FOUR
THE HOUSE WAS a big white colonial with black shutters and a massive mahogany front door. The grounds were professionally landscaped. A dusty and battered police cruiser and two gleaming black Rangeman SUVs were parked in the circular drive. Ranger parked behind one of the Rangeman SUVs, we got out, and Tank and Hal came forward to meet us.
I gave Hal my paperwork for Marbles, Hal got behind the wheel, backed the Escalade out of the drive and disappeared down the street.
“Same MO,” Tank told Ranger. “The clients attended a political fund-raiser, came home, and found money and jewelry missing.” He handed Ranger a list. “We interrogated the system and found it had been briefly disarmed and then reset.”
“Anything missing besides the money and jewelry?”
“Some electronics. They’re going through the house now, trying to make sure the list is complete.”
“I want Stephanie to walk through the house and look at it from a woman’s point of view. Make sure she has total access. Assure the owners her paint isn’t wet.”
Tank looked at my paint-splattered hair and clothes. He paused for a beat, but he didn’t smile or frown or grimace. “Yessir,” he said to Ranger.
I wandered around, checking out the kitchen with its professional-level appliances, marble countertops and splash plates, warming ovens and wine cooler. I thought it would be nice to have a kitchen like this, although most of it would go unused. All I actually needed was a butter knife, a loaf of white bread, and a jar of peanut butter. And can you fill a wine cooler with Bud Light?
The upstairs master bath had a crystal chandelier and a bidet. I knew the purpose for the bidet, because I had seen Crocodile Dundee about a hundred times, but I wasn’t sure how one actually used a bidet. I mean, does it shoot water up your cooter or do you splash it around? And I thought I might have issues with the crystal chandelier. I wasn’t sure I could do number two in a room with a crystal chandelier.
I’d looked at the list, so I knew what had been taken and what had been left. There was a safe in the master bedroom, but it hadn’t been touched. Madame’s jewelry had been easy access in a jewelry case on display in her walk-in closet. A couple thousand in twenties had been left on the dresser. All this stuff was gone. Plus two laptop computers from the home office, and a Patek Philippe man’s watch.
I wandered around in the house for a half hour while the police did their thing, and Ranger did his thing, and the burgled house owners, a conservatively dressed middle-aged couple, quietly sat in the living room, looking shell-shocked.
Ranger caught up with me in the front foyer. “Any ideas?” he asked me.
“The thieves only hit two rooms. The master bedroom and the home office. There was a woman’s rose gold and diamond Cartier watch on the kitchen counter. And there were four icons that looked priceless in a display case in the living room. All untouched. Is this always the pattern?”
“Yes. They disable the alarm for precisely fifteen minutes, and they move directly to the master bedroom and office.”
“Why fifteen minutes?”
Ranger did palms-up. “I don’t know.”
“No prints left on doorknobs?”
“None.”
“And they only hit residential accounts?”
“So far.”
“This house has two security keypads. Can you tell which was used?”
“They always enter and exit through the garage.”
“The garage in this house opens into a short hall that leads to the kitchen. That means they walked through the kitchen twice and didn’t take the watch.”
“Correct,” Ranger said.
“Do you have anyone working for you who’s OCD or superstitious?”
“Almost everyone. I’m going to have Tank take you back to Rangeman so you can get your car. I need to stay here for a while and then I have paperwork to complete.”
“So I’m off the hook with the undressing thing?”
“Rain check,” Ranger said.
I drove home and did my own undressing, lathering, and shampooing. When I flopped into bed, my hair was still multicolored.
I STOPPED AT the bonds office on my way to Rangeman. It was a little before nine in the morning, and the air was warm, and the sky was almost blue. It was Indian summer in Jersey.
Connie and Lula looked over when I walked through the door.
“What the heck happened to you?” Lula wanted to know. “You got tutti-frutti hair. Is this some new fashion statement?”
“No, this is the result of a paintball encounter on Stark Street. The good news is I apprehended Kenny Hatcher.”
“Your mother’s going to have a cow when she sees your hair,” Connie said. “You try water? You try paint thinner?”
“I’ve tried everything.”
“I like it,” Lula said. “You should add some more pink. Pink’s a good color on you. And by the way, have you been listening to the radio? There’s a big reward being offered to anyone who brings in the guy who whacked Stanley Chipotle.”
“How big?”
“A million dollars. It’s from the barbecue sauce company he did all those advertisements for. Fire in the Hole Red Hot Barbecue Sauce. He was supposed to represent them in this cook-off coming up. And I’m gonna get that reward. I know what those guys look like. All I have to do is find them. So I thought I’d cut you and Connie in on it, and between us we could track them down and we’d each get a third of a million dollars.”
“I’m so there,” Connie said. “I could pay my mortgage off with that money.”
“What would you do with the money?” Lula asked me.
I didn’t know what I’d do. My mind was blank. The amount was incomprehensible to me. I could put a crystal chandelier in my crapper for that kind of money. I could buy a case of motor oil and feed it to my $700 car. I could download all the 3rd Rock from the Sun episodes from iTunes. I could get the works on my pizza. I could buy new sneakers. I really needed new sneakers. I could probably buy a house, for crying out loud. Except I didn’t actually want a house. I had a hard enough time keeping people out of my apartment. If I had a house, the weirdos would be coming in every door and window and down the chimney like Santa. Plus, I’d have to cut grass and paint the porch and caulk the tub.
“I think this is about barbecue sauce,” Lula said. “Everyone knows it’s dog-eat-dog out there in barbecue land. You wait and see, someone didn’t want Stanley Chipotle in that barbecue contest. I looked into it, and he always wins those contests. He was the one who come up with Fire in the Hole Red Hot Barbecue Sauce. He invented that recipe, and when he’s in a contest, he has a secret ingredient he puts in. I’m tellin’ you, Stanley Chipotle’s killer is a sauce freak. So I figure we just gotta bust into the barbecue circuit and we’ll find the killer.”
“Bust into the circuit?”
“All I gotta do is enter the contest as one of them chefs. I bet I could even win.”
“You can’t cook.”
“That’s true so far, but that could change. I’m real good at eatin’. I got a highly developed palate. Especially for barbecue. I just gotta take some of my eatin’ talent and make it into cookin’ talent. Anyways, I only gotta come up with sauce. How hard could it be? I mean, you start out with ketchup and keep adding pepper until you feel it burnin’ a hole in your stomach.”
“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Connie said. “I watch these contests on The Food Channel, and you have to use the sauce on ribs and chicken and stuff. Can you cook ribs or chicken?”
