AN: I forgot to mention that the last chapter was dedicated to my husband who demanded that I start the story off with a little hijinx. Thank you to everyone for reading, and for following and reviewing! Usual disclaimers apply.
I woke up far too early on July 5th to Ranger getting out of bed.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I have to go handle something so that someone doesn't completely lose his fucking mind today."
"Sounds fun," I said.
"There's a pretty good chance I'm going to get puked on," Ranger said.
"I'm definitely not coming. If I do, they'll miss you and hit me," I said.
"I figured you'd say that," Ranger said. "I'll be back."
Ranger left, and I went back to sleep, only for the phone to ring thirty minutes later at 7:00 and I was seriously considering just throwing the phone across the room. I can't tell you how satisfying that would have been.
"Yo," I answered the phone.
"It's your mother," my mom said, sounding resigned. I think she was pretty much giving up on me. My telephone manners were regressing, and I think she's just happy I didn't answer the phone with "What?"
"Hi mom," I said. "What's up?"
"I'm at the library, and I'm having issues with my library card."
"What kind of issues?" I asked, also wondering what the hell the library card had to do with me. I didn't say that out loud. Mom was finally speaking to me again without sounding like she wanted to deny me desserts for the rest of my life.
"Apparently you didn't return a book you borrowed from me," she said. A book I'd borrowed? My first thought was that my mom was still drunk from the night before and had called me instead of Val this morning. I'm not exactly an avid reader, and mom and I don't exactly have the same taste in literature.
Mom was really big into romance novels, and frankly, they just pissed me off. All of these women thought they had complicated love lives and didn't have the first idea what complicated, meant. Val, on the other hand, loved them and she and mom often shared books.
Not to mention I was not good at recreational reading. What usually happened was that I would pick up a book at the end of the day and then I would pass out after reading half a page. It wasn't that I didn't find books interesting, it was just that I was usually wiped at the end of the day, and I was better at staring blankly at the television letting it think for me. And you can multitask while you watch TV. You can't do that while you read. Either you are reading, or you're doing other stuff. There was no in between.
"You have the wrong daughter," I said.
"No," she said, "I know who I called, Stephanie. You had the book. You borrowed it that time Joseph's cable was out, and you were going to sit at home all day waiting for the cable repairman."
I know precisely the time she was talking about. One of my upstairs neighbors had decided to have fireworks for her birthday party, forgetting that we lived in an apartment complex. She let off the fireworks and managed to blow up the fire escape, and she set fire to my apartment. I mean par for the course for me, really, so I'd moved in with Morelli. He was working a lot of double shifts, and his family was supposed to be coming over to watch Football at his house, but his cable was down. So he called the cable guy and made it worth my while to sit around for three days waiting for him to show up.
"Mom," I said, "That was two years ago."
"There are some overdue charges and the new lady at the library is not a very nice person," mom said. I heard grandma in the background say that she was an epic monster bitch.
"Mom," I said, "I can't go over to Joe's right now to get the book. He's got a…a friend over. It would be awkward."
"You left it at Joseph's house?" Mom asked.
"If I didn't take it back to the library, then yeah," I said, "But I'm sure I took it back."
"Well the computer says that you didn't," mom said. "She said we have to pay the fines and return the book, or pay the fines and replace the book."
"Well, what's the name of the book?" I asked. "I'll go pick it up at the bookstore, and return it."
"She won't tell me."
"She won't tell you?" I asked.
"She said she can't open the file because my account is frozen and she needs her boss's permission to do it, and he's out of town right now. All she can tell me is that the book is called, 'The W…'"
"The W…" I said.
"It's truncated on the menu screen, and she won't open it without her boss's permission."
"Won't or can't?"
"Won't," mom said. "She said that she's not sure if she's allowed to let me see the information because she's new and hasn't come across someone who they are going to send to collections. So she's not sure what she can tell me."
"How much are your fines?"
"$700," mom said.
"Holy f—cow."
"What's an f cow?"
"An autocorrect," I said.
"Your mouth autocorrected?" My mom said incredulously.
"Darn skippy," I said. I'd already dropped one f-bomb on her in the last twenty-four hours. I wasn't going to risk dropping another.
"Do you know anything else about the book?" I asked.
"She printed a color copy of the charge, and I can tell you that it's a blue cover with pink writing."
"What's it about?"
"I don't remember Stephanie, it was two years ago," mom said impatiently, "Could you just retrieve the book for me? Please?"
