AN: Yay he's not dead! It was touch and go for a long time, but thank my husband for Waldo Dickerson still being alive. I've killed of characters he's liked too many times I guess so he fought for Mr. Dickerson, while I was on the fence. This chapter is a bit low on funny, but I'll make up for it, I promise!

"You're dead," I said. "I saw you get shot. I watched it happen."

He lifted up his shirt and showed off the scars from where he'd been shot and what was unmistakably a healed stab wound. "I got lucky."

"I'll say," I said. "Why did you fake your death?"

"It's not what you think. I was never going to do this to Bernadette. I didn't want to put her through this. I have a mould of my body from a few years ago. A friend of mine did it for me; he made it at that factory you found me in. Our plan was to make a realistic dummy of myself, one that could look like it was really wounded. This place, it makes things real enough to freak out a layman."

"I know, I used one of the heads as a distraction," I said.

"I always liked your resourcefulness. You may not know exactly what you're talking about all of the time; you could bullshit like nobody else I ever taught."

"Thanks," I said. "I think."

"It's a useful talent," he said. "Most of life is about bullshitting your way through things you don't understand."

"How did you end up dead?"

"This is the part that would be funny if it weren't so fucked up. We found a crack in the mould. My friend said we could use a fast hardening foam in the old mould and then use it to make a new mould for this ballistics material. We made it, and that's when the muppets came in. Kermit got the jump on me. He cracked me over the head with his gun, and I fought back. I had a knife, he wrestled it from me, and he stabbed me. Sometime during the fight, my friend split and hid. I don't blame him. Kermit and Animal tied me to the machine; they laughed about killing me and told me it was no less than I deserved. Then Kermit accidentally fired the gun, and someone else came in and gave them shit and said people were coming into the building. Then you showed up, and I don't remember anything else until I woke up in my friend's van.

He had hidden until the coast was clear; he dragged me off of the machine and put the new mould on it to look like they had successfully vacuumed me. He said he wanted them to think I was dead like we planned, so he planted the skeleton we were going to use in the dummy, in my classroom."

"Where'd you get the skeleton from?"

"A body farm," Dickerson said. "My friend works there now. He said they were getting ready to cremate a set of remains, so it would be easy to steal them without anyone noticing."

"Your friend is kind of creepy."

"My friend has vocational ADD," Mr. Dickerson said. "When I first met him, he was my dentist."

"Which is how your dental records were able to be faked."

"Yeah," he said. "I had no idea he was doing all of this until days later. As soon as I knew what he'd done, I tried to contact Abby to let her know I was alive. I needed to get word to Bernadette."

"She didn't want to believe you were dead, not from the moment we told her. It's because you told her."

"No," he said. "I never spoke to Abby; I left her a message on her voicemail, but the next day my friend's kid got an invitation to a muppet themed birthday party. He'd never heard of the kid, and neither had his son."

"What about your students?" My mom demanded. "You didn't think it would hurt them to think you were dead? You didn't think maybe you should do something about the skeleton in your classroom."

" It was my niece who figured it out. Nobody believed her," I said.

"Shit," he said. "That's not what I meant to happen. I thought the police would search the school before the students got back."

"Angie realized it was a real skeleton, and my husband and I went to check it out. We called the police."

"Why didn't they search my classroom before that?"

"Between us, I don't think the Detective in charge is doing more than phoning in the investigation."

"Figures," he snorted. Dickerson ran his hand over his face and swayed a little in his seat.

"You don't look so good," I said.

"I can't remember when I last slept," he said. "Every noise, every time I turn around, I'm expecting someone to be there. I'm being haunted by the fucking muppets. Do you know how wrong that is?"

I didn't really have an answer to that, so I handed him my coffee because his was empty. I wasn't sure if it was real or decaf, but Dickerson didn't seem to care either way. I think the coffee was something to do with his hands.

When he had recovered a bit, I started asking more questions. "Was that you in the restaurant in Boston?"

"Yes," he said. "I recognized Joseph Morelli leaving the restaurant, and I was afraid he'd recognize me, so I left before Sadie showed. I don't want the police involved."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I don't trust them, Stephanie," he said. "First with Abby, and then with the accident… They did nothing. They are doing nothing now. I mean, a man goes missing, and you don't look for evidence in his classroom? You don't extensively question his friends and family? And then there's Bernadette..."

