Finger Lickin' Fifteen (6 page)

“So you have nothing?”

“Worse than that, we have more than we can manage. The million-dollar reward brought out every crackpot in the state. We had to pull Margie Slater off traffic duty and sit her in a room with a phone so she could field the calls coming in. They were clogging the system.”

“Lula’s convinced Chipotle was killed over barbecue sauce, and she figures the killers will be at the cook-off. She’s entered the contest so she’ll have the inside track at identifying them.”

“That’ll make sense if she lives that long.”

“Do you have someone watching her house?”

“That kind of surveillance only happens in the movies. We’re so underbudgeted we’re one step away from holding bake sales to pay for toilet paper.”

“Have you considered the barbecue sauce connection?”

“I’ve considered a lot of connections. Chipotle had so much bad juju going it’s a wonder he wasn’t killed sooner. He has three ex-wives who hated him. Everyone on his television show hated him. His sister hated him. He was suing his manager. And the tenants in his New York co-op signed a petition to get him evicted.”

“Who would have thought? He was all smiley on the jar of barbecue sauce.”

“It’s not that easy to slice off someone’s head,” Morelli said.

“The way Lula tells it, there wasn’t any struggle.”

“Yeah. That bothers me. Would you stand there and let someone decapitate you? And what about the guy who did it? Why would he choose decapitation? There are so many easier, cleaner ways to kill someone. And this was done in broad daylight in front of the Sunshine Hotel. It was almost like it wasn’t planned.”

“A spontaneous decapitation?”

Morelli grinned. “Yeah.”

“And he just happened to be carrying a meat cleaver around with him?”

“Maybe he was a butcher.”

“So all we have to do is look for an impulsive butcher.”

Morelli signaled for another beer. “I’m having fun.”

“Me, too.”

“Do you want to go home and go to bed?”

“Jeez,” I said. “Is that all you ever think about?”

“No, but I think about it a lot. Especially when I’m with you.”

“I thought we were supposed to be mad at each other.”

Morelli shrugged. “I don’t feel mad anymore. I can’t even remember what we were fighting about.”

“Peanut butter.”

“It was about more than peanut butter.”

“So you
do
remember?”

“You called me an insensitive clod,” Morelli said.

“And?”

“I’m not a clod.”

“But you admit to being insensitive?”

“I’m a guy. I’m supposed to be insensitive. It’s my birthright.”

I was pretty sure he was kidding. But then, maybe not. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll take half of it back. You’re not a clod.”

The waitress brought our food and Morelli took out his credit card. “We’ll take the check now, and we’d like a to-go box.”

“Since when?” I said.

“I thought we decided to go home.”

“I can’t go home. I have to go back to work.”

“Doing what?”

“Doing what I do. I’m working at Rangeman.”

“At night?”

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“I bet.”

I felt my eyebrows squinch together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don’t trust him. He’s a total loose cannon. And he looks at you like you’re lunch.”

“It’s a job. I need the money.”

“You could move in with me,” Morelli said. “You wouldn’t have to pay rent.”

“Living with you doesn’t work. Last time we tried to cohabitate, you threw my peanut butter away.”

“It was disgusting. It had grape jelly and potato chips in it. And something green.”

“Olives. It was just a little cross-contamination. Sometimes I’m in a hurry and stuff gets mixed into the peanut butter. Anyway, when did you get so fussy?”

“I’m not fussy,” Morelli said. “I just try to avoid food poisoning.”

“I have never poisoned you with my food.”

“Only because you don’t cook.”

I blew out a sigh because he was right, and this was going to lead to another contentious topic. Cooking. I’m not sure why I don’t cook. In my mind, I cooked a lot. I made whole mental turkey dinners, baked pies, roasted tenderloins, and whipped up rice pudding. I even owned a mental waffle maker. So to some extent, I understood Lula’s delusional belief that she could barbecue. The difference between Lula and me being that I knew fact from fiction. I knew I was no kind of cook.