There are a lot of things I would rather do than interrupt Joe the morning after when he's probably hung over and has a friend over. For instance, the first thing that springs to mind is wiring my nipples to a car battery; I'd happily do that over going to his place right now.
"I'll go over this afternoon," I said. "Will that be soon enough?"
"No," mom said. "I needed to use the computers, and that's the whole reason I was at the library in the first place."
"Use grandma's," I said.
"I will not. It's too complicated, and all of these voices come out of it, and they all cuss a lot."
"Go home," I said, "I'll figure something out."
I hung up the phone and rolled out of bed. I went to the bathroom and didn't bother looking in the mirror before I got into the shower because I knew it wouldn't be good. I stood under the spray for a long time before I did anything to clean myself, and then I got out and tried to figure out what I was going to do with my appearance. I combed out the tangles in my hair, added some anti-frizz gunk, slathered on some mascara, and called it a job well done.
I put on a pair of cut off jeans that were a reasonable length, but not something my mom would wear, and pulled on a red stretchy tank top. I crammed my feet into some flipflops and put a hair elastic around my wrist just in case I needed it later. I went out to the kitchen where Lunch Box was standing on the counter glaring at the fruit bowl on top of the fridge, frustrated that he couldn't fly up there to massacre a banana.
I pulled down two bananas and gave half of one to Lunch Box, half to Rex, scratched Lunch Box's head and ate the second banana for myself. The banana wasn't my real breakfast, it was the snack that would tide me over until real breakfast. There were Fruity Pebbles in the cupboard, but I wasn't in the mood for them. We were running low on groceries, and by that I meant, crap I like to have in the house but feel bad asking Ella to pick up.
I grabbed a notepad that Ella kept in a drawer by the fridge, and I made myself a grocery list, and then called Ella and explained why I was going to the market, and she told me what else I needed to pick up. I put the list in my pocket, grabbed my shoulder bag from the counter, and shuffled out to the elevator that would take me to the garage.
I rooted around in my purse and came up with a set of keys to my dead Range Rover, and the keys to Ranger's new Porsche 918. Damn. I needed a new car. I knew I could go upstairs and find the keys to the Cayenne, or I could take one of the fleet vehicles. All I'd have to do is go upstairs and get a set of keys from Ranger's office. I had a fob that would get me in and everything, but I didn't want to do that. I didn't like taking the fleet vehicles when I wasn't working. I absolutely didn't want to drive Ranger's new baby, and he had the 911.
Ranger pulled into the garage while I was thinking about what I should do, and once he was parked, tossed me the keys to the Turbo.
"Long morning?" he asked.
"I need a car," I said.
"We have three," he said.
"No," I said, "You have three. If I drive one of these and call it mine, it's going to get destroyed in some flukey horrible way. They survive longer if I just borrow them from you."
"Your luck might be changing," Ranger said. "Where are you going?"
"The grocery store, an electronics store, a bookstore, and then my mother's. Wanna come?"
"Can it wait until after lunch?" He asked.
"Probably not," I said. "Meet me at the diner for food later?"
"Sounds good," Ranger said. He kissed me, and I got into the car. He was already on his phone befoe he stepped into the elevator. We had our honeymoon, and last night was fun, but it was back to work today. I sighed and pulled out of the garage.
My first stop was breakfast and bought myself a fried egg sandwich and a giant coffee. The bag that held my sandwich was small, and I felt a bit sad. Part of me missed the old days where I'd get doughnuts and then go hang out at the bonds office for a bit while I ate. Now the Bonds Office was home to my nemesis and my rodent of a cousin Vinnie. After I bailed him out a little while ago, he paid me back by taking on my least favorite person in the world, as partner. I quit on the spot, followed closely by Lula, and Connie. Lula was out of the gig entirely, and now working as a production consultant for our friend Sally Sweet, who also happened to be the father of her unborn baby.
Connie was working as office manager for Ranger, and while the pay was good, she got a lot more respect, and she didn't have to worry about her boss trying to grab her ass all of the time, she was dying of boredom. Her life would get a lot more interesting when Ranger got her some security clearance so she could handle some of the more exciting office issues, until then, she was stuck filing, sorting out pay and answering phones.
I drove to the Shop and Bag and got out of the sweet blissful air-conditioning utterly unprepared for the wall of humidity and heat outside of the car. It was four hundred times worse than the day before, and the sun felt about nine times brighter than it normally would have, thanks to the smoggy haze that hung in the air so thick that you almost needed a chainsaw to get through it.
