Three to Get Deadly (13 page)

“Postponed to tomorrow morning. The doc is hoping Cameron Brown will be thawed out by then.”

“Know anything on cause of death? Like what kind of bullet did the job?”

“Won’t know until tomorrow. Why the interest?”

I had my mouth full of chicken sandwich. I chewed and swallowed and washed it back with beer. “Just curious.” Curious because this was the second dead drug dealer I’d stumbled over since starting the Mo search. It was a stretch to think there might be a
connection. Still, my radar was emitting a low-level hum.

Morelli looked pained. “You and your girlfriends didn’t do him the first time, did you?”

“No!”

He stood and tugged at my hair. “Be careful driving home.”

He snagged a brown leather bomber jacket off a hook on the wall at the far end of the bar and left.

I stared after him, dumbstruck. He’d tugged my hair. First a chuck on the chin, and now a tug at my hair. This was a definite put-off. It was one thing for me to snub Morelli. It was an entirely different matter for him to snub me. This was
not
how the game was played.

I rolled out of Pino’s at nine-thirty, feeling sulky and suspicious. I stood staring at my truck for a moment before getting in. More misery. My truck wasn’t cute anymore. It looked like it needed orthodontia. I’d gotten new points and plugs, but I didn’t have money for the bodywork. I slipped behind the wheel and shoved the key in the ignition. The truck started and…stalled.

“SHIT!”

My parents’ house was only three blocks
away. I raced the engine all the way and was relieved to finally be able to let the rotten truck die at the curb.

The Buick sat gloating in the driveway. Nothing was ever wrong with the Buick.

The phone woke me out of a dead sleep. The digital display on my bedside clock read 2
A.M
. The voice at the other end was girlish.

“Hi ya,” the voice said. “It’s Gillian!”

Gillian. I didn’t know anyone named Gillian. “You have the wrong number,” I told her.

“Oops,” she said. “Sorreee. I was looking for Stephanie Plum.”

I pushed myself up on an elbow. “This is Stephanie Plum.”

“This is Gillian Wurtzer. You gave me your card, and you said I should call you if I saw Uncle Mo.”

Now I was fully awake. Gillian, the kid across from Mo’s!

Gillian giggled. “My boyfriend was over tonight. You know, helping me with my homework. And he just left. And while we were saying good-bye I noticed there was a light on in the candy store. It must have been the hall light in the back. And I saw someone moving around in there. I couldn’t tell if it
was Uncle Mo or not, but I thought I should call you anyway.”

“Is the light still on?”

“Yes.”

“I’m ten minutes away. Keep your eye on the store, but don’t go out. I’ll be right there.”

I was wearing a red flannel nightgown and thick white socks. I pulled on a pair of jeans, shoved my feet into my Doc Martens, grabbed my jacket and my pocketbook and flew down the hall, punching Ranger’s number into my cell phone while I ran.

By the time I reached the Buick I’d explained it all to Ranger and had the phone back in my pocketbook. It had begun to drizzle with the temperature hovering at freezing so that every car in the lot sat under a shroud of ice. Déjà vu. I used my nail file to chip the ice away from the door handle and counted to ten in an attempt to lower my blood pressure. When the blood stopped pounding in my ears I used the nail file to carve a six-inch hole in the ice on my windshield. I jumped in the car and took off, driving with my nose practically pressed to the glass.

Please, please, please still be there.

I really wanted to catch Uncle Mo. Not so much for the money as for the curiosity. I wanted to know what was going on. I wanted
to know who killed Ronald Anders. And I wanted to know why.

The burg was quiet at this time of night. Houses were dark. Streets were empty of traffic. Streetlights were hazy behind misting rain. I slowly rolled by Mo’s store. A light was burning in the back hall, just like Gillian had said. There was no sign of Ranger. No blue Honda parked at the curb. No movement anywhere. I took King and turned into the alley leading to Mo’s garage. The garage door was open, and deep in shadow, I could see a car parked in the garage. The car was a Honda.

I cut my lights and angled the Buick so that it was blocking the Honda’s exit. I sat for a moment with my window cracked, listening, watching. I silently slipped out of the Buick, walked the length of the alley down King to Ferris and crossed the street. I stood in black shade, behind the Wurtzers’ oak, and I waited for Ranger, waited for the store light to be extinguished, for a form to appear.