The waitress came back with a couple plastic take-out boxes and the check.

“Well?” Morelli asked me.

“Well what?”

“Are we eating here or are we taking these subs back to my house?”

“I’d rather eat here. I have to go back to work tonight, and this is closer to Rangeman.”

“So you’re choosing Ranger over me?”

“Rangeman. Not
Ranger
. I have a project I can only do in the evening. You should understand that. You choose your job over me all the time.”

“I’m a cop.”

“And?”

“And that’s different,” Morelli said. “
I’m
serving the public, investigating murders, and
you’re
working for . . . Batman.”

“Gotham City would have been a mess without Batman.”

“Batman was a nutcase. He was a vigilante.”

“Well, Ranger isn’t a nutcase. He’s a legitimate businessman.”

“He’s a loose cannon hiding behind a veneer of legitimacy.”

We’d had this conversation about a hundred times before, and it never had a happy ending. Problem was, there was an element of truth to what Morelli said. Ranger played by his own rules.

“I don’t want to get into a shouting match,” I said to Morelli. “I’m going to pack up this sandwich and go back to work. We can try this again when I’m done working for Ranger.”

THE RHYTHM OF Rangeman was always the same. As a security facility, it worked around the clock. The fifth-floor control room, the dining area, and most of the satellite offices were interior to the building and without windows. If you worked in these areas, it was difficult to tell if it was night or day.

The evening shift was in place when I came on the floor. Sybo Diaz was kicked back in his chair, watching several monitors. The code computer was to his right; the screen was blank. I’d never spoken to Diaz, but I’d seen him around. He wasn’t the friendliest guy in the building. Mostly, he stayed to himself, eating alone, not making eye contact that would encourage conversation. According to his work profile, he was five foot nine inches tall and thirty-six years old. His complexion was dark. His face was scarred from acne he probably had as a teenager. He was built chunky, but he didn’t look like he had an ounce of fat. He walked like his shorts were starched.

“Hey,” I said to him, passing the desk on my way to my cubicle. “How’s it going?”

This got me a polite nod. No smile.

I plunked myself into my chair and turned my computer on. I could see Diaz from where I sat. I watched him for twenty minutes, and he never moved or blinked or looked my way. I wanted to talk to him, but I didn’t know how to go about it. The man was a robot. For lack of something better to do, I ran one of my assigned security checks. I printed the report and attempted to staple the pages, but the stapler was jammed. I pressed the button that was supposed to release the staples, I poked at it with my nail file, I banged it against the top of my desk.
Bang, bang, bang.
Nothing. I looked up and found Diaz staring at me.

“Stapler’s jammed,” I said to him.

His attention turned back to his monitors. No change in facial expression. Also no change in my stapler condition, so I hit it against my desktop some more.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!
Diaz swiveled his head in my direction, and I think he might have sighed a little.

I left my station and took my stapler over to Diaz. “I can’t get it to work,” I told him, handing him the stapler.

Diaz examined the stapler. By now the stapler had a bunch of dents, and the part that holds the staples was all bashed in. Diaz pushed the button that was supposed to release the staples, but of course nothing happened.

“It’s dead,” Diaz said. “You need a new stapler.”

“How do I get a new stapler?”

“Storeroom on the second floor.”

“Will it be open at this time of the night?” I asked him.

“It’s always open.”

This was like talking to a rock. “I don’t suppose I could borrow your stapler?”

Diaz so looked like he wanted me to go away that I almost felt sorry for him.

“I don’t have a stapler,” he said.

“Would you like me to get one for you from the storeroom?”

“No. I don’t need one. I haven’t got anything to staple.”

“Yeah, but what if suddenly you had to staple something and you didn’t have a stapler? Then it would be a stapling emergency.”

“Somebody put you up to this, right? Martin? Ramon?”

