AN: Thanks to everyone who's reading, reviewing, sticking with me even though I haven't had the most regular publishing schedule... I really do appreciate it!
Ranger left me to wait in the classroom for Morelli, alone. He wanted to inform the principal that there was a dead body in the science room that shouldn't be there and that the police had been notified. He was also going to gently suggest installing real cameras on the entrances and exits to the school. I had a suspicion that the middle school was about to get considerable security upgrades, gratis. Partly because Angie was going to this school and she was family, and partly because it was good for his karma to protect the kids.
Joe walked into the classroom, his shirt rumpled as though he'd slept at his desk, and his jeans had that day two or three softness to them, that suggested it had been a while since he'd had a chance to change.
"Working a double?" I asked.
"More like a triple," Joe said. "There's a flu going around, and we're more shorthanded than usual. As soon as I leave here, I'm going home to eat something that isn't cold leftovers, and then I'm going to get into my bed and not leave it for at least 18 hours."
"And to think, the last time we met at a crime scene you were bragging about being well rested."
"Yeah, that statement really came round to bite me in the ass," Joe said, "So you think you've found Dickerson, in his classroom?"
"Well, what are the odds that another guy with a fake shoulder, a fake elbow, and the same injuries he had, would turn up in his classroom?"
"I'd say they were pretty slim," he said. "Why didn't you call Bucky?"
"Because I don't have Bucky's number in my phone."
"You haven't been all over this for the last few weeks?"
"No," I said. "Ranger asked me not to. You mean you don't know?"
"I've taken some personal leave," he said. "I just started back last week."
"Everything all right?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said, "It's great. I…"
We were interrupted by Joe's pocket suddenly sounding out, with a loud, "Scooby Doobie Doo!"
Joe laughed and pulled his phone out of his pocket, switched it to vibrate, and read a text message. It buzzed twice more and, he grinned as he wrote a response. His phone rang then, and he shook his head and answered with, "You know, I'm working."
He listened for a few minutes and then chuckled. It was his, I-know-I'm-going-to-get-laid, laugh and I rolled my eyes.
"Hello? Dead body?" I whispered.
He shrugged with mock innocence because the girl on the other end of the phone wouldn't let him get off of the damn thing. "I'd say that's a more than fair trade. Just leave your keys on the seat, there will be a bunch of uniforms here who'll keep an eye on your car. Yeah, I'll hold you to that."
He hung up his phone.
"Are you done?" I asked.
"My girlfriend wants to borrow my Jeep for a couple of hours. She's going to the hardware store, and her car is too small for what she needs to buy."
"You were having phone foreplay," I said.
"I promise you I wasn't. She was bribing me with food," Joe said, "You're just confused because you never called me for anything normal; it's always a dead body, work, something blowing up, one of our families has done something to freak you out, and you're slightly hysterical."
"That's not true," I said. "I called you for things like borrowing the car."
"You either stole it, or you texted," Joe said. "If you didn't call me for one of the aforementioned reasons, it was to check in after you'd done something crazy or were about to do something you knew I wasn't going to like."
I thought about it, and wow he was right. I don't know what a normal conversation with Joe is like on the phone.
"So you have a girlfriend," I said. Joe smirked at me because he totally knew I knew who he was sleeping with, but he was in a good mood and willing to play along.
"I do," he said.
"Is it serious?"
"It's looking that way," he said.
"Has she met the family yet?"
"Most of it," he said, "I've been keeping her away from Bella, but she's basically besties, with Tony."
"Is that a good thing?" I asked. The women in Joe's family were saints. Almost all of them were, with the possible exception of his grandma Bella who is a terrifying woman, and probably a witch. The men, on the other hand, were dogs, alcoholics, and had an inability to keep their hands and dicks to themselves. Joe was doing what he could to distance himself from his family's reputation, but Joe's brother Tony was doing his best to live up to it. Tony's wife once shot him in the ass with a nail gun because she caught him cheating. They were still together, but he'd moved on to other affairs.
"Yeah," he said. "She's not Tony's type, but she's kicking his ass in their fantasy baseball pool and does home inspections on the side when business is slow, so she's his kind of people."