I glanced at my watch. I’d give Ranger three more minutes. If Ranger wasn’t here in three minutes I’d cross the street and cover the back door. I had my gun in one pocket and pepper spray in the other.

Car lights appeared a block down King. When the car reached Ferris the lights in the store blinked out. I took off at a sprint just as Ranger’s BMW turned the corner and slid to a stop.

Ranger owned two cars. The first was a black Bronco equipped with a state-of-the-art Bird Dog tracking system. When Ranger was doing a takedown and expected to transport felons he drove the Bronco. When Ranger wasn’t responsible for a takedown, he drove a black BMW, limited production 850 Ci. I’d priced the car and found it listed at close to seven figures.

“The lights just went out,” I called in a stage whisper. “His car’s in the garage. He’s going to go out the back door.”

Ranger was dressed in black. Black jeans, black shirt, black flak vest with
FUGITIVE APPREHENSION AGENT
lettered in yellow on the back. His earring shone silver against dark skin. His hair was held back in his usual ponytail. He had his gun in hand when his foot hit the curb. If he’d been after me I’d have wet my pants on the spot.

“I’ll take the back,” he said, already moving away from me. “You cover the front.”

This was fine with me. I was perfectly happy to play second string.

I scooted to one side of the candy shop’s front door, pressing myself against the brick front. I had fairly good vision through the window, into the store, and I was in a good position to nab Uncle Mo if he bolted for Ferris Street.

A dog barked in the distance. It was the only sound in the sleeping neighborhood. Ranger was undoubtedly at the back door, but there was no indication of entry or capture. My stomach was clenched in anticipation. I had my lower lip caught between my teeth. Minutes passed. Suddenly the store was flooded with light. I inched to the window and looked inside. I could clearly see Ranger in the back hall. No one else was visible.

Ranger was opening doors just as I had done days ago. He was looking for Mo, and in my gut I knew he wouldn’t find him. Mo had slipped away. And it was all my fault. I should have moved sooner. I shouldn’t have waited for Ranger.

I turned at the sound of labored breathing and almost collided with Mo. His face was shadowed, but the shadows did little to hide his annoyance.

“You blocked my car,” he said. “And now your cohort is nosing around in my store.
You keep this up, and you’ll ruin everything!”

“You failed to show for your court appearance. I don’t know why you decided to run, but it’s not a good idea. You should let me drive you to the police station to reschedule.”

“I’m not ready. It’s too soon. You’ll have to talk to my lawyer.”

“You have a lawyer?”

“Yes.” His eyes locked onto Ranger’s Beemer. The door was open, and the keys dangled from the ignition. “Ohhh,” he said. “This will do nicely.”

“Oh no. Not a good idea.”

His mouth tipped up at the corners into an ironic smile. “It looks like the Batmobile.”

“It’s not the Batmobile. Batman doesn’t drive a BMW. And I can’t let you go driving off in it. You’re going to have to come with me.”

Mo was carrying a plastic bag in one hand and a bear-sized can of pepper spray in the other. He narrowed his eyes and pointed the can at me. “Don’t make me use this.”

I’d seen people get sprayed. It wasn’t fun. “Bond is the one in the BMW,” I told him. “Happy driving.”

“Bond,” he repeated. “Of course.”

And then he took off.

Ranger rounded the corner at a run and stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk, watching the Beemer’s taillights disappear into the night. “Mo?”

I nodded and pulled my collar tight to my neck.

“Probably there’s a good reason why you didn’t take him down.”

“His can of pepper spray was bigger than my can of pepper spray.”

We stood there for a few more minutes, squinting into the mist, but Ranger’s car didn’t reappear.

“I’m going to have to kill him,” Ranger said, his voice matter-of-fact.

I thought Ranger might be kidding, but then again…maybe not.

I’d once asked Ranger how he could afford such expensive cars, and he said he’d made some good investments. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. A money market account seemed a little tame for Ranger. If I had to venture a guess on the contents of Ranger’s portfolio, I’d lean toward running guns to well-connected foreign gunmongers.

“Find anything unusual in the store?” I asked Ranger. Like a dead body.

“Nothing. He must have seen you on the
street. Didn’t even take the time to make sure the back door was closed. Just cleared out of there.”

