Lean Mean Thirteen (9 page)

"Technically, Lula started the fire. It was an accident. She winged a bottle of ether, and it spilled onto the gas stove."

"We're holding the kid in the cuffs. What do you want to do with him?"

"He's FTA. I need to turn him in."

"If you turn him in, you're going to be implicated in the fire. It's going to get you more publicity."

"I need the money."

Ranger got a bottle of water from the fridge. "I can give you a job if you need money."

"What would I do?"

"Fill my minority quota, for one thing. I only employ one woman, and she's my housekeeper."

"Besides that?"

"Odd jobs," Ranger said. "You can work part-time on an as needed basis."

"Do you need me now?"

Ranger smiled.

"You missed your chance," I told him.

"I'll get another one. You got a phone call while you were in the shower, and he left a message. You should listen to it."

The message was from Peter Smullen. He wanted to speak to me. Would I please call him back.

Ranger was leaning against the counter, arms crossed, watching me.

"Hard to believe my day could get any worse," I said to him.

"You underestimate yourself."

I dialed Smullen's number and waded through layers of secretaries. Finally, Smullen came on. "I appreciate the callback," he said. "I imagine your days are complicated since Dickie's disappearance."

"Its been interesting."

"I was hoping we could get together for a chat."

"What do you want to chat about?" I asked him.

"Things."

"That narrows it down."

"I prefer not to discuss sensitive issues on the phone. I have a full schedule this afternoon, but I was hoping we might meet for a drink after hours. Perhaps the bar at the Marriott at eight?"

"Sure. See you at eight."

"I have a date," I said to Ranger. "It turns out I'm very in demand. Everyone wants to talk to me. The police, Joyce, Peter Smullen."

"Did Smullen say why he wanted to meet with you?"

"He said he wanted to talk about things. Like, maybe the fact that I planted a bug on him.

"And Joyce?"

"She was here this morning, demanding to know where I stashed Dickie."

"As in chopped-up body parts you fed to your neighbor's cat? Or alive and living in your closet?"

"I don't know."

"You should find out. Maybe she knows something we don't."

"Maybe you should talk to her," I said to Ranger. "She likes you."

"You'd throw me into the shark tank?"

That got me smiling. "Is big, bad Ranger afraid of Joyce Barnhardt?"

"I'd rather face the python."

"Joyce doesn't have a long attention span. “I’m surprised she's still involved in this." Ranger's phone buzzed, and he answered it on speaker mode.

"You have a meeting on the calendar for one o'clock," Tank said. "Do you need a ride?"

"Yes."

"I'm in the lot."

"I'll be right down."

Ranger took the Cayenne keys from his pocket and placed them on the counter. He counted out four hundred dollars and placed that on the counter as well. "Caesar is designing a system for a new client tomorrow morning, and a female point of view would be helpful. He'll pick you up at nine. I'll send a uniform with him. The money is an advance on salary for services you'll provide."

He backed me against the wall, leaned into me, and kissed me. His tongue touched mine, and I felt my fingers involuntarily curl into his shirt as heat rushed through my stomach and headed south. He broke from the kiss and looked down at me with a suggestion of a smile. Just a slight curve to the corners of his mouth.

"That's an advance on services I provide," he said.

He grabbed his jacket and left.

SEVEN

Since I was no longer desperate for money, I decided to spend the afternoon on activities designed to keep me out of jail. I heard what Morelli was saying… that Dickie was just a missing person and I shouldn't worry. But people had been sent to jail for less. I knew this for a fact. I helped put them there.

First up was the conversation with Joyce. I drove to her house and parked in her driveway behind a Pro Serve van and hatchback. Joyce's front door was open, and I could see a cleaning crew working inside. A couch and chair had been set curbside. Terminal victims of the beaver explosion.

I picked out a guy who looked like he might speak English and asked for Joyce.

"Not here," he said. "She let us in and split."

"That's okay, I'll just look around until she gets back. I'm her interior decorator. We had an appointment, but I'm early."

"Sure," he said. "Knock yourself out."

The house was elaborately decorated with a lot of velvet upholstery and gilt-framed mirrors. Rugs were plush. Marble in the kitchen and bathroom. Satin in the bedroom. Flatscreen televisions everywhere. Joyce had married well this last time around. She'd chosen more velvet and gilt than I could manage, but it looked expensive.

There was a designated office/library, the shelves filled with hardcover books that had probably belonged to her ex. A large carved mahogany desk floated in the middle of the room. The desktop was clean. Telephone but no scribble pad. No computer. I checked all the drawers. Telephone book. Nothing else.

I returned to the kitchen and sat at the little built-in workstation. The phone was attached to an answering machine. A Starbucks coffee mug held pens and markers. A couple sticky pads were stacked next to the phone.

I opened the top drawer and found a piece of paper with two nine-digit numbers and a phone number scrawled on it. I recognized one as Dickie s social security number. Odd how you remember things like that. I didn't recognize the second number or the phone number. I dialed the phone number, and a programmed voice introduced itself as the Smith Barney automated Reserved Client Service Center and asked for an account number. That was as far as I was going to get, so I copied the three numbers on a sticky pad and put the paper in my pocket.

