Moving into the Rangeman building would protect me from everyone but Ranger. Not that I could compare sleeping with Ranger to being dead. And not that Ranger would force himself on me. My fear was more that I’d force myself on Ranger and screw my life up in a major way.
I looked at my watch. “Damn. It’s almost seven o’clock! I’m late. I told Grandma I’d pick her up for Bingo at seven.” I thunked my forehead with the heel of my hand. “My car is still parked at the bonds office.”
“I had it picked up and brought here. It’s parked in the lot.”
The firehouse is on the fringe of the Burg. It has a large public-use room that holds Bingo games, wedding and baby showers, small wedding receptions, and pancake breakfasts that benefit a variety of causes. The floor is oak, the walls are painted a bilious green, and the lighting is fluorescent. The Bingo game setup is pretty much the same as at the Senior Center.
Grandma and I, the last to arrive, were relegated to the back of the room. This was perfect for me. I could see everyone playing. Twenty percent of the players were gonzo Bingo junkies who played Bingo every day and were also at the Senior Center. The remaining 80 percent were mostly from the Burg. A bunch of Grandma’s cronies were there, plus some of my grade school and high school friends. At least half the room had been drinking, and they were feeling no pain.
“Your hair is different,” I said to Grandma.
“Yeah. I went blond. The gray made me look too old.”
Grandma’s gray hair was just the tip of the iceberg. She was young at heart, but she had a body like a soup chicken and skin like an elephant.
“I went to the beauty salon today and got spruced up,” Grandma said. “Ever since Mildred Frick called me a slut my phone hasn’t stopped ringing. I got two dates for the weekend.”
“It might not be such a good thing to have men calling you because they think you’re a slut,” I said. “They’re only going to be after one thing.”
“I hope that’s true. I don’t want to find out I went blond and bought them thongs for nothing.”
“Did you happen to hear anything about me this afternoon?”
“Just how you got thrown off the bridge and Ranger jumped in to save you.”
“Does Mom know?”
“Yeah. She ironed sheets for three hours, mumbling about how she wished you were more like your sister with all the kids and a lawyer for a husband, and how she couldn’t understand you not wanting to be a butcher. And then she had a couple nips of booze while she was making supper, and some red wine when we sat down to eat, and she was pretty much in a nice stupor by the time I left.”
My mother always irons when she’s upset. If you walk into the house and see the ironing board up, it’s usually a good idea to turn tail and leave. I guess that’s cowardly, but Grandma and I are almost always the cause for the stress, and we’ve learned it’s best to give my mother some space when she’s freaked.
Grandma and I each had three Bingo cards. Every time a number was called I’d bang my splint onto the Formica table-top, trying to use my dauber.
“How long do you gotta wear that thing?” Grandma asked.
“A couple weeks.”
“Maybe you want me to take over your cards so you don’t break any more of your finger bone.”
“That would be great. Thanks.”
There were three men playing Bingo. All three had been at the Senior Center. Two were a gay couple who were probably in their seventies. It was hard to judge their exact age because they were Botoxed, exfoliated, and moisturized, and had skin like a baby’s bottom.
Gordon Krutch was the third man. He was also in his seventies, but without the benefits of gaydom his face looked like a road map of Newark: lots of intersecting streets, plus a bunch of potholes, and skin the color and texture of concrete.
Grandma caught Gordon’s eye and waved at him. Gordon waved back and blew Grandma a kiss.
“Isn’t he something?” Grandma said to me. “We’re going to the movies tomorrow. He still drives and everything. He’s a real catch. He’s kept himself in shape. He takes the fitness class for old people at the Senior Center.”
I suppose it’s relative, but Gordon didn’t look to me like he was in great shape. He was about fifty pounds overweight, and he broke into a sweat from the exertion of walking. Plus there was the near-death pallor.
“Ever since his wife died he’s been the hot ticket,” Grandma said.
“Has he dated any of the women who were murdered?”
“Not that I know about.”
