Ranger slept in and got up at seven the next morning, changed into his workout clothes and crept into the bathroom. When he finished getting ready for the day, he tiptoed back into the bedroom and whispered to me that he was going out for a run for an hour or two. I barely remembered telling him goodbye before I fell back to sleep again. I woke up to the sounds of him showering two hours later. Mary Lou was still asleep, and I crept into the kitchen to make some coffee. When Ranger got out of the shower, I poured him a cup and followed him into the bedroom to watch him get dressed.
"I have already dedicated a car for you to use."
"Thanks."
"What are you planning on doing with Mary Lou?"
"I'll give her today to recover from last night, and I guess I will have two partners when I go skip chasing this week."
"Do you think she'll be any good at it?"
"I don't know. She can't run and she can't fight. I don't think she's ever held a gun and the only wrestling she's done has been with Lenny when he gets amorous. So, she is about as qualified to be a bounty hunter as I am."
"Don't sell yourself short, babe. You're a good bounty hunter."
"I can get the easy ones. I wouldn't have been able to cope if I'd had to pick up Romeo by myself last night. I would have been in a lot of trouble. Thank you, once again, for being there."
"No problem", said Ranger. "If Vinnie bonds Romeo out again, I'd like to be in on that capture as well. I don't particularly want you walking in that neighborhood with just Lula as backup. Kanye could approach you again at any time."
"Way to make me nervous."
"I'm not trying to make you nervous. I'm trying to make you cautious. You need to be on your toes out there, and Kanye is bad news."
I swallowed hard.
Ranger finished his cup of coffee as there was a knock on the door, and he pulled his gun as he walked to the door and peeked out the peephole. He holstered his gun again and opened the door. Morelli walked in. "Hey", he said to Ranger.
Ranger smiled, and Morelli turned to me and gave me a kiss on the lips.
"Did you get any sleep last night?" I said to Joe.
"Some. I got in at three this morning."
"Do you want coffee?"
"Is the Pope Catholic?"
"I certainly hope so. My mother would be exceedingly disappointed if he wasn't. The whole foundation of everything she believed in would be brought into question."
Morelli laughed.
Ranger went back into the bedroom, and Morelli looked at me. "This is cozy", he said. "You and Ranger. Has he been to your parents for dinner yet?"
I sighed. I had been able to avoid taking him so far. Ranger had told me that he didn't mind going and would feel comfortable going any time, but I personally thought it was a lot to ask. My mother would ask him when he was marrying me and when he would be giving me babies, my grandmother would be asking me how he was in bed, my father would lament Ranger's choice to drive a foreign import, and my sister Valerie would ignore him in favor of the gravy boat. She was pregnant again, and gravy seemed to have magical properties when she was pregnant. She couldn't get enough of it. Judging by the size of her, she couldn't get enough of anything else either. I personally thought she looked more like she was having a baby elephant rather than a baby boy. All in all, going to my parents' didn't scream a good time out in my books.
I shook my head, and Morelli smiled. "You took him to Mary Lou's for dinner yet you haven't taken him home yet? That was a comfort-limiting move, cupcake. Your mother might even cut you off dessert for that one. No pineapple upside-down cake for you."
I sighed again. He was right. It was time to take Ranger home. I really didn't want to go without pineapple upside-down cake.
I poured him a coffee and fixed it the way he liked it, and topped up my own cup. "I'd ask you to sit on the sofa, but Mary Lou is sleeping there."
"Why is she here?" asked Morelli in surprise.
"She left Lenny last night. Something about her getting tired of him always having affairs on her."
"He's been having affairs on her since before they were married."
"That's what I told her."
"What changed for her? After all, she's been married to him for almost ten years. Why the sudden desire to be free of him?"
"I don't know, and she was too wasted last night to ask."
"How did she get here?"
"She drove and luckily didn't cause an accident. She wants to get a job skip chasing with Lula and me."
"Does Lula know this?"
"Not yet. I'll have to warn her before tomorrow."
"You already look like Lucy and Ethyl. Adding another bumbler to the group won't increase your professionalism."
