Explosive Eighteen (Stephanie Plum 18)

“Did Hal get my messenger bag?”

“Yes. He brought it back here to Rangeman. He didn’t want to leave it in an unlocked car.”

“Maybe you could mail it to me?” I asked.

I was really, really not ready to see him.

“You can run, but you can’t hide,” Ranger said.

So true. I hung up and headed for home. I stopped at the supermarket and had my cart half filled with groceries when I realized I had no money, no credit cards, no ID. It was all in my messenger bag … with Ranger. Damn. I returned the groceries and called Morelli from my car.

“About tonight,” I said. “Is it going to involve dinner?”

“Not unless you want to eat at midnight.”

“Are you avoiding me?”

“I’m not that smart,” Morelli said.

I sat for a long moment after Morelli hung up, reviewing my current choices. I could drive to Rangeman and retrieve my bag from Ranger. I could go home and share a cracker with Rex. I could mooch dinner from my mom.

Twenty minutes later, I was at my parents’ house and Grandma was hustling to set a plate at the table for me. My mom had been making minestrone this morning, and that meant there’d also be antipasto, bread from the bakery, and rice pudding with Italian cookies.

“The table is set for four,” I said to Grandma. “Who’s coming to dinner?”

“This real interesting lady I met last week. I joined one of them bowling leagues, and she’s on my team. You might want to talk to her. She’s some kind of relationship counselor.”

“I didn’t know you could bowl.”

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“Turns out it’s easy. You just gotta throw the ball down the alley. They gave me this shirt and everything. We’re the LWB. That stands for Ladies with Balls.”

My father was watching television in the living room. He rattled his newspaper and muttered something about women ruining bowling. He was watching national news and a bulletin came on showing a picture of a man found dead at LAX. He’d been hit with a blunt instrument, had his throat slashed, and he’d been stuffed into a trash can.

Ugh. As if this wasn’t horrific enough, I was pretty sure it was the guy sitting next to me for the first leg of the Hawaii flight home. I’d spoken to him briefly in the beginning but slept for the rest of the trip. I’d been surprised to find his seat empty when we reboarded. My impression had been that he’d planned to fly into Newark. I guess this explained his absence.

The doorbell rang. Grandma rushed to get it and ushered a brown-haired, pleasantly plump, smiling, forty-something woman wearing an LWB bowling shirt into the living room.

“This is Annie Hart,” she said. “She’s the best bowler we got. She’s our ringer.”

I knew Annie Hart. I’d been involved in a Valentine’s Day fiasco with her a while back and hadn’t seen her since. She was a perfectly nice woman who lived in LaLa Land, firmly believing she was the reincarnation of Cupid. Hey, I mean, who am I to say, but it seemed far-fetched.

“How wonderful to see you again, dear,” Annie said to me. “I think of you from time to time, wondering if you’ve resolved your romantic dilemma.”

“Yep,” I said. “It’s all resolved.”

“She got married in Hawaii,” Grandma told Annie.

My father shot straight out of his chair. “What?”

“She had a ring and everything,” Grandma said.

My father was wild-eyed. “Is that true? Why didn’t someone tell me? No one ever tells me anything around here.”

“Look,” I said, holding my hand in the air. “I’m not wearing a ring. I’d be wearing a ring if I was married, right?”

“You got a ring mark,” Grandma said. “Of course, I guess there could be other explanations. You could have the vitiligo, like Michael Jackson. Remember when he turned white?”