Ranger and I were known in the community, and it was obvious we were there to ensure the Linkens’ safety.

  Grandma Mazur spotted me from across the room. “Yoo-hoo!” she called. And she waved.

  Grandma has some things in common with the Queen of England. They have the same hairstyle, they each carry their purse in the crook of their arm, and no one tells either of them what to do.

  Grandma was wearing a sleeveless dress with big red and pink flowers on it. Her lipstick was a bright pink to match the flowers on the dress. Her shoes and her purse were black patent leather. The purse was big enough to hold her .45 long barrel.

  The double doors were open to the viewing room, and I could see that every chair was occupied. A line of condolence wishers snaked from the casket almost to the double doors. Usually viewings at Stiva’s are a respite from mourning, with a lot of gossip and laughter and boozing it up. But the atmosphere in Slumber Room No. 1 was sullen tonight. Doug and Monica took their place at the end of the line, and a buzz went through the room. Heads turned and eyes focused on the Linkens, and the climate of the room ratcheted up from sullen to hostile.

  Ranger leaned close, and I caught a hint of the scent of the shower gel that always lingers on his skin, and I could feel the warmth from his body.

  “Going to be a long night,” he whispered, his lips brushing against my ear.

  I got a rush that went all the way down to my toes. Okay, so I know it wasn’t a sexy message, but jeez Louise, the man was fine.

  We inched our way forward, and as we got closer to the deceased I could see the immediate family glaring at the Linkens.

  “What’s with all the animosity?” I asked Ranger.

  “I’ll spare you the complicated financials, but Doug Linken will benefit from his partner’s death. The Getz family will not.”

  Grandma Mazur elbowed her way through the crowd and sidled up to me.

  “Isn’t this a pip of a viewing?” she said. “Standing room only. Take a close look at his neck when you get up there. If you look real good you can see the marks from where he got shot. That’s not something you see every day.”

  “Look over there,” I said to Grandma. “A seat just opened up in the second row.”

  “I’m on it,” Grandma said, rushing to the empty seat.

  “She likes when she can be up close,” I said to Ranger.

  Ranger looked over at Grandma. “That’s a lot to live up to, Babe.”

  A woman in a pink suit and a man in a tweedy sport coat stood at the casket. I guessed they were the wife and brother. Ranger stepped in front of the Linkens as they approached the casket. I remained behind, so we had them sandwiched between us.

  “Our condolences,” Doug Linken said to the family, not sounding all that sincere.

  “You have a lot of nerve showing up here,” the brother said. “You swindled him, and you swindled us. And don’t think you have us fooled. You killed him. You killed him.”

  “Killer!” the woman shrieked at Linken. “Dirty, rotten killer!”

  Ranger put himself between the Linkens and the Getz family and moved the Linkens toward the side door that led to the back exit.

  “Not so fast,” Monica Linken said. “I want a cookie.”

  “I’ll have my men stop at a bakery,” Ranger said.

  “I don’t want a bakery cookie. I want a cookie from the lobby,” Monica said. “And I’m not leaving out of the side door like we’re criminals or something.”

  “Well, I’m leaving out the side door,” Doug Linken said. “Those people are nuts.”

  “Escort Mrs. Linken to the cookie table,” Ranger said to me. “The car will be waiting for her at the front door.”

  I followed Monica as she slowly made her way through the crush of people. Grandma was out of her seat and was half a step behind me.

  “Don’t worry,” Grandma said. “I’ve got your back.”

  “Not necessary,” I said to Grandma. “We’re just going for cookies.”

  “Me too,” Grandma said. “I hope they got some of them vanilla sandwich cookies left, but if anything goes down I’m ready to rock and roll.”

  We reached the cookie table and Monica poured herself a cup of tea and took an oatmeal raisin cookie.

  “I could put your tea in a to-go cup,” I said to Monica.

  “I’m in no rush,” Monica said. “So just chill.”

  Grandma Mazur snagged the last vanilla sandwich cookie and turned to Monica. “What’s the story?” Grandma asked Monica. “Did your husband kill Harry?”

  “Excuse me?” Monica said. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Stephanie’s granny,” Grandma said.

  Monica looked at me. “You brought your grandmother? What kind of an agency does my husband employ?”

  “I didn’t bring her,” I said. “She was already here. She goes to all the viewings.”

  “Not all of them,” Grandma said. “Sometimes they conflict with my television shows.”

  I could see people jostling around by the viewing room door. Voices were raised. There was a disturbance of some sort, and I didn’t want to hang around to identify the source.

  “We should go,” I said to Monica. “Now.”

  Monica pretended not to hear. She reached for another cookie, and Harry’s wife knocked me aside and got into Monica’s face.

  “No cookies for killers,” the woman said to Monica. “I paid for these cookies and you can’t have any.”

  The wife slapped the cookie out of Monica’s hand, and Monica splashed her tea onto the widow’s pink suit.

  “Bitch!” the wife yelled. “You cow. You cheap whore.”

