Janet Evanovich - Explosive Eighteen

It was more like I made him happy, and then I didn’t make him happy, and then I made him happy. And then the shit hit the fan.

“He’s just a clean kind of guy,” I said to Lula.

“Yeah, I could see that.”

Lula took off, and I went to my car. The driver’s side door had been left unlocked. The key was tucked under the mat. There was no Big Buggy in the backseat.

I punched Ranger’s number into my cell phone. “Thanks,” I said. “Did you get my car detailed?”

“There was a problem with blood on your right front quarter panel, so Hal ran it through the car wash.”

“Omigod.”

“Nothing serious. Bugkowski slipped resisting arrest and smashed his face into your car.”

“Where is he now?”

“Bugkowski was screaming like a little girl and drawing a crowd, and Hal didn’t have the paperwork to justify a capture, so he had to let him go.”

“Did Hal get my messenger bag?”

“Yes. He brought it back here to Rangeman. He didn’t want to leave it in an unlocked car.”

“Maybe you could mail it to me?” I asked.

I was really, really not ready to see him.

“You can run, but you can’t hide,” Ranger said.

So true. I hung up and headed for home. I stopped at the supermarket and had my cart half filled with groceries when I realized I had no money, no credit cards, no ID. It was all in my messenger bag… with Ranger. Damn. I returned the groceries and called Morelli from my car.

“About tonight,” I said. “Is it going to involve dinner?”

“Not unless you want to eat at midnight.”

“Are you avoiding me?”

“I’m not that smart,” Morelli said.

I sat for a long moment after Morelli hung up, reviewing my current choices. I could drive to Rangeman and retrieve my bag from Ranger. I could go home and share a cracker with Rex. I could mooch dinner from my mom.

Twenty minutes later, I was at my parents’ house and Grandma was hustling to set a plate at the table for me. My mom had been making minestrone this morning, and that meant there’d also be antipasto, bread from the bakery, and rice pudding with Italian cookies.

“The table is set for four,” I said to Grandma. “Who’s coming to dinner?”

“This real interesting lady I met last week. I joined one of them bowling leagues, and she’s on my team. You might want to talk to her. She’s some kind of relationship counselor.”

“I didn’t know you could bowl.”

“Turns out it’s easy. You just gotta throw the ball down the alley. They gave me this shirt and everything. We’re the LWB. That stands for Ladies with Balls.”

My father was watching television in the living room. He rattled his newspaper and muttered something about women ruining bowling. He was watching national news and a bulletin came on showing a picture of a man found dead at LAX. He’d been hit with a blunt instrument, had his throat slashed, and he’d been stuffed into a trash can.

Ugh. As if this wasn’t horrific enough, I was pretty sure it was the guy sitting next to me for the first leg of the Hawaii flight home. I’d spoken to him briefly in the beginning but slept for the rest of the trip. I’d been surprised to find his seat empty when we reboarded. My impression had been that he’d planned to fly into Newark. I guess this explained his absence.

The doorbell rang. Grandma rushed to get it and ushered a brown-haired, pleasantly plump, smiling, forty-something woman wearing an LWB bowling shirt into the living room.

“This is Annie Hart,” she said. “She’s the best bowler we got. She’s our ringer.”

I knew Annie Hart. I’d been involved in a Valentine’s Day fiasco with her a while back and hadn’t seen her since. She was a perfectly nice woman who lived in LaLa Land, firmly believing she was the reincarnation of Cupid. Hey, I mean, who am I to say, but it seemed far-fetched.

“How wonderful to see you again, dear,” Annie said to me. “I think of you from time to time, wondering if you’ve resolved your romantic dilemma.”

“Yep,” I said. “It’s all resolved.”

“She got married in Hawaii,” Grandma told Annie.

My father shot straight out of his chair. “ What ?”

“She had a ring and everything,” Grandma said.

My father was wild-eyed. “Is that true? Why didn’t someone tell me? No one ever tells me anything around here.”

“Look,” I said, holding my hand in the air. “I’m not wearing a ring. I’d be wearing a ring if I was married, right?”

“You got a ring mark, ” Grandma said. “Of course, I guess there could be other explanations. You could have the vitiligo, like Michael Jackson. Remember when he turned white?”

My mother put two platters on the dining room table. “I have antipasto,” she said. “And I have a bottle of red open.”

My father went to the table shaking his head. “Vitiligo,” he said. “What next?”

“Annie’s been helping Lorraine Farnsworth with her love life,” Grandma said, forking into a slice of hard cheese and prosciutto.

My mother looked over at Annie. “Lorraine is ninety-one years old.”

“Yes,” Annie said. “It’s time for her to make a decision. She’s been seeing Arnie Milhauser for fifty-three years. It might be time for her to move on.”

My father had his head bent over his antipasto. “Only place she’s gonna move on to is the bone farm.”

“She’s doing pretty good for her age,” Grandma said. “Sure, she rolls her share of gutter balls, but heck, who don’t.”

“She’s doing better now that we got her the longer tubing to her oxygen tank,” Annie said.

Grandma nodded. “Yeah, that helped. She was on a short leash before.”

I had my phone clipped to the waistband on my jeans, and it beeped with a text message. We need to talk to you. It’s urgent. Come outside . It was signed The FBI .

I texted back no .

The next message was Come outside or we’re coming in .

I pushed away from the table. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “I need to step outside for a moment.”

“Probably got to let a breezer go,” Grandma said to Annie. “That’s always why I got to step outside.”

My mother drained her wineglass and poured another.

I went to the front door, and saw they were the fake FBI guys. They were standing at the curb in front of a black Lincoln. The bigger of the two, Lance Lancer, motioned me forward. I shook my head no. He pulled his badge out, held it up for me to see, and crooked his finger at me. I did another head shake.

“What do you want?” I yelled.

“We want to talk to you. Come here.”

“Move away from the car. I’ll meet you halfway.”

“We’re the FBI. You gotta come to us,” Lancer said.

“You’re not the FBI. I checked. Besides, the FBI doesn’t ride around in big black Lincoln Town Cars.”

“Maybe we got it on account of it was confiscated,” Lancer said.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

“I told you we want to talk, and I can’t be yelling to you. It’s confidential.”

I moved out of the house onto the walk. “I’ll meet you halfway,” I said again.

Lancer mumbled something to Slasher, and they marched over to where I was standing.

“We want the photograph you got on the plane,” Lancer said. “Bad things are gonna happen if you don’t give it to us.”

“I told you. I don’t have it.”

“We don’t believe you. We think you’re fibbing to us,” Lancer said.

Good lord. As if the vacation wasn’t disastrous enough, now I’m involved in God knows what.

“I don’t have it. I’m not fibbing. Go away and bother someone else,” I told them.