It was close to twelve when I crawled into bed. The rain had stopped and the moon was shining between the broken cloud cover. My curtains were drawn, and my room was dark.
An old-fashioned fire escape attached to my bedroom window. The fire escape was good for catching a cool breeze on a hot night. It could be used to dry clothes, quarantine house plants with aphids, and chill beer when the weather turned cold. Unfortunately, it was also a place where bad things happened. Benito Ramirez had been shot to death on my fire escape. As it happens, it isn’t easy to climb up my fire escape, but it isn’t impossible, either.
I was laying in the dark, debating the merits of the Coconut junior over the Butterscotch Krimpet, when I heard scraping sounds beyond the closed bedroom curtains. Someone was on my fire escape. I felt a shot of adrenaline burn into my heart and flash into my gut. I jumped out of bed, ran into the kitchen, and called the police. Then I took the gun out of the cookie jar. No bullets.
Yikes!
There was a huge guy on my fire escape. I only saw him for an instant, but he looked like Benito Ramirez. How could that be? Ramirez was dead.
There was a lot of noise, and I realized I’d fired all four rounds through my window, into the guy on my fire escape.
Rats! This isn’t a good thing. First off, I might have killed someone. I
I ripped the curtain aside, and pressed my nose to the window pane. No one out there. I looked more closely and saw that I’d blasted a life-size cardboard cutout. It was laying flat on the fire escape and there were a bunch of holes in it.
I was standing there dumbfounded, breathing heavy with the gun still in my hand, when I heard the police siren whining in the distance. Good going, Stephanie. The one time I call the police, and it turns out to be an embarrassing false alarm. An evil prank. Like the snakes.
So who would do something like this? Someone who knew about Ramirez getting killed on my fire escape. I gave up a sigh. The entire state knew about Ramirez. It was in all the papers. Okay, someone who had access to a life-size cutout. There had been a lot of the cutouts floating around when Ramirez was fighting. Not many of them floating around now. One person came to mind. Eddie Abruzzi.
A blue-and-white pulled into my parking lot, lights flashing, and a uniform got out. I opened my window and leaned out. “False alarm,” I yelled down. “Nobody here. It must have been a bird.”
He looked up at me. “A bird?”
“I think it was an owl. A real big owl. Sorry you got called out.”
He waved, got back into the car, and drove off.
I closed and locked the window, but it was an empty gesture since a lot of the glass was missing. I ran into the kitchen and ate the Chocolate Junior.
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I WAS HALF-ASLEEP, contemplating the nutritional value of a Creme-filled Cupcake for breakfast, when there was a knock at my door.
It was Tank, Ranger’s right-hand man. “Your car turned up at a chop shop,” he said. He handed my bag over to me. “This was on the floor in the back.”
“And my car?”
“In your parking lot.” He gave me my keys. “The car’s fine except for a chain attached to the tow. We didn’t know what the chain was all about.”
I closed and locked the door after Tank, stumbled into the kitchen, and ate the package of cupcakes. I told myself it was okay to eat the cupcakes because it was a celebration. I had my car back. Calories don’t count if they’re connected to a celebration. Everyone knows this.
Coffee would taste good, but it seemed like a lot of work this morning. I had to change the filter, add the coffee and water, and push the button. Not to mention, if I had coffee I might wake up, and I didn’t think I was ready to face the day. Better to go back to bed. I’d just crawled into bed when the doorbell rang again. I put the pillow over my
