Turbo Twenty-Three (Stephanie Plum 23)

“The clown break-in occurred at one in the morning,” Ranger said. “At two o’clock Bogart showed up, entered through the loading dock, and went straight to his office. He spent five minutes in his office, and left the building. Before he left he called Rangeman to report the break-in. My man at the desk asked Bogart if he’d also called the police, and Bogart said he didn’t want the police involved.”

“Why didn’t your monitoring station pick up the break-in?”

“Bogart didn’t want his cameras monitored in real time.”

“This still doesn’t seem like anything serious enough for you to drag me out of bed in the middle of the night.”

“We can’t find Bogart,” Ranger said. “He never returned home, and his car was found abandoned about a mile from here. We’ve notified the police, but there’s no indication of foul play or of a struggle, and Bogart has only been missing for a couple hours. Right now the damage to his office is considered vandalism.”

“But you think it’s more serious.”

“I think no matter how you spin it this isn’t going to look good for Rangeman.”

We entered the building through the loading dock door and walked straight through to Bogart’s office. The door was open. Bogart hadn’t bothered to close it when he stomped out. I peeked in and grimaced. The office was a mess. The chocolate and chopped nuts were everywhere. They were sprayed on walls, bookshelves, the desk, and the floor. Some of the chocolate had been smeared, and DIE had been written in it. Other messages were DEAD MAN, BURN BABY, and BE AFRAID.

“This is beyond vandalism,” I said to Ranger. “This is ugly.”

“Yeah,” Ranger said. “We’ve got a bad clown.”

“Have the police seen this?”

“We had a uniform here, but no plainclothes. You might want to mention to Morelli that this might be more than a prank. It’s not his problem, but he can pass it along.”

“Is that my purpose here?”

“Partly. Mostly I wanted you to walk through the two videos and see if anything was off. I’ve got a problem with the clown. I can’t see Ducker getting into his clown suit and doing this.”

“I can. He’s totally postal. Too many years of listening to the Jolly jingle.”

“Someone blew up his truck.”

“He hated the truck. He could have blown it up. He was in the men’s room when it went boom!”

“So he’s your prime candidate?”

“He’s in a tie with Butchy. And I guess I can’t rule out Kenny Morris.”

“Could either of those men have been in the clown suit tonight?”

Good question. I reran the video in my mind. “I don’t think it’s Butchy. Butchy is built like a scarecrow, and he sort of hunches forward when he walks.”

“What about Kenny Morris?”

“I don’t know. I only saw him on a barstool. He’s average height and build. Closer to the clown than Butchy.”

We exited through the loading dock and walked around the building until we came to the back door to the storeroom. It was locked.

“Can you open it?” I asked. I already knew the answer. Ranger could open anything.

“The real question is can you open it?”

The door had a numerical keypad like the keypad to the freezer. I punched in 0000 and opened the door.

“Either Bogart is very trusting or very stupid,” I said.

“So far in my dealings with him I haven’t seen evidence that he’s either of those.”

We stepped into the storeroom and followed the clown’s path through the rows of shelves. We left the storeroom and walked the hall to Bogart’s office. We turned and retraced our steps to the storeroom’s back door.