I walked through the parking lot thankful that nothing that I was going to buy needed refrigeration and went into the store. I picked up a giant jar of cheese puffs that might cause alarms to go off at Haywood when I brought it in. To feel a little more virtuous, I added a bag of apples, a gigantic tub of peanut butter, a box of Corn Flakes, that I was going to use to cut my Frosted Flakes so I could tell Ranger that I was eating better, and a box of Rice Crispies. I grabbed a few other snacks while I was at it, and a big box of Freezies to shove in the freezer when I got home.
I lugged it all out to the car, and I put it into the trunk. By then Crystal's Computers was open, so I went inside, and looked around. I liked Crystal's computers. I went to high school with Crystal and she only up-sold people she didn't like or treated her like she was an idiot because she was a girl working in a computer store.
She was about 4'8" and compensated by wearing enormous, Big Bird yellow, platforms with absolutely everything. Today it was a pair of painted on acid wash jeans, and a Guns n Roses tank top. Her hair was a bit 80's pop star but so was mine now probably thanks to the humidity. Thinking about it, I wrestled my hair into a ponytail just because I figured it was about time that I did, before it got too unruly.
"What's up, Steph?" Crystal asked.
"Mom needs a computer," I said. "Grandma's scares her, and there is a new dragon guarding the library."
"She's great for business," Crystal said. "You're my ninth customer to come here because of that woman. I'm thinking of sending her a commission cheque. What's your mother's skill level like?"
"She says please and thank you to Google."
"Okay then," Crystal said. "What is she going to use it for?"
"Not a lot," I said. "Making photo books mostly from a website, and occasionally looking up recipes online, and paying bills."
"Okay," Crystal said. She hooked me up with a Microsoft Surface and then told me she was going to set it up with what she called the Burg special, which basically made everything super simple, so that even mom couldn't get confused by it, and told me to come back in an hour. My next stop was a used bookstore in the same plaza.
I got grandma to send me a picture of the cover of the book from the printout the woman at the library had given mom, and I showed it to the woman behind the counter. "Uhh, that's really hard to see," she said.
The picture was less than an inch tall. You could just make out the pink and blue of the cover. "The W?"
I explained the situation to her, and she shrugged, "Personally I'd just call the library when she's not working. Someone would get it for you."
"My mom wants me to recover the book today," I said. So we spent an hour going through all paperbacks that started with 'W' and came up with three possibilities. None of them rang a bell since I couldn't tell you what the book was about in the first place.
I bought all three for $10 and went back to Crystal to get mom's computer. If one of these books worked, then I was saved from having to go to Joe's place later today. With mom's new computer dealt with, I brought it into the car, and put it on the passenger seat, and turned the engine over. There was an indicator light on saying that the trunk was open. I got back out of the car and went to the back to see that a handle from one of the plastic grocery bags was around the latch thingie, so I untangled it and looked in the back to make sure there were no booby traps or anything like that.
All clear, I closed the trunk and drove over to my mother's, incident free.
When I got there, mom was standing on the porch talking to a woman who was wearing a chartreuse suit that I'm pretty sure the Queen of England would enjoy. She was wearing white gloves on her hands and had her little patent black handbag's handle hooked on her left arm. She was wearing thick tights, and shoes that matched her suit perfectly.
She was about ten years older than I was, and she had her hair cut like Jackie Kennedy, with enough hairspray in it to act as a helmet. I had absolutely no idea who she was, but when mom saw me, she waved at me impatiently to come over.
I'd parked on the street, so I jogged up the lawn, and up the steps. "This is my daughter Stephanie," mom said, "Stephanie, this is Bernadette Dickerson. She needs your help."
Bernadette looked at me, unsure if I really was my mother's daughter. I took more after my dad, and mom was much more conservatively dressed than I was, with perfectly pressed tan capris, and a petal pink sleeveless blouse.
"Stephanie is good at this sort of thing," mom was saying, "She does private investigations all the time. I know she doesn't look professional right now, but she's probably dressed to blend in for some assignment."
That was a big fat fib, and we all knew it. Mom was a terrible liar. I always dressed like this. "Why don't we go inside where it'll be cooler?" I said. Though to be totally honest it didn't exactly look like she was suffering despite the many layers she was sporting. We all went to sit down at the kitchen table, and mom produced some coffee and some coffee cake. Mom always had coffee or marble cake in case company came over, and if it weren't for the fat that she had me pick it up for her on more than one occasion, I might almost think that she had a private wormhole to the bakery, hiding in her pantry.
"Just tell Stephanie everything you told me," my mom said.
