22 Tricky Twenty-Two (9 page)

I WOKE UP
in Ranger’s bed. Ranger was no longer in it, but it was clear that he had been. This is what happens when you tell a man to put you to bed and you don’t specify
which
bed. I felt around and determined I was wearing panties and one of Ranger’s T-shirts. I suspected I’d had help with the undressing. And I vaguely recalled Ranger tucking me in. The fact that I was still wearing panties was a good sign. I’d hate to think I had an event with Ranger and couldn’t remember it. That would be a horrible waste of guilt.

The room was cool and dark. A sliver of light peeked from behind a curtain. My iPhone had been placed on the bedside table. It was almost eight o’clock. I had a text message from Morelli telling me to call him.

Ranger owns a nine-story office building on a quiet, mostly residential street in downtown Trenton. He has underground parking, state-of-the-art security in the entire building, and a private apartment that occupies the top floor. The apartment is professionally decorated and feels right for Ranger. Clean classic lines, warm browns, and black leather. It’s slick and comfortable but feels impersonal. There are no family photos displayed, no trinkets brought back from vacations, no clutter. The apartment is kept pristine by his housekeeper, Ella. His T-shirts are neatly folded. His dress shirts and slacks are perfectly ironed and hung. His guns are kept in locked drawers. Everything is easy to arrange because he only wears black.

His bathroom is Zen and ultra modern. His bedroom is luxuriously calm and unpretentiously masculine. His towels are fluffy. His sheets are smooth. The scent of Bulgari Green shower gel lingers on everything he touches. I’d marry him if for no other reason than to inherit Ella and his expensive linens.

My clothes had been draped over a chair in the dressing room. A note was pinned to the clothes. It told me to help myself to breakfast and to take the car in parking space number twelve. He reminded me that the Linken funeral was at eleven, and I had to be at the mortuary chapel at ten-thirty. Crap!

I got dressed, grabbed a bagel from the kitchen, and took the elevator to the basement garage. A shiny black Porsche Macan was in parking space number twelve. The key was on the dash. I jumped in and took off. By nine o’clock I was in my apartment, in my shower. No time for a hangover. I had my hair dry and pulled into a ponytail by nine-thirty. I washed a couple Advil down with a mug of coffee, brushed my teeth, and grimaced at myself in the mirror. The bruise was even worse than it had been yesterday.

I ransacked my closet, looking for something appropriate for a funeral, preferably something without gravy or bloodstains. I settled on an ancient black suit with a pencil skirt, and I dressed it up with heels. I grabbed my bag, yelled goodbye to Rex, and took off at a run. I called Morelli from the car.

“Did you have any luck last night?” Morelli asked.

“I didn’t pick anything up at the viewing, but as you know I didn’t stay for the whole thing. Monica wanted to leave so I went with her.”

“I’m told you went to Lotus.”

“Monica needed a drink and a hook-up.”

“And?”

“She got lots of drinks,” I told him. “There was slim pickings in the hook-up department.”

“Yeah, there’s an older crowd at Lotus these days thanks to Viagra. Used to be we had to worry about guys bootlegging roofies. Now it’s little blue stiffie pills. Gives all the swingers from the seventies a second chance to get an STD. Were you able to get anything from Monica?”

“Nothing useful. She’s halfway afraid she’s on the hit list, but she’s hostile about getting questioned. And I think her brain is too pickled to hold a thought.”

“Thanks for trying. I appreciate it. I’ll see you at the funeral.”

“Don’t get too close to me. I’m making a huge effort to be civil, but deep down inside I’d really like to punch you in the face.”

“Understood.”

Ranger was in the funeral home lot waiting for me when I skidded to a stop and parked. He was in a perfectly tailored black suit, black dress shirt, and tie. The Glock at his waist was undetectable and didn’t ruin the line of the jacket.

I got out of the Macan and made an attempt to smooth some of the wrinkles out of my skirt. “Thanks for rescuing me last night,” I said. “And thanks for the car loaner.”

“It’s part of my fleet, and it’s a permanent loaner. At least for as long as it lasts. You can’t go around collecting felons in a ’53 Buick. You’re too recognizable.”

People were beginning to gather for the funeral, pulling into the lot and lining up on the street.

“This is going to be a circus,” I said to Ranger. “Is the widow here yet?”

“She’s with the deceased, having a last moment alone with him. I have Tank babysitting her.”

“You’re going to have to give him a bonus for this one.”

“He’s getting the weekend off,” Ranger said.

