Джанет Иванович - Twisted Twenty-Six

“This is Ranger,” I said. “We’re working together to find Grandma. May we come in?”

“Is it necessary?”

“Yes,” I said.

Barbara rolled her eyes, stepped away from the door, and made a sweeping enter motion. I hadn’t been in her house before, and I was surprised at the decorating. It was very neat and quietly pleasant. Comfortable, basic furniture in neutrals. Fresh flowers on the coffee table. It looked like a nice person lived there.

Jeanine came in from the kitchen. “Stephanie, I thought I heard my mom say your name. We were just having lunch and talking about what happened at the church. We were at the bake sale earlier. We must have just missed your grandmother and your mom. What happened? Did Edna just wander away? It’s not like her.”

“We think she might have gone off with someone,” I said.

“A friend?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe someone who was unhappy with her.”

“Oh gosh,” Jeanine said.

“Did you see anyone who might fall into either of those categories?” I asked her.

“There were a lot of people there. There was a late Mass and then the bake sale. There were certainly some people who could be considered friends. A bunch of the women from bingo. I don’t know about the people who might want to harm her.”

“Any La-Z-Boys?”

Jeanine looked over at her mom. “Did you see any?”

“No,” Barbara said, “but one of Benny’s wiseguy caregivers was there. He bought a coffee cake.”

“I guess you know that one of the men who tried to kidnap Grandma was a trainer at Miracle Fitness,” I said.

“Of course,” Jeanine said. “What happens in the Burg is instantly known by everyone in the Burg.”

“I know you both take classes there. Did you ever hear anything that would make you suspicious? Was Lucca ever especially friendly with anyone who might be interested in the keys?”

“Sidney DeSalle, the gym owner, is a little sketchy,” Jeanine said. “I didn’t take any of Lucca’s classes. I couldn’t keep up. He was hard-core. Bernie took some of Lucca’s classes, but Bernie hasn’t been there lately. Things got too busy at the concrete plant. He’s there now. Some sort of a breakdown.”

We left Barbara’s house and sat in the Cayenne for a couple minutes.

“What do you think?” I asked Ranger.

“Barbara didn’t say much.”

“Does that mean something?”

“Just that she strikes me as the sort of person who would dominate a conversation. And Jeanine, not so much.”

“Jeanine can be very chatty.”

“Her husband works at a concrete plant?”

“I think that might be the name of it, the Concrete Plant. It’s a family business. Bernie’s father started it, and when he retired Bernie’s brother took over. Bernie works there too, but I’m not sure what he does. Some sort of managerial thing. Word in the neighborhood is that he isn’t real bright. I don’t know if that’s true. I’ve always found him to be a nice guy. He’s not Italian, and I don’t think he was ever accepted by Jimmy and the rest of the Rosollis.”

“Do they have kids?”

“Adults. Living out of state.”

“Next up, Sidney DeSalle,” Ranger said.

“I have multiple choices for him. He has an office at Miracle Fitness, an office in a building downtown, and a house in Hamilton Township. He has three adult children. They all live out of state. He’s divorced. Ten years ago.”

“It’s Saturday. Let’s try his house.”

“It’s north of town, toward Pennington. And I hate to say this, but I’m starving. I need lunch. Go back to my parents’ house, and I’ll get some fast food.”

I called my mom and asked her to pack us lunch. When we pulled to the curb five minutes later, she was at the door with a grocery bag. I ran up and got the bag from her. Her eyes were red as if she’d been crying, and she looked exhausted.

“You need to iron,” I told her. “Everything is going to be fine.”

Back in the car, Ranger glanced at the bag as we drove away. “I have a feeling this is going to be good.”

I pulled out two pot roast sandwiches and handed one to Ranger. The sandwiches were made on perfectly sliced bakery rye bread. They had the perfect amount of mustard, a dab of horseradish, a crisp romaine lettuce leaf, a thin slice of onion and tomato, and a couple slices of my mom’s amazing pot roast. They were each cut in half to form triangles. On my best day I couldn’t make a sandwich that would come even close to these masterpieces of deliciousness. She’d also packed a couple bottles of water. A cookie tin was at the bottom of the bag. I choked up when I saw the cookie tin, because I knew Grandma had made the cookies to make the house smell happy. I took a breath and swallowed back the emotion. No negative thoughts, I told myself. Everyone has to believe that she’s okay and this will end well, and that energy will make it happen. I mentally repeated the thought until I convinced myself it was true.

We ate while Ranger drove. DeSalle lived about a half hour from the gym if traffic cooperated. At midday Saturday there was almost no traffic at all. I was working on the cookies when Ranger cruised into an area of obvious wealth.

DeSalle’s house was one of the largest on a street of very large houses. It sat on about an acre of land. A small metal sign was attached to the elaborate mailbox at the entrance to the driveway. PROTECTED BY RANGEMAN.

“It doesn’t get any better than this,” Ranger said.

He called his control room and asked them to check if the alarm system was on. The answer came back yes .

“Does he have video?” Ranger asked.

“Yes. Inside and out.”

“Check the video to see if anyone is in the house.”

After several minutes the control room came back on. “We can’t pick up anyone in the house. Twenty minutes ago, a single male got into a car and drove away. This was the same time the alarm was set.”

“Turn the alarm off and shut the cameras down,” Ranger said. “And go back over video starting at eight o’clock this morning. I want to know who was in the house.”

“Lucky us,” Ranger said to me.

He parked in the garage area, where his SUV wouldn’t be visible from the road. He unlocked the side door and announced himself as Rangeman Security. No one answered.

We went room by room through the house.

“This guy has nine bathrooms,” I said. “And I counted twelve televisions. So far as I could see he’s the only one living here. What the heck does he do with all the bathrooms and televisions?”

The control room got back to Ranger. “The one male that we saw leave is also the only one we picked up on the interior monitors.”

We returned to Ranger’s car, and reinstated the alarm and cameras.

“I’d still like to talk to DeSalle,” Ranger said. “Let’s try Miracle Fitness.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MIRACLE FITNESS WAS PACKED. There were classes going in every room, and a lot of people in varying degrees of fitness were walking around in spandex. They were clustered at the healthy juice bar, chugging bottles of healthy water, stretching tendons while they chatted about trendy diets.

All this healthiness had me regretting that I’d just eaten half a tin of cookies made with genuine butter and a ton of sugar. I looked down at my jeans and didn’t see anything hanging over the waistband, but it was only a matter of time before the butter and sugar turned to fat. And God knows what my arteries looked like.

I glanced at Ranger. He’d eaten one cookie. One . How is it possible to eat only one cookie? What kind of a weirdo can do that? He wasn’t in Rangeman tactical gear today. He was wearing black slacks, a black dress shirt with RANGEMAN embroidered in black on the pocket, and a black blazer. It all fit him perfectly, and he looked like money, and muscle, and not someone you would want to mess with.