One for the Money (11 page)

“Wonderful,” Morelli said. “Do the silent thing. You can hang there forever for all I care.”

He rummaged through the vanity drawers, emptied the wastebasket, and took the lid off the toilet tank. He stormed out of the bathroom without giving me so much as a backward glance. I could hear him methodically, professionally moving through my apartment, searching every square inch. Silverware clanked, drawers slammed, closet doors were wrenched open. There were sporadic patches of quiet, followed by mutterings.

I tried hanging my full weight on the bar, hoping to bend it, but the rod was industrial strength, built to endure.

At last Morelli appeared in the bathroom doorway.

“Well?” I snapped. “Now what?”

He indolently leaned against the frame. “Just came back to take another look.” A grin surfaced at the corners of his mouth as his eyes locked halfway down my chest. “Cold?”

When I got loose I was going to track him down like a dog. I didn't care if he was innocent or guilty. And I didn't care if it took the rest of my life. I was going to get Morelli. “Go to hell.”

The grin widened. “You're lucky I'm a gentleman. There are individuals out there who'd take advantage of a woman in your situation.”

“Spare me.”

He shifted off the doorjamb. “It's been a pleasure.”

“Wait a minute! You're not leaving, are you?”

“Afraid so.”

“What about me? What about the handcuffs?”

He debated his options for a moment. He stepped off into the kitchen and returned with the portable phone. “I'm going to lock the front door when I leave, so make sure whoever you call has a key.”

“Nobody has a key!”

“I'm sure you'll think of something,” Morelli said. “Call the police. Call the fire department. Call the fucking Marines.”

“I'm naked!”

He smiled and winked and walked out the door.

I heard the front door to my apartment close and lock. I didn't expect an answer, but I felt compelled to call out to Morelli as a test. I waited a few moments, holding my breath, listening to the silence. Morelli seemed to be gone. My fingers curled tighter around the phone. God help the phone company if they'd reneged on their promise to resume my service. I climbed onto the edge of the tub to bring myself up to the height of my secured hand. I carefully extended the antenna, pushed the on button, and put my ear to the handset. The dial tone sang out loud and clear. I was so relieved I almost burst into tears.

Now I was faced with a new problem. Who to call? The police and the fire company were out. They'd roar into my parking lot with their lights flashing, and by the time they got to my door, forty senior citizens would be standing in my hall in their jammies, waiting to see what all the excitement was about, waiting for an explanation.

I'd come to realize there were certain peculiarities about the seniors in my building. They were vicious when it came to parking, and they had a fascination for emergencies that bordered on the ghoulish. At the first hint of a flashing light, every senior in my building had their nose pressed to the window glass.

I also could do without four or five of the city's finest leering at me chained naked to my shower curtain rod.

If I called my mother, I'd have to move out of state because she'd never let up. And besides, she'd send my father, and then my father would see me naked. Being naked and handcuffed in front of my father wasn't something I could visualize.

If I called my sister, she'd call my mother.

I'd hang here and rot before I'd call my ex-husband.

To make it even more complicated, whoever came to rescue me was either going to have to climb the fire escape or jimmy the front door. I could only come up with one name. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Shit.” I was going to have to call Ranger. I took a deep breath and tapped out his number, praying I'd remembered it correctly.

It took only one ring for him to pick up. “Yo.”

“Ranger?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Stephanie Plum. I have a problem.”

There was a pause two beats long, and I could imagine him coming alert, sitting up in bed. “What's the problem?”

I rolled my eyes, only half believing I was making this phone call. “I'm handcuffed to my shower curtain rod, and I need someone to open the cuffs.”

Another pause and he disconnected.

I redialed, punching the buttons so hard I almost broke a finger.

“Yo!” Ranger said, sounding good and pissed off.

“Don't hang up! This is serious, dammit. I'm trapped in my bathroom. My front door is locked and no one has a key.”

“Why don't you call the cops? They love this rescue shit.”

“Because I don't want to have to explain to the cops. And besides, I'm naked.”

“Heh, heh, heh.”

“It's not funny. Morelli broke into my apartment while I was in the shower, and the son of a bitch handcuffed me to the shower rod.”

“You gotta like the guy.”

“Are you going to help me, or what?”

“Where do you live?”

“The apartment building at the corner of St. James and Dunworth. Apartment 215. It's a rear apartment. Morelli got in by climbing the fire escape and going through the window. You can probably do the same.”