Joe reached into his pocket and pulled out some latex gloves and handed me a pair. He put his on and examined the skeleton, "Remind me about this guy again. He was the muppets guy?" Joe asked.
"Yeah," I said, "He was shot, bludgeoned, stabbed and vacuumed."
"We should check to see if he was related to Rasputin," Joe said. "You're sure this was him?"
"No," I said, "But those are real bones."
"Why's he dressed like the Doctor?"
"Because Dickerson always dressed the skeleton like the outgoing Doctor as an homage."
"I don't know how I feel about that," Joe said. "Have you looked for anything else inside the Tardis?"
"Nope, just found the skeleton and called you," I said. Joe went into the cupboard and shone a flashlight around, and not really seeing anything, he closed it and called Bucky.
"Still behind a desk?" I asked when he got off of the phone.
"No," Joe said, "But this is Bucky's case. I know basically nothing about the investigation, except for what you've told me."
"I thought he was keeping you informed?"
"I took time off, remember?" Joe said. Ranger texted me to let me know he was going back to Rangeman to get some temporary security cameras and would be back in a bit. While we waited, Joe and I shot the shit, in a totally normal fashion. He looked really good. Yes, he was tired, needed a haircut and to spend some quality time with his razor, but he was smiling a lot, and there was something about his body language that I hadn't seen in a really long time.
"I'm trying to figure out if it's the time off, or your girlfriend's influence?" I said.
"What?"
"You don't look like you hate your job," I said. "It's been a while since you didn't look like you hated going to work."
"Pretty hard to hate your job when you get a case that involves both Doctor Who and the Muppets," he said. "Tell me you haven't been half expecting this pile of bones to turn into Jodie Whittaker?"
"I mean, would that be the weirdest thing to ever happen to me?" I asked.
Joe was about to reply when Bucky walked in, and I noted that Bucky wore really baggy jeans. Was it to accommodate his bear-like anatomy, or was it to add fuel to the myth?
"You're a pain in the ass," Bucky said, as he scowled at me and snapped on a pair of rubber gloves.
"Hey!" I said, "I've been nothing but co-operative since I started this."
"Do you know how many Muppet Baby costumes there are in the New York area?"
"No," I said, "But I wasn't the one who dressed up as one, so don't be pissed off at me."
"I read about you, and there are two things I know to be fact. The first is that you're a fucking magnet for this weird shit because you get all friendly with these weirdo types."
"Yeah, and?"
"It makes you a pain in the ass," Joe said, "Because there are all kinds of factors one needs to take into account. I mean were the Muppets after Dickerson or were they after you? History tells us that the odds favor them being after you, which means we would be wise to chase down any asshole who has a hate on for you this week, or a weird obsessive love…"
"We think Leitrim gave me a giant peanut butter statue of David for a wedding present," I said. "It has a big giant dong that a bunch of dogs fought over."
"I'd have paid to see that," Joe said.
"It's probably on YouTube."
"And then…" Bucky said, "There's the fact that on every case you've ever worked on with this idiot here, you've kept shit from him. You pretend to play all nicey-nice, but you only tell him half of the truth, and then you'll stumble across something and have to fill him in. When if you'd just told him the shit in the first place, you might have been able to get the case solved a million fucking years earlier."
"Actually," I said, "I was protecting him. If I tell him everything he gets heartburn, and his blood pressure goes up, and there's this vein in his forehead that starts to throb and gets so big it develops its own gravitational field. I'm worried that if I let it get too strong it's going to start sucking things up, and I don't want him to get bludgeoned by a mailbox while he's dealing with his acid reflux."
"Thanks for that, Cupcake," Joe said, "Now tell us what you're keeping from me this time."
"Nothing," I said. "I swear. I gave everything to Bucky and dropped it. I've spent the last few weeks doing research for a project Ranger is working on that isn't even remotely related to this."
"Why?" Joe asked. "You're like a Pit Bull with a bone when you have a case."
"Ranger asked me not to," I said.
"He just asked you not to, and you agreed to it?" Joe said.
"He said, 'please,'" I said with a shrug.
"So then how did you stumble on this?" Bucky asked.
