Notorious Nineteen

by Janet Evanovich

  “No time,” I told her. “Things to do. I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “You really should try it on,” Mary said. “It’s such an important occasion.”

  “I’ll try it on at home. Promise.” I grabbed the massive zippered bag and rushed to the door. I couldn’t resist the opportunity and turned back toward Mary DeLorenzo. “Be sure to call Ranger and tell him I picked the dress up,” I told her.

  I tossed the heavy plastic bag into the backseat and slid behind the wheel.

  “Did you ever check the morgue and the funeral homes to see if either of these guys turned up?” Briggs said. “Maybe we should take a walk along the river and make sure they’re not washed up and lying there.”

  “I’m sure Morelli’s checked the morgue. And Grandma would know if they were in a funeral home.”

  “What about the river?”

  I glanced at him. “Do you want me to drop you off so you can check it out for yourself?”

  “You’d drive away and leave me there, and I’d get mugged.”

  This was all true. “I’m going to take you back to your car, and my advice is to go home and take a nap. If I get any breaking news I’ll call you. Promise.”

  A lot of skip tracing is done on the phone and computer. For the most part Connie does the phone and Internet work and I do the legwork. I have some search programs on my computer, but Connie’s programs are better. For lack of something better to do I ran Geoffrey Cubbin and Elwood Pitch through the system on my computer to see if anything new showed up. I got a big zero, and I was surfing Pinterest when Morelli dropped in.

  “I got off work and thought I’d stop by to see if I’d missed any rocket or firebomb events,” he said.

  “You missed a bucket of fried chicken. It was the high point in my day.”

  Morelli sat across the table from me. “I went deeper on Franz Sunshine and found some interesting things. He has similar clinics in four other states. He owns two midsize jets. And he’s the primary on seven different holding companies.”

  “Success isn’t a crime.”

  “He’s operating five businesses at a loss, but he can afford to keep two jets in the air.”

  “What about FS Financials?”

  “It’s in the black but it doesn’t show the kind of profit that would offset his other expenses and losses.”

  “Creative bookkeeping?”

  Morelli shrugged. “Hard to say, but it’s one more reason to suspect The Clinic.”

  “Do you want me to go in with guns blazing? Briggs thinks Pitch is in there. It’s probably enough justification for me to enter.”

  “No! Let me see if I can dredge up a search warrant.” He looked at his watch and stood. “I have to get home to let Bob out. Do you want to do something for dinner tonight?”

  “I have the rehearsal dinner tonight.”

  “That’s still on?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  Morelli looked like he was contemplating cuffing me and locking me up somewhere. “And the wedding is tomorrow?”

  “Yep. What are you doing tomorrow?” I asked him.

  “Shopping for a new car,” Morelli said.

  “That’s almost as bad as being in a wedding.”

  Morelli opened the front door to leave and Brody Logan was there. Logan shrieked and ran away down the stairs.

  “What the hell was that?” Morelli said.

  “Brody Logan. He wants Tiki.”

  “Does this happen a lot?”

  “Define a lot.”

  Morelli dragged me up against him and kissed me.

  “Was that a lot of a kiss?” I asked.

  “Not as a lot as I’d like it to be.”

  I watched Morelli walk down the hall, and I closed and locked my door. Moving on to the next activity, I thought. Dinner with Ranger.

  Ranger let himself into my apartment a little before seven o’clock. He was wearing black slacks, a black blazer, and a black dress shirt. He was perfectly tailored and pressed, and the cut of his blazer hid the black Glock at the small of his back.

  I was pretty much matching in a black skirt, white silky blouse, and black jacket.

  “I was told you picked your dress up from the bridal salon,” Ranger said.

  “I thought you’d want to know.”

  He smiled at me. “It made my day.”

  Ranger doesn’t smile all that often so it’s always either really wonderful or stone cold scary. This smile was a mixture of both.

  I had a little black leather purse hanging from my shoulder. Ranger hooked his finger under the strap, tested the weight, and returned it to my shoulder. It was heavy enough to hold the Ruger.