"I know", I said. I didn't know what it was about Morelli, but whenever I spoke to him about my job I got my back up. He could make me ashamed of my ineptitude faster than anyone else that I had ever met.
Ranger came out with his gym bag of clothes, ready to take back to Rangeman for Ella to wash. He turned to Morelli. "What's happening on the case from last night?"
"I found Kanye. He wanted to put a formal complaint in about the fight that you had with him, but since he didn't start talking about that until after I brought up the conversation about Steph, I was able to bury your involvement as much as I could. He has been arrested for sexual assault and harassment for the way that Steph was treated, and I am running the names and faces of all his girls. I have found one already that is a missing person report that had been done three years ago. All his girls have been admitted to the hospital for support while they detox. This case has the potential to be huge. If all his girls were kidnapped, that will mean that we'll be able to clean up fifteen missing persons files. He will be going in front of a judge tomorrow for his bail hearing. I'll recommend that he isn't awarded bail."
I knew the chances of that happening were slight. The jails were too full to hold everyone waiting for their trial in addition to the people who had been sentenced. Judges were pressured to award bail to as many people as they could to reduce the impact on the jails, and in many cases where bail was awarded I agreed with the judge. For personal reasons, I didn't want Kanye to be one of them. For some reason, I felt nervous around him and that feeling wouldn't go away.
Morelli finished up his coffee and, as I prepared another cup for him, he pulled out a witness statement form and took Ranger's formal statement. "So you didn't hit him?" he said to Ranger after he listened to Ranger's account.
"I did punch him in the stomach and then in the nose", said Ranger, "at which point he fell and twisted his knee. I walked away. When he got up and attacked me, it was self-defense and I neutralized the threat."
"That's the story you're going with?" said Morelli.
Ranger's lips quirked up in a half-smile. "Absolutely."
Morelli chuckled. "Okay, then. I'll file my report." He took my statement, and turned to the both of us. "I'm keeping him behind bars until we have run all his girls through the system, but as I said he'll likely be awarded bail. We'll get him, cupcake, but you need to be careful."
Mary Lou yawned and stretched with a loud moan, and got to her feet to pad through to the kitchen. "How are you feeling?" I said.
"Hung over", said Mary Lou. "It was nice though. I didn't have the children yelling and screaming at six this morning to wake me up. I haven't slept this late in years. Do you have any ibuprofen?" she said.
I rummaged around in the cupboard and handed her a bottle, and she gratefully took two. She looked at the coffeepot and the bottle of ibuprofen, grimaced, and took two more. I put the bottle on the counter for her to take some later. I suspected her headache was multi-dose in size.
As Mary Lou poured herself a coffee and took a sip, she looked at Morelli. "I'm surprised to see you here."
"I was just taking Steph's statement for her kidnapping last night."
"Steph was kidnapped last night? She was here when I was here." She turned to Ranger. "How could you let her get kidnapped?"
Ranger paled as I said, "it wasn't Ranger's fault. He was taking a skip into the precinct and some other gangbangers that I had run into earlier in the day kidnapped me out of Ranger's car. He came out of the station and found me gone."
Mary Lou turned to Morelli. "How could you let that happen?"
Morelli paled. "It wasn't his fault", I said. "He was at home watching a Yankees game."
"Hunh", said Mary Lou. She turned to me. "What happened?"
"It's as I said. Earlier in the day I ran into a pimp who was determined to make me into a 'ho." I told her what had happened. She turned even whiter and, as I finished telling my story, she ran into the washroom and threw up her coffee. She came out again, her body shaking, and grabbed the ibuprofen bottle to take two more.
"Feel better?" I said.
Mary Lou groaned.
"Do you still want to go skip chasing with me?"
Mary Lou was still for a moment. "I'm not going to let a simple kidnapping scare me", she said. "If I can handle washing Lenny's tighty whities, I can handle anything."
"Washing his underwear is challenging?" Morelli said.
"Yeah, there's a reason I call him the shit whisperer", said Mary Lou.