“No! Cross my heart and hope to die. I came in to catch up on my work, and I had this stapler issue.”

Diaz looked at me. Not saying anything.

“Jeez,” I said. And I went back to my cubicle.

I fiddled around for ten or fifteen minutes, drawing doodles in the margins of the report I’d just done, and Ranger called.

“This guy isn’t human,” I said to Ranger. “Does he ever talk to anyone?”

“No more than necessary to be a team member.”

“I get the feeling he’s been the brunt of some practical jokes.”

“I’m not supposed to know, but I think there’s a lottery going to see who’s the first to get him to crack a smile.”

“Why did your cousin divorce him?”

“She found someone she liked better.”

“Gee, hard to believe there’s someone better than Mr. Charming here.”

“He’s a good man,” Ranger said. “He’s steady.”

“He’s emotionally closed.”

“There are worse things,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

Truth is, Ranger was every bit as silent and unemotional as Diaz. Always in control. Always on guard. What made the difference was an animal intelligence and sexuality that made Ranger mysterious and compelling, while Diaz was simply annoying.

I ambled down to the second floor and prowled through the stockroom in search of a stapler. I finally found them and selected a small handheld. I took it back to the fifth floor and showed it to Diaz on the way to my desk.

“Got my stapler,” I said. “Thanks.”

Diaz nodded and resumed staring at his collection of monitors. I walked around his desk and looked over his shoulder. He was watching multiple locations in the building. No activity at any of them.

“I thought for sure one of these would be tuned to the Cartoon Network,” I said.

No response.

“What’s this computer?” I asked, referring to the code computer. “Why isn’t there anything on the screen?”

“I don’t need it right now.”

“What happens if you have to go to the bathroom?”

“One of the other men will cover. There’s always an extra man in the control room.”

I stood there for a while, watching Diaz ignore me.

“This is a little boring,” I finally said to him.

“I like it,” Diaz said. “It’s quiet. It lets me think.”

“What do you think about?”

“Nothing.”

I found that easy to believe. I returned to my cubicle and my cell phone buzzed.

“Hey, girlfriend,” Lula said. “Your granny needed a ride to a viewing at the funeral parlor tonight, so after the fire department hosed the tree down, I took her over here to pay respects to some old coot. Anyways, we were just about to leave and who do you think walked in? Junior Turley, your exhibitionist FTA. I didn’t recognize him at first. It was your granny who spotted him. And she said she almost missed him, bein’ he had all his clothes on. She said usually he’s in her backyard waving his winkie at her when she’s at the kitchen window. And she said she wouldn’t mind seeing his winkie up close to make a positive identification, but I thought we should wait until you got here.”

“Good call. I’m about fifteen minutes away.”

I grabbed my purse and took the stairs, deciding they were faster than the elevator. I wanted to capture Turley, but even more I didn’t want Grandma trying to make a citizen’s arrest based on identification of Turley’s winkie. I rolled out of the garage and called Ranger.

“Lula has one of my skips cornered,” I told him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

SEVEN

THE FUNERAL PARLOR is part renovated Victorian and part brick bunker. I found on-street parking and jogged to the front porch. Hours were almost over, but there were still a lot of mourners milling around. A group of men stood to one side on the wraparound porch. They were smoking and laughing, smelling faintly of whiskey. The funeral parlor had several viewing rooms. Two were presently occupied. Knowing Grandma, she probably visited both. Viewings were at the core of Grandma’s social scene. On a slow week, Grandma would go to the viewing of a perfect stranger if nothing better popped up.

I found Grandma and Lula to the back of Slumber Room #3.

“He’s up there at the casket,” Lula said. “He looks like he knows the stiff’s ol’ lady.”

