Finger Lickin' Fifteen

by Janet Evanovich

  I walked him to the door and watched him take a key from the silver server on the breakfront. Ranger always kept three cars for his personal use. The Porsche Turbo, a Mercedes sedan, and a Porsche Cayenne. He used to have a truck that he loved, but it went to truck heaven and was never replaced. The key he chose tonight was for a Cayenne.

  “Replaced already?” I asked him.

  “It would have been here sooner, but they had to install the lockbox under the seat.”

  “I guess you’re all about instant gratification.”

  Ranger grabbed me and kissed me. “If I was all about instant gratification, you’d be naked and in bed.”

  And he left.

  FIFTEEN

  I OPENED MY eyes and looked at the bedside clock. Almost six in the morning. I heard keys clink onto the silver server in the hall, and I knew Ranger was home. I vacated the bed and sleepwalked into the dressing room. Not a lot of variety to my clothing choices. Black everything. Life was simple at Rangeman, and this was a good thing at this hour because I wasn’t capable of complicated thoughts, such as red shirt or blue shirt.

  I grabbed some clothes and hustled into the bathroom. When I came out, Ranger was eating breakfast at the small dining room table.

  “It looks like Ella’s been here,” I said to him.

  “She brought you coffee and an omelet.”

  There was also a breadbasket, plus a fresh fruit platter with raspberries, blackberries, and kiwi. Ranger had a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon.

  “How was your night?” I asked him.

  “Uneventful. And yours?”

  “Uneventful once I got here,” I said.

  Ranger pushed back from the table and stood.

  “What are your plans for today?”

  “I want to take another stab at capturing Myron Kaplan. I’m hoping to get into my apartment to at least look around. And we have to sign in for the barbecue cook-off this afternoon. Tomorrow is the big day.”

  “I hate to point out the obvious, but so far as I know, you can’t cook.”

  “It’s about barbecue sauce,” I said. “You take some ketchup and add pepper, and you’ve got sauce.”

  Ranger grinned down at me. “And this is why I love you.” He kissed me on the top of my head. “I need to get some sleep. Take whatever car you want.”

  I finished my omelet, had a second cup of coffee, and headed out, grabbing the keys to the new Cayenne. It would be fun to drive the Turbo, but it wasn’t practical for hauling felons back to jail. I stepped into the elevator, pushed the button for garage level, and waved at the little camera in the corner up by the ceiling, knowing someone was manning a monitor, looking at me. And that’s when it hit me. The camera.

  I got to the garage and hit the button to go back to the seventh floor. I let myself into Ranger’s apartment and yelled out to him. “I’ve got it!”

  “I’m in the bedroom,” Ranger said.

  “Are you naked?”

  “Do you want me to be?”

  “No.” That was a total lie, but I was too chicken to say yes. Even if a woman was sworn off men for life, she’d still want to see Ranger naked. And I was only sworn off men for the time being.

  He walked out to see me. “What do you have?”

  “Suppose our man gets into the house under some pretext. Like maybe he’s checking phone lines or cable lines. And then he plants a small camera in such a way that it gets a video of the owner punching in the code. And then a couple days later, he comes back and gets the camera. Or maybe the camera sends the video out to an exterior location and then he gets the camera when he commits the robbery. Could he do that?”

  “I suppose it could be done, but there’ve been a lot of break-ins, and no one has noticed a camera.”

  “Yeah, but these cameras are small. And maybe they get placed alongside other devices like smoke detectors or motion sensors.”

  “I like it,” Ranger said. “Run with it.”

  “Would you mind if I went to some of your accounts and did a fast check of the areas where touch pads have been installed?”

  “Make sure you show them your Rangeman ID and tell them you’re a tech.”

  I ROLLED OUT of the garage and realized it was barely seven o’clock. What on earth is a person supposed to do at this hour? I could go to breakfast at the diner, but I’d just eaten. My parents would be getting up around now, and it might be fun to see everyone fighting over the bathroom. But then, maybe not. I drove past the office. No lights on. Connie never came in this early. I cruised past Morelli’s house. No one on the front lawn. His SUV parked at curbside. A single light on upstairs. Morelli was most likely moving a little slow this morning. I avoided my apartment building. It was too soon to get in, and I knew the sight of the fire-blackened windows would make me feel sad.

  That left me with Myron Kaplan. I returned to the center of the city and parked across the street from Kaplan’s house. It was Monday morning and some houses showed signs of life, but not Kaplan’s. If I was a television bounty hunter, I’d kick the door down and go in guns drawn to catch Kaplan by surprise. I elected not to do this because it seemed like a mean thing to do to a guy who just wanted to return his teeth, I wasn’t any good at kicking doors down, and I didn’t have a gun. My gun was home in my cookie jar, and it wasn’t loaded, anyway.