  In an instant they were on the ground, gouging eyes and pulling hair. I tried to wade in to separate them, but they were rolling around and I couldn’t get a grip. Someone kicked out and caught me in the back of the leg, and I went down too. The funeral director ran in, made the mistake of getting too close, and Monica bit him.

  There was a deafening bang! and everyone froze. A chunk of plaster fell out of the ceiling and smashed onto the floor.

  “What the heck?” the funeral director asked.

  “Edna shot up the ceiling again,” Mabel Schein said.

  “I figured someone had to get their attention,” Grandma said.

  Ranger stepped out of the mob, scooped Monica up, and whisked her through the lobby and out the door. I got to my feet and helped Grandma fit her six-shooter back into her purse.

  “This was worth the price of admission,” Grandma said.

  “Do you need a ride home?”

  “No. I came with Betty Shatz. We’re going to the diner for rice pudding after this.”

  SEVEN

  THE RANGEMAN SUV was pulling away with the Linkens inside when I approached Ranger.

&nb
sp; “Another job well done,” I said.

  “I assume they were fighting over cookies.”

  “More or less. The best part was when Monica Linken bit the funeral director.”

  “I’m sorry I missed that.”

  “I need to check out an address tonight. I’m looking for a Kiltman student, and I think he might be hiding out with his girlfriend. Want to come along?”

  He gave me a long slow look from my head to my toes, and I figured he was wondering how difficult it would be to get me out of the skinny slacks.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said.

  A hint of a smile curved the corners of his mouth, and he wrapped an arm around me. “Babe.”

  We walked to his Porsche, buckled up, and drove across town. It was dark by the time we got to Banyan Street. We sat across from 2121 for a while, watching the house.

  “Do you have an apartment number?” Ranger asked.

  “2B.”

  “So she’s most likely on the second floor. Lights are on in the front. Let’s get out and take a look at the back.”

  It was a large house, probably built in the fifties for a big family. The lot was relatively small. The details were lost in deep shadow. A driveway hugged one side and led to a four-car garage on the back edge of the property. No one out and about but Ranger and me. Lights were also on in back windows. No shades were drawn, but we couldn’t see anyone moving around.

  “What do these people look like?” Ranger asked.

  “Julie Ruley is about five foot four, shoulder-length blond hair, nice looking in a back-to-nature kind of way. Ken Globovic has sandy blond hair. A little pudgy. File says he’s five ten. His mug shot made him look like Christopher Robin.”

  Ranger was wearing a perfectly tailored black suit, black cross-trainers, a black Glock, and a dressy black T-shirt. He handed me his suit jacket, ran a couple steps at the building, went up the side like Spider-Man, and did an effortless, silent pull-up onto the slanted roof that covered the wraparound porch. He moved from one window to the next, and disappeared around the side of the house. Minutes later he returned and quietly swung down from the roof.

  “I saw a woman who matched your description of Julie Ruley,” he said. “I didn’t see a man in the apartment. And I didn’t see anything that would lead me to believe a man was living there.”

  “No underwear on the floor, dirty dishes stacked up in the sink, porno magazines lying around?”

  “Only hers.”

  We walked back to his car and sat there for a while. Nothing happened.

  “This is boring,” I said.

  Ranger looked over at me. “I could fix that.”

  “Tempting, but no.”

  “Do you have any other leads on him?”

  “He’s a big deal in his fraternity. I’m not sure he would chance going there. He’s a biology major, but I can’t see him hiding out in the bio lab. Supposedly he’s been seen on campus late at night.”

  “Family?”

  “Not local.”

  “Friends?”

  “Tons.”

  “You look young enough to be a college student. Maybe you should go undercover and get cozy with the fraternity brothers.”

  “Too late. They’ve already seen me.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “I thought I’d sit here until I needed a bathroom.”

  “Is that going to happen anytime soon?”

  “Hard to say.”

  This wasn’t the first time I’d been on a stakeout with Ranger. Ranger has infinite patience. He goes into a zone, his heart rate slows, and you have to hold a mirror under his nose to see if he’s breathing. He can sit like this for hours, stalking his prey. On the other hand, I have no patience. I’m not the queen of the stakeout. After I’ve checked my email on my phone I have nothing.

  Ranger tugged at my ponytail. “How about a burger and fries? Are you hungry?”

  “Yes!”

  We went to a small dark bar four blocks away and settled into a corner booth. It was far enough from Kiltman that it wasn’t frequented by college kids. There were some people at the bar who looked like regulars, and there was another couple in a booth on the other side of the room.

  We ordered burgers, French fries, and onion rings. Ranger is former Special Forces, and he’s maintained his Special Forces level of fitness. He works out. He has only an occasional glass of beer or wine. He eats healthy. When our food was set on the table he removed the bun from his burger and took a single French fry for a test drive. I removed the lettuce and tomato from my burger, saturated the fries with ketchup, and ate all the onion rings.