We went inside and inserted earbuds with battery packs so we could communicate. The plan was for me to sit with Monica and for Ranger to stand at the back of the chapel. When the service was over Ranger and I would ride in the funeral home limo with Monica. Tank and Hal would follow in an SUV. The entire rest of Trenton would follow Tank and Hal.

Monica was wearing a skin-tight black sheath dress, her usual spike heels, and very dark oversized sunglasses.

“How do I look?” she asked me. “Do you think the television SAT truck will cover this?”

“I didn’t see the truck out there,” I said, “but it’s early.”

The service was short. No one tried to shoot anybody. No SAT truck showed up. Afterward we whisked Monica out the side door and into the limo. She took a flask out of her purse and chugged something that smelled like turpentine.

“When this is over I’m checking myself into Betty Ford,” Monica said. “Then after my liver enzymes go down I might allow myself a small drinkypoo once in a while.”

Good luck to Betty Ford.

It started raining halfway to the cemetery.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Monica said. “Rain? Could this day get any worse?”

A small canopy had been set over enough folding chairs for the immediate family. The rest of Trenton huddled under big black mortuary umbrellas. A chair next to Monica had been reserved for me, and I saw Grandma knock a couple people aside to secure a chair. I looked out over the rest of the mourners and recognized a few people from the Burg. Professor Pooka was there and also Dean Mintner.

“Do you know Professor Pooka from the Kiltman biology department?” I asked Monica.

“He’s a fruitcake. He came to Doug with a research project that needed funding. He came knocking on our door one night. Totally uninvited. Looked like a maniac. Practically foaming at the mouth about some crazy discovery.”

“Why did he come to Doug?”

“Doug was on a bunch of committees at Kiltman. He liked being a big-shot alum doing fundraising and shit.”

“Did Doug help him get the funding?”

“No. No one would fund Pooka and he was turned down for tenure. That’s all I know. Doug didn’t go into detail with me. He saved the chatter for the sluts.”

Spending time with Monica wasn’t doing a lot to enhance my opinion of marriage. Actually, it wasn’t doing much to enhance my opinion of human beings in general.

The priest was saying something about Doug Linken, but it was hard to hear him over the rain falling on the tarp. He made the sign of the cross and looked to Monica. The funeral director gave Monica a red rose, and Monica threw it at the casket.

“Done,” Monica said, standing. “Let’s eat. I ordered vodka rigatoni from Marsilio’s for the wake.”

The wake was held at the firehouse in the room usually reserved for Tuesday bingo. There was a full serve-yourself bar, two tables of donated food in disposable containers, and enough vodka rig to feed two hundred people. I stayed close to Monica, Ranger watched from twenty paces, and Morelli hung in a corner and never took his eyes off me. He was in jeans, a blue buttoned-down shirt, a red and blue striped tie, and a navy blazer. It was the middle of the day, but he had a five o’clock shadow that looked good on him. The hem on his jeans had wicked up water. Aside from the jeans he seemed untouched by the rain.

I wasn’t doing as well as Morelli. My hair had frizzed up into a giant afro-type ponytail. My suit was damp and my shoes squished water.

“This is a real bust,” Grandma said, sidling up to me. “I like when the wake is in a house and you get to see people’s furniture and the kind of toilet paper they buy. This was hardly worth crashing.”

“Did you get anything to eat?”

“I had some vodka rig and Mabel Worchek’s meatball casserole. I’m thinking about going back for a piece of cake. There are some good-looking cakes there.”

“I’ve been thinking I might bake a cake.”

“Get out.”

“I found a recipe, and I bought a couple cake pans.”

“What brought this on?”

“It just came over me,” I said.

“You aren’t pregnant, are you?”

“No!”

“Well, just holler if you need help. And people are asking about that bruise you’ve got. It’s a pip. What am I supposed to tell people?”

“Tell them I got it in a bar fight.”

“Can I say you got hit by a drag queen?”

“Sure.”

“It would make a more interesting story,” Grandma said.

Monica was standing behind me and I heard her give a snort of laughter. “I’d take a day off from work to see you get punched out by anyone.”

“I thought you didn’t have a job,” I said to Monica.

“Yeah, but if I did.”

I looked around the room for possible suspects. In the movies the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime, always shows up at the funeral. Most of the people who showed up for this wake were same old same old. Professional wake attendees. The couple people I recognized from Kiltman had only been present at graveside. Obviously the politically correct gesture didn’t extend to the wake. Obviously they didn’t know about the vodka rig.

“I’m soggy,” Monica said. “I want to go home. Grab one of those trays of vodka rig and meet me outside.”

