20 Takedown Twenty (18 page)

“A man named Gordon Krutch. He seems to be the senior citizen go-to guy when someone needs a ride.”

I blew out a sigh.

“Not liking that information?” Ranger asked.

“No. He seems entirely incapable. And he’s with my grandmother.”

“Are you giving up on Bingo?”

“Not entirely. I got a slow cooker out of it.”

“Have you used it?”

“I put Rex in it when I cleaned his cage.”

He had one hand resting on the steering wheel and the other on the back of my seat. His finger traced a line down the nape of my neck. “What’s next? Am I taking you home?”

Okay, I have to admit I was tempted to strip my shirt off and straddle him. I’d actually done this once in his Porsche 911, and it was a complicated undertaking. He was driving his SUV tonight so it would be easier, but the consequences would be the same. Mind-blowing gratification followed by Catholic guilt and the munchies. I could probably handle the Catholic guilt, but I couldn’t handle the three extra pounds the munchies would produce.

“Well?” Ranger said.

“Let’s see if we can flush out Uncle Sunny.”

Ranger put the Cayenne in gear and drove the short distance to Joe’s mother’s house. He parked across the street and one house down, and we sat silently watching the neighborhood. No activity. Lights on in all the houses. No Lincoln Town Car parked at the curb.

We got out and stood for a moment in front of the house. Upstairs windows were dark. Lights were on downstairs in the kitchen and living room. Shades hadn’t been drawn. We moved closer, keeping in the shadows. Joe’s mom and Grandma Bella were on the couch. Joe’s mom was watching television. Bella was head down, snoozing. No sign of Sunny.

“Maybe he’s asleep in an upstairs bedroom,” I said.

Ranger stepped out of the shadows and went to the front door. “Let’s find out.”

Joe’s mom answered on the second knock. She looked at Ranger and then at me standing by his side.

“We’re looking for Sunny,” Ranger said.

“He’s not here.”

I looked into the living room and saw Bella’s head snap up with a snort. Her raptor eyes focused on me, and she sprang off the couch and rushed over to us.

“You!” she said, pointing her finger at me. “You devil.”

“I thought we discussed this,” Joe’s mom said to Bella. “Stephanie is
not
the devil.”

“She come to get my nephew. She’s no good. And she’s stupid. She come too late. Sunny’s already gone. I spit on her.”

“We don’t spit on people,” Joe’s mom said to Bella. “And we especially don’t spit on people when they’re in my house.”

“How about the porch?” Bella asked her.

Joe’s mom looked like she was getting a migraine. “Are we done here?” she asked Ranger.

Ranger looked at me. “Would you like to search the house?”

“Not necessary,” I told him. “If Joe’s mom says Sunny isn’t here, then he isn’t here.”

We retreated to the car, and sat there for a moment.

“Any ideas?” I asked Ranger.

“Babe.”

“Any ideas about finding Sunny?”

“If he’s as frustrated as I am, he’ll be at Rita’s,” Ranger said.

Twenty minutes later we were parked across from Rita’s house. Lights were on. Shades were drawn. No car in the driveway.

“Let’s talk to her,” Ranger said, getting out of the SUV.

I scrambled to catch up to him. “Just like that? No snooping first?”

“If I’m going to sneak around in the bushes with you, I’m not wasting time looking in Rita Raguzzi’s windows.”

“Okay then. Good to know. Snooping first is tedious anyway. Let’s just knock on her door.”

Ranger rapped a couple times and Rita answered. She looked at me, and she looked at Ranger. She did a slow whole-body scan of Ranger, head to toe, and she smiled.

“At least you came with a present this time,” she said to me.

“We’re looking for Sunny.”

“He’s not here, but tall, dark, and handsome is welcome to come in for a drink.”

“Tall, dark, and handsome is going to pass on that offer,” I told her, “but keep me in mind if Sunny drops dead in your bed and you want to get rid of him.”

We left Rita and headed out of her neighborhood.

“Is it likely Sunny will drop dead in Rita’s bed?” Ranger asked.