I didn't see anything else of interest on Joyce s desk. I scrolled through calls made and calls received on her phone and copied the list, going back four days.

I packed up and ran into Joyce as I was leaving the kitchen.

"What the fuck?" Joyce said.

"I was looking for you," I told her.

"Well, you found me. What do you want?"

"I thought if we put our heads together we might be able to figure out what happened to Dickie."

"I know what happened to him. I just don't know where he is now."

"Why do you care?" I asked Joyce.

"I love him."

I burst out laughing, and Joyce cracked a smile.

"Okay, even I couldn't keep a straight face on that one," Joyce said.

"Do you think he's dead?"

"Hard to say one way or another until a body turns up. What I can tell you is this-stay out of my way. I've got an investment here, and I intend to collect. And I'll run over anyone who tries to stop me."

"Hard to believe Dickie had that much money. From what I could see, he wasn't that smart."

"You have no idea what's involved here. And I'm warning you again. Stay out of it." Joyce was really starting to annoy me. Bad enough from time to time Morelli and Ranger tried to push me around, now Joyce was telling me to butt out.

"Looks like you're doing some redecorating," I said to Joyce. "Is that animal fur on your chandelier?"

We locked eyes, and I knew the thought was fluttering in her head… did Stephanie Plum mastermind the beaver bombing? And then the moment passed, and we both stepped back from it.

I walked to the Cayenne, got in, and powered out of the driveway. I drove to Coglin s house just for the heck of it and saw that the green SUV was parked in the alley, two tires on Coglins property line. I angle-parked behind the SUV, blocking its exit, and approached Coglins back door with stun gun in hand.

Coglin answered the door with a sawed-off shotgun in his. "Now what?" he asked.

"Same ol’ same ol'," I told him.

"I'm not going with you. I can't. I gotta stay here. I'll go as soon as I can." I looked down the barrel of the sawed-off. "All right, then," I said. "Good conversation. Call me when you're ready to, uh, you know."

I got into the Cayenne and took off for the bonds office.

"If you're looking for Lula, she isn't here," Connie said when I walked in. "She went home to get dry clothes and never came back. Sounds like you had a busy morning. I hear people are driving from all over the state to breathe Burg air."

"I swear, I didn't have anything to do with that fire. I wasn't anywhere near that house."

"Sure," Connie said. "Did you get Hansen?"

"Yes and no. I came here to use the by-phone number program."

"Is this for Hansen?"

"No. I'm trying to make sense of the Dickie mess. Joyce is tied up in it. I don't exactly know how or why, but I got some numbers off her phone, and I want to run them down. One of them is for the Smith Barney automated Reserved Client Service Center."

"That's heavy," Connie said. "Reserved clients are those with at least ten million in assets. What else do you have on that list?"

I pulled a chair up to Connie s desk and gave her the list. "The three numbers on the sticky page came from a piece of paper in Joyce's desk. The rest came from her phone."

"Doing some breaking and entering?"

"Only entering. Her door was open. I'd like to get into that account, but it asks for an account number."

Connie looked at the sticky page. “Joyce isn’t Smart. If she had to write the phone number down, I'm guessing the rest of the information is there too."

"The top number is the phone number. The second number I don't recognize, and the last number is Dickie's social security number."

"And they were written in this order on her pad?"

"Yep."

Connie punched the Smith Barney phone number in. The automated voice asked for the account number and Connie gave it the second nine-digit number. The voice asked for the access code and Connie punched in the social security number. Access denied. Connie went through the routine again and gave it just the last four digits of the social security number.

"I'm in," Connie said. "There's a zero balance. And the last transaction was a forty-milliondollar withdrawal. That was two weeks ago." Connie hung up and looked at me. "That's a shitload of money. Whose account is this?"

"I don't know."

"It can't be Joyce's," Connie said. "She'd be in the Bahamas buying men and goats. The access code is from Dickie's social security number, so the logical assumption would be that it's Dickie's account. But I don't know how Dickie would get that kind of money. That's a lot of bill-able hours."

No kidding. When Joyce said Dickie was worth money, I wasn't thinking this kind of money. "Maybe he stole it from the guys who snatched him, and they got cranky." Connie took the list of numbers I'd lifted from the phone, typed them into her computer, and plugged them into the by-phone number program.

"After we get rid of the dupes, there are sixteen numbers," Connie said. "I'll run them and print them out for you."

I watched the information come in. Five calls from the law firm in the last two days. And Joyce got an incoming call at one in the morning from Peter Smullen right after Dickie disappeared.

"Isn't Smullen a partner?" Connie asked.

"Yes. That's kind of weird that he called Joyce at one in the morning."

"Maybe there's something going on with them."

Yuk. What would that mean for my meeting? I thought Smullen wanted to talk to me about kidnapping and murder. It would be horrible if it turned out he wanted to talk about sex. Maybe he didn't notice the bug. Maybe he noticed the cleavage.

The rest of the list looked benign. I took the printed copy from Connie and shoved it into my bag.

"Gotta go," I said to Connie.

Connie reached into her top drawer, took out a box of rounds for my Smith & Wesson, and tossed them to me. "Just in case."