So I told them about Angie's suspicions, and Joe frowned. "Is she all right?"
"She's a bit freaked out, but mostly just pissed off that nobody would listen to her," I said.
"I'll have to talk to her," Bucky said.
"No," Joe said. "I'll talk to her. She's scared, and she'll probably say more to me because she knows me."
"And she has a huge crush on you," I said.
"It's not me she likes," Joe said, "She's got a thing for one of my nephews."
"Guess again; she's in the gym right now with one of the Molnar boys," I said.
"She's lying to you," Joe said. "She's been going steady with my nephew since June. She probably told you it was one of Mary-Lou's kids, so you didn't flip out when she told you she's been necking with a Morelli."
"How the hell do you know that, when I don't?"
"Because I saw them at your reception," he said.
"Why the hell didn't you tell me?" I demanded.
"Because I was drunk and about to get laid," he said. "But we've wandered off topic, and if you bust Angie for what I've just told you, she's not going to say anything to any of us. Now, how the hell did she know what she was looking for?"
"History project that's due in October. She's investigating a crime from 1912 and recognized the head wounds as being similar to her victim's. I told her you'd give her a copy of the original case files, and maybe let her look at the evidence."
"Oh great," Joe said.
"It'll be a good way to get her to talk," I said.
"Who's the victim?" Joe asked.
"Stephanie Prune," I said, "She died on April 15, 1912."
"Are you fucking with me right now?" Joe said, "because I might be in a good mood, but that could change really damned fast."
"I promise, that's what she told me," I said, and crossed my heart.
"Why am I not reassured?" Joe asked.
"Because you're not that trusting," I suggested.
Joe brought in a crime scene team, and I made my exit and found Ranger waiting for me by the car.
"And?"
"He thinks it's Dickerson, too," I said. "I may have forgotten to tell him about Angie's forensic report, with all of its pictures of the skeleton and everything, because I seriously doubt he's going to share evidence with me."
"You're probably right," Ranger said, as he started the car. "What's your next move?"
"You're not going to ask me to back off? Things are still the same. There's still danger. Nothing has been resolved with your other thing."
"Angie's family, and she's involved now," Ranger said. "I doubt she's in any trouble, but I'd like this to be dealt with, fast."
"Okay," I said, "Well now we figure out where the hell the Muppets came from. Those costumes didn't look new, and maybe we see if we can't pull the accident report from the wreck that destroyed Dickerson's career."
"I'll look into the insurance angle," Ranger said. "Maybe there's something there."
When we got to Haywood, I went into my office, only to find it fully occupied by Minnie, Lester, Bobby, and Tank. "Uhh, guys?"
"Sorry Steph," Minnie said, "I needed more space than I have at my desk, and you've been using Ranger's office. We can relocate to the conference room."
"Don't worry about it; I'll just go home," I said. I grabbed my laptop from the desk and backed slowly out of the office. It looked like they were planning either a serious prank or some kind of serious military operation. I took the elevator upstairs, and parked on the sofa, and started searching the internet for Muppet Baby Costumes.
Now I like to think I'm an open-minded kind of person. I'm not a prude by nature, and I'm not particularly judgemental, but I did start to wonder what the world was coming to when I stumbled across Halloween costumes of Bert and Earnie, that were basically bootie shorts, and bras that Lula would find revealing. I mean the Big Bird costume that looked like a flapper dress, I could deal with, but there is a line you know?
I gave up a general internet search for Muppet Baby costumes because they were pissing me off, and getting me almost nowhere. What I did turn up, was that the outfits from the warehouse weren't right. All of our muppets were wearing diapers. The only one there that night who should have been wearing a diaper was Rowlf. In the original cartoon, Kermit wore a cute little sailor suit, Miss Piggy wore a pink dress with little bloomers, and Animal wore red shorts, a bonnet, and a yellow t-shirt.
It gave me a new angle to start searching, but for the hell of it, I decided to run a search in the federal crime databases to see if any other crimes had been committed by people dressed as Muppet Babies.
While it was running, I changed the focus of my internet search. The only muppet I got a good look at was Animal, so I started combing through pictures of old Parades, and theme park costumes. I started searching CosPlay, and made a list of costume rentals and went on Etsy and searched for Muppet Baby Costumes, looking only for homemade costumes.