  I told Rex and Tiki I’d be back in a little while. I got to the door and hesitated.

  “They’ll be fine,” Ranger said. “He’s not going to hit your apartment again. He’s already done that. Orin is going to kick i t up a notch. He was the kind of guy who tortured bugs, pulling their legs and wings off one at a time. It was like foreplay for Orin, leading up to the kill. We were all thrill junkies but Orin was pathological. He got his thrills from the fear and suffering of his victims. He liked the kill but it was almost anticlimactic for him.”

  “Are you sure it’s Orin?”

  “Yes. He left a message on my phone this morning. I recognized his voice. He said it was time for him to come out of the shadows. He laughed his crazy Orin laugh, and he said I would see him soon.”

  “Did he say why he wasn’t dead?”

  “No. It wasn’t part of the message.”

  “Do you want to tell me the rest of the message?”

  “You’d rather not know.”

  I was sure this was true. I didn’t even want to know what I already knew. I could have done without the whole ripping-wings-off analogy.

  “Did he say why he was doing this now?”

  “Only that the road here wasn’t easy but he’d finally made it.”

  “Was he this crazy when you were serving together?”

  “There were signs. Orin was a good man to have on your side and a very bad enemy. We all slept with one eye open, not just for whatever was out there but for Orin.”

  “The life you have now must seem tame compared to that.”

  “It has its moments. I had to talk to the bridal salon lady twice today.”

  He had his hand at my back, guiding me down the hall to the elevator and out of the building to his Porsche 911 Turbo. I suspected the car was brand-new. Hard to tell since it was identical to the last one, but its paint was unmarred, and it was lacking the aroma of horked-up cocktail wieners and meatballs.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE CHURCH WASN’T far. It was in the Burg, and it was the Catholic church where I’d made my First Communion. It was the church where my family worshiped and I was supposed to worship. I went to Christmas mass and I was there for weddings and funerals but true faith was elusive for me. Catholic guilt was a constant. I made the sign of the cross and watched Ranger. He was comfortable here. He knew the rituals. He was raised Catholic just as I was.

  “Do you attend mass?” I asked him.

  “Not as often as I would like.”

  The answer surprised me. It had never occurred to me that Ranger might attend church. He was on the job 24/7, and he wasn’t a man who easily accepted someone else’s doctrine. Ranger made his own rules. Most of them were good rules, but they didn’t completely line up with the Ten Commandments.

  He wrapped his hand around mine, and we walked down the aisle to the crowd of bridesmaids and ushers at the altar. Kinsey and Amanda were there. The parents were sitting in a pew. A priest and a wedding planner were organizing.

  “We need the maid of honor to lead the bridesmaids to the back of the church,” the wedding planner said.

  “That’s you,” Ranger said to me.

  “I’m the maid of honor?”

  “Yes. That’s why you have the special pink dress.”

  I gave him a sharp elbow to the r
ib cage and was pleased to hear him expel some air.

  I lined up at the back of the church with the bride and the rest of the bridesmaids. The music started and we walked down the aisle. Step, stop, step, stop. Ranger was next to Kinsey, watching me walk toward him. His expression was serious and unwavering. Hard to imagine what he was thinking. And I hoped he had no idea what I was thinking, because I was having a hard time corralling my emotions. For a heart-stopping moment I imagined myself walking down the aisle to marry Ranger. It was one of those bizarre what if moments and was so disorienting that I almost stepped on the bridesmaid in front of me. It got a smile out of Ranger and a gasp from the bride, behind me. In the next instant I saw him scan the church, nothing moving but his eyes, and then he was back to me.

  I left the altar on his arm after the practice ceremony. We were behind the bride and groom. Kinsey and Ranger were vigilant. Amanda looked shell-shocked. Everyone else seemed oblivious to the possibility of impending doom.

  “Would Orin try to do something in a church?” I asked Ranger.

  “He’s crazy,” Ranger said. “He’d do anything.”