“Copy,” Ranger said into my earbud.

I found a tray that was mostly untouched, covered it with aluminum foil, turned to leave, and bumped into Morelli.

“You could get into big trouble taking that vodka rig,” Morelli said. “That’s official wake property.”

“I’ll chance it.”

He gently traced his fingertip across my bruise. “I hate to see this.”

“You realize you’re risking that punch in the face.”

“Yeah. Go ahead take your best shot. I deserve it.”

“You’re only saying that because I have my hands filled with casserole.”

“True. Are you planning on having this for dinner?”

“Monica asked me to grab it for her.”

“Anything strike you as odd today?” Morelli asked.

“Other than the fact that the widow is showing no remorse?”

“You’d think she could at least pretend, right?”

“I think she’s in a transitional place,” I said. “Moving on with her life.”

“That’s charitable.”

“And she drinks a lot.”

“That’s real. I was looking for more than that. There was a weird-looking guy at graveside. He wasn’t part of the usual funeral crowd.”

“The guy wearing pajamas?”

“Yes.”

“That’s Stanley Pooka. He’s a biology professor at Kiltman. Doug Linken was a Kiltman alum. Active in fundraising and stuff. Dean Mintner was also at graveside.”

Ranger’s voice came into my earbud. “Kiss him goodbye and get out here with the food.”

“Gotta go,” I said to Morelli.

Monica was waiting in the SUV when I brought the vodka rig to her.

“Do you need further security?” Ranger asked her.

“No, but I wouldn’t mind keeping the two gorillas in the front seat for a couple hours of fun.”

“Their shift ends at four,” Ranger said.

“It won’t take that long,” Monica told him.

They drove away and Ranger wrapped an arm around me. “We missed our date with Ernie Blatzo this morning. Do you want to take him down now or wait until tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow.”

“You need to get out of your wet clothes, Babe. I’d be happy to help.”

“Thanks for the offer, but you’ve helped enough.”

I KICKED MY
shoes off when I walked into my apartment, and I left my wet clothes on the bathroom floor. I took a fast shower to wash the smell of funeral flowers out of my hair, and I dressed in sweats and a T-shirt. It was the moment of truth. I was going to bake a cake.

Rex was running on his wheel when I walked into the kitchen.

“I’m going to bake a cake,” I told him. “It’s going to be awesome.”

Rex stopped running for a moment, blinked his shiny black eyes at me, and went back to running. Not impressed.

I’d never seriously looked at my kitchen before, but it turns out I haven’t got a lot of counter space. I also haven’t got a mixer or a big bowl. I had a mixer when I first moved in but it got charred when my apartment was fire-bombed.

“No problem,” I said to Rex. “I’ll make my cake at my parents’ house.”

I packed my cake pans and all the cake ingredients into a shopping bag, laced up my sneakers, hung my messenger bag on my shoulder, and told Rex he was in charge of the apartment. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and it looked like the sun was trying to burn through. I parked in my parents’ driveway just as Mrs. Kulicki was dropping Grandma off from the wake.

“Too bad you couldn’t stay longer,” Grandma said to me. “Emily Root had too many highballs and started singing one of them Miley Cyrus songs and tried to hump the fire pole. She was doing pretty good, too, considering she’s so old.”

“I don’t think I know Emily Root.”

“She was wearing the purple dress. They bused her in from Senior Living. She had her teeth in her purse on account of they were giving her trouble.” Grandma looked at my shopping bag. “What have you got in there?”

“My cake stuff. I thought I’d make it here.”

“Good idea. There’s nothing better than smelling a cake baking in the house.”

Grandma went upstairs to get out of her wet clothes, and I went into the kitchen.

“I came over to bake a cake,” I told my mother.

My mother stopped chopping vegetables and made the sign of the cross. “Something’s wrong. You have breast cancer. You found a lump.”

“No!”

“You’re pregnant.”

“I’m fine. I just feel like making a cake.”

“Holy mother! Where did you get that bruise?”

“I walked into something.”

I unpacked my bag and set everything on the kitchen table. “I was going to make the cake at home but it turns out I don’t have a mixer. Or a bowl. So I brought everything here.”

“Maybe you should start with a box mix. I’ve got Duncan Hines in the pantry.”

“Nope. I’m making it from scratch. If this turns out I might go to school to be a pastry chef.”

My mother clapped her hand to her heart. “You got fired. The bonds office burned down again. Somebody finally killed Vinnie.”

“Everything is fine. I just got to thinking it might be fun to bake cakes.”