  So I hung out in Ranger’s brand-new Cayenne, watching Kaplan’s house, telling myself I was doing surveillance. Truth is, I was snoozing. I had the seat reclined and was feeling very comfy inside the big car with the dark tinted windows.

  I woke up a little after nine and saw movement behind Kaplan’s front window. I got out of the car and rang Kaplan’s bell.

  “Oh jeez,” Kaplan said when he saw me. “You again.”

  “I’ll make a deal,” I said. “I’ll take you to breakfast if you go to the police station with me when you’re done.”

  “I don’t want to go to breakfast. I haven’t got any teeth. I have to gum everything to death. And if I swallow big chunks of stuff, I get indigestion. Can’t eat bacon at all.”

  “You got your money back. Why don’t you go to another dentist and get new teeth?”

  “I called some other dentists and couldn’t get an appointment. I think they’re all in cahoots. I’m on a blacklist.”

  “Dentists don’t have blacklists.”

  “How do you know? Are you sure they don’t have blacklists?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Pretty sure doesn’t cut it, chickie.”

  “Okay, we’ll go to plan B. Let’s pay a visit to your old dentist.”

  “The quack?”

  “Yeah. Let’s talk to him about your teeth.”

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s a waste of time,” Myron said. “You’ll never get in.”

  “Trust me, I’ll get in.”

  WILLIAM DUFFY, DDS, had an office suite on the fifth floor of the Kreger Building. The waiting room was standard fare. Durable carpet, leatherette chairs, a couple end tables holding artfully arranged stacks of dog-eared magazines. A receptionist desk presided over one wall and guarded the door that led to Duffy.

  “That’s her,” Myron said. “Miss Snippity.”

  Miss Snippity was in her forties and looked pleasant enough. Short brown hair, minimal makeup, blue dental office smock with the name Tammy embroidered on it.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Tammy said. “I’m calling Security.”

  “That’s not necessary,” I told her. “We aren’t armed.” I glanced over at Myron. “We aren’t, right?”

  “My daughter took my gun away,” Myron said.

  “We’d like to talk to Dr. Duffy,” I said to Tammy.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Dr. Duffy only sees by appointment.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but you just opened for the day and there’s no one in the waiting room.”

  “I’m
sorry. You’ll have to make an appointment.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’d like an appointment for now. Do you have that available?”

  “Dr. Duffy doesn’t see patients until 10 A.M.”

  “Okay. Give me an appointment at 10 A.M.”

  “That’s not available,” she said, thumbing through her appointment book. “The next available appointment would be three weeks from now.”

  “Here’s the deal,” I said to her. “Poor Mr. Kaplan has no teeth. He’s getting indigestion, and he can’t eat bacon. Can you imagine a life without bacon, Tammy?”

  “I thought Mr. Kaplan was Jewish.”

  “There’s all kinds of Jewish,” Mr. Kaplan said. “You sound like my daughter. Maybe you want to tell me to get a colonoscopy, too.”

  “Oh my goodness, you haven’t had a colonoscopy?”

  “No one’s sticking a camera up my rump,” Mr. Kaplan said. “I never like the way I look in pictures.”

  “About Mr. Kaplan’s teeth,” I said to Tammy.

  “I have no appointments,” Tammy said. “If I break the rule for Mr. Kaplan, I have to break the rule for everyone.”

  Tammy was starting to annoy me.

  “Just this once,” I said. “No one will know. I know Dr. Duffy is in. I can hear him talking on the phone. We want five minutes of his time. We just want to talk to him. Five minutes.”

  “No.”

  “I told you,” Mr. Kaplan said to me. “She’s snippity.”

  I put palms down on Tammy’s desk and I leaned in real close to her. Nose to nose. “If you don’t let me in, I’m going to picket this building and let everyone know about the shoddy work Dr. Duffy is doing. And then I’m going to run a personal computer check on you and get the names of all your high school classmates and tell them you have relations with ponies and large dogs.”

  “You don’t scare me,” Tammy said.

  So that was when I went to plan C and broke into my imitation of Julie Andrews, singing, “The hills are alive, with the sound of music. . . .”

  Dr. Duffy almost immediately stuck his head out the door. “What the heck?”

  “We’d like to talk to you for a moment,” I said. “Mr. Kaplan is very sorry he held you up, and he’d like to discuss his teeth.”

  “I’m not sorry,” Mr. Kaplan said. “This office gives me a pain in my behind.”

  “You aren’t armed, are you?” Dr. Duffy asked.

  “No.”

  “Come back to my office. I have a few minutes until my first appointment.”

  Myron stuck his tongue out at Tammy, and we followed Dr. Duffy down a short corridor, past dental torture rooms.