  Ranger pulled a photo out of his jacket pocket. “This was taken a while ago but it will give you some idea what Orin looks like. Orin is standing next to me. He’s the one with the sunglasses.”

  It was a picture of seven men in army fatigues. They all had rifles and they were smiling. Ranger hadn’t changed much. Maybe he was a bit heavier now but not a lot. Different haircut. The same serious dark eyes. Orin was shorter. Stocky. Blond hair. Couldn’t see his eyes behind the glasses. Dimple in his chin.

  I memorized Orin, but I was most interested in Ranger. I’d never seen a photo of him at a younger age. And I’d never seen a photo of the men he’d served with for at least part of his time in the military. Ranger’s apartment was beautifully decorated and his furniture was comfortable, but as a home it was sterile. There were no photos anywhere, no keepsake baseballs, no favorite coffee mug in the cupboard. Sometimes it felt like Ranger was just passing through this life, serving some purpose, not intending to stay long.

  “What exactly is my role here?” I asked him.

  “My best guess is that Orin will target Amanda either tonight or tomorrow. Orin’s ultimate goal is Kinsey and eventually me, but Orin will want to pull the wings off before the kill.”

  Oh God, it was the wings again.

  “Kinsey will stay close to Amanda but there are times when you’ll have to take over. He can’t follow her into the ladies’ room. He won’t be with her tomorrow before the wedding. I have extra security in place but they’ll be at a distance. You’re the one who will be at Amanda’s side.”

  I thought Ranger’s confidence in me was flattering but unfounded. I was willing to give this my best shot, but I wasn’t exactly Ranger. I wasn’t even half a Ranger.

  “Are you sure you don’t want one of your men to go drag for this?” I asked him. “He’d be much more competent.”

  “I asked Tank but he declined. He said pink wasn’t a good color for him.”

  The after-rehearsal dinner was held at Cedar Mill House. It was a nice restaurant in downtown Trenton that had no relationship to anything cedar and didn’t look like a mill house. It was in a redbrick building with public dining downstairs and a private dining room upstairs. The adjoining building burned down three years ago and Cedar Mill House cleared the rubble away and used the space for a parking lot.

  Ranger pulled into the lot and cut his lights. “I’m going to wire you for sound,” he said, “and add another GPS unit.”

  “Another?”

  “There’s one in your purse.”

  “This is a new purse. This is the first time I’ve used it. How did you bug it?”

  “I took a few precautions last night while you were sleeping.”

  “You were in my apartment last night?”

  “Briefly.”

  “That’s creepy. I don’t want you looking at me when I’m sleeping.”

  “Babe, that’s not the first time I’ve seen you sleep.”

  “But all those other times I knew you were watching me sleep.”

  “Not always,” Ranger said.

  “You waited until I was asleep so you could sneak in and plant all your secret listening gizmos, because if I was awake I wouldn’t let you do it.”

  “It was expedient. I had to take over a patrol for one of the men last night. I only had a few minutes to plant the GPS. When I asked you to be my date I didn’t realize it was going to turn into this. I put you in harm’s way and now I need to try to keep you safe.”

  Ranger removed a small plastic bag from the glove box. It contained a watch, a metal disk, and a roll of surgical tape.

  “The watch looks like a sports watch but it has a GPS system and can transmit audio. You turn the audio on and off by pushing this button. You’ll see a plus or a minus sign on the watch face telling you if the audio is sending. If you get into trouble you push the button, an alarm sounds in the control room, and we can listen in.”

  I took my own watch off, dropped it into my purse, and put Ranger’s watch on my wrist. “Can I talk to you through the watch?”

  “No. It just transmits. It doesn’t receive.”

  The metal disk was approximately the same size as the watch face. Ranger ripped off a small piece of tape and stuck the disk to it.

  “This is backup GPS. I’m going to put it inside your bra for now. If it gets uncomfortable you can move it to the small of your back. I’d like you to wear both devices until the threat is removed.”