“There’s got to be a reason for this. Did Joseph propose? Did he give you a ring? Would you like to learn how to roast a chicken?”

“No, no, and no. Joe and I broke up, remember?”

Grandma came into the kitchen. “What did I miss?”

“Stephanie and Joseph are still on the outs,” my mother said.

I pulled the recipe out of my bag and put it on the counter. “I’m going to make a chocolate cake. And I’m going to make it all by myself.”

“Good for you,” Grandma said. “Go for it.”

“All I have to do is follow the recipe, right?”

“Right,” Grandma said. “And then we can eat it for dinner. We’re having pasta and red sauce and meatballs, if you want to stay. We got a lot of it.”

“Sure. That sounds good.”

“I don’t know why you keep breaking up with Joseph,” my mother said. “He’s such a nice young man.”

This was true. But he didn’t want me. It was so painful I couldn’t say it out loud.

“I have to concentrate on this cake,” I said. “I don’t want to mess up.”

“Last time you tried to cook something you set your kitchen on fire,” Grandma said.

“Baking is better,” I said. “It doesn’t involve oil that suddenly bursts into flames.”

I measured everything out and precisely followed the directions. I looked at the two cake pans.

“It says I’m supposed to dust them with flour,” I said to Grandma.

“Yeah, but first you got to grease them up,” Grandma said.

When I was done I had chocolate cake batter and flour all over the front of my T-shirt.

“Guess this is why pastry chefs wear those white jackets,” I said.

“I always wanted one of them jackets,” Grandma said. “We should get ourselves a couple. I could get them online.”

“No more Internet,” my mother said to my grandmother. “You’re addicted. You’re on all the time.”

“I’ve got my sites,” Grandma said. “I gotta keep up. I’m famous. I’ve got a blog.”

I slid my cake pans into the oven and set the timer. “What kind of sites do you go on?”

“All the usual. I tweet and I google and I got a Facebook page. And I go on some dating sites, only they’re the kind you don’t date in person. You just date online. Some of those I stopped using because the men got weird.”

Thwack!
My mother sliced a carrot.

Grandma rolled her eyes. “She don’t approve of me having fun,” Grandma said.

Thwack!
Another chunk off the carrot.

A text message buzzed on my phone. It was Lula wondering where I was hiding. I told her I was at my parents’ house, and she texted back that she’d be there in a couple minutes.

“What kind of frosting are you putting on your cake?” Grandma asked.

“Chocolate.”

“That’s the best kind,” Grandma said. “You wash out your bowl, and I’ll set the butter on the counter to soften.”

I just finished cleaning my work area when Lula showed up.

“Howdy, Mrs. P. and Granny,” Lula said. “Hope you don’t mind me stopping by like this, but I had to bring a package to Stephanie. Connie said it could wait until tomorrow, but I gotta know what’s in it.”

It was a large padded envelope with no return address. It was postmarked Des Moines.

Oh boy.

“I bet it’s something good,” Lula said. “The excellent mechanical device we got came from Des Moines.”

“Maybe we should wait until after dinner,” I said.

“No way,” Grandma said. “I want to see what you got.”

I opened the envelope and pulled out a pair of skimpy black lace panties.

“They look like they got something missing from them,” Grandma said.

“They’re made that way,” Lula said. “They’re crotchless. I bet he got these at Frederick’s of Hollywood.” Lula looked in the bag and found a note. “It says here that he wants to rip these off Stephanie with his teeth.”

My mother took a bottle of whiskey from the cupboard above the sink and poured herself two fingers, straight up.

“Why me?” my mother asked, tossing the whiskey back like a pro.

“There’s a name on this card,” Lula said. “It’s the same as last time. Scooter Stud Muffin.”

“That’s a coincidence,” Grandma said. “I used to friend someone who called himself Scooter Stud Muffin. I haven’t heard from him in a while on account of I blocked him from my account. He was one of the ones that was getting weird.”

“You mean like Facebook friend?” Lula asked.

“Yeah, only it wasn’t Facebook,” Grandma said. “It was a romance site.”

Lula shook her finger at Grandma. “Granny, you’ve been catfishing!”

I looked over at Lula. “What’s catfishing?”

“It’s when you go on a dating website and make up your profile,” Lula said. “Like Granny could be telling men she’s twenty-three years old and a NFL cheerleader. Problem is when it gets serious and they want to meet you in person you gotta keep making excuses.”

“Exactly,” Grandma said. “I’m real hot stuff online.”

“That’s awful,” my mother said.