For all of that, I got a lot of things that weren't anywhere close to the Animal I saw, and a crime report of Muppet Babies knocking over several jewelry stores. Sadly that happened in 1986, during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Miss Piggy and Gonzo snuck off, they said to go to the bathroom, but the police report said they suspected that they had snuck off to do something else. They were mugged, and their costumes stollen. The costumes were then used in a bunch of armed robberies, and collected again four days later, when one of the guys was found passed out drunk, in Queens, wearing the Gonzo head and smile.
This wasn't particularly useful information, but what I was able to glean from the report was that Gonzo wasn't accurate. The picture of the costume showed Gonzo wearing plain red overalls, but there was no yellow chicken on the front. There were no pictures of the Piggy costume in the report, and when I looked up pictures from the 1986 parade, I was unable to find any good shots of the other muppets, except for baby Rowlf.
I printed it off, and then out of a moment of sheer smart ass brilliance, I went online and found some other Rowlf the Dog cosplay pictures and put them in a lineup card. I was working my way through the list of costume suppliers, calling to ask if they had muppet baby costumes when Ranger came in.
I handed him the card. "Do you recognize any of these dogs?"
He smirked and looked at the lineup.
"This one," he said, and unbelievably pointed to the one from the 80's.
"You're joking," I said.
"No," he said, "Why?"
"You're sure that's the dog you saw?"
"Babe," he said.
"Okay, so that is a picture from the 1986 Thanksgiving Parade. From that same parade, Gonzo and Miss Piggy were mugged, their costumes stollen, and guys using those costumes went on a crime spree in Queens, knocking over jewelry and liquor stores."
"Interesting," he said. "Just Gonzo and Miss Piggy?"
"Yep."
"Is there more to the police report?"
"Nope," I said. "This is all that's made it online and no pictures of Miss Piggy."
Ranger made a call to get us access to the hard copy of the files, "It's a long shot, but if Rowlf the Dog is actually the costume you saw, then it's possible this is related."
"Maybe," Ranger said. "I'm going to say something now, that I know you're going to object to. In fact, I'm pretty sure you're going to decide it's important to get in the car and drive to Moonachie."
"What?" I said.
"If this is a parade costume, then we should contact the Macy's Parade Studio in Moonachie to see if they are missing some retired costumes."
"Will there be anyone there?"
"Babe, how long do you think it takes them to make the floats in the parade."
"A few months?"
"They start work on the next year's parade the afternoon after this year's ends."
I looked at him for a long minute. I've had some dreams in my life. Things I've wanted to do since I could remember. Develop Super Powers, win the lottery, own a luxury car that doesn't get blown up… You know the usual things, but I have ALWAYS wanted to be a balloon handler in the parade. Do I want to go see where the magic happens? Fuck yes I do.
"You know what?" I said. "If they can't even take the afternoon off on Thanksgiving because they are so crunched for time, it might be best if I let them multitask while they answer questions, and that's so hard to do on the phone. I mean I bet it's all loud, so speakerphone isn't a great idea…"
"Nice thinking on your feet," he said.
"I don't suppose you have an address in Moonachie for the Studio?" I said.
"It's on State Street," he said.
"Do you want to come with me?" I asked.
"No," he said. "As fun as that would be, I have to fly to Washington in an hour. I've got Minnie digging up all of the information he can find on anyone involved in Dickerson's insurance claims. There are four companies involved, and none seem to be connected in any way."
"Four?" There was his wife's claim from her accident, the life insurance policy, and the claim from his own accident. "What was the other one?"
"The driver of the car that hit him," Ranger said.
"And?"
"So far nothing. Minnie's doing deep background on the people involved."
"Does he have time for that, given the operation he's taken over my office with?"
"He's going to be a bit distracted, so you may have to keep on top of him," Ranger said.
"Seriously, what is he doing?"
"Traveling a little too far outside the box," Ranger said. He went into the bedroom and put together an overnight bag, and then he kissed me goodbye, leaving me to try to decide who I wanted to bring with me to the Parade Studio.