"She's not been told that we think you're dead. She thinks your missing. We didn't think she was well enough to know the truth," I said.

"I think it would do you both a world of good if you did see her," Mom said. "I've been visiting her daily. She's getting better, but she's still very frail."

"I'd love to see her," he said. "But as long as those fucking muppets think I'm dead, she's safe. If they find out I'm alive..."

"Why have you come to us now?" I asked, "What's changed?"

"Abby left a message at the restaurant, telling me to check an email account she'd made up for me."

"How did you know to check the restaurant?" I asked.

"I decided to keep my date with Sadie at the restaurant. We never sign our emails to each other, so I thought it might be safe to contact her. Sadie is the least punctual person on the planet. If she's going to be late, she calls and leaves messages with the maitre'd. When she didn't show up, I knew she would have called, and I had to make sure that she was okay. This morning I went to the restaurant and asked if there had been messages left for me, and they gave me Abby's," Dickerson said. " Steph, I came here because I knew I could trust your parents, but I'm feeling very exposed, and I don't want to put them in any danger by staying here too long."

"I'll take you back to the office," I said. "The building is secure, you'll be able to get some sleep, and our medic will look after you."

I took Mr. Dickerson out to my car. His hands shook as he opened the door, and the moment he was in the car, he crouched down in the passenger seat and pulled a hat down over his eyes.

"A former classmate of ours told us that we should look into Ed Settle, Gary Gadson, John Lewis, and Jerry Carruso," I said. "Do you think it could be them?"

"Jerry used to always be Kermit when we put on those stupid costumes. But it can't be him, because he's dead. Greg Neudendorf was always Animal. The other guys didn't like putting on the muppet costumes unless they had to, and there was always a fight over who had to be Piggy. You think it's them?"

"Who else could it be?"

We drove back to the office, and I swiped my fob to get us into the garage. As the gate rolled up, I felt Mr. Dickerson draw in a breath. I knew what was going through his head. He was seconds away from safety, and he was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. He exhaled as the gates came down behind us, and we pulled into my parking space. Ranger was waiting for us in the garage.

"I saw you come in with a passenger," Ranger said when I got out of the car. Mr. Dickerson was still in the passenger seat. "I don't like it when you bring home strays without checking with me first."

"It's Mr. Dickerson. He was at my mother's house. He's in rough shape, Ranger."

Ranger went to the car door and opened it. "I'm glad you decided to come in. You should have come to me when this shit started up again."

"A man should be able to protect his own wife," Mr. Dickerson said.

"That task alone consumes most of my waking hours," Ranger said.

"I'd like to argue, but unfortunately, that's probably true," I said.

"Babe." He was right. There was no probably about it.

Ranger helped Mr. Dickerson out, and we went straight to the third floor and the infirmary. Bobby was gearing up to do his shift on the Kazinsky house, so he looked more Commando than medic. The only reason Mr. Dickerson didn't get paler at the sight of him was that he was already chalk white, to begin with. He looked like he was going to faint.

Bobby shrugged off his kevlar, and traded it for a stethoscope, and had us bring Mr. Dickerson into his exam room. They got Mr. Dickerson into a hospital gown while I had my back turned and got him onto the bed. Bobby examined Mr. Dickerson and started an IV in a stick he'd put in the man's elbow instead of the back of his hand. "Are you allergic to anything? Taking any meds for pain?"

Mr. Dickerson shook his head no, and Bobby injected something into the bag then shooed us out of the room.

"He's very dehydrated," Bobby said. "And he's exhausted."

"What about his wounds?" I asked.

"From what I can see, they look like they are healing well," Bobby said. "I'm sure they still hurt like a bitch, though. I've given him some painkillers to deal with it. It should knock him out for a bit, which is good because he needs it."

"Do you think he needs a doctor?" I asked.

"At this point, his vitals aren't worrying me. If that changes, I'll take him to the hospital. I'm going to keep giving him fluids and keep an eye on his blood pressure, but honestly? Sleep is a great healer, and he needs a lot of it. Physically, I'm sure he'll be fine. He's been through the wringer so mentally, he'll probably be fucked up for a while."

