14 Fearless Fourteen (3 page)

I took a call from Morelli while I unlocked my
car.

“I just walked into my house, and the kid is wearing a black
satin cape, he only answers to the name Zook, and he seems obsessed
with someone named Moondog.”

“Order a pizza and go with it,” I told him.

I WAS FIVE minutes late when I pulled into hotel parking. This
wouldn't be an issue if I was meeting anyone other than Ranger.
Ranger has many good qualities. Patience isn't one of
them.

I ran through the parking garage, slid to a stop when I got to
the hotel lobby, adjusted my skirt, and crossed to where Ranger was
standing. He was wearing black slacks, black blazer, and a black
dress shirt with a black tie.

The black tie had a black stripe. If GQ ran an issue on contract
killers, he'd make the cover.

“Nice,” I said to him.

“Playing the role,” Ranger said.

I followed him to the third floor and the only suite in the
hotel. Tank was in front of the suite door, arms crossed, feet at
parade rest. He was dressed in the usual Rangeman black T-shirt and
cargo pants, with a gun at his hip.

“Any problems?” Ranger asked.

“No,” Tank replied. “She's been inside since I came on
duty.”

“We'll take it from here,” Ranger said.

I watched Tank walk to the elevator and thought about Lula out
shopping for an engagement ring. I could sort of see Tank and Lula
engaged, but the mental image of them settling into married life
went right to the top of the bizarrometer.

Ranger rapped on Brenda's door and waited. He rapped a second
time.

“Maybe she's in the bathroom,” I said.

Ranger took a pass card from his pocket, inserted it in the
lock, and opened the door. “See if you can find
her.”

I tiptoed into the entrance foyer and looked into the living
room area.

“Hello,” I called.

A young woman popped out of the bedroom. She was slim, and her
face was pinched and had the hungry, haunted look of someone who'd
recently quit smoking. Her short dark hair was pushed behind her
ears in a non-style. She was wearing a skirt and a cardigan and
flat shoes. She didn't look happy.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Security,” I told her. “We're here to escort
Brenda.”

“She's getting dressed.”

“Honestly,” Brenda yelled from the bedroom. “I don't know why I
have to do these things.”

Brenda was Kentucky born and raised. Her voice was country, and
her style was ballsy. From what I read in the tabloids, at
sixty-one she was on a slippery slope as an aging star. And she
wasn't going down gracefully.

“It's a charity event,” the young woman said. “It's a goodwill
gesture. We're trying to erase the image of you running over that
cameraman last month.”

“It was an accident.”

“You ran over his foot, and then you put your car in reverse and
knocked him down!”

“I got confused. For crissake, get off my case. Who do you work
for anyway? I want a glass of wine. Where's my wine? I specifically
requested that the cooler be stocked with New Zealand sauvignon
blanc. I must have my blanc!”

I looked at my watch. “Are you responsible for getting her there
on time?” I asked Ranger.

“I'm responsible for getting her there alive.”

“I'm responsible for getting her there on time,” the dark-haired
woman said.

“I'm Nancy Kolen. I'm the press secretary assigned to this trip.
I work for Brenda's record company.”

“I have nothing to wear,” Brenda said. “What am I supposed to
wear? Honestly, why am I always surrounded by amateurs? Is it too
much to ask to have a stylist here? Where's my stylist? First no
blanc, and now no stylist. How am I supposed to work under these
conditions?”

Nancy Kolen disappeared into the bedroom, and ten minutes later,
Brenda swished out, followed by Nancy.

Brenda was slim and toned and spray-tanned to something
resembling orange mud.

She had big boobs, lots of curly auburn hair tipped with blond,
and her lips looked like they'd been inflated with an air
hose.

She was wearing a red knit strapless tube dress that could
double for skin, four-inch spike-heeled shoes, and a white sheared
mink jacket. She looked like Santa's senior off-season
"ho.

Ranger was standing pressed against my back, and I could feel
him smile when Brenda entered the room. I gave him an elbow to the
ribs, and he exhaled on a barely audible bark of
laughter.

“Look at who we got here,” Brenda said, eyeing Ranger. “I swear,
you are so hot, I could just eat you up. Sugar, I gotta get me some
of you.”

Rangers smile was still in place. Hard to tell if he was
enjoying himself or being polite.

