An old lady tottered out of the house next door and turned her garden hose on Lula and Mrs. Apusenja. Lula and Mrs. Apusenja broke apart sputtering. Mrs. Apusenja turned tail and scuttled into her house, her soaked sari leaving a trail of water behind her that looked like slug slime.
The old lady shut the water off at the spigot on her front porch. “That was fun,” she said. And she disappeared into her house.
Lula squished to the car and climbed in. “I could have taken her if I'd had more time,” Lula said.
I dropped Lula off at the office and drove on autopilot to Hamilton and eased into the stream of traffic. Hamilton is full of lights and small businesses. It's a road that leads to everything and everywhere and at this time of the day it was clogged with cars going nowhere. I turned from Hamilton, cut through a couple side streets, and swung into my apartment building lot. I parked and looked up at my building and realized I'd driven myself to the wrong place. I wasn't living here these days. I was living with Morelli. I thunked my head on the steering wheel. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
I was on the third thunk when the passenger side door swung open and Ranger took the seat next to me. “You should be careful,” Ranger said. “You'll shake something loose in there.”
“I didn't see you in the lot when I pulled in,” I said. “Were you waiting for me to come home?”
“I followed you, babe. I picked you up a block from the office. You should check your mirrors once in a while. Could have been a bad guy on your tail.”
“And you're a good guy?”
Ranger smiled. “Are you parked here for any special reason? I thought you moved in with Morelli.”
“Navigation error. My mind wasn't on my driving.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“The shooting?”
“Yeah,” Ranger said. “And anything else I should know about.”
I told him about the shooting and then I told him about the flowers and the photos.
“I could keep you safer than Morelli,” Ranger said.
I believed him. But I would also be more restricted. Ranger would lock me up in a safe house and keep a guard with me 24-7. Ranger had a small army of guys working for him who made Marine commandos look like a bunch of sissies.
“I'm okay for now. Is there any word on the street about Bart Cone? Like does he rape and murder women?”
“The street doesn't talk about Bart Cone. The street doesn't even know Bart Cone. The Cone brothers run a tight factory and pay th
eir bills on time. I had Tank ask around. The only interesting thing he turned up was the murder inquiry. Two months after the police dropped Bart as a suspect, Bart's wife left him. He's the nuts-?and-?bolts guy at the factory. Has an engineering degree from MIT. Smart. Serious. Private. The direct opposite of Clyde, who spends most of his day reading comic books and gets together several times a week with his friends to play Magic.”
“Magic?”
“It's one of those role-?playing card games.”
“Like Dungeons and Dragons?”
“Similar. Andrew is the people person. Manages the human resources side of the business. He's been married for ten years. Has two kids, ages seven and nine.” Rangers pager went off and he checked the readout. “Do you have any candidates for the flowers and photos?”
“I've made my share of enemies since I've had this job. No one stands out. Bart Cone crossed my mind. The business with the murder is hard to ignore even though the charge didn't stick. And the break-?in occurred right after I was at the factory. Sort of a strange set of coincidences. If he's the nuts-?and-?bolts guy maybe he knows how to open locks.”
“Don't go walking in the woods with him,” Ranger said. And he was gone.
Stephanie Plum 9 - To The Nines
Chapter Six
I OPENED THE front door to Morelli's house and Bob exploded out at me. He knocked me to one side, took the concrete and brick stairs in a single bound, and ran up the street. He stopped and turned and ran back full speed. He got to Morelli's property line, applied the brakes, hunched, and pooped.
Lesson number one when cohabitating with a man and a dog: Never be the first to arrive home.
I went to the backyard, got the snow shovel from the shed, and used the shovel to flip the poop into the street. Then I sat on the stoop and waited for a car to run over the poop. Two cars drove by, but both of them avoided the poop. I gave a sigh of resignation, went into the kitchen, got a plastic baggie, scooped the poop up off the street, and threw it into the garbage. Sometimes you just can't catch a break.