“Everybody does it,” Grandma said. “It’s not like there’s a lot of good stuff to watch on television these days. You got to do something to make the time go. You heard about fantasy football? This here’s fantasy dating.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let’s see if I can guess. You told these men you were me?”

“Of course not,” Grandma said. “You don’t steal someone’s identity. I went by the name of Gina Bigelow. And I said I was an interior designer. The only thing I borrowed from you was a picture. It didn’t have your name on it or nothing.”

“They could do an image search,” Lula said. “Connie uses stuff like that at the office all the time. You just plug Stephanie’s picture in, and it’ll get you her name. After you have her name it’s easy to find out all kinds of other things, like where she works and her home address.”

“I didn’t know that,” Grandma said. “Does it work for everyone?”

“Some people are harder to find than others,” I said. “I’m easy because my picture’s been in the paper a couple times.”

“And it’s easy to find people who got social media accounts with their pictures on them,” Lula said.

“It’s like we’re living in a time of magic,” Grandma said.

“How many people are you catfishing?” Lula asked Grandma.

“I got two on the hook right now. And there were four that I cut loose. Those were the ones I sent the picture to. It was like a goodbye gesture.”

“Boy, you must be something to get these men so worked up over you,” Lula said. “I bet you would have made a good ’ho.”

“Coming from you that’s a real compliment,” Grandma said to Lula.

“I smell cake baking,” Lula said.

“It’s Stephanie’s cake,” Grandma said. “She made it all by herself. We’re going to put the frosting on it when it’s cool.”

“I wouldn’t mind having a piece of that cake,” Lula said.

“You could stay for dinner,” Grandma said. “We’re having the cake for dessert.”

Lula looked over at my mother. “Is that okay with you, Mrs. P.? I don’t want to impose.”

My mother is a good Christian woman who would never refuse someone a seat at her table, but I knew this was a nightmare for her. With Lula and Grandma at the table together, it’s much more likely that my father will try to stab someone with his fork.

My father has developed coping methods over the years. He puts his head down at the dinner table and plows through the meal, listening to no one. Once in a while he’ll pick his head up and look like he wants to join the Foreign Legion. At the moment he was concentrating on shoveling in chocolate cake.

“That was a wonderful meal,” Lula said to my mother. “And this chocolate cake is excellent. Who’d ever think Stephanie could make a cake?”

“How about you?” Grandma asked Lula. “Do you like to bake?”

“I’ve never thought about baking,” Lula said. “I think I’m more a savory person than a baking person. Not that I’d ever pass up a donut. And, anyways, I don’t have a oven.”

I finished my cake and wondered if
I
was a baking person. The cake had turned out okay. It had tasted better than it looked. It had been a little lopsided, and I couldn’t figure out how to get a nice swirly pattern in the frosting.

Truth is, the whole thing hadn’t been as satisfying as I’d hoped, and I couldn’t imagine being in the back room of a bakery making cakes all day. I clearly was no Julia Child. And for sure I was no Martha Stewart.

I helped my mother clear the table and I paused in the kitchen to check my email. Two emails from Valerie with pictures of her kids. An email from Connie saying a new FTA had come in. And an email from Gobbles saying he wanted to talk to me. I emailed back asking when and where, and he answered that he wanted to meet me behind the Zeta house at ten o’clock. Good deal!

I pulled Lula aside and told her about the email.

“I’m in,” Lula said. “We’re gonna bust him.”

“Don’t you find it strange that he wants to talk?”

“He’s probably just tired of being on the run.”

“He could go to the police station and turn himself in. He doesn’t need me.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know that.”

“He’s not stupid. And he has his girlfriend helping him. And she’s not stupid.”

“So what are you saying?”

“It feels complicated.”

“Say what?”

I handed Lula a towel and we started drying the dishes my mom was washing.

“I just don’t want to go all animal on him,” I said. “I want to give him a chance to talk.”

“I get that,” Lula said. “I’m all about that.”

“No shooting.”

“Sure. Unless it’s necessary.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”

“Yeah, but if it is.”

“It won’t be.”

“Boy, you know how to take the fun out of stuff. What are we gonna do until ten o’clock? I wouldn’t mind going to the mall. Macy’s is having a shoe sale.”

“I can’t go to the mall like this. I’ve got chocolate cake batter all over my shirt.”

“It balances out the bruise and the pimple,” Lula said. “You don’t know what to look at first. It’s one of them things that confuses the senses. It could be a signature look for you.”

“How about if you go to the mall without me, and pick me up at nine o’clock.”