Bernadette Dickerson was the wife of my favorite middle school teacher, Waldo Dickerson. I always loved Mr. Dickerson because he was one of those teachers who genuinely seemed to care. Now I'd recently been burned by believing that a high school teacher beloved by the community could be faultless, so I was willing to listen, but I didn't really want to.
When I was ten, I convinced myself that I was invisible and tried to walk into the boys' bathroom, and I got caught. Mr. Dickerson heard about it from my sister who was absolutely mortified to be related to me, and he sent her home with a present for me. It was a book called, 'The Science of Super-Heroes,' And he'd written, Don't give up on your dreams. On the inside. So my tolerance for talking bad about him was pretty freaking low.
"About five years ago," Bernadette said, "I met Waldo on a cruise. He'd come into a little money and decided to go around the world. We met in Venice."
"Where are you from originally?" I asked.
"She's lived down the street for more or less your whole life Stephanie," mom said with a roll of her eyes,
"Oh she would have no reason to know me," Bernadette said. "Anyway, we hit it off on the cruise, and The Burg connection was something we laughed about a lot. We got married about three years ago, and we've been very happy. Only about six months ago, he started picking up some off-the-books tutoring work to bring in some extra money."
"Tutoring who?" I asked. She shrugged.
"Anyone who answered his ad I guess. He had a website set up and everything. Then about four months ago he started going out to help a student who could only meet after 8:00. I'm not an idiot, and of course I thought he was having an affair. Last night, I followed him after he left, and we went out towards Franklin, to this little village, called Steveston. He went to this house, and he was met at the door by a girl wearing nothing but a t-shirt and holding a glass of wine. And I mean girl. She couldn't have been more than sixteen. He went inside, and he was there for at least half an hour. I couldn't stay any longer because I couldn't take it anymore."
"Now you don't know that she was wearing only a t-shirt," mom said, "Some of these girls today are wearing shorts that are very short, and dresses that look like shirts. It's possible she's just a student."
"I know that, and I wouldn't even really be suspecting except, well, we haven't been intimate for months."
"Oh," mom said, "Oh dear. You do know that at fifty, things can sometimes… well, they might not exactly work. There are little pills that do wonders for that."
"And I asked if that was the problem, but he says it's not. He said that he's just been tired and that when he's got the energy, I'm always at work. He says we're just out of synch and if we didn't need the extra money, he wouldn't be tired all of the time."
"Why do you need the extra money?" I asked.
"Well that's just it," she said, "I don't know exactly. He started talking about it, and well I know I shouldn't have done it, but I'm an investment counselor at Trenton Mutual, and I have access to all sorts of information, and I ran a credit check on my husband, and he has no outstanding debt. And we're doing all right financially. I mean yes sometimes things are tight, and we really should consider getting a new car, but we're not in any sort of position to be worried about money."
"He's a middle school teacher," I said, "Aren't teachers chronically low on cash?"
"Yes," she said, "And he sets aside a large portion of his pay to buy books and supplies for his classroom, but I make enough to support us both."
"Maybe he wants to feel like he's contributing more?" Mom suggested.
"Look if it were just that he's stepping out on me, I wouldn't be bringing this to you," she said, "It's that I think he's committing a crime, and I can't have that on my conscience."
Mom nodded her understanding and patted Mrs. Dickerson's hand. Mrs. Dickerson looked at her watch. "I have to get back home before he does, or he'll suspect something." She handed me her business card. "Call my office if you find something."
"Okay," I said. There was no way I could turn this down or mom would kill me. Part of me wondered if I should call Joe to tell him about it, just in case there was a crime being committed, but I didn't want word to get out that Dickerson might be sleeping with a student. If he were innocent, his career would be ruined for nothing. Mom saw Mrs. Dickerson to the door and came back to her kitchen.
"That woman is insane if she thinks her husband is stepping out on her," mom said. "Waldo Dickerson is a very good man, and I flat out refuse to believe he'd be involved with a student. He's been teaching for twenty years, and there's never been so much as a whiff of a scandal about him."
"What about this money he came into?"
"His great aunt died, and apparently had a large life insurance policy that he was the sole beneficiary of."
"Why?"
"Because he mowed her lawns on weekends, and she was a crazy old bat who thought the $5 she insisted on giving him a week, was what kept his head above water financially. She took the insurance policy out so he wouldn't have to worry about the lack of additional income when she died."
"Really?" I said.
"Ask your grandmother," mom said. "She told me about it. Eileen got an excellent deal on the policy and mom was thinking about taking out a policy for herself and naming you the beneficiary because you were always broke. She thought she'd leave you the Buick and the policy."
