We loaded our bags into the back of a black SUV. Tank was going to escort us to the Newark airport so we could avoid the hassle of parking and toting our luggage half a mile to the terminal. After we loaded our bags, we loaded ourselves into the Explorer and headed out to highway 1 toward Newark. When we got to the airport we offloaded our things, waved goodbye to Tank, and an hour later we were through check-in and security, boarding the plane that would deliver us to Miami. Ranger politely offered me the window seat and I accepted. I didn't want to miss the view of Miami when we arrived!
Three hours later, my dream changed from a tranquil walk on a pristine beach to plummeting toward the ground. I woke with a start, conveniently backhanding Ranger in the face with my knee-jerk reaction to a falling dream. It turns out that the plane was descending. That would make sense. I apologized profusely to Ranger, who just smiled that little amused smile and I turned my attention to the window to see a lot of blue-green water and skyscrapers not too far in the distance. A thrill of nervous anticipation ran through me. We weren't here on vacation and the business side of it wasn't especially attractive. Hopefully we'd find what we were looking for without too much of a hitch, but then that would make things too easy. I knew we were really in for it when we crossed the threshold into the airport and were immediately rushed by a pack of Latina women, swooning over Ranger.
"Ay, papi!" one of the barely dressed women said to him as she reached out to fondle his chest. Ranger kept walking without giving the women a second glance and I couldn't help but look behind me at the disappointed women after we'd walked past. Ya, that's right. He's with me, Icommunicated with my chin a little higher in the air. That was until I ran right into Ranger's back.
While I was busy gloating he had stopped to talk to two burly, dark skinned men dressed in all black. I knew they must have been some of Rangers men from the Miami branch. They greeted him in Spanish and shook hands. They handed him a car key and a piece of paper and disappeared like smoke in the air.
"What's with the paper?" I asked Ranger.
"Hotel reservation," he handed me the paper with the directions to the hotel. Well this was going to be fun. We were booked into the Setai in South Beach, which happened to be one of the various five-star hotels in the area. Oh boy.
We wound our way through the airport and out to a parking area where Ranger led me to a black Suburban. "What? No Porsche?"
"We'll blend better with this." I couldn't argue with that. Blending was good. Within thirty minutes we were cruising into the hotel parking lot. We checked into a two bedroom suite on the top floor. The accommodations were plush and luxurious. The sitting area was highlighted by modern cream and tan colored upholstery. The bedrooms were to one side, right next to each other, each containing elaborately carved queen size poster beds, armoires with more hand carved designs, benches and mahogany work desks. To the other side of the sitting room was a full kitchen and cherry wood dining table that seated four.
We set our suitcases in separate rooms and rendezvoused in the sitting room.
"We're going to take a two hour break to recuperate from the flight and then we'll set out to find Gurstmyer's parents' house. I've got a contact here that says they've located his former BFF, but I don't think it's going to be pretty."
"Why's that?" I asked.
"His friend is in the nut house. His ex-wife is living in the same house she was left in the divorce. We'll try to get a hold of her, too. If all goes well we can be back on the plane to Jersey this time tomorrow."
I took the information in stride and decided I could use a shower. I went to my room and set my suitcase on the bed to grab some fresh clothes. Next thing I knew someone was stroking my hair telling me to wake up.
"What?" I wasn't aware of having fallen asleep. "I have got to stop falling asleep out of nowhere. What time is it?" I looked at the clock on the nightstand. Two hours had passed already?
"Wow, this bed is almost as good as yours! It just sucked me right in."
"Babe, no bed is as good as mine," Ranger said with a half smile. I punched him in the arm.
"No ego on you at all."
"I never claimed to not be aware of my qualities," he lifted me off the bed and pinned me to him. He kissed me in a show of just how good some of his qualities were. A certain quality of his was poking into me. Just when I was getting to the point of dragging him down to the bed with me, he broke the kiss and moved toward the door. He looked back to me before he walked out of the room with a smug almost-smile.
"Ten minutes to freshen up." and he closed the door behind him. I stuck my tongue out at the door and set about getting ready.
We were driving down Biscayne Bay Boulevard with the air on full blast to squelch the smothering heat. Everywhere I looked on the street were immaculate homes that I couldn't imagine belonging to anyone but the rich and famous. Three story tropical mansions towered over the street, while others sat farther back, guarded with electric gates and security shacks at the entrances. We pulled into the driveway of one that had steel enforced gates. We identified ourselves to the guard and pulled into a circular drive, fountain on one side, sprawling two story Spanish colonial on the other. We got out of the car and walked together to the front door.
"Is this really Brody's parents house?"
"One and the same."
"Wow, they must have disowned him or something to make him leave all this behind." Ranger didn't comment, possibly because at that moment, an older Hispanic woman in a pale blue maid uniform was approaching. Ranger said something in Spanish and she reciprocated, waving her arm toward a decadent sitting area off the grandiose marble columned foyer.
We took a seat and waited until a man came to greet us. He had country club prep written all over him. His hair was balding on top, slicked back around that. He was dressed in pleated khaki shorts and a baby blue polo shirt with a white sweater wrapped around his shoulders. He stood half a head taller and about fifty pounds heavier than me and his skin was tan and creased from years in the sun. He looked gentle, but confident as did the woman who joined him a moment later. She was blonde, her hair pulled back in a severe crescent, wearing a knee length pink designer dress. We all shook hands and introduced ourselves as they ushered us back to the seats.
"What kind of trouble is our son in?" Mr. Gurstmyer asked, his face troubled.