"If you have to take him to the hospital, I want him under a full guard," Ranger said.

"Thanks, Bobby," I said. Ranger and I left Mr. Dickerson in Bobby's care and went up to the apartment where I promptly filled Ranger in on the planned death faking.

"Did he say who this man who helped him was? Or which body farm?" Ranger asked.

"No," I said.

"So we have no new leads," Ranger said.

"Only that one of our suspects is dead," I said. "But I don't know the circumstances. We also know that Greg Neudendorf was probably in the Animal Costume. Though I doubt we'll be able to prove it."

My phone rang, and I saw Morelli's name. "Should we tell him what we know?"

"Yes," Ranger said, "But not here."

"Hi, Cupcake," I said when I answered the phone.

"I'm not in the mood for cute, Stephanie. Molly said you had some bookies logs and were asking about statistics. This comes on the heels of you asking her to go to Boston to do some spying for you. Want to tell me what the hell this is all about? Because I hear that you're asking questions about baseball stats, which starts me thinking about Waldo Dickerson. A case you said you'd back off from. Clearly, you haven't, and I want to know what the hell is going on."

"Ranger and I were just saying it was time to bring you into the loop. Some new evidence has come up that you need to know about."

"I'll be right over."

"No," I said. "That's really not a good idea. Why don't we come to you? Make it look like a friendly dinner party."

"Hang on," Joe said. He muffled the phone, and I guess he was consulting with Molly. "You're lucky I like you. We were going to have meatloaf tonight."

"I like meatloaf," I said.

"But Ranger doesn't. Apparently, she's changing the menu to suit him."

"Oh relax," Molly said in the background, "You're getting meatloaf in your lunch tomorrow, and you like it better the next day anyway."

Joe disconnected, and I looked at Ranger. "I thought she didn't like you?"

"She has a lot of manners," Ranger said.

I made Ranger stop at the bakery on the way to Morelli's, and picked up a box of Italian cookies that I knew were a hit with Joe, and then we drove to Morelli's. If anyone was watching from the street, and there were probably a few people looking and maybe tweeting about us, they would have seen Ranger, and I greeted at the door by Joe and Molly. It all looked exceptionally normal if you didn't know that Molly and Ranger were on cordial terms only, and Joe and I were almost engaged, and there had been repeated instances of Joe and Ranger fighting over me.

"Dinner is going to be another ten minutes," Molly said as she let us in, "I'll grab you some beer and then hide in the kitchen while you talk."

"You're allowed to sit in," Ranger said. "We trust you."

"I get that," she said, "But it's a question of wanting to get involved, and honestly, right now, I have enough excitement in my life."

"We may need your help with some of the math," Ranger said.

"That I can do," she said. "But seriously, I don't want to know."

"We don't need her," I said, "No offence, Molly."

"None taken," she said.

"We have someone who can do this Math. We don't need Lester or Molly now. Hell, we probably don't need Minnie and Julie doing what they're doing."

"Care to explain?" Joe asked.

"Bye," Molly said brightly, and we walked to the living room while she retreated to the kitchen. As soon as she was out of the room, I turned to Joe.

"Waldo Dickerson is alive."

"No," he said. "Waldo Dickerson is in the morgue as a thoroughly cleaned skeleton. We proved that."

"Yeah," I said. "About that? He faked his death. The skeleton is someone from a body farm, and his dentist was in cahoots with him."

"Sit down, start from the beginning," Joe said. Any second he was going to reach for his Maalox. I wondered if Molly knew he kept a case of it for when he had to deal with me?

"So when Bucky bitched about the muppet costumes, I did some research of my own and found out that there weren't a lot of cases involving muppets, according to what was on the internet. There was a muppet thing that happened in New York during the Macy's parade a looong time ago, and I showed Ranger a lineup of Rowlf the Dog, and he picked out the one from the parade."

"Okay," Joe said.

"So I went and questioned the people at the parade headquarters with Lula, and we learned that they actually weren't officially part of the parade, but some students from Dickerson's alma mater who had crashed in order to get the school into the papers."

"I have a question," Joe said.

"Okay."

"You went to Parade Headquarters with Lula?"

"Yeah."

"Is there going to be a parade this year? Or is the facility in ruins now?"

