14 Fearless Fourteen (7 page)

Halfway through the interview, a guy from the Asbury Park paper
stood and said he'd heard a rumor that Brenda was being harassed by
a stalker who had unsuccessfully tried to kidnap her. Was that
issue being addressed while she was in Trenton?

“Absolutely,” Lew Pepper said. “No one's going to kidnap Brenda
while she's in Trenton. All stalkers are going to have to be
content with buying an album.”

Everyone laughed but Ranger. Ranger was watching the
room.

“Is it being addressed?” I asked him.

“He's in the third row. Pudgy guy. White hair. Black-rimmed
glasses. In his forties.”

“Why don't you have him ejected? Isn't there a restraining order
against him?”

“Yes, but I'd rather have him where I can see
him.”

A reporter for one of the Trenton papers got the nod. He looked
mid-twenties.

Probably fresh out of college. He was slim and dressed in an
oversize shirt and khaki slacks.

“Brenda,” he said, “my grandfather has been a huge fan ever
since he first heard you perform when he was in college. Do you
expect to see much of that early fan base here at your concert in
Trenton?”

“Cripes,” Brenda said. “Your grandfather? How old are you? You
look like the last guy I dated.”

Nancy jumped out of her chair. “And that concludes our press
conference. Thank you all for coming.”

Ranger helped Brenda off the stage and handed her a can of soda
and a cookie from the refreshment table set out for the
press.

“Keeping her hands occupied?” I asked him.

“Trying.”

He put his hand to Brenda's back and guided her through the
crowd. I watched for the stalker guy and put myself between him and
Brenda when he moved toward her.

“Are you her bodyguard?” the stalker asked.

“I'm part of the security team.”

“I gotta talk to her.”

“No can do,” I said.

“You don't understand. It's critical. I had a new
vision.”

I moved closer to Ranger, closing the gap, and followed him into
the elevator.

The doors closed and Brenda's stalker was out of my life, stuck
in the lobby with the rest of the crazies.

Brenda drank some soda and nibbled the cookie. “Where am I
again?”

“Trenton.”

She did an exaggerated eye roll. “I hate Trenton. It's dreary
and provincial. Why can't I be in New York or
Paris?”

“No one wanted you there,” Nancy said. “We could only get you a
gig in Trenton.”

“That's ridiculous,” Brenda said. “It's your incompetence that
has me stuck here. Why do I always get the incompetent
assistants?”

Tank was in the hall when we stepped out of the elevator. He was
back to silent mode after spilling his guts about his engagement. I
thought he probably wouldn't speak to me again for another four or
five years. We lured Nancy and Brenda into the suite with the
promise of room service and closed the door after
them.

“Tank and I can take it for the rest of the afternoon,” Ranger
said. “I'd like you back here at six-thirty. The dinner is at
seven. It's formal. Black tie.”

“Formal! You never told me the dinner was formal. I haven't got
anything to wear.”

He gave me a credit card. “Take the corporate card. Get whatever
you need.”

My eyes went wide. “It's not that easy! Do you have any idea how
hard it is to find the right gown? And then I have to accessorize.
Shoes and a purse and jewelry.”

“Babe,” Ranger said.

Zook WAS waiting when I rolled to a stop in front of his school.
He was with the same odd assortment of friends, and they all
applauded when they saw my car.

He slid onto the passenger seat, dropped his backpack between
his legs, and buckled up. “I guess my mom's still in the slammer,”
he said on a sigh.

“I'm sorry.”

“I feel sort of stupid that I can't help her.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

My cell phone rang with a number I didn't recognize on the
display.

“It's your new best friend, Dom,” he said. “I'm watching you,
but you'll never find me, so don't bother to look around. Just act
like everything is normal. I don't want to freak the
kid.”

“Okay, what's up?”

“Just making sure you're not taking him back to Morelli's house.
You take him back to Morelli's house, and I'm gonna have to kill
you along with Morelli.”

“Have you thought about getting help? Maybe seeing a
doctor?”

“I don't need help. I know what I'm doing. You're the one who's
gonna need help if you don't take good care of the
kid.”

And he disconnected.

This was a family beyond dysfunction. Dom's mother was probably
the sanest of them all, and she was being fed pureed
peas.