I left the bonds office, settled myself in the Cayenne, and called Ranger.

"Yo," Ranger said.

"I took your advice and went to talk to Joyce, and I learned there's a Smith Barney account that has Dickies social security number as an access code. It has a zero balance and the last withdrawal was forty million dollars."

"Joyce shared that with you?"

"More or less. When you went through Dickie's house, did you search his home office?"

"No. I wanted to see the crime scene, and I didn't have time for much else. I slid in between police investigations."

"Maybe it would be a good idea to poke around in Dickie's office and see what turns up. I'd like to prowl through his law office too, but that feels more complicated."

"Where are you now?"

"I'm at the bonds office."

"Pick me up at RangeMan."

RangeMan is located on a quiet side street in downtown Trenton. It's a relatively small, unobtrusive seven-story building sandwiched between other commercial properties. There's a number on the front door and a small brass plaque, but no sign announcing RangeMan. Parking is underground in a gated garage. Ranger's private apartment is located on the top floor. The whole operation is very high-tech and secure.

Ranger was waiting outside for me. I pulled to the curb and placed his hat on the console. He got in and put the hat on.

"Do you feel better now?" I asked him.

"A friend gave this hat to me just before he died. It's a reminder to stay alert." I glanced over at him. "I thought you wore it because it looked hot." That got a smile from him. "Do you think I look hot in this hat?" I thought he looked hot in everything. "It's a pretty good hat," I told him. When I reached Dickie's house, I did a slow drive-by. The crime scene tape had been taken down, and the house no longer felt ominous. No cars in the driveway. No lights shining from windows.

"Park in front of the house," Ranger said. "We're going in like we belong here." We walked to the door, and Ranger tried the handle. Locked. He took a small tool from his jacket pocket, and in twenty seconds the door was open. I suspected the tool was for show, and if I hadn't been watching he'd say abracadabra and the door would unlock. I followed Ranger in and the ominous feeling returned. There were still bloodstains on the floor, and the house had been tossed.

"Did it look like this when you were here?" I asked.

"No. Someone's been here looking for something, and they weren't subtle." We went room by room, not disturbing the mess that had been made. Drawers were open, contents thrown onto the floor. Cushions were on the floor too, and some of them were slashed. Mattresses ditto. His office was more orderly only because it had clearly been carefully picked over. His computer was missing. His files were also missing. No way to know if they'd been taken by the police or by whoever ransacked the house. All messages on the answering machine were from Joyce.

"Time's up," Ranger said. "We need to get out of here." We left the same way we came in. Ranger slid behind the wheel of the Cayenne, and we drove away. I checked my watch and realized I was due for dinner at my parents'. I reached Morelli on his cell. "It's Friday," I said.

"And?"

"Dinner?"

"Oh crap," Morelli said. "I forgot. I can't make it. I'm tied up here." I didn't say anything. I just sat on the phone.

"It's my job," Morelli said. "You can't get mad at me for doing my job." And that was true, but I didn't want to go to dinner without Morelli. I was afraid I'd get relentlessly grilled about Dickie if I didn't have Morelli on board to distract my mother and grandmother.

"Is that Bob barking?"

"Yeah, Bob's with me."

"So what kind of job is this?"

"It's a secret job."

"And when is this secret job going to be done?"

"I don't know. Hopefully soon."

"I could swear I hear television."

"Bob's watching a movie."

I hung up and looked at Ranger.

"No," Ranger said.

"You don't even know what I was going to ask."

"You were going to ask me to fill in for Morelli at dinner."

"Roast chicken."

"You'll have to come up with something better than roast chicken."

"Do you have dinner plans?"

"Are you going to nag me on this?"

"Yes."

"What happened to the Stephanie who thought I was mysterious and scary?"

"Gone."

Actually, that wasn't entirely true. Ranger was still mysterious and scary at times-just not today, just not compared to my mother and grandmother.

Ranger parked in the driveway behind my fathers Buick. "We need to be out of here at seven-thirty. If you tell Tank I did this, I'll chain you naked to the traffic light on Hamilton and Broad. And I'll shoot your grandmother if she grabs me."

I was pretty sure he was kidding about the traffic light.

"Isn't this something," Grandma said when she saw Ranger. "What a nice surprise. Is Joe coming too?"

"Nope," I said. "Just Ranger."

"Look here, Helen," Grandma called to my mother. "Stephanie's swapped out Joseph tonight."

My mother stuck her head out the kitchen door. 'Where's Joseph?"

'Working," I told her.

"I'm just spooning out the gravy," my mother said. "Everyone sit down." The doorbell rang and Grandma ran to get it. "It's him," she said to me. "It's my honey." My father got out of his chair in the living room and took his seat at the table. "I don't care if he craps in a bag," he said to Ranger. "I'll give you a hundred bucks if you can scare him into marrying her and moving her into his room at the old people's home."

"They won't take him back," I said to my father. "He started a fire, and they kicked him out."

"Guess I look like I could still scare somebody/' Ranger said to me. "You look like you could scare anybody," my father said to him. "Don't you ever wear anything but black?"