"Were here because he seems to have cultivated an obsession for Stephanie." ranger told him. Mr. Gurstmyer took the information in, looking pensive, but not surprised.
"So what can we do?" Mrs. Gurstmyer looked from Ranger to me with wide, concerned eyes.
"We'd just like to get some background on him. What were his habits? His quirks? How did he relate to others?" Ranger said.
"Well, he was always kind of a strange kid. He used to collect stuffed animals, which we thought was normal enough until we found a stash under his bed one day. There were probably close to a hundred stuffed animals in there, all of them decapitated or mutilated in some way. We started taking him to a psychiatrist then. He told us that Brody was antisocial and this was his way of releasing pent-up aggression." I was trying my best not to shudder over the memories of the little surprises he'd left for me.
"I'm guessing that he didn't leave here under the best circumstances." I said. "What happened?"
"Well," Mrs. Gurstmyer started out, and she looked like she has to prepare herself to tell us something. After a minute of straightening out nonexistent creases in her dress, she finally continued. "We found out that Brody had been seeing a girl. We were trying to set him up with a girl from our social club. They'd been seeing each other for a little over a year and we discovered he'd been seeing another girl from a poor part of town. He'd tell us he was going out to study or out with friends and he'd sneak over to her house." Her face was mostly composed, but I thought I saw a twinge of regret.
"We told him he had to choose and if he made the wrong decision he would have to make his own way. So when he chose this other girl, we kicked him out. Within a week we were regretting it and we invited him over to try to make amends. Only when he got here, Sarah, the girl from the social club showed up and he accused us of setting him up." A small tear fell down her cheek as she sniffled and sucked in a deep breath. "When he saw Sarah, he just snapped. He was throwing things at us and screaming at us. He even tried to set the house on fire! He threw my bacon grease that was left over from breakfast on the lit stove." She was sobbing now. "We had to have the whole kitchen redone. It was horrible! For a whole month we couldn't eat anything but microwave meals! And we had to heat them up in the living room!" I had originally thought she was crying from love lost between a mother and her son. Now I wasn't so sure. I stood, "Well, thanks for everything. Nice to meet you. Sorry about all that." I was pulling Ranger to his feet. I power walked to the door, pulling him behind me. We got in the SUV and I breathed a sigh of relief as we left the house behind us.
"What's next on the agenda?" I asked Ranger.
"Now we're going to visit the BFF," he said, matter-of-factly. In about thirty minutes of crazy highway traffic, we pulled onto a mundane street with mundane businesses. Most of the buildings were white or cream colored stucco in this area with a few straggly palm trees dotting the street side. The buildings weren't exactly rundown, but they weren't brand new either. They were all discreetly marked with small plaques and maybe an ad in the window to announce the business. We passed a dentist office, a tax office, a general store and hung a left into the parking lot of a building that, other than the fact that this one had three stories instead of two, looked pretty much just like the others. The plaque by the door announced, "Several Clinic." We got out and entered the building where we met with a nondescript reception area. We asked to see Barney Kuffel and within minutes a nurse was ushering us back to his room. On the way we met Clyve, who let us know with no qualms that he wasn't happy with his dessert. His silver hair sprouted off his head in every which direction, reminding me of the professor from Back to the Future. His arms swung wildly over his head, like a monkey running wild. "How am I supposed to eat it? It's poisoned. It's all poisoned! They want to get rid of us all!," his spittle sprayed my face when he spoke.
"Clyve, no one is trying to kill you. You wouldn't be worth the effort." the nurse told him. I thought I heard her mumble something like,"Fucking crazies are gonna turn me into a nut." but she said it so low that I could've been wrong. She unlocked the door to a room and led us in.
"You've got some visitors. You aren't going to be any trouble are you?" the nurse asked the man I presumed was Barney. His hair was just about as crazy as Clyve's, but it was sandy brown and looked tousled from fingers running through it instead of naturally crazy. His face was flushed red and his eyes were glassy. His left foot was shackled to the foot of the bed. He shook his head "no" in answer to the nurse.
I got close to her and whispered, "Is there something we should be worried about?" I asked, pointing to his shackled foot.
"It was just a mess hall scuffle. He wanted to trade someone his sugar free pudding for their ice cream. He's diabetic so we have to watch his sugar intake." she explained to me. "The shackle is just a precaution." She showed herself out and left us alone with him.
"What can you tell us about Brody Gurstmyer?" Ranger asked him right off. A little while later we were leaving without much more information than we had come in with, other than the fact that they were both nuts. And I guess it was something that we had at least a first name for the girlfriend. Her name was Rachel, but he couldn't dredge up the last name, so that didn't narrow it down a whole lot.
Ranger was in his zone as we made our way back to the hotel. "I guess that wasn't too productive." I said.
"I don't know. I have a feeling. If I'm right, then this is bad." he said. "When I first met Rachel she had told me she had a stalker, but she just blew it off. Nothing serious. The guy would come up to her work and try to talk to her. She was working in the same neighborhood that Barney was talking about."
Panic briefly fluttered through me. "Do you really think there's a connection?" I asked.
"I don't know." Ranger dialed a number on his phone. "Rachel, I need to talk to you. Are you available right now?" He listened for a second more and disconnected. Before I knew it, we were in a modest neighborhood filled with well maintained ranch homes with big back yards, at least compared to the ones in the Burg. We pulled into the driveway of a house that was half light blue and gray brick, half light blue clapboard. There was a squat palm tree and boxy hedges lined the front of the house.