I pulled away from the school and hooked a left. Zook turned in
his seat and looked out the back window.

“Who's the guy following you?” he asked.

I looked in my rearview mirror. White car right on my bumper.
Might be a Taurus. That probably meant it was a rental, since no
one actually buys a white Taurus. My first thought was Dom. I
stopped for a light and got a glimpse of the driver. White hair.
Pasty complexion. Large, framed, black plastic Buddy Holly glasses.
Definitely not Dom. It was the stalker.

Must have followed me from the hotel garage. Just what I needed,
one more nut to add to my collection.

“Hang on,” I said to Zook. “I'm going to get rid of
him.”

I have a routine that I do in the Burg when I want to lose a
tail. It involves a lot of cornering and rocketing down alleys, and
it always works. It was especially easy this time, because the
stalker was clearly an amateur. I lost him halfway through my
drill.

“Cool,” Zook said. “That was excellent. Do you know that
guy?”

“He's a Brenda stalker. I don't know why he attached himself to
me.”

I rolled through the Burg and parked in front of my parents'
house.

“I have to work tonight, so I'm leaving you with my parents,” I
told Zook.

“What about Morelli?”

“I thought we'd test-drive this arrangement. Variety can be
good, right?”

My Grandma Mazur had the door open before we even got to the
front porch.

Grandma was dressed in her favorite lavender slacks, white
tennis shoes, and flowered shirt. Her gray hair was freshly set in
rows of curls, her nails were painted to match her slacks. She'd
been a beauty in her time, but a lot of her had shrunk and sagged.
This went unnoticed by Grandma, who seemed to get younger in spirit
as her body aged.

“Who do we have here?” she wanted to know.

“This is Mario Rizzi, Loretta's son. Everyone calls him
Zook.”

“Zook,” Grandma said. “That's a pip of a name. I wish I had a
name like that.”

She took a closer look at him. “You got a awful lot of holes in
you. How do you sleep with all those rings attached to your head?
Don't it bother you when you roll over?”

“You get used to it,” Zook said.

“You remind me of someone,” Grandma said. “Stephanie, who does
he look like?”

I gnawed on my lower lip. “Gee, I don't know.”

Grandma snapped her fingers. “I know who it is. It's Morelli!
He's the spitting image of Joseph when he was Zook's
age.”

“They're very, very distant cousins,” I said.

Zook peeked into the living room. “This house has high speed
Internet, right?”

“Sure, we got cable,” Grandma said. “We're not in the Stone Age
here. I blog and everything.”

“I have to go,” I said to Zook. “Don't paint anything. Moondog
doesn't stand a chance against Grandma.”

I left my parents' house and drove the short distance to
Morelli's house to let Bob out to tinkle. I parked and let myself
in through the front door. The house was quiet. No Bob feet
galloping to greet me.

“Bob!” I yelled. “Yoohoo! Want to go out?”

Nothing. I walked through the dining room to the kitchen. Still
no sign of Bob. I looked out the window over the sink and saw Bob
sitting in the sun in Morelli's little backyard. Bob was wearing
his collar but no leash. Morelli wasn't around. I opened the back
door, and Bob rushed in, tail wagging, all smiley
face.

I wasn't nearly so happy as Bob. I had creepy crawlies, plus the
willies. I took Bob's leash off the kitchen counter, snapped it
onto Bob's collar, and walked him straight through the house to the
front door, out the door to my car.

I loaded Bob into the back of the Sentra and I called
Morelli.

“I stopped by to let Bob out to tinkle, and he was sitting in
your backyard,”

I said. “Did you let him out?”

“No. You were the last one out of the house.”

“Bob was sleeping in your bed when I left. And I know your
kitchen door was locked, because I remember checking it, but it was
unlocked when I got here just now.”

“Does it look like anything is missing? Any sign of forced
entry?”

“I didn't hang around long enough to find out. I've got Bob in
my car, and I'm dropping him at my mom's. You need to go home and
walk through the house, and please don't do it alone, like a big,
stupid, macho cop. Two break-ins in a row is too much of a
coincidence. Something is going on here.”