“They’re relations,” Grandma said. “Nothin’ anyone would want to admit to. That whole family is odd. I went to school with Mary Jane Dugan, the wife of the deceased. She was Mary Jane Turley then. Up until fourth grade, she quacked like a duck. Never said a blessed word in school. Just quacked. And then one day she fell off the top of the sliding board in the park and hit her head and she started talking. Never quacked again. Not to this day. Junior’s father, Harry, was Mary Jane’s brother. He electrocuted himself trying to pry a broken plug out of a wall socket with a screwdriver. I remember when it happened. He blew out one of them transformer things, and four houses on that block didn’t have electric for two days. I didn’t see Harry after the accident, but Lorraine Shatz said she heard they had to put him in the meat locker to get him to stop smokin’.”

“Stay here,” I said to Lula. “I’m going to make my way up to the casket. You grab Junior if he bolts and tries to leave by this door.”

“Don’t you worry,” Lula said. “Nobody’s gonna get past me. I’m on the job. He come this way, and I’ll shoot him.”

“No! No shooting. Just grab him and sit on him.”

“I guess I could do that, but shooting seems like the right thing to do.”

“Shooting is the
wrong
thing to do. He’s an exhibitionist, not a murderer. He’s probably not even armed.”

Grandma helped herself to a cookie set out on a tray by the door. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you saw him naked.”

I eased my way along the wall, inching past knots of people who were more interested in socializing than in grieving. Not that this was a bad thing. Death in the Burg was like pot roast at six o’clock. An unavoidable and perfectly normal part of the fabric of life. You got born, you ate pot roast, and you died.

I came up behind Turley and snapped a cuff on his right wrist. “Bond enforcement,” I whispered in his ear. “Come with me, and we don’t have to make a big scene. We’ll just quietly walk to the door.”

Turley looked at me, and looked at the cuff on his wrist. “What?”

“You missed your court date. You need to reschedule.”

“I’m not going to court. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You flashed Mrs. Zajak.”

“It’s my thing. Everybody knows I’m the flasher. I’ve been flashing for years.”

“No kidding. This is the third time I’ve captured you for failing to appear. You should get a new hobby.”

“It’s not a hobby,” Turley said. “It’s a calling.”

“Okay, it’s a calling. You still have to reschedule your court date.”

“You always say that, and then when I get to the courthouse with you, I get locked up in jail. You’re a big fibber. Does your mother know you tell fibs?”

“Does your mother know you flash old ladies?”

Turley’s attention switched to the door where Lula and Grandma were standing. “What are the police doing here?” he asked.

I turned to look, and he jumped away.

“Hah! Fooled you,” he said. And he scuttled around to the other side of the casket.

I lunged and missed, bumping into Mary Jane Dugan. “Sorry about your loss,” I said, shoving her aside.

“What’s going on?” she wanted to know. “Stephanie Plum, is that you?”

Turley took off for the double doors at the front of the room, and I ran after him. He knocked some lady on her ass, and I tripped over her.

“Sorry,” I said, scrambling to my feet in time to see Grandma do a flying tackle at Turley.

Turley wriggled away from Grandma and escaped into the ladies’ room. Two women ran shrieking out, and Grandma, Lula, and I barged in.

Turley was trapped against the wall between the tampon dispenser and the sanitary hand dryer.

“You’ll never take me alive,” he said.

“Do you have a gun?” I asked him.

“No.”

“Are you booby-trapped?”

“No.”

“Then how are you going to die?”

“I don’t know,” Turley said. “I just always wanted to say that.”

“Could we hurry this up?” Lula said. “I’m missing my Wednesday night television shows.”

“I’ll make a deal,” Turley said. “I’ll go with you if I can flash everyone on my way out of the ladies’ room.”

“No way,” I told him.

“Eeuw,” Lula said. “Ick.”

Grandma slid her dentures around a little, thinking. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” she said.

Turley unzipped his pants and reached inside.

“Hold it right there,” Lula said. “I got a stun gun here, and you pull anything out of your pants, I’ll zap you.”

Next thing there was a
zzzzt
from the stun gun and Junior Turley was on the floor with his tool hanging out.