“He has a bad heart.”

I was out of ideas for finding Sunny, so I had Ranger take me home. He walked me to my door, and waited while I unlocked it.

“Would you like to come in?” I asked him.

“Is this invitation out of passion or pity?”

“Do you care?”

Ranger smiled. “No.”

The truth is, I felt inviting him in was the least I could do after declining Rita’s invitation on his behalf. I mean I’d be a really terrible person if I didn’t compensate him for that, right? At least give him a glass of wine. Tell him how appreciative I was for all he did for me.

I hung my bag on the hook in the foyer and went into the kitchen.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” I asked him.

“No.”

“Pretzels? I went food shopping. I have crackers and cheese.”

He shook his head, closed in on me, and I felt the first stab of panic.

“Um,” I said.

Ranger pulled back and looked at me. “Really?”

I sucked in some air. “I can’t do this. I’m almost engaged.”

And the hideous part was that I
really
wanted to do it. I wanted to do it
bad
.

He brushed a kiss across my lips. “You know where to find me. In the meantime you can drive my car.”

“The 911 Turbo?”

“My
fleet
car. I’ll have one dropped off.”

I WENT TO nine o’clock mass. The last time I’d gone to mass was Easter, and my mother had made me go. I heard people gasp when I walked into the church. I’m sure they were wondering what horrible thing I’d done that had driven me to attend mass. Fortunately or
un
fortunately, however you were looking at it, the horrible thing was all in my mind. I’d thrashed around all night in a sweat over Ranger. On the one hand I felt good that I’d done right by Morelli and sent Ranger home. It was the
other
hand that was giving me problems. The
other
hand wanted to wrap itself around Ranger’s most perfect body part and not let go.

I stopped in at my parents’ house after mass. My grandmother was at the kitchen table doing a Jumble, and my mother was ironing.

“Now what?” I asked my mother. “Why are you ironing?”

“Since when can’t a person iron?” my mother said.

“You iron on Thursdays after you do the laundry. Ironing on Sunday is mental health ironing. You probably ironed this same shirt ten times.”

“It’s breast cancer, isn’t it? You found a lump. It’s from those sports bras you wear.”

“I don’t have breast cancer.”

“Then why did you go to church? Harriet Chumsky called and said she saw you at mass.”

“I just felt like going to mass.”

“Omigosh,” my mother said. “You’re pregnant.”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“There’s something,” my mother said. “You don’t just go to mass. Are you sure it’s not cancer?”

“It’s not cancer!” I helped myself to a cup of coffee and added cream. “How did the date go last night?” I asked Grandma.

“It was pretty good. We went to the diner for rice pudding, only thing is he had car troubles when we came out, and he had to call his nephew to come get the engine started. He said he’s thinking about buying a new car. I wouldn’t mind that on account of his car right now is gray. If I’m going out with a guy who’s shorter than me and has asthma, I think he should at least have a red car.”

“I don’t trust him,” my mother said. “He’s too happy. And he’s not from the Burg. What do we know about him? Where does he live?”

“He’s got an apartment in one of those buildings by the
DMV,” Grandma said. “I haven’t been there yet. It turns out he isn’t as hot as people said.”

“Melvina Gillian was talking about a new boyfriend just before she was killed,” I said to Grandma. “Do you know if any of the other women had boyfriends?”

“Not that I heard.”

“How about your friends now? Is there anyone talking about having a new boyfriend?”

“You mean besides me?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t heard anything,” Grandma said. “It’s hard to get a boyfriend when you’re a certain age. All the good ones are dead. Do you think there’s some Don Juan going around sweettalking the ladies and then throwing them into a Dumpster?”

I took a cookie out of the cookie jar and dunked it in my coffee. “It’s possible.”

And if you wanted to stretch your imagination the Don Juan could be Gordon, I thought. Or maybe Gordon and an accomplice.

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Grandma said. “Sometimes life is like a television show. I wouldn’t mind seeing this Don Juan. I bet he’s got a red car. Or maybe it’s not some Don Juan. Maybe it’s some mob guy. It came to me last night that these women could have owed the wrong people money. What if they were gambling, and they couldn’t pay up?”

