Hard Eight (Stephanie Plum 8)

“This feels odd,” I said. “Do you watch basketball in the Bat Cave?”

“I don't have a lot of free time for television.”

“But the Bat Cave has a television?”

“Yeah, the Bat Cave has a television.”

“Just curious,” I said.

He drank some wine, and he watched me. He was different from Morelli. Morelli was a tightly coiled spring. I was always aware of contained energy with Morelli. Ranger was a cat. Quiet. Every muscle relaxed on command. Probably did yoga. Might not be human.

“Now what are you thinking?” he asked.

“I was wondering if you were human.”

“What are the other choices?”

I knocked back my glass of wine. “I didn't have anything else specifically in mind.”

I WOKE UP with a headache and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was on my couch, tucked under the quilt from my bed. The television was silent, and Ranger was gone. From what I could remember, I'd seen about five minutes of basketball before falling asleep. I'm a cheap drunk. Two and a half glasses of wine and I'm comatose.

I stood under a hot shower until I was pruney and the throbbing behind my eyes had partially subsided. I got dressed and made tracks to McDonald's. I got a large fries and a Coke at the drive-thru and ate in the parking lot. This is the Stephanie Plum cure for a hangover. My cell phone rang when I was halfway through with the fries.

“Did you hear about the fire?” Grandma asked. “Do you know anything about it?”

“What fire?”

“Steven Soder's bar burned to the ground last night. Technically, I guess it burned this morning, since it was after closing when it caught fire. Lorraine Zupek just called. Her grandson is a firefighter, you know. He told her they had every truck in the city there but there wasn't anything they could do. I guess they're thinking it might have been arson.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Lorraine didn't say.”

I shoved a handful of fries into my mouth and cranked the engine over. I wanted to see the fire scene. I'm not sure why. Ghoulish curiosity, I guess. If Soder had partners, then this wasn't entirely unexpected. Partners were known to come into a business sometimes, drain it of all profits, and then destroy it.

It took me twenty minutes to get through town. The street in front of The Foxhole was closed to traffic, so I parked two blocks away and walked. A fire truck was still on the scene, and a couple cop cars were angled into the curb. A photographer from the Trenton Times was taking pictures. Crime-scene tape hadn't been stretched, but sightseers were kept at a distance by the police.

The brick face was blackened. Windows were gone. There were two levels of apartments above the bar. They looked totally destroyed. Sooty water pooled on the street and sidewalk. A hose snaked into the building from the one remaining truck but it wasn't in use.

“Was anyone hurt?” I asked one of the bystanders.

“Doesn't look like it,” he said. “It was after-hours for the bar. And the apartments were empty. There were some code violations, so they were being renovated.”

“Do they know how the fire got started?”

“Nobody's said.”

I didn't recognize any of the cops or firefighters. I didn't see Soder anywhere. I took one last look, and I left. A quick stop at the office was next on my list. Connie should have the more complete background check on Evelyn by now.

“Jeez,” Lula said when I walked in, “you don't look so good.”

“Hangover,” I said. “I ran into Ranger after I dropped Kloughn off, and we had a couple glasses of wine.”

Connie and Lula stopped what they were doing and stared at me.

“Well?” Lula said. “You're not going to stop there, are you? What happened?”

“Nothing happened. I was sort of creeped out about the spiders and stuff, so Ranger came in with me to make sure everything was okay. We had a couple glasses of wine. And he left.”