I filled Ranger in on Cameron Brown and the RiverEdge while we walked back to my car. Then I told him about Jackie seeing Mo on Montgomery Street, coming out of the apartment building. I told Ranger how I’d staked the building out but hadn’t come up with anything.

Ranger looked at my bedraggled hair and at the red flannel nightgown hanging under my jacket. “Who are you supposed to be?”

“I was in a hurry.”

“You’re going to give bounty hunters a bad name you go around looking like that.”

I unlocked the passenger door for Ranger, climbed behind the wheel and cranked the engine over. “Where to?”

“Montgomery Street.”

That would have been my choice too. I’d listened to the BMW drive away. It had gone southeast, toward Montgomery.

“Nobody home,” Ranger said, after walking the underground lot.

“We could wait.”

“Babe, I don’t know how to break this to
you, but we’re not exactly inconspicuous. Doing surveillance in this car is like trying to hide a whale in a jelly jar.”

Fine by me. I was cold and wet and tired. I wanted to go home and crawl into my nice warm bed and sleep until July.

“Now what?” I asked.

“You can drop me at Twelfth and Major.”

No one knew where Ranger lived. I had Norma run a check on him once at the DMV and his address turned out to be an empty lot.

“You aren’t really going to kill him, are you?” I asked, nosing the Buick toward Twelfth.

“You steal an eight-fifty Ci, you should be killed.”

“It’s Uncle Mo.”

“Uncle Mo is wacko,” Ranger said.

“Yes, but he’s my wacko. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t kill him until after I log him in and straighten a few things out.” Like who killed Ronald Anders.

“Professional courtesy.”

“Yeah.”

“You have any leads?”

“No.”

“We’ll work together on this one,” Ranger said. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at five.”

“Five in the morning?”

“You got a problem with that?”

“Nope. No problem.”

Trenton is creepy at three in the morning. Forlorn and subterranean, the pulse of the city checked behind black glass and acid-etched brick. Even the night people, the drunks and the kiddie crews, were tucked away, leaving the occasional fluorescent wash of light to derelict pigeons, walking the sidewalks, pecking at fool’s food.

What sort of person would cruise these streets at this hour? Cops, shift workers, evildoers, bounty hunters.

I swung into my lot and cut the engine. Chunks of yellow dotted the big block building in front of me. Mrs. Karwatt, Mrs. Bestler, the DeKune apartment, Mr. Paglionne. Seniors don’t waste a lot of time sleeping. Mr. Walesky, across the hall from me, was probably watching TV.

I stepped away from the Buick and heard a car door open and close behind me. My heart did a little tap dance at the sound. I looked to the building entrance and saw two figures move from the shadows. My gun was still in my pocket. I hauled it out and spun around, almost smacking a wiry little guy in the nose with it.

He immediately jumped back a step, hands in the air. “Take it easy,” he said.

I had the other two in my peripheral vision. They’d stopped and raised their hands. All three men were wearing ski masks and brown coveralls over their street clothes.

“Who are you?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

“We’re concerned citizens,” the wiry little guy said. “We don’t want to hurt you, but if you keep after Mo we’re going to have to take action.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an envelope. “You’re a businesswoman. We understand that. So here’s the deal. The money in this envelope represents your fee for bringing Mo in to Vinnie, plus a two-hundred-dollar bonus. Take the money and hop a plane for Barbados.”

“Number one, I don’t want your money. Number two, I want some answers.”

The wiry guy made a come-on signal with his hand, and car lights blinked on behind him. The car rolled forward and the back door opened.

“Get in that car, and I’ll shoot,” I said.

“I’m unarmed. You wouldn’t want to shoot an unarmed man.”

He was right there. Not that it mattered. It had been an empty threat to begin with.

I’d set my alarm for four fifty-five and was so startled when it rang that I fell out of bed. I hadn’t allowed myself time for a shower, so I brushed my teeth, dressed myself in some clothes I found on the floor from the previous day and staggered downstairs.

Ranger was waiting for me in the lot. He pulled a piece of paper, folded into four sections, from his jacket pocket and gave it to me. “A list of Montgomery Street tenants,” he said. “Anything jump out at you?”

I didn’t ask how he’d gotten the list. I didn’t want to know the details of Ranger’s network. I suspected his methods for acquiring information might sometimes involve broken bones and small-caliber bullet holes.