  He opened two blouse buttons and traced a line along the top of my bra with his fingertip. He bent his head, brushed a kiss across my breast, and slipped his hand inside my bra. I think I might have moaned a little, and I steadied myself by sliding my hand up the inside of his thigh. It turns out that just because I think I could have a future with Morelli doesn’t mean I’m entirely immune to Ranger’s hotness.

  He taped the disk to the underside of my breast, and his thumb skimmed across my nipple. I’d once done the deed with Ranger in his Porsche but it involved an open driver’s side door and my knee on the console. I knew this wasn’t a possibility in the Cedar Mill House parking lot. Especially not with a madman stalking us, someone’s high beams shining in Ranger’s rear window, and my resolve to not be a slut.

  “Rain check this,” Ranger said. “We have company.”

  I made some clothing adjustments, and we followed Kinsey and Amanda into the restaurant. Besides the cars carrying the bridal party I counted two Rangeman SUVs in the lot and one more on the street.

  We walked through the restaurant and up a flight of stairs. The private dining room, decorated in red and gold, was dimly lit, and seating was at three long tables. I was placed next to Amanda, and Ranger was across from us.

  “I appreciate that you would take on this job,” Amanda said to me. “I knew Robert was in Special Forces, but I was unprepared for something like this to happen.”

  “This has nothing to do with his Special Forces background,” I said. “This is about mental illness. This is about a man with a problem, and for some reason that’s beyond our control he’s fixated on Kinsey and Ranger. We just have to be careful until Ranger catches him.”

  “Do you have a gun?” Amanda asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Me too,” she said. “I have a Beretta. What kind do you have?”

  “A Ruger.”

  “Have you ever shot anyone?”

  “Yes, but it was sort of an accident.”

  “You mean the gun went off when you didn’t mean it to go off?”

  “No. I mean he was shooting at me, and I shot him back.”

  “That doesn’t sound very accidental.”

  “It wasn’t planned,” I said.

  This subject was out of my comfort zone. My comfort zone ran more to bakery products, mascara, who was pregnant from my high school graduating class, and who was doing well on The Biggest Loser
. I searched for a change of topic and came up short.

  “You must be excited about the wedding,” I finally said.

  Amanda leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Can I confide in you? I’m nervous. I thought this would be the most fabulous thing. All my life I’ve dreamed about my wedding day. The gown. The walk down the aisle. The party after.”

  “And now?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. I love Robert, but marriage is so permanent.”

  It should be permanent. That’s certainly the aspiration, but I knew firsthand it didn’t always work that way. I’d been married for about ten minutes. I was hoping for longer next time around . . . if there was a next time around.

  “I guess most brides have pre-wedding jitters,” Amanda said. “I’m not even sure I did the right thing by having such an elaborate wedding. I almost wish we’d just gone off and gotten married.”

  “It’ll all be great,” I said. “You’ll be a beautiful bride.”

  Amanda sipped at the wine that was set in front of her. “Have you ever thought about marrying Ranger?”

  “Ranger and I aren’t really a couple,” I said.

  “Right,” Amanda said, rolling her eyes and smiling.

  When Amanda rolled her eyes it was cute. In fact it was adorable, because Amanda was adorable. When I roll my eyes people are afraid I’ve had a seizure.

  “I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Amanda said.

  “Like I’m a disaster?”

  “Like he can’t take his eyes off you.”

  “We’re friends,” I said. “And sometimes we work together. I don’t think Ranger is ready for a relationship.”

  Amanda glanced over at him. “He’s very handsome,” she whispered.

  I nodded in agreement. Ranger is drop-dead handsome.

  The first course was set in front of me. Green salad with croutons and chunks of tomato. Standard fare. Not especially tempting.

  Ranger was next to the bride’s mother, listening politely to her chatter. Occasionally he’d flick a glance my way but more often than not he was looking behind me, watching a waiter, scanning the room. I was doing the same, looking for someone with a dimple in his chin.

  The main course was steak, vegetable medley, and mashed potatoes. I stared at the mashed potatoes and bit into my lower lip. I was hungry but not hungry enough to risk getting poisoned again.