“I’m always interested in that,” Ranger said. “I’m just not willing to pay the price right now.”
I felt my eyes go wide. “Right now?”
“Probably never,” Ranger said. “How did it go tonight?”
“We sort of got kicked out of Bingo.”
“Babe.”
“Lula got into a fight with Mildred Frick. You don’t want to know the details.”
“Did you learn anything helpful?” Ranger asked.
“I can honestly say I didn’t see anyone there that I could suspect of murdering the women. Okay, maybe Mildred Frick, but she would be a long shot.”
“Was there any talk of the murdered women?”
“Not that I heard. Bingo is serious stuff at the Senior Center. You get your cards set up, you hunker down and concentrate. There’s not a lot of chitchat.”
“Men?”
“I counted seven. None of them looked robust e
nough to heave a body into a Dumpster.”
“Did any of them look robust enough to persuade a woman to empty her bank account?”
“Hard to say. You can’t always tell with old people. You think they have one foot in the grave, and next thing they’re ramming you with a shopping cart at Costco.”
Ranger stood, crossed the room, and pulled me to my feet. He slid his hands under my T-shirt and leaned in to kiss me.
“Um,” I said.
He stopped a fraction of an inch away from my mouth. “ ‘Um’?”
“What about paying the price?”
“I wasn’t going to pay the price.”
“Okay, but you have to be careful of my finger. You noticed it, right?”
“You’re carrying a tracking device in your messenger bag,” Ranger said. “I called the hospital when you checked in.”
“You planted a bug in my messenger bag?”
“Is that news?”
It wasn’t news. Ranger tracked me all the time. Sometimes I was relieved to be rescued from a crazed killer, and sometimes it was an invasive annoyance.
“I guess it’s not news,” I told him.
“Would you like me to stop tracking you?”
“Would it do any good if I said yes?”
He smiled. “No.” He took the remote from the coffee table and shut the television off. He closed the distance between us and kissed me.
“Wait!” I said, pulling back. “What’s that sound?”