“Yep. I already told your mother. And Louise Greeber is coming over this afternoon to help me. So you don't need to worry about a thing. It was nice of you to let me stay. I appreciate it, but I need my shut-eye. I don't know how you get by on so little sleep.”
“Well, okay,” I said. “I guess your mind is made up.” Maybe I'd light a candle, too.
Bob was waiting for us when we walked in.
“Think Bob needs to do you-know-what,” Grandma said.
So Bob and I trooped back down to the parking lot. Habib and Mitchell were sitting there, patiently waiting for me to lead them to Ranger, and now Joyce was there, too. I turned around, went back into the building, and exited the front door. Bob and I walked up the street a block and then cut over, back to a residential neighborhood of small single-family houses. Bob did you-know-what about forty or fifty times in the space of five minutes, and we headed home.
A black Mercedes turned the corner two blocks in front of me, and my heart tripped. The Mercedes drew closer, and my heartbeat stayed erratic. There were only two possibilities: drug dealer and Ranger. The car stopped beside me, and Ranger made a slight head movement that meant, 'Get in.'
I loaded Bob into the backseat and slid in next to Ranger. “There are three people parked in my lot, hoping to get a shot at you,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“I want to talk to you.”
It was one thing to have the skill to break into an apartment; it was something else to be able to divine what I was doing at any given moment in the day. “How did you know I was out with Bob? What are you, psychic?”
“Nothing that exotic. I called, and your grandma told me you were walking the dog.”
“Gee, that's disappointing. Next thing you'll be telling me you aren't Superman.”
Ranger smiled. “You want me to be Superman? Spend the night with me.”
“I think I'm flustered,” I told him.
“Cute,” Ranger said.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“I'm terminating your employment.”
The fluster disappeared and was replaced with the seed of an ill-defined emotion that settled in the pit of my stomach. “You and Morelli made a deal, didn't you?”
“We have an understanding.”
I was being cut out of the program, shoved aside like unnecessary baggage. Or worse
, like a liability. I went from hurt disbelief to total fury in three seconds.
“Was this Morelli's idea?”
“It's my idea. Hannibal has seen you. Alexander has seen you. And now half the police in Trenton know you broke into Hannibal's house and found Junior Macaroni in the garage.”
“Did you hear that from Morelli?”
“I heard it from everyone. My answering machine ran out of space. It's just too dangerous for you to stay on the case. I'm afraid Hannibal will put it together and come after you.”
“This is depressing.”
“Did you really sit him up in a lawn chair?”
“Yes. And by the way, did you kill him?”
“No. The Porsche wasn't in the garage when I went through the house. And neither was Macaroni.”
“How did you get past the alarm system?”
“Same way you did. The alarm wasn't set.” He looked at his watch. “I have to go.”