  “What would you like to discuss?” Dr. Duffy said, settling himself behind his desk.

  “Do you still have Myron’s teeth?”

  “The police have them. They’re evidence.”

  “Can they be fixed so they fit him and they’re comfortable?”

  “They seemed to fit him when he left my office.”

  “They were fine, and then a week later, they were terrible,” Myron said.

  “You should have made an appointment to get them rechecked,” Dr. Duffy said.

  “I couldn’t get an appointment,” Myron said. “Your snippity secretary wouldn’t give me one.”

  “It would be really great if you could drop the charges against Mr. Kaplan and fix his teeth,” I said to Duffy. “He’s not a bad guy. He just wants teeth. And for the record, your secretary is snippity.”

  “I know she’s snippity,” Duffy said. “She’s my wife’s first cousin, and I can’t get rid of her. I’ll see what I can do about getting the charges dropped, and I’ll call you as soon as the police release your teeth.”

  “That would be real nice of you,” Myron said. “I’m getting tired of oatmeal.”

  Ten minutes later, we were in front of the courthouse. “I have to check you in,” I said to Myron, “but Connie is on her way to bail you out again. And hopefully, you’ll be cleared of charges soon.”

  “That’s okay,” Myron said. “I didn’t have anything to do today, anyway.”

  I HAD MY map and a summary of Ranger’s accounts in front of me. My plan was to take a look at those accounts I’d tagged as high risk and those accounts that had already been hit. The first two houses were high risk. Each of the houses had a touch pad by the front door and a touch pad by the garage entrance. I couldn’t find any evidence of filming devices in the touch-pad areas. The next stop was the only commercial account on my list. It was the insurance company that had been burgled four days ago.

  I went directly to the rear-entrance touch pad and looked to find possible lines of sight. Rangeman had installed a motion sensor over the door. This was the spot I’d choose if I wanted to snoop on the touch pad. I’d set the camera above the motion sensor, and it would look like it belonged there. There was no camera there now, but it looked to me like some of the paint above the motion sensor had flaked off.

  I asked building maintenance to get me a stepladder. I climbed up, took a closer look, and I was pretty sure something had been taped there. When the tape was removed, the paint had peeled away with it. I took a picture with my cell phone and thanked the maintenance guy for the ladder.

  “No problem,” he said. “The guy last week needed a ladder, too.”

  “What guy?”

  “The Rangeman guy. What is it that you people keep checking?”

  “Do you remember exactly when he was here?”

  “Yeah, he was here twice. Monday morning and Wednesday morning.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Sure. He was young. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. Slim.

  About my height. I’m five ten. Brown hair, brown eyes. Sort of dark skin. Nice-looking kid. Is something wrong?”

  “No, but I’ll check with the office to make sure we’re not both doing the same route. Did you get his name?”

  “No. He didn’t tell me his name. At least, I can’t remember.”

  I had to work hard not to run out of the building. I was so excited, I could barely concentrate on driving. I screeched to a stop in the Rangeman garage and danced in the elevator all the way to the seventh floor. I ran through Ranger’s apartment, rushed into his bedroom, and jumped on the bed.

  “I’ve got it! I know how the robberies were done and I know what the guy looks like!”

  I was straddling Ranger, who fortunately was under a quilt, because from what I could see, he looked deliciously naked.

  Ranger put his hands on my waist. “You’ve got my attention.”

  “I noticed the paint was flaked away near a motion sensor that was opposite the touch pad at the insurance company. So I asked for a ladder, and sure enough, you could see where something had been taped to the wall.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Are you sure you’re listening? Your hand just moved to my breast.”

  “You’re so soft,” Ranger said, his thumb brushing across my nipple.

  I got a rush, followed by a lot of desire spread all over the place. “Oh,” I heard myself murmur. “That feels good.” No! Wait a minute. Get a grip. “Jeez,” I said. And I scrambled off the bed.

  “I almost had you,” Ranger said.

  “I’m not ready for you. I’m currently off men.”

  “Taking a hiatus.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Tell me more about my break-in expert.”

  “The maintenance man said a Rangeman employee had been in twice to check on the same motion sensor. I figure, once to install the camera and once to remove it. He said the tech was eighteen or nineteen years old. Around five ten. Brown hair, brown eyes, sort of dark skin. Nice-looking.”

  “I don’t have anyone that young,” Ranger said, “but I have several men who would fit the rest of the description and might look younger than they actually are.”

  “So we’re back to someone in-house. That’s ugly.”

  Ranger slipped out of bed.
“I’m going to take a shower, and then I’ll follow up on this.”

  I stared at him. He was naked, all right.

  “You’re staring,” he said, smiling.

  “I like to look.”