“Whoa, Nellie,” Lula said, staring down at Junior.

“Yep,” Grandma said. “He’s got a big one. All them Turleys is hung like horses. Not that I know firsthand, except for Junior. And maybe Junior’s Uncle Runt. I saw him take a leak outside the Polish National Hall one time, and it was like he had hold of a fire hose. I tell you, for a little guy, he had a real good-size wanger.”

“We need to get that thing back in his pants before we drag him out of here,” I said.

“I’ll do it,” Grandma said.

“I think you done enough,” Lula said. “You’re the one encouraged him to take it out in the first place.”

They looked over at me.

“No, no, no,” I said. “Not me. No way, Jose. I’m not touching it.”

“Maybe we could drag him out facedown,” Lula said. “Then no one would see. All’s we have to do is flip him over.”

That seemed like an okay plan, so we rolled him over, and I finished cuffing him. Then Lula took a foot, and I took a foot, Grandma got the door, and we hauled him out of the ladies’ room.

All conversation stopped when we dragged Junior through the lobby. It was like everyone inhaled at precisely the same time and the air all got sucked out of the room. Halfway across the oriental carpet, Junior’s eyes popped open, his body went rigid, and he let out a shriek.

“Yow!” Junior yelled, flopping around like a fish out of water, wrangling himself over onto his back. He had a
huge
erection and a bad case of rug burn.

“I gotta tell you, I’m impressed,” Lula said, checking out Junior’s stiffy. “And I don’t impress easy.”

“It’s a pip,” Grandma said.

It was a pip and a half. I was going to have nightmares.

By now, the funeral director was hovering over Junior, hands clasped to his chest, face red enough to be in stroke range. “Do something,” he pleaded. “Call the police. Call the paramedics. Get him out of here!”

“No problemo,” I said. “Sorry about the disturbance.”

Lula and I pulled Junior to his feet and muscled him to the door. We got him outside, onto the porch, and he kicked Lula.

“Hey,” Lula said, bending over. “That hurts.”

He gave Lula a shove, she grabbed me by my sweatshirt, and Lula and I went head-over-teakettle down the wide front stairs.

“Adios,” Junior yelled. And he ran away into the night.

I was flat on my back on the sidewalk. My jeans had a tear in the knee, my arm was scraped and bleeding, and I was worried my ass was broken. I went to hands and knees and slowly dragged myself up to a semivertical position.

Lula crawled to her feet after me. “I’m surprised he could run with that monster boner,” she said. “I swear, if it was two inches longer, it’d be draggin’ on the ground.”

I DROPPED GRANDMA off at my parents’ house, drove to my building, parked, and limped to my apartment. I flipped the light on, locked the door behind me, and said hello to Rex. Rex was working up a sweat running on his wheel, beady black eyes blazing bright. I dropped a couple raisins into his cage and my phone rang.

“Myra Baronowski’s daughter has a good job in the bank,” my mother said. “And Margaret Beedle’s daughter is an accountant. She works in an office like a normal human being. Why do I have a daughter who drags aroused men through funeral parlors? I had fourteen phone calls before your grandmother even got home.”

The Burg has a news pipeline that makes CNN look like chump change.

“I think it must have happened when he got rug burn,” I told my mother. “He didn’t have an erection when I cuffed him in the ladies’ room.”

“I’m going to have to move to Arizona. I read about this place, Lake Havasu. No one would know me there.”

I disconnected, and Morelli called me.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “I heard you dragged a naked guy through the funeral parlor, and then shots were fired, and you fell down the stairs.”

“Who told you that?”

“My mother. Loretta Manetti called her.”

“He wasn’t naked, and no shots were fired. He kicked Lula, and Lula took me down the stairs with her.”

“Just checking,” Morelli said. And he hung up.

I dropped my clothes on the bathroom floor and washed the blood away in the shower. I pulled on my old flannel pajamas and went to bed. Tomorrow would be a better day, I thought. I’d get a good night’s sleep in my nice soft jammies and wake up to sunshine.