"Val could use it more than I could," I said, "She has a thousand children, and her husband isn't exactly rolling in it."
"Which is more or less what I said to mom. Even at your poorest, you didn't have, and you had Joseph and Ranger if you needed them, and you could always move home if things got really desperate. What is Valerie going to do with her children? I love the girls, but they can't stay here. It would be a madhouse."
"Did grandma get that policy?"
"I don't know," mom said. "You'd have to ask her."
"Where is, grandma? I thought you were together at the library?"
"She's looking at a retirement community with that… Person."
'That person' being Balthazar Williams, grandma's long lost lover/ grandpa's rival in grandma's own personal love triangle back when she was my age. He'd come back into her life a few months ago, and she said that he was more or less a horse's ass, but he'd been like that when she knew him before, so really nothing had changed.
"Dad must be thrilled," I said.
"He's been whistling all morning."
"Is grandma seriously thinking about moving out?"
"No idea," mom said, "She's been saying this to humor him, but I don't know if it's actually going to happen. She can't really afford a place like this, but he says they can share a duplex, and he's got the money. I don't like it."
I didn't really have a comment. I didn't know how I felt about it. I mean it was fantastic that grandma seemed happy, but I didn't know if it was a good idea for her to be moving in with the guy. "So I got you a present today," I said, changing the subject.
"Oh?" Mom asked.
"Yeah," I said, "It's in the car. I'll be right back."
I jogged outside and noticed that the trunk was opened again. "Seriously?" I said. I closed it again, and it popped back open. That wasn't good. I shut it, and it opened immediately. I looked at the key fob and realized that the button for the trunk was a little crusty. That was weird. These were Ranger's keys. Everything Ranger owned always looked pristine. I scraped the crud off of the key fob with my fingernail, the button released, and when I closed the trunk, it actually stayed closed.
I went to the front seat to get the bag of books and the Surface and went back inside. I handed mom the books. "Are any of these your book?"
"No," mom said, "I don't think so."
She read the backs of them and shook her head. "No, I don't recognize them. They look interesting though."
"Keep them," I said.
"Is this my present?" Mom asked.
"No," I said. "This is. So you don't have to get past that battle-ax at the library."
I brought out the Surface and gave her a quick lesson on how to use it. When I left her, she was happily putting all of her recipes into a recipe box program she'd downloaded. I went out to the car and called Ranger.
"Still on for lunch?" I asked.
"I'll have Tank drop me off at the diner in ten," Ranger said. I put the car in gear and headed to the Diner beating Ranger by about two minutes and sat on the hood of the car waiting for him.
"Busy morning?" I asked when he got there. He kissed me stupid, and copped a feel of my ass, in the process.
"Very," he said. We walked into the diner and sat in our usual booth. "I might be going to Washington next month."
"For how long?" I asked.
"No idea," he said. "I'm thinking about getting an apartment there. It looks like I'm going to be going back an forth a lot. I was thinking you should come with me when I go. That way you can handle the Rangeman shit I usually have to deal with while I'm away."
"What do you usually do?" I asked.
"Tank fills me in when I have a free minute, and then I try to cram in the research, paperwork, and evaluations whenever I'm not in fucking meetings. It would make my life easier if you were there. I could tell you what I needed, and you could just do it, so all I have to do is read it later."
"You find it really really handy that I'm willing to do your paperwork, don't you," I said.
"You have no idea," he said. "And this way you have a reason to come to DC with me."
"Besides liking you a little and wanting to see you?"
"We both know that you'd go crazy if you didn't feel useful. You'd be happier at home, doing whatever you thought might be useful at Rangeman."
"Speaking of," I said, "I have a case, and I don't think she can afford our rates, but if I don't take it I'm pretty sure mom is going to disown me."
"What kind of case?"
"Cheating husband," I said.
"Your father's not cheating on your mother," Ranger said.
"No, not him. My middle school science teacher, Mr. Dickerson."
"Bernadette needs to up her meds," Ranger said.
"You know Bernadette Dickerson?" I said.
Ranger nodded. "I met her in New York before she got married. She used to be a wealth management consultant, and she handled some of my investments."
"Past tense?" I asked.
"She got sick," he said. "It's why she's always dressed like it's the middle of winter. The mercury could be in the triple digits, and she'd be cold. That's one of her milder symptoms. One of the things that bring on episodes is stress, so they recommended that she quit. She moved back to Trenton to live with her parents, and took up the same job at Trenton Mutual, but with fewer clients, and smaller portfolios."
