Hot Six

'How do you know it was Ulysses?'

'Just a guess. He looked like Hannibal, but slimmer.'

There was a moment of silence.

'Do you want me to keep watching the town house?' I asked.

'Do a spot check once in a while. I want to know if anyone's living there.'

'Don't you think it's strange that Ramos would smack his son?' I asked.

'I don't know,' Ranger said. 'In my family we smack each other all the time.'

Ranger disconnected, and I stood without moving for several minutes, wondering what I was missing. Ranger never gave much away, but there'd been a moment's pause and a small change of inflection that had me thinking I'd told him something interesting. I reviewed our conversation and everything seemed ordinary. A father and two brothers gathered together at a time of family tragedy. Alexander's reaction to Hannibal's greeting had seemed odd to me, but I got the impression that wasn't what had caught Ranger's attention.

Grandma staggered through the front door. 'Boy, have I had a day,' she said. 'I'm all done in.'

'How'd the driving lesson go?'

'Pretty good, I guess. I didn't run anybody over. And I didn't wreck the car. How was your day?'

'About the same.'

'Louise and me went to the mall to do some senior citizen power walking but we kept getting sidetracked into the stores. And then after lunch we went looking at apartments. I saw a couple I might settle for, but nothing that really floated my boat. Tomorrow we're gonna look at some condos.' Grandma snooped into the potato pot. 'Isn't this something. I come home from a hard day of running around and here's dinner all waiting for me. Just like being a man.'

'I got a banana cream pie for dessert,' I said, 'but I had to use the pie plate for the meatloaf.'

Grandma peeked at the pie in the refrigerator. 'Maybe we should eat it now before it defrosts and loses its shape.'

That sounded like a good idea to me, so we all had some pie while the meatloaf was baking.

When I was a little girl I'd never thought of my grandmother as the sort of person to eat her pie first. Her house had always been neat and clean. The furniture was dark wood and the upholstered pieces were comfortable but unmemorable. Meals were traditional Burg meals, ready at noon and at six o'clock. Stuffed cabbage, pot roast, roast chicken, an occasional ham or pork roast. My grandfather wouldn't have had it any other way. He'd worked in a steel mill all his life. He had strong opinions, and he dwarfed the rooms of their row house. Truth is, the top of my grandmother's head comes to the tip of my chin, and my grandfather wasn't much taller. But then I guess stature doesn't have much to do with inches.

Lately I've been wondering who my grandmother would have been if she hadn't married my grandfather. I wonder if she would have eaten her dessert first a lot sooner.

I took the meatballs out of the oven and set them side by side on a plate. Sitting there together they looked like troll gonads.

'Well, will you look at these big boys,' Grandma said. 'Reminds me of your grandfather, rest his soul.'

When we were done eating I took Bob for a walk. Street lights were on, and light poured from the front windows of the houses behind my apartment building. We walked several blocks in comfortable silence. It turns out that's one of the good things about a dog. They don't talk a lot, so you can go along, thinking your own thoughts, making lists.

My list consisted of Catch Morris Munson, Worry about Ranger, and Wonder about Morelli. I didn't exactly know what to do about Morelli. My heart felt like it was in love. My head wasn't so sure. Not that it mattered, because Morelli didn't want to get married. So here I was with my biological clock ticking and nothing around me but indecision.

'I hate this!' I said to Bob.

Bob stopped and looked over his shoulder at me, like, What's the big deal back there? Well, what did Bob know. Someone had whacked off his doodles when he was a puppy. Bob was just left with some extra skin and a distant memory. Bob didn't have a mother waiting for grandchildren. Bob didn't have all this pressure!

When I got back to the apartment Grandma was asleep in front of the television. I wrote a note saying I had to go out for a while, pinned the note to Grandma's sweater, and told Bob to behave himself and not eat any of the furniture. Rex was buried under a mound of shavings, sleeping off his piece of pie. All was well in the Stephanie Plum household.

I drove directly to Hannibal's town house. It was eight o'clock, and the place looked like no one was home, but then it always looked like no one was home. I parked two streets over, got out of the car, and walked to the back of the house. No light shining from any of the windows. I climbed the tree and looked down into Hannibal's yard. Totally dark. I dropped out of the tree and retraced my steps on the bike path, thinking this was very spooky. Black trees and bushes. No moon overhead to light the way. Only the occasional streak of light spilling from a window.

Wouldn't want to meet a bad guy out here. Not Munson. Not Hannibal Ramos. Maybe not even Ranger… although he was bad in a very intriguing way.

I moved the car to the end of Hannibal's block, where I had better visibility. I pushed the seat back, locked the doors, and watched and waited.

It didn't take long for waiting to get old. To pass the time, I dialed Morelli on my cell phone. 'Guess who?' I said.

'Is Grandma gone?'

'No. I'm working, and she's home with Bob.'

'Bob?'

'Brian Simon's dog. I'm baby-sitting him while Simon's on vacation.'

'Simon's not on vacation. I saw him today.'

'What?'

'I can't believe you fell for that vacation scam,' Morelli said. 'Simon's been trying to pawn that dog off ever since he got him.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'I didn't know he was gonna give you the dog.'

I narrowed my eyes at the phone. 'Are you laughing? Is that laughter I hear?'

'No. I swear.'

But it was laughter. The rat was laughing.

'This is no laughing matter,' I said. 'What am I going to do with a dog?'

'I thought you always wanted a dog.'

'Well, yeah… someday. But not now! And the dog howls. He doesn't like being left alone.'

'Where are you?' Morelli asked.

'It's a secret.'

'Christ, you aren't staking out Hannibal's house again, are you?'

'Nope. I'm not doing that.'

'I have a cake,' he said. 'Do you want to come over and have some cake?'

'You're lying. You don't have a cake.'

'I could get one.'

'I'm not saying I'm staking out Hannibal's house, but if I was, do you think there'd be any value to it?'

'As far as I can tell, Ranger has a handful of people he trusts, and he has those people watching the Ramos family. I've spotted someone at Homer's house in Hunterdon County, and I know there's someone in place in Deal. He's got you sitting over there on Fenwood. I don't know what he expects to find, but my guess is, he knows where he's going. He has information about this crime that we don't have.'

'Doesn't look like there's anyone home, here,' I said.

'Alexander's in town, so Hannibal has probably moved into the south wing of the Deal house.' Morelli let a beat go by. 'Probably Ranger's got you sitting there because it's safe. Make you feel like you're doing something, so you don't stumble into a more important surveillance situation. Probably you should give up on it and come over to my house.'

'Nice try, but I don't think so.'