I had a feeling the Bingo connection wasn’t going to lead to a suspect. There had to be something else the murdered women had in common.
Morelli’s ringtone sang out on my cellphone.
“I’ve only got a minute,” Morelli said. “Double homicide in the projects. Not sure when I’ll be done here.”
“Bingo!” Grandma yelled. “Stephanie got Bingo!”
I looked over at my card, and I looked up at the screen. Bingo.
“What did I win?” I asked Grandma.
“One of them slow cookers.”
“No money?”
“No. It wasn’t a money game. It was a potluck game.”
“I won a slow cooker at Bingo,” I told Morelli.
“You’re at Bingo?”
“Yeah, and I won!”
Two hours later I carefully stepped out of the firehouse and looked around. No big black cars with gun turrets. No thugs with Tasers. No scary Italian granny with an assault rifle. Good deal.
I dropped Grandma off at my parents’ house and took my slow cooker home. I parked in the lot to my apartment building, and Ranger’s 911 Turbo slid in next to me. I hauled the massive slow cooker box out of my car and saw Ranger’s mouth twitch at the corners, suggesting the beginning of a smile.
“I won it,” I told him.
“The perfect prize.”
“Scoff all you want, but I might use it. I’ve been thinking about taking up cooking. I made dinner the other night.”
“How’d that go?” Ranger asked.
“I exploded the vegetables in the microwave, but other than that it went pretty good.”
“You never disappoint,” Ranger said, taking the box from me.
He carried the box into my apartment and set it on my kitchen counter. Rex came out of his soup can to take a look, decided the box wasn’t all that interesting, and went back into his soup can.
“I think the Bingo connection is dead in the water,” I said to Ranger. “The women must have had something else in common.”
“Keep working at it. Do you need help with Sunucchi?”
“I might. He spends his nights with Rita Raguzzi. She has a house in Hamilton Township, and I think that’s the best place to grab him. It’s the only time Sunny isn’t surrounded by his posse.”
“This is shotgun Rita?”
“Yeah. It should be fun.”
“Good,” Ranger said. “I’m all about fun.”
“Since when?”
He pulled me into him and kissed me. There was some highly skilled groping and use of tongue, and on a fun scale of 1 to 10 it was an 11.
“Call me when you’re ready to do the takedown,” Ranger said.
I locked the door after him, took the slow cooker out of the box, and set it on my kitchen counter. I had no clue what I was supposed to do with it. I thumbed through the instructions and did a quick scan of the little recipe book that came with the cooker. It sounded simple enough. Throw a bunch of stuff in the pot and turn it on.
TWELVE
LULA ROLLED INTO the office five minutes after I did. Her hair was a big orange frizzball, and she had bags under her eyes.
“How was the date?” Connie asked her. “You look like you got run over by a truck.”
“First off, there were no good corners left. I’ve never seen so many hookers. They’re all over the place. And then there’s a real impact on the trade being that the economy is in the toilet.”
>
“Did you make enough money for the Brahmin bag?”
“I didn’t make nothing. I stood out there until the sun come up and the only bite I had all night was some fool wanted a hand job and was gonna pay me in food stamps. I’m telling you there’s a lot of food stamps floating around out there. I mean, what the heck is this country coming to? Food stamps aren’t gonna buy me no genuine Brahmin, you see what I’m saying?”
“Maybe you don’t need a Brahmin,” I said.
“Of course I need a Brahmin,” Lula said. “You carry a Brahmin and everybody knows you got class and fashion flair. They got ads in Vogue.”
“Mary Treetrunk is still in the wind,” Connie said. “She’s not a big ticket bond, but she’ll get you pizza money.”
“What did she do this time?” Lula wanted to know.
“She got raided for having a pot farm behind her doublewide. And then when they tried to take her in she kicked one of the cops in the nuts and offered to kiss it and make it a lot better.”
“You see what I mean,” Lula said. “Everybody’s a ’ho these days. How’s a professional supposed to compete in the marketplace?”