"What makes you think Mr. Dickerson isn't cheating on her?"
"He loves her," Ranger said.
"You really are quite the romantic," I said.
"Yes," he said, "But that has nothing to do with my assessment of things. If you wanted to put pressure on Waldo Dickerson, all you'd have to do is hint at the possibility of hurting his wife, and he'd bend over backward and do literally anything to protect her."
"You know this how?"
"She was in a car accident a year or so ago, and she was in the hospital for about a week. He wanted to sue the man who caused the accident and for whatever reason, his insurance company wouldn't go for it. He asked me if there was anything I could do."
"Seriously? Like he wanted you to whack the guy?"
"More like intimidate him into paying for Bernadette's hospital bills."
"Did you?"
"No," Ranger said, "But I did make a phone call to their insurance provider so they would stop dragging their heels about paying her bills."
"Why wouldn't they pay the bills?"
"They claimed that her injuries were taking so long to heal due to her pre-existing condition, and because of that a procedure she needed wasn't going to be covered by their policy."
"What did you do?"
"Threatened to take my business elsewhere."
"Why would that work?"
"It would cost them more money to lose me than it would to just cough up the money for the procedure."
Considering that I was on his policy, I could buy that. "Do you think I should just leave it?"
"No," he said, "Give her some peace of mind, and if I'm wrong and he's having an affair with a student, take it to Morelli."
"Speaking of Morelli," I said. "Do you think Hector would be willing to hack the Library's computer?"
"Why?"
I filled him in on mom's book problem and the dragon at the library.
"What does that have to do with Morelli?" He asked.
"I think the book might be at his house," I said. "Chances are that if he was hammered last night, he's not up yet. If he is, he'll be pissy because he's hungover. I don't want to walk into that."
"Can it wait a day?"
"Yeah," I said, "But only because I'm 90% sure that book is history. I mean I've cleaned Morelli's place, and if I'd seen the book sometime in the last two years, I'd have taken it to the library, or at the very least shoved it in my handbag. And if I did that, it's really long gone. If I knew the title of the book, I could just replace the damn thing and get it over with."
"I think the woman at the library is on a bit of a power trip. Odds are that book has been written off already."
"That's what I was thinking, but mom is freaked out."
"I think hacking the library is a bit extreme," Ranger said. "A conversation explaining the situation might be all that you need."
He was right. My mom would have been too mortified over the lost book to think clearly, and my grandmother probably wasn't exactly helpful in the situation. If we went to the library, apologized for grandma, and told them what had probably happened to the book, she might be willing to bend the rules so we could pay the fine and replace it.
"So this morning, when you said you might get puked on," I said. "Did it actually happen?"
"No," he said. "She made it to the alley beside her building. Why?"
"Your keys were covered in something. The button for popping the trunk was stuck down, and I've been driving around all day with the trunk continuously opening. I fixed it, and it seems to be working now."
He held out his hand for the keys. Some of the crusty stuff was still on the keys, and he examined it for a minute. "It's adhesive," he said. "Have you left them unattended at all?"
"No," I said. "The keys have either been in my handbag, or in my pocket all morning."
"When did you first notice the problem?"
"I got an alert that the trunk was open after I bought mom's computer," I said.
"Walk me through your morning?" He said.
So I did. He tossed some bills onto the table and stood up. He motioned for me to follow him and we went to the car. He popped the trunk and looked through the groceries, "Did you forget peanut butter?"
"No," I said. "I know I bought peanut butter."
I fished out my receipt and handed it to Ranger, "See there. Peanut butter."
He did an inventory of the groceries, and said, "Only thing missing is the peanut butter. It didn't get its own bag?"
"No," I said. "Aw fuck he's back?"
"Looks like it," Ranger said. He pulled out his phone, and he made a call, he read off everything on the receipt and hung up the phone. A few minutes later Tank showed up and took my groceries out of the trunk, and put them in the back of his explorer.
"I want to know where Leitrim is, and I want to know the status of the restraining order. He's in violation of it," Ranger said.
Harvey Leitrim was a fan of mine. We don't know why, but he liked to steal my peanut butter, and he was slowly escalating on the creep scale. I mean it took balls to break into Ranger's Porsche to take my peanut butter.
"Ella's going to replace the groceries," Ranger said.
"What's Tank going to do with the ones I bought?"
"Probably feed it to the men. If they contain hallucinogens, it could make for an interesting afternoon."
"Babe," I said. He grinned.