MY PHONE RANG at 5:20 A.M. I reached for it in the dark and brought it to my ear.

“Who died?” I asked.

“No one died,” Ranger said. “I’m coming into your apartment, and I didn’t want you to freak.”

I heard my front door open and close, and moments later, Ranger was in my bedroom. He flipped the light on and looked down at me.

“I’d like to crawl in next to you, but there was another break-in tonight. This time it was a commercial account. I want you to take a look at it with me.”

“Now? Can’t it wait?”

Ranger grabbed jeans from my closet and tossed them at me. The jeans were followed by a sweatshirt and socks. “I want to go through the building before people arrive for work.”

“It’s the middle of the night!”

“Not nearly,” Ranger said. He looked at his watch. “You have thirty seconds to get dressed, or you’re going in your pajamas.”

“Honestly,” I said, rolling out of bed, scooping my clothes up into my arms. “You are such a
jerk
.”

“
Twenty
seconds.”

I stomped off into the bathroom and slammed the door closed. I got dressed and was about to brush my hair when the door opened and Ranger pulled me out of the bathroom.

“Time’s up,” Ranger said.

“I didn’t even have time to fix my hair!”

Ranger was dressed in a black Rangeman T-shirt, cargo pants, windbreaker, and ball cap. He took the ball cap off his head and put it on mine.

“Problem solved,” he said, taking my hand, towing me out of my apartment.

THE BUILDING THAT had gotten hit was just four blocks from my apartment. Police cars and Rangeman cars were angled into the curb, lights flashing, and lights were on inside the building. Ranger ushered me into the lobby and one of his men brought me a cup of coffee.

“This building is owned by a local insurance company,” Ranger said. As you can see, the first floor is mostly lobby, with a front desk and satellite glass-fronted offices. Executive offices, a boardroom, a small employee kitchenette, and a storeroom are on the second floor. It’s not a high-security account. They have an alarm system. No cameras. For the most part, there’s nothing of value in this building. The computers are antiquated. There are no cash transactions. The only thing of value was a small collection of Fabergé eggs in the company president’s office. And that’s what was taken.”

“Was the routine the same?”

“The thief entered through a back door that had a numerical code lock. He deactivated the alarm, went directly to the second-floor office, took the eggs, reset the alarm, and left. The alarm was off for fifteen minutes.”

“He had to be moving to get all that done in fifteen minutes.”

“I had one of my men run through it. It’s possible.”

“Was the president’s office locked?”

“The office door was locked, but it wasn’t a complicated lock, and the thief was able to open it. He didn’t bother to close the door or relock it when he left.”

“How much were the eggs worth?”

“There were three eggs. One was especially valuable. Collectively, he probably lost a quarter of a million.”

“Is this guy going to have a hard time fencing the eggs?”

“I imagine they’ll go out of country.”

I looked around. There was one uniform left in the building and one plainclothes guy from Trenton P.D. I didn’t know either of them. Ranger had four men on site. Two were at the front door, and two were at the elevator.

“How was this discovered?” I asked Ranger. “Is there a night watchman or something?”

“The company president likes to get an early start. He’s here at five every morning.”

Morelli was awake at five. Ranger was awake at five. And now here was another moron at work at five. As far as I was concerned, five was the middle of the night.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked Ranger.

“Look around.”

I went to the back door and looked outside. From what I could see, there was an alley, a small blacktop parking lot with six designated spaces. No light. There should be a light. I stepped outside and looked up at the building. The light had been smashed. There were some glass shards on the ground under the light.

I went back inside and looked for the alarm pad. On the wall to my right. Exactly where I would have put it. I walked to the stairs, imagining the thief doing this in the dark. Probably had a penlight and knew exactly where he was going. And he was in a hurry, so he would take the stairs rather than the elevator.