“What kind of gambling?” I asked her. “Off-track betting? Late-night poker?”

“Online Bingo,” Grandma said.

“What makes you think they were gambling online?” I asked Grandma.

“I tried playing a couple times. It’s real cutthroat Bingo. You got to pay to play, and you could sink a lot of money into it if you keep playing and don’t win anything.”

“Did all the murdered women play?”

“I don’t know about all of them, but I know Bitsy Muddle was on all the time. And I was playing once when Lois was playing. I knew it was them because I knew their handles. Bitsy was ‘Little Bit,’ and Lois was ‘Hotsy Totsie.’ ”

“When did they play?”

“Just about every night, but usually not until after nine o’clock,” Grandma said. “There’s other things to do up to nine o’clock. Television shows and real-life Bingo.”

My mother had stopped ironing. “This is the first I heard about this.”

“That’s because you don’t play Bingo, and you sleep at night,” Grandma said. “When you get older you nod off all day long, and then you don’t need to go to bed so early.”

“I find it hard to believe those women were running up gambling debts,” my mother said.

“That’s just one of my theories,” Grandma said. “It could also have been aliens from some other galaxy that got them. And the aliens needed money but they didn’t need any old ladies.”

“If I wanted to drop in and watch the Bingo games, how would I do it?” I asked Grandma.

“I can give you the website. There’s lots of online gambling sites, but mostly I only hear talk about this one that comes off an island in the Caribbean.”

I got the information from Grandma, finished my coffee, and stood to leave.

“You can stop ironing,” I said to my mother. “I don’t have cancer. I’m not pregnant. And Grandma isn’t gambling her Social Security checks away playing online Bingo.”

“There’s always tomorrow,” my mother said.

I left my parents’ house and drove past Joe’s mother’s house. It was only a few blocks away so it wasn’t a huge effort. I idled for a moment and moved on. There was no indication that Sunny had returned, and I wasn’t about to knock on the door without good reason.

My real destination was Victory Hardware. I was going to buy a vacuum cleaner. I had no idea if Victor carried them, but it seemed like a good place to start.

Snoot ambled up to me when I walked in. Snoot wasn’t nearly as old as Victor, but he had the same deeply lined dead-skin look of a lifelong heavy smoker. If I had to guess I would say he was in his forties. He was about six feet tall, and lanky, walking slouched and loose-jointed. His thinning brown hair was pulled back into a low ponytail.

“Yuh?” he asked me.

“Is Victor here?”

“He stepped out to get us eats.”

“I’m looking for a vacuum cleaner.”

“We don’t have none of those. We had a couple of ’em years ago, but they took up too much space, so Victor never got any more in. If you want a vacuum cleaner you should go to the Hoover store two blocks down. You can’t go wrong with a Hoover.”

“There’s a Hoover store?”

“It’s part of the tattoo parlor. They sell Hoovers and sewing machines, and you can get a tattoo. I’ve seen some fine tattoos come out of there.”

“Did you know any of the women who were murdered and left in Dumpsters?”

“You mean like Mrs. Fratelli? She came in here all the time.”

“Did you know any of the others?”

“Nope. Don’t think so.”

“You didn’t kill them, did you?”

“Not that I remember.”

I drove two blocks and parked in front of Fancy Dan’s Tattoo Parlor. The front of the store had a vacuum cleaner display, and the back was given over to the tattoo business.

A heavily tattooed guy approached me and introduced himself as Fancy Dan. “I bet you’d like a rose tattooed on your shoulder,” he said to me. “I’m pretty good at knowing these things.”

“Not today,” I told him. “I want a vacuum cleaner.”

“Usually my wife sells the vacuum cleaners,” he said, “but she had to take the dog to the vet for his annual. Do you have carpet or wood floors?”

“Carpet.” I looked at the lineup of display vacuum cleaners and found one that was exactly like my mother’s. “I’ll take that one,” I said.