  A guy at the bar stood and walked toward us on his way to the men’s room. My heart skipped a beat when he got close. I was almost positive it was Gobbles.

  “Ken?” I asked him. “Ken Globovic?”

  He looked at me, and he looked at Ranger, and he looked at me again. His first reaction was confusion, and then panic.

  “Um, no,” he said.

  Ranger reached out for him, and Globovic jumped away and took off. Ranger and I were out of the booth and on our feet, but Gobbles had a head start. He ran into the narrow galley kitchen, knocked over a cart filled with glasses, and ran out the back door. By the time we maneuvered around the cart, Gobbles was gone, disappeared into the night.

  Two line cooks watched the whole thing with wide eyes and open mouths. Ranger apologized in Spanish, and we returned to our booth. Ranger dropped some money on the table, and we left. We drove the neighborhood, covering it in a grid pattern, but didn’t see Gobbles.

  “At least we know he’s not in Argentina,” I said to Ranger.

  “Have Connie run a check on the fraternity brothers tomorrow, and see if anyone is renting near the bar.”

  “Instinct tells you he isn’t living with Julie Ruley?”

  “I’m sure he has contact with her, but I doubt he’d be having his dinner in a bar that was four blocks away if he was living with her. He’d be in her apartment eating takeout pizza.”

  Personally I thought she looked more like lentils and quinoa, and that could be why Gobbles was in a bar. Ranger might not understand that, since lentils and quinoa would be a step up from the tree bark and desert beetles he probably ate when he was in Special Forces.

  •••

  It was almost eleven o’clock when Ranger parked in the lot behind my apartment building. He walked me into the small deserted lobby, drew me close against him, and kissed me. The kiss was light at first and then got serious. I felt my fingers curl into his shirt and someone moaned. It might have been me. Ranger pushed the elevator button, the doors opened, and he moved us into the elevator. By the time we got to my apartment door I was thinking he needed to come in to make sure everything was secure. Check under the bed to get rid of any serial rapists or scary, drooly monsters. And while he was checking under the bed I might have to get undressed because I was having a massive hot flash.

  We were in the middle of the living room, halfway to the bedroom, when Ranger’s phone rang. He took his hand out from under my shirt, answered his phone, and stared at the floor while he listened. He asked “When?” and “Where?” He disconnected.

  “That was Tank,” Ranger said. “Someone shot Doug Linken.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “He’s in surgery. Tank said it doesn’t look good. He said the wife looks even worse.”

  “She was shot too?”

  “No. She’s hysterical.” Ranger grabbed my hand and tugged me to the door. “I need you at the hospital.”

  I dug my feet in. “No way. You want me to babysit Monica Linken.”

  “Yeah. I’ll pay you time and a half.”

  “Not enough.”

  He stood hands on hips, looking at me. “I’ll give you a car.”

  “Permanently? Will it be mine or will it be temporary?”

  “It’ll be yours until you trash it. Considering your record with cars you won’t have it long.??
?

  “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  It wasn’t such a great deal. Ranger gave me cars all the time. Sooner or later he got fed up with me driving around in a hunk of junk, and he gave me a car.

  At this time of night, when there wasn’t much traffic, it was a short trip to St. Francis Hospital. The hospital was on Hamilton, a couple blocks from the bonds office, on the edge of the Burg. If you needed complicated brain surgery, it was best not to go to St. Francis. If you had a gunshot wound, you were in the right place. Trenton saw a fair amount of shooting. The surgeons at St. Francis had a lot of practice removing bullets.

  Ranger swung into the emergency room drop-off, and we were met by a uniformed Rangeman guy. He gave us directions to Monica Linken, and he took the car. Rangeman valet service.

  Monica had been placed in a small waiting room reserved for families of surgery patients. Hal, one of Ranger’s security force, was standing guard at the door. He looked like he wanted to hurl himself out a fourth-floor window. Monica was inside, pacing and sucking on an electronic cigarette. She spotted Ranger and rushed at him.

  “You’re supposed to be protecting us,” she yelled. “Is this protecting us?”

  “We weren’t hired for twenty-four-hour continuous personal protection,” Ranger said. Very calm. No emotion. “The alarm system in your house is working perfectly. Your outdoor perimeter security lights are working perfectly.”

  “They were working so perfectly they got my stupid husband shot. He walked outside to sneak a smoke, the lights went on, and bang!, some asshole shot him. He was an easy target.”

  “Unfortunate,” Ranger said. “Do you have any idea who did this?”

  “There’s a big list. He wasn’t popular. Hell, I didn’t even like him. And I didn’t see anything, if that’s what you mean. I was watching television. One of the CSI shows. There was lots of shooting. I didn’t even find him until there was a commercial. I went to the kitchen and the back door was open. And there he was. Facedown on the patio in lots of blood.” Monica took a massive drag on her fake cigarette. “I’m never going to get the blood out of that stone. I’m going to have to replace it. Do you have any idea how expensive that is? Bastard rip-off stonemasons.”