“I heard more about Marvina,” she said. “A friend of mine works in the ER, and she said Marvina was admitted to St. Francis. Some kind of stomach thing.”
“That’s terrible,” Grandma said.
“Well, you know, stuff happens. I was wondering if you wanted to have coffee tomorrow. We could meet at the coffee shop on Hamilton.”
“I’m pretty busy,” Grandma said. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
“Sure,” Barbara said. “Give me a call.”
Neither Grandma nor I said anything on the five-minute drive home. I parked in front of my parents’ house and gave up a sigh.
“Yeah,” Grandma said. “Me too. I don’t know if she wants to pump me for information or just kill me.”
“I feel really bad about Marvina.”
“I’ll go in and make some phone calls and see if I can get more information. I don’t want to make a big deal about Barbara’s cookies if it turns out Marvina didn’t eat any.”
I watched to make sure Grandma got into the house, and then I drove off with my bag of cookies. I pulled into my building lot and saw that the lights were on in my apartment. I looked around and spotted Ranger’s black Porsche 911 Turbo parked close to the rear lobby door.
He was checking his texts when I walked in. I set the grocery bag on the counter and hung my messenger bag on the back of a dining room chair.
“Have you been waiting long?” I asked.
“Just got here. I know the bingo schedule.”
I took all of the tins out of the grocery bag, set them on the counter, and opened them. Hungarian filled cookies, butter cookies, chocolate chip, gingerbread, oatmeal raisin, chocolate chocolate chip, peanut butter, and sugar cookies.
Ranger put his phone down and grinned at the tins of cookies. “There’s a story here,” he said.
“Grandma wanted to make the house smell happy, so she spent the day baking cookies.”
He nodded. “She’s a smart woman.”
I took a sugar cookie, and Ranger took a chocolate chip.
“Whoa,” I said. “I thought you didn’t eat cookies. I thought you only ate tree bark.”
“You thought wrong.”
“Chocolate chip, too. You went right for the money cookie.”
“They’re my favorite,” he said.
I chose a Hungarian filled as my second cookie. “You even have a favorite. You’ve been leading a secret life.”
“In many ways,” Ranger said.
I knew this to be true. “Is there a special reason for this visit, beyond cookies?”
“I heard you were a hero today. I thought I’d come by and say congratulations. Usually when we see each other anymore it’s for something bad. I thought this was an opportunity to stop by for something good.”
“Thanks. I appreciate the thought, but I don’t feel like a hero.”
“Connie said you saved the bonds office from bankruptcy. I know that’s not entirely true because Vinnie is insured, but you still made a good capture.”
“I don’t want to do this job anymore. I’m not good at it. I don’t like it. I don’t like being in the bad neighborhoods, looking for the bad people.”
“What would you rather do?”