I pulled Mary’s file out of my messenger bag and paged through it. “It looks like she’s still living in that patch of mud and scrub down by the river.”
“So far as I know,” Connie said. “She’s probably there even as we speak, planting a new crop of cannabis.”
“I’m not having her smell up my Firebird,” Lula said to me. “If we do this we gotta take your P.O.S.”
We’d busted Mary twice before, and neither time was pretty. She weighed upwards of two hundred pounds, she smelled like dead fish, and she was cranky about leaving her doublewide.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
I took Hamilton to Broad and turned onto the narrow rutted road that led down to Mary Treetrunk’s homestead. She owned a half acre of land that was part floodplain and part garbage heap. Her doublewide was rusted out and listing, propped up on cinderblocks. An electric line ran to the mobile home that was anything but mobile, and a satellite dish was precariously attached to the roof. A Ford Crown Vic was parked off to the side. A lot of years ago it had been a police car, but it was now a wreck. A pirate’s skull-and-crossbones flag had been tied onto the antenna.
“This here’s a mess,” Lula said. “I’m glad I dressed down today and I’m not wearing my Louboutins.”
Lula was wearing a shocking-pink tank top, a poison-green spandex skirt that came two inches below her ass, and gold sequined sneakers. If you put her in a room and turned the lights off, she’d glow in the dark.
“Are you still dressed from last night?” I asked her.
“Of course not. If I was dressed like this I wouldn’t draw no attention. As it was I could have stayed home. Did I tell you I’m thinking about getting a cat?”
“You’re allergic to cats.”
“Yeah, but I saw one in the pet store that didn’t have no hair, and they said it was a nonallergic cat.”
Lula and I got out of my car, the door to the doublewide crashed open, and Mary looked out at us.
“The store’s closed,” Mary said. “I haven’t got any damn merchandise. The damn police took it all. Get off my damn property.”
“Sounds like Mary’s not in a good mood,” Lula whispered to me.
I pulled flexi-cuffs out of my bag and stuffed them into my back pocket. Mary’s wrists were too large for ordinary handcuffs. “Mary’s never in a good mood.”
“It’s no wonder. I’m a big woman but I’m big in a beautiful way. This woman here is just plain too fat. She look like she got no muscle tone. She’s all lumpy.”
Mary squinted at me. “Do I know you?”
“It’s Stephanie Plum,” I yelled. “You need to get rebonded.”
“I don’t got time for that. It’s supposed to rain later today. I gotta get my plants in before it rains.”
“You aren’t putting in more cannabis, are you?”
“What do I look, stupid?” Mary said. “You can’t start a new crop outside at this time of the year. I got them little guys under grow lights in my doublewide. I’m setting out some cabbage.”
“This will only take an hour or two, and you’ll be released on bond again,” I told her. “And we can stop and get a bag of breakfast sandwiches on the way.”
“I could use a breakfast sandwich,” Mary said.
“Me too,” Lula said. “I wouldn’t mind a breakfast sandwich myself. And if we go to Cluck-in-a-Bucket we could add some fried chicken for a extra boost of protein. And maybe some biscuits with the chicken.”
“They got good gravy there,” Mary said. “I’m partial to gravy.”
I cuffed Mary’s hands in front of her so she could eat, and we loaded her into my backseat.
“I don’t mean to be rude or nothing,” Lula said to Mary, “but you stink.”
“I don’t smell nothing,” Mary said.
Lula powered her window down. “You smell like dead fish.”
“That’s because I’m one of them green people. I don’t participate in fertilizing my plants with that phony nitrogen stuff. I wait until there’s a fish kill in the river and then I go collect all the dead fish that wash up. I let them rot out, and I use them for plant food. It’s why I grow such quality product. You get weed from Mary Treetrunk and you know it’s good organic shit.”
“Is there lots of fish kills?” Lula asked.
“Yep. There’s dead fish laying around all the time. Some of them only got one eye, and a couple times I found fish with two heads.”