“Stephanie and I are providing security,” he
said.

“Do you have a name?”

“Ranger.”

“Like the Long Ranger?” Brenda asked.

There was a moments pause while I debated correcting Brenda, but
truth is, we all knew exactly what she was asking. Finally, Ranger
stepped forward and opened the suite door.

“Like an Army Ranger,” he said.

Brenda slithered through the door, rubbing against Ranger in the
process. “I hear Army guys have big guns.”

Nancy and I did some eye-rolling, and Ranger remained pleasantly
impassive.

I was the last to leave the room. “I've seen your gun,” I
whispered to Ranger.

“Would you like me to tell her about it?”

“Not necessary, but we could discuss it over a glass of wine
later.”

Nancy took the lead and punched the elevator button. The doors
opened, we stepped in, and Brenda moved close to Ranger. “So, Hot
Cakes, are you with me for the night?”

“Stephanie and I will be with you until you return to your hotel
room,” Ranger said.

“Sometimes I need my bodyguards to spend the entire night with
me,” Brenda said to Ranger.

This produced more eye-rolling from Nancy and me and more
passive pleasantness from Ranger. The doors opened, and we moved
into the crush of people in the lobby. Nancy led the way, and I
followed Nancy, with Brenda sandwiched between Ranger and me. We
cut a swath through the crowd to the meet-and-greet
room.

Once we were inside the room and the door was closed behind us,
the atmosphere became much more calm. These were patrons of the
charity, and they'd paid a huge amount of money to have a private
audience with Brenda. She accepted a champagne flute, drained it,
and reached for a second.

“This isn't so bad,” I said to Ranger. “It's not like someone is
shooting at her. And so far, she hasn't totally exposed herself.
You got groped in the elevator, but you're probably used to
that.”

“Yeah,” Ranger said. “It happens a lot.”

A forty-something woman approached Brenda.

“What is this?” the woman asked, pointing to Brenda's
jacket.

“A jacket?”

“What kind of jacket?”

“What kind do you think it is?”

“I think it's mink.”

“Bingo,” Brenda said.

“You have a lot of nerve,” the woman said. “Was this done as a
deliberate insult?”

“Sweetheart,” Brenda said, “when I insult someone they know
they've been insulted.”

Nancy's eyes went to the size of goose eggs, and she frantically
thumbed through her event schedule. “Oh crap!” she said. “Oh
shit.”

I looked over her shoulder and read down the clipboard.
Thursday's event will benefit the humane treatment OF
ANIMALS.

The woman narrowed her eyes at Brenda. “Take that offensive
jacket off immediately.”

“Bite me,” Brenda said. “And what's your problem,
anyway?”

“Do you have any idea how many little minks it took to make that
jacket?”

“Oh puhleeze,” Brenda said. “Don't give me that tree-hugger
crap. Look, if it's an issue for you, just think of it as Russian
weasel.”

The woman snatched a glass of red wine from a waiter, dumped it
on Brenda's jacket, and Brenda tossed her champagne in the woman's
face. Ranger reached for Brenda, but Brenda already had her hands
around the woman's throat. There was a lot of kicking and shrieking
of obscenities, and by the time Ranger got the women separated,
Brenda's boobs had popped out of her dress and the skirt had ridden
up to her waist. Ranger dispassionately yanked the dress up over
Brenda's breasts and pulled the skirt down over her ass, apologized
to the other woman, and dragged Brenda out of the room and into the
lobby. Nancy and I rushed after Ranger and Brenda, and we all
jumped into the elevator.

Nancy crossed meet and greet off her schedule. “One down,” she
said. “We have ten minutes before the dinner.”

Ranger and I elected not to sit at the head table with Brenda.
We took a position on the wall toward the front of the room, so we
could better see if anyone was rushing at Brenda with a glass of
red wine.

Brenda had changed into a black satin bustier, tight jeans
studded with rhinestones, and she had an animal-friendly black
cashmere wrap draped over her shoulders.

My cell phone vibrated, and I looked at the screen. It was
Morelli calling. “I need to take this,” I said to Ranger. “I'm
going to step outside for a moment.”

I found a quiet corridor and dialed Morelli.

“How's it going?” I asked Morelli.