It had taken me longer than I would have thought to get clothes
for the dinner. I had Ranger's credit card, with a limit high
enough to buy a house, but I couldn't spend beyond my own comfort
zone. And then there were Ranger's rules, which he hadn't
articulated but I knew existed. He'd want me in black, and he'd
want me to wear something that would allow me to move about
unnoticed.

I'd done a decent job, with the possible exception of the skirt.
And lucky for Ranger, I'd run out of time before I got around to
accessorizing at Tiffany's.

I hiked my skirt up over my knees so I wouldn't catch my heel in
my hem, and I ran through the parking lot to the hotel. I was ten
minutes late. I was wearing a white silk camisole under a short
black satin jacket and a simple floor-length black skirt with a
slit up the front that stopped a couple inches short of
slut.

I barreled through the lobby and was sideswiped by the stalker.
He reached out for me, and I slapped his hand away.

“I have to talk to you,” he said.

“Go away,” I told him, on the run for the elevator. “I'm
late.”

“It's important. It's about Brenda. I had another vision. There
was a big pizza ...”

I rushed into an open elevator, he tried to follow me, and I
gave him a two-handed shove that sent him out of the elevator and
onto his ass. The elevator doors closed and I checked my hair and
makeup in the shiny gold door trim.

Ranger and Hal were in the hall when I stepped out. The shift
had changed, and Tank was either getting ready to face Lula, or
else he was at the airport, heading for South America and points
unknown.

Ranger was wearing a perfectly fitted black tux, black shirt,
black-on-black striped silk tie. I've seen him in SWAT black
fatigues, black T-shirt and jeans, black slacks and jacket, and
I've seen him naked. He always looks great, but Ranger in a tux was
a heart-stopper. Almost as good as Ranger naked. Almost, because
nothing was better than Ranger naked.

I returned the credit card, and he pocketed it with a smile.
“Nice,” he said, eyes fixed on the slit in the front of my
skirt.

It was one of those moments that if Hal hadn't been present, we
might have torn each other's clothes off right there in the
hall.

Ranger knocked on the door, and Nancy answered.

“How long?” Ranger asked.

“Hard to say. She's undecided on gowns.”

“I'm going to knock again in ten minutes, and she'll go to the
dinner in whatever she's got on.”

“Jeez,” Nancy said. And she closed the door.

“Boy, you're tough,” I told Ranger.

“It was a desperate, hollow threat.”

Ten minutes to the second, the door opened, and Brenda flounced
out in a very low-cut, skintight, iridescent white gown trimmed in
long, fluffy white feathers. The feathers fluttered from her
shoulders and the lower half of her skirt. I couldn't imagine what
sort of bird had grown the fabulous feathers, but I suspected there
were a lot of them running around bare-skinned.

“Wow,” I said.

Brenda wiggled so the feathers would swirl around her. “It's
from the Ginger Rogers collection.”

No shit.

She sidled up to Ranger. “I'm not wearing panties. The dress is
too tight. I thought you'd want to know.”

“Eeuw,” I said.

Brenda looked at me. “You have a problem with
that?”

“Too much information.”

Hal looked like he'd swallowed his tongue. Nancy took a large
bottle of Advil from her purse, tapped out two pills, and popped
them into her mouth. Ranger picked feathers off his black tux. The
Ginger collection was molting.

We marched the bird-woman through the lobby to the waiting
motorcade. Downy feather remnants drifted like dust motes on air
currents in our wake, and a blizzard of feathers whirled across the
floor. A handful of fans and a few members of the press took
pictures, and Brenda posed and smiled and flapped
around.

I felt heavy breathing on the back of my neck and turned to see
the stalker hovering in my personal space.

“You're breathing on me,” I said to him.

“I thought if I got close enough I might be able to send you a
mental message. It was an experiment.”

“It failed. Go away.”

“You don't understand. It's critical that I talk to
you.”

“No, you don't understand. It's critical that you go away,
because if you keep bothering me, that Latino guy in the tux is
going to throw you out a third-story window.”

Ranger looked over at me, and the stalker backed up into a
luggage cart.

Brenda moved toward the limo, and we all climbed in after her.
Nancy and I sat in the seat facing backwards, and that left the
seat next to Brenda for Ranger. He picked a feather out of his
mouth and looked across at me and smiled. I pressed my knees
together, but no matter what I did with my legs, from where he sat
there was a direct line of sight up my skirt.