I returned to Broad Street, drove to Cluck-in-a-Bucket, and loaded up at the drive-through. Mary was happy in the backseat with a bag filled with breakfast sandwiches, a bucket of chicken, and a side of biscuits and gravy. Lula had a super-sized diet cola, a single breakfast sandwich, and a medium box of chicken nuggets. No biscuits. No gravy. No apple pie for dessert. I assumed this relatively small portion for her was the result of listening to the car groan under Mary’s weight and not wanting to go there. The other possibility was nausea from the fish stench.
I pulled out of the lot, onto the street, and a black Cadillac Escalade with a satellite dish on the roof passed me going in the opposite direction.
“That’s the car!” Lula said. “That’s the dart gun car.”
I checked my rearview mirror and saw the Escalade make a U-turn. It zoomed up to my bumper and gave me a tap.
“What the heck?” Lula said. “I almost spilled my soda. I think they hit us on purpose.”
“Can you see who’s driving?”
Lula turned in her seat. “I can see him, but I don’t know him.”
There were cars stopped for a traffic light in front of me. I slowed for the light, and the Escalade tapped me again. The passenger side door on the Escalade opened, a guy got out, pulled a gun, and ran for my car. It was the cinderblock guy who had tried to throw me into the river.
I pulled out of the line of stopped traffic, jumped the curb, and drove across three front lawns. I hit the cross street hard, with the rear of the car scraping the cement curb. The muffler fell off with a loud klunk, and I roared away, fishtailing and leaving behind what meager tread had been left on my tires.
Lula had her foot braced on the dash, and Mary had her food clutched to her chest.
“What the Sam Hill?” Mary exclaimed.
I paused at the corner and looked back. The Escalade had followed me across the lawns but was now stopped in the middle of the road.
“What’s going on?” I asked Lula.
“I don’t know. They’re stopped, and the one guy is out of the car again. Looks like he’s trying to grab hold of something. I think they might have run over your muffler.”
We brought Mary into the police station, and everyone took a step back from us.
“I’m gonna have to burn my clothes,” Lula said. “I’m never getting this fish smell out, and this top was one of my favorites. I’m p
utting in to Connie for damages done on the job. Vinnie’s gonna have to buy me a new outfit. We’re gonna have to stop someplace on the way back to the office, because I’m not contaminating my Firebird with this smell. I’ll have a pack of cats following me down the street.”
I got my body receipt from the docket lieutenant and ran into Morelli on the way out.
“Wow!” he said. “Holy sweet Jesus. What’s that smell?”
“I just brought Mary Treetrunk in,” I told him.
“That would explain it.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any breaking news on the Dumpster murders.”
“Only that the chemistry hasn’t been helpful. Butch got the latest report back from the state lab and it didn’t show anything useful. The women were clean. Anything new happening in your life today?”
“My muffler fell off.”
“Yeah, but it turned out to be a good thing,” Lula said. “On account of the guy with the gun who was chasing us ran over the muffler, and it got stuck under his car. So you see, everything happens for a reason, right? All’s well that ends well.”
Morelli’s face went blank for a moment. “Seriously?” he finally said.
“It was one of those random encounters,” I told him.
“I can’t stand here talking anymore,” Lula said. “My eyes are burning. I got to de-fish myself.”
I told Morelli I’d talk to him later, and Lula and I chugged off across town to T.J. Maxx on South Broad Street. After five minutes we pretty much had the store to ourselves. Lula went with a silver sequined tank top and a short fuchsia handkerchief skirt that looked like it should be worn by the Sugar Plum Fairy. I stuck with my fish jeans and T-shirt since I was going to have to find money for a new muffler.
I dropped Lula off at the office and drove to my parents’ house. I could throw my clothes in the washer, mooch lunch, and grill Grandma on the dead women all at the same time. And hopefully it would go okay and my mother wouldn’t be dragging the ironing board out when I left.