“I don't know. He hasn't stopped playing since I got home. He
can play and eat at the same time. I think he took the computer
into the bathroom with him. It's kind of creepy. You're coming back
here tonight, right?”

“Urn...”

“Let me rephrase that. What time are you coming back
here?”

“Hard to say. I'm running security for Brenda.”

“The Brenda?”

“Yeah. I'm working with Ranger.”

There was a full sixty seconds of silence where I suspected
Morelli was staring down at his shoe, getting a grip. Morelli
thought Ranger was a dangerous guy from multiple points of view.
And Morelli was right.

“Don't you want to hear about Brenda?” I asked
him.

“No. I don't care about Brenda. I care about you. I don't like
you working with Ranger.”

“It's just for a couple days.”

“I'm out of the house at six tomorrow morning. You need to be
here to make sure Picasso doesn't spray paint the dog
again.”

“Zook painted Bob?”

“He did it before I got home. He said he had to protect Bob from
the griefer. He pulls anything like that again, and I'm going to
make the griefer look like the Tooth Fairy.”

Ranger was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his
chest, calmly watching the room when I returned.

“Did I miss anything fun?” I asked him.

He made a small side-to-side movement with his head.
“No.”

“Brenda is waving her glass around.”

“I told the wait staff not to give her a refill, and she's
feeling neglected.”

“Hey!” Brenda called to a passing waiter.
“Hell-O!”

The waiter scurried away, and Brenda waved the glass at another
guy. Brenda lapped at the empty glass and waggled her tongue at the
waiter. A red scald rose from his collar to the roots of his hair,
and he ran for the kitchen.

A waiter carrying plates of food passed behind Brenda, and in
the blink of an eye, Brenda had the guy by his nuts. The waiter
stopped in mid-stride, tray aloft, mouth open. I couldn't hear
Brenda from where I stood, but I could read her
lips.

“I need a drinky-poo,” Brenda said to the waiter. “Nod your head
if you understand.”

The waiter nodded his head, and Brenda released
him.

“I have to give her credit,” I said to Ranger. “She knows how to
get a man's attention.”

An hour later, we escorted Brenda to her room.

“I want to party,” Brenda said in the elevator. “Isn't there a
party somewhere?”

Ranger stayed stoic, saying nothing, and I followed his lead. If
Brenda had been sober, she would have been hard to control. As it
was, her eyes were unfocused, and her attention span was short. The
elevator doors opened, Brenda lurched out, walked into a potted
plant, and got knocked on her ass.

“Whoops,” Brenda said. “Where'd that come from?”

Ranger scooped her up and pointed her in the right direction.
She tried to grab him, and he jumped away.

“You need to take point on this,” Ranger said to me. “If she
grabs me one more time, I'm going to have to shoot
her.”

I linked arms with Brenda and walked her down the hall to her
suite. I opened the door and maneuvered her inside. I herded her
into the bedroom, and she crawled into bed fully
clothed.

I turned the light off in the bedroom and joined Ranger in the
living room. He locked the liquor cabinet, pocketed the key, and we
left the suite.

“Tank has the night off, and Hal doesn't come on until
midnight,” Ranger said.

“I'll stand guard until then.”

“I'll stand with you,” I said. “Just in case Brenda comes out
and attacks you and you're tempted to shoot her.”

Hal was one of the younger guys on Ranger's team. He was big and
blond and blushed when embarrassed. He was over-muscled and looked
a little prehistoric.

He showed up ten minutes early.

“Call me if there's a problem,” Ranger said, giving Hal the room
key. “Don't go into the suite alone. If you need to enter and can't
wait for me, get hotel security to go in with you.”

Hal nodded. “Yessir.”

Ranger walked me to the parking garage, gave me a friendly kiss
goodnight that sent a flutter of emotion through me that I'd rather
not name, and watched me drive away.

I got back to Morelli's house a little after midnight. Morelli's
porch light was on and a nightlight was burning in the hall leading
to the stairs. The rest of the house was dark. I unlocked the front
door and stepped inside. The house was quiet. Everyone was asleep,
including Bob Dog.

I didn't need light to find my way around Morelli's house. I
spent a decent amount of time there, and it was almost identical to
the house where I grew up. I made my way into the kitchen and
checked the fridge for leftovers, hitting the jackpot with
pepperoni pizza.