"Fuck off," I said. "Do you want to hear this or not?"

"Go on," Joe said.

So I told him about the van, the trip to Boston, having to leave Boston because Neudendorf thought I'd thrown a real head, and not wanting to go to jail over a Halloween prop. I told him about the peanut butter David and how my stalker had pictures of the same van from the gas station and the Linton University Muppets. I told them about Sadie, and Abby, and Waldo, all giving their stories. "He doesn't want the police involved. He says that they have never done anything for him, and he didn't think they would start now. And he's right," I said.

"He's not right," Joe said, "Bucky is a good cop; he's working on this."

"Oh?" I said. "When we were in Boston, I asked about the Linton University Muppets. I was called a pain in the ass because of it. Apparently, they have big boxes of files of students breaking laws and vandalizing shit dressed as muppets because the costumes are used during Rush week. Now it's possible that none of those files are on the internet because the cases get dismissed almost always. It's more likely that I forgot to include the Boston area in my search. However, if you're Bucky, and you're a Detective in Boston, and you're aware of the muppet thing, and you come across a case involving muppets, isn't the very first thing you're going to do is at least place a call to BPD to get a 20 on the muppets you know about? Especially if those same Muppets have a connection to the victim?"

"Yeah," Joe said.

"Bucky is sitting on his thumbs, Joe. He's paying lip service to the investigation, but he's not doing anything. I found out more in a day than he has in weeks. Using mostly Google. Seriously."

"You're right," Joe said.

Molly came in with our beer, "I really don't want to know the context, but you're talking about Bucky?" She asked.

"Yeah," Joe said.

"You ever talk to Eddie about him?" Molly asked.

"No," Joe said.

"You should," Molly said. "Eddie doesn't like him. He thinks he's as useless as tits on a bull. Rumour has it he was shunted to Trenton from Boston because nobody wanted to work with him."

"How are you hearing this shit, and I'm not?" Joe asked.

"You've been acting Captain a lot of the time," Molly said. "You're basically The Man. How often do you bitch to your superiors about your colleagues unless they do something really heinous?"

"Never," Joe said.

"I only know because Shirley told me that Bucky's been trying to pawn off cases on Eddie. Something about Bucky claiming he has too much on his plate right now. Eddie won't take them, and Bucky's starting to be a tit about it."

"Eddie has so much work right now that I don't think he sleeps anymore. He basically a robot fuelled by caffeine."

Molly shrugged. "I think Shirley told me so that you would do something about Bucky. Probably he's not the only one of your detectives who is having issues with Bucky being lazy."

Joe groaned. "Fuck. I'm one of them, for Christ's sake."

"You get paid more because you did pass that exam," Molly said.

"Fine, I'll look into Bucky, and if I have to, I'll bring it to Captain Hodges. In the meantime, I'll have the Muppets reassigned to me."

"The mupp… nope, I don't want to know!" Molly said, and went back to the kitchen.

The same thing that was teasing at the tip of my brain started nagging me again, and I said, "Don't let Bucky know."

"Why?" Joe asked.

"I dunno," I said. "Just a gut feeling."

"If I have the case reassigned to me, Bucky will learn about it. I can arrange it so that it sounds like Captain Hodges is giving it to me because I deal with your shit all of the time, and he wants fresher, more experienced eyes on the case."

"Okay," I said. I wasn't okay with it. Molly's declaration that Eddie didn't like Bucky kind of tripped that nagging feeling in my brain even further. Something was wrong. I needed to get back to my computer. The desire to bail was strong, and I was just going through the motions of socializing until Molly brought dinner out to the dining room. She had fresh bread on the table that I couldn't fathom how I'd not smelled before, and a seafood soup that looked amazing.

"You just happened to have the ingredients for Bouillabaisse," Ranger said as we sat down.

"We were going to have it for dinner tomorrow night when Joe's mother came for dinner. I'll have to re-think that menu now. But I already had the stock made, and I know you like it."

"I assume it's the recipe from that place?" Ranger asked.

"Of course," Molly said. "It's the best in Paris."

"What are we missing?" I asked.

"Although Ric and I never actually hung out together when I lived in France, we both happened to like the same restaurant, and whenever Ric goes there, he gets the Bouillabaisse. I liked to branch out a bit, but this was definitely one of the best things on their menu."