I couldn't actually blame Morelli for cuffing me to the curtain rod. After all, I had sort of stolen his car. And I could understand that he needed to keep me out of the way while he searched my apartment. I might even be able to forgive him for destroying my shower curtain in a show of macho force, but he went too far when he left me hanging here naked. If he thought this would discourage me, he was wrong. This whole deal was now in the ballpark of double-dare, and childish as it might be, I was not going to walk away from the challenge. I'd get Morelli or die trying.

I'd been standing in the tub for what seemed like hours when I heard my front door open and close. The steam from the shower had long ago dissipated and the air had turned cool. My hand was numb from being held overhead. I was exhausted and hungry and had the beginnings of a headache.

Ranger appeared in the bathroom doorway, and I was too relieved to be embarrassed. “I appreciate your coming out in the middle of the night,” I said.

Ranger smiled. “Didn't want to miss seeing you chained up naked.”

“The keys are in the mess on the floor.”

He found the keys, pried the phone loose from my fingers, and unlocked the cuffs. “You and Morelli got something kinky going on?”

“Remember when you gave me his keys this afternoon?”

“Un huh.”

“I sort of borrowed his car.”

“Borrowed?”

“Commandeered, actually. You know, about us having the law and all?”

“Un huh.”

“Well, I commandeered his car, and he found out.”

Ranger smiled and handed me a towel. “He understand about commandeering?”

“Let's just say he wasn't pleased. Anyway, I parked the car in the lot out here and removed the distributor cap as a safety precaution.”

“Bet that went over big.”

I got out of the tub and had to squelch a scream when I saw my reflection in the vanity mirror. My hair looked like it had taken 2,000 volts and been spray starched. “I need to install an alarm system in his car, but I haven't got the money.”

Ranger laughed soft and low in his chest. “An alarm system. Morelli'll love that.” He took a pen from the floor and wrote an address on a piece of toilet paper. “I know a garage that'll give you a price.”

I padded past him into the bedroom and exchanged the towel for a long terrycloth robe. “I heard you come in through the door.”

“Picked the lock. Didn't think it prudent to wake up the super.” He looked over at my window. Rain was spattering on the dark pane, and a piece of torn screening draped over the sill. “I only do the Spiderman shit in nice weather.”

“Morelli wrecked my screen.”

“Guess he in a hurry.”

“I've noticed you only talk ghetto half of the time.”

“I'm multi-lingual,” Ranger said.

I followed him to the door, feeling jealous, wishing I knew a second language.

*    *    *    *    *

MY SLEEP WAS DEEP AND DREAMLESS, and I might have slept until November if it weren't for the relentless pounding on my front door. I squinted at my beside clock. The display read 8:35. Used to be I loved company. Now I cringed when someone knocked on my door. My first fear was of Ramirez. My second was that the police had come to haul me away for auto theft.

I picked the Sure Guard off my night table, stuffed my arms into my robe, and dragged myself to the door. I closed one eye and looked through the peephole with the other. Eddie Gazarra looked back at me. He was in uniform, holding two Dunkin' Donuts bags. I opened the door and sniffed the air like a hound on a scent. “Yum,” I breathed.

“Hello to you, too,” Gazarra said, squeezing past me in the little hallway, heading for the dining room table. “Where's your furniture?”

“I'm remodeling.”

“Un huh.”

We sat opposite each other, and I waited while he took two cardboard cups of coffee out of one of the bags. We uncapped the coffee, spread napkins, and dug into the donuts.

We were good enough friends that we didn't have to talk while we ate. We ate the Boston creams first. Then we divided up the remaining four jelly donuts. At two donuts down he still hadn't noticed my hair, and I was left to wonder what my hair usually looked like. He also hadn't said anything about the mess Morelli had created while searching my apartment, which gave me pause to consider my housekeeping habits.

He ate his third donut more slowly, sipping his coffee, savoring his donut, sipping his coffee, savoring his donut. “I hear you made a recovery yesterday,” he said between savors.

He was left with just his coffee. He eyed my donut, and I protectively drew it closer to my edge of the table.

“Don't suppose you'd want to share that,” Gazarra said.

“Don't suppose I would,” I replied. “How did you find out about my recovery?”

“Locker room talk. You're prime conversation these days. The boys have a pool going on when you'll get boinked by Morelli.”

My heart contracted so hard I was afraid my eyeballs might pop out of my head. I stared at Gazarra for a full minute, waiting for my blood pressure to ease out of the red zone, imagining capillaries bursting throughout my body.

“How will they know when I'm boinked?” I asked through clenched teeth. “Maybe he's boinked me already. Maybe we do it twice a day.”

“They figure you'll quit the case when you get boinked. The winning time is actually when you quit the case.”

“You in the pool?”

“Nope. Morelli nailed you when you were in high school. I don't think you'd let a second boinking go to your head.”