'Babe.'
I got out of my garbage-scow Crown Vic and into Rangers shiny, immaculate SUV.
'You involved me in a murder,' I said to Ranger.
'And you have no alibi,' Ranger said.
'Is there anything you don't know?'
'I don't know what happened to Dickie.'
'So I guess that means you didn't snatch him?'
'I don't leave bloodstains,' Ranger said.
Ranger was dressed in his usual black. Black Vibram-soled boots, black jeans, black shirt, black wool pea coat, and his black Navy SEAL ball cap. Ranger was a shadow. A mystery man. A man who had no time or desire to mix and match colors.
'Those bugs I planted on Dickie… what was that about?' I asked him.
'You don't want to know.'
'Yes, I do.'
'You don't.'
I stared him down. 'I do.'
Ranger did what for him was a sigh. The barest whisper of expelled breath. I was being a pain in the keester.
'I'm looking for a guy named Ziggy Zabar. His brother, Zip, works for me and came to me for help when Ziggy disappeared last week. Ziggy's a CPA with a firm downtown. They prepare the tax reports for Petiak, Smullen, Gorvich, and Orr. Every Monday, the partners hold a meeting off-site, and Ziggy had the meeting on his calendar. He was seen getting into his car to go to the meeting, and then he disappeared. The four partners swear Zabar never showed up, but I don't believe it. There's something not right about the firm. Dickie has legitimate credentials and has passed the Jersey bar. His partners have law degrees from Panama. Right now, I can't tell if Dickie is dumb or dirty.'
'Did the bugs work?'
'The meeting was canceled. We listened until a little after ten and packed up when Dickie went to bed.'
'So you weren't listening when shots were fired.'
'No, but I was in his house after the police sealed it, and it looks to me like Dickie left the house wearing the same clothes he had on all day. We've tried scanning to pick up a bug, but haven't had any luck. Either he's out of range, or the bugs have been found and destroyed.'
'Now what?'
Ranger took a little plastic bag from his pocket. It contained another bug. 'Do you think you can plant this on Peter Smullen?'
I felt my jaw drop and my eyebrows shoot up into my forehead. 'You're not serious.'
Ranger took a file off the dashboard and handed it to me. 'Smullen wasn't in the office yesterday. He had a dentist appointment. So he shouldn't recognize you. Here are a couple pictures of Smullen, a short bio, plus our best guess at what his schedule will be like tomorrow. He divides his time between Trenton and Bogota. When he's in town, he's a creature of habit, so running into him won't be a problem. Try to tag him tomorrow morning, so I can listen to him all day.'
'And I'm going to do this, why?'
'I'll let you wrestle with that one,' Ranger said. He looked through the Cayenne windshield at my car. 'Is there a reason you're driving the Vic?'
'It was cheap.'
'Babe, free wouldn't be cheap enough.'
'You haven't asked me if I killed Dickie,' I said to Ranger.
'I know you didn't kill Dickie. You never left your apartment.'
There was a time when I considered Ranger's surveillance an invasion of privacy, but that time was long gone. There's not much point to worrying about things you can't control, and I had no control over Ranger.
'Where is it? On my car?' I asked him, doing a pretty decent job of not sounding completely pissed off.
Rangers mouth didn't smile, but his eyes crinkled a little at the corners. 'GPS unit in your bag. Please don't remove it.'
I took the file and the bug-in-a-bag and got out of the Cayenne. 'I imagine you'll be watching my every move.'
'Just like always,' Ranger said.
I got into the Crown Vic, cranked the engine over, and turned the heat on full blast. I looked in my rearview mirror. No Ranger.
I studied the pictures of Peter Smullen. He was an average-looking guy with receding brown hair and a beer belly. Heavy five o'clock shadow in all the photos. Lips like a flounder. His file put him at five feet eight inches. Forty-six years old. Married with two kids, ages twenty and twenty-two. Both kids and the wife were in Colombia. Smullen kept a bachelor apartment in Hamilton Township. When Smullen was in town, at precisely eight A.M., he'd roll into a parking garage that was a block from his office at the law firm and get a triple-shot Frappuccino at the Starbucks on the corner.
I'd get him at the Starbucks.
I closed the file, turned to lay it on the seat next to me, and the Vic's driver's side door was suddenly wrenched open. Joyce Barnhardt glared in at me and called me the 'c' word.
Joyce was six feet tall in four-inch, spike-heeled black boots. She was wearing a black leather duster lined with fake fur, her eyes were enhanced with rhinestone-studded fake eyelashes, her red enameled nails were long and frightening. The package was lopped with a lot of shoulder-length brilliant red hair arranged in curls and waves. Joyce had never moved beyond Farrah Fawcett.
I narrowed my eyes at her. 'Is there a point to this conversation?'
'You killed him. You found out we were a couple, and you couldn't handle it. So you killed him.'
'I didn't kill him.'
'I was inches from marrying the little turd, and you ruined it all. Do you have any idea how much he's worth? A fucking fortune. And you killed him, and now I get nothing. I hate you.'
I turned the key in the ignition and put the Vic into drive. 'I have to go now,' I said to Joyce. 'Good talk.'
'I'm not done,' Joyce said. 'I'm just beginning. I'm going to get even. I'm going to make your life a misery.' Joyce pulled a gun out of her coat pocket and aimed it at me. 'I'm going to shoot out your eye. And then I'm going to shoot you in the foot, and the knee, and the ass…'
I stomped on the gas pedal and rocketed off with my door still open. Joyce squeezed off two rounds, putting a hole in the rear window. I looked in my mirror and got a glimpse of her standing in the middle of the road, giving me the finger. Joyce Barnhardt was nuts.
I drove one block down Hamilton and turned into the Burg. I was thinking that after the traumatic Joyce experience, I needed something to calm myself… like a piece of the raspberry Entenmann's. Plus, my dad had all kinds of things stashed in his cellar, like electrician's tape, that I could use to patch my rear window. Wind was whistling through the bullet hole, creating a draft on the back of my neck. It would have been perfectly okay in July, but it was damn cold in February. I wound through the maze of Burg streets to my parents' house and parked in the driveway. I got out and examined the car. Hole in the rear window, and Joyce had taken out a taillight.
I hunched against the sleet and ran to the front door. I let myself in, dropped my bag on the sideboard in the foyer, and went to the kitchen. My mother was at the sink, washing vegetables. Grandma was at the little table with a cup of tea. The Entenmann’s box was on the small kitchen table. I held my breath and approached the box. I nipped the lid. Two pieces left. I anxiously looked around. 'Anyone want this Entenmann’s?' I asked.
'Not me,' Grandma said.
'Not me either,' my mother said.
I shrugged out of my jacket, hung it on the back of the chair, and sat down.
'Anything new in the world of crime?' Grandma asked.
'Same ol’, same ol’.' I told her. 'What's new with you?'
'I'm outta that glue stuff for my dentures. I was hoping you could run me out to the drugstore.'