It was as good as it looked, made better because I suspected that things between Ranger and Molly weren't nearly as tense as they had been even a month ago. That was a good thing. Ranger was on the outs with a lot of his family, and for the most part, he had no guilt about it. The people he cared about most cared about him back, and that's what mattered. Molly was the exception to that rule. I knew he cared about her deeply and that it bothered him that she still didn't trust him. I didn't exactly blame her, he'd been a complete dick to her, and it was one of his many regrets.

After the soup, there was another course to come, more fish that she called Sole Meunière served with grilled vegetables. For dessert, we had the cookies I brought and some of Molly's coffee. The food was so good, there was little conversation. Ranger asked Molly about her store, Joe and I talked about Bob and his love of the craters in the backyard and how he'd been an enthusiastic digger when they were fixing the foundation.

Full and out of ideas for conversation, I offered to help with the dishes, Molly and Joe declined, and Ranger and I left. We were almost back at Rangeman when my brain finally decided it was tired of me not paying attention to the subconscious nudges and brought what was bothering me into my conscious mind.

"Why did Bucky ask me about costumes in New York?" I said, and Ranger glanced at me.

"When?"

"When we found Dickerson's skeleton," I said. "Bucky said, 'you're a pain in the ass. Do you know how many muppet costumes there are in New York?' Why would he be looking in New York? Why not New Jersey? Why not Boston? Why New York? What's special about New York?"

"I couldn't tell you," Ranger said.

"I need to look into the men from the scandal. I need to know how Jerry Caruso died, and I need to know more about the people involved in that case."

We got back to the office and pulled Minnie and Julie off of the data entry since we didn't really need them to do it anymore; now that we had Dickerson. I went into my office and started digging.

Ed Settle lived in Trenton. He had no kids, had never married, and was currently employed at the Button Factory. After he'd been kicked off of the team, he was expelled. He moved to Trenton for whatever reason, and aside from a couple of busts for possession of Mary Jane, he'd lived a quiet, if apparently dull, life.

I took down his name and address and moved on to Gary Gadson. Gary had not been expelled as I had been told. Apparently, Gary did his own homework and was a decent student. They let him stay at the school, but he lost his scholarship. He graduated and sold used cars in…huh, Newark. Now that was strange. What were the odds that three of the men involved in the scandal had moved to New Jersey?

I was wrong; it wasn't three guys, it was four. John Lewis lived in New Jersey as well, though he lived in Cape May. John had been expelled with the rest of them, but his father paid his way into Princeton, and nobody said a word about it. A little more digging, and I learned that John Lewis's father, Justin, was the reason behind Gary and Ed's relocation to the Garden State. It turned out that he'd found them all jobs. Ed had not always worked at the Button Factory but had, at one point, worked as the floor manager in one of Justin Lewis's factories before he'd been fired for unspecified reasons. Reasons I would ask him about in the morning when I drove out to the Button Factory to speak to him.

The last one, Jerry Caruso, was the one who had no safety net. I don't know why John Lewis didn't step in to help him. Again something I'd have to ask Ed Settle about in the morning. Jerry, like Mr. Dickerson, had been a shoo-in for the bigs. In fact, when he'd been expelled, Harvard snapped him up. Shortly after that, Jerry married his longtime girlfriend, Debbie Maddox. Only Jerry was under so much scrutiny from the league that he was not only watched very carefully when he wasn't playing ball, he was drug tested after every game. What had not come out in the old scandal was that Jerry took a lot of Steroids while he was at Linton. Something they discovered at Harvard when his stats started to slump; the result was that he was kicked off of the team. Shortly after that, he was kicked out of school, and six months later, he and Debbie were found dead in their New York apartment of heroin overdoses.

Morelli said he was going to look into Bucky, and I trusted Joe, but I didn't want to wait for him to tell me what was up with him. I pulled up Bucky's police record and saw that he did have a decent closure percentage, but his caseload was smaller than anyone else's in Boston. I also learned that he had done his stint as a rookie in New York City before moving to Boston. Now all I need to know was why?

I didn't know anyone in New York who could dig into Bucky for me, but I was betting Ranger did. I showed him what I found, and he placed a call. Now, all we had to do was wait.