AN: So I have news. I picked up a backpack the other day and pulled something in my wrist. The doctor is pretty sure it's tendonitis, and the backpack was just the tipping point for my tendons to tell me where to go. So the good news first. I have this chapter and two chapters of Molly, all ready to go. The bad news is that I'm in a splint for two to three weeks, and banned from typing with my left hand. So I'm going to take a little break. I'm going to finish both stories, I just have to get my left hand back. See you soon!
Rangeman in Boston wasn't like Rangeman anywhere else. It was Ranger's main training facility. It was set up more like a military base than an office complex. The office building itself was small, squat, and grey. New recruits and contract workers lived in a small dormitory-style unit, with communal kitchen and shower facilities.
The permanent staff that lived in residence lived in small one bedroom veteran style homes, with little yards, but no driveways. All cars were parked in an underground lot under the office building. I didn't have a fob for this lot, as Ranger had recently changed all of them, but I did have keys to the house, so I pulled up in front, and considered it.
I'd never actually stayed in the house; I'd just visited. It was kind of charming in a utilitarian sort of way. There was a simple peaked roof with a small chimney coming out of it. It had pristine white siding, and two small gardens on either side of the walk. And it looked like every other house on the street.
I used my key to let myself in and looked around. The kitchen was small, with only about three feet of counter space next to a sink. There was a range, with a bank of drawers next to it, and three upper cabinets. I opened these to find a few dishes, but not enough for entertaining more than one other person. The fridge had been stocked and the one pantry cupboard contained a box of Cocoa Puffs, a jar of peanut butter, and a loaf of white bread.
I grinned. Ella must have called to say I was coming. I took my bags to the bedroom and found a king sized bed, and walk-in closet, but no ensuite bathroom. There wasn't really any need for it in the little house. I tossed my bags into the closet and walked out. The great room was home to a small home office, a small bistro table, with two dining chairs, and a love seat that pointed at a small flatscreen television.
It had been a long drive, and in the quiet of the little house that was still bigger than my old apartment, I laid out all of my research, and chose the best pictures of the muppets to bring with me to the University in the morning, and then decided to stop working.
I had a bowl of cereal for dinner, and paired it with a beer from the fridge, and took the audiobook I'd been listening to in the car on my way out to Boston, into the bathroom to finish it before I went to bed. I drew myself a hot bath and had just stretched out in the tub when Ranger walked in, and I nearly had a heart attack.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked, "You're supposed to be in DC."
"I finished and had some work to do here before I came home. You're a nice surprise. Why are you here?"
"I'm here to see the costumes. If the Muppets here turned out to be the ones from our murder, then I was going to call your guys to have them come pick them up and take them back to Trenton."
"Do we have confirmation that it's Dickerson?"
"Joe told me this morning that the dental records matched," I said. "And Bucky isn't doing a damn thing. And do you know what's weird? Dickerson did a lot, for a lot of kids, and everyone is just accepting his disappearance. Usually, when it's a pillar of the community, it doesn't seem to matter what side of the law they are, if something goes down, the masses end up howling for justice. As far as I know, the only ones who really give a rat's ass that Mr. Dickerson is gone, are his wife, and my family."
"Have you run background on Buckerson?"
"I haven't," I said. "Joe likes him."
"Morelli has a lot on his plate at the moment," Ranger said, "He's not going to look too hard at a man who's doing his job. If he has a lot of open cases, and he thinks this one is a low priority because it's cold, Morelli's not really going to question it."
"Joe ran some plates for me today."
I filled him in on the van and my run in with Leitrim.
"Who do the plates belong to?" Ranger asked.
"One is registered to a 2016 Ford Fiesta that was stolen last year, and the second set of plates belongs to Pontiac Super Chief. The Super Chief, according to Joe, is sitting in a driveway on Joe's street and belongs to a 98-year-old man named Waylon Casey. Waylon has dementia and cataracts. On Saturdays his daughter and her husband come over and hang a sheet on his garage door, so he thinks he's at a drive-in. They watch old movies that are projected onto the screen and then on Sunday mornings, the son-in-law helps him wash the car."
"Have you run the daughter and the son-in-law?"
"Yeah," I said. "The report should be on my computer, but I haven't looked at it yet."
Ranger got up and retrieved my laptop. "Squeaky clean," he said. "Up to their ears in debt but handling it. No connection to the victim. Too old to have been taught by him in middle school, and their kids don't attend school in the district."
"Which to me suggests that someone in the Burg has to be involved. I mean it's probably no secret that Waylon loves his car, but he's not going to notice if it's missing its plates for a few days in the week."
"Are the plates currently on the car?"
"No," I said, "But only because Morelli has them being processed for evidence at the moment. So far there are no prints on the either of the plates or the exterior of the car, which is no surprise if it's been washed several times since then."
"Nope," he said. "So a dead end."
"Pretty much," I said.
He put my laptop down on the counter and sat on the edge of the bathtub. "I have to work tonight, but if you want company tomorrow when you go to the University, I should be available."
"Are you flying back, or are you going to ride with me?"
"I'll drive back with you," he said. "It's probably quicker than flying commercially."
"Okay," I said. "When are you heading out?"
"In about five minutes. I just came in to drop off my bag and grab something quick to eat."
He was looking at me like I was on the menu, and I wasn't entirely sure he had time for the sort of meal he had in mind. He grinned as he read my mind, and then sighed, "You're right, I don't have time, but maybe when I get back."
"Probably I'm not going to be in the bath anymore," I said.
"If you could arrange to be similarly dressed, it'll work for me."
He bent and kissed me, and then pulled me to my feet and grabbed a towel. He wrapped it around me, and we went out to the living room. He made himself a sandwich and looked at my mess.
"Shush," I said. "My office is filled with Minnie, and his caper, Julie, Rex, and Lunch Box have taken over the apartment. My old place has been sublet, and if you came back to my organizational structure on your desk, you'd have an aneurysm."
"Why has Julie taken over the apartment?"
"She was lonely in her little place because Minnie has been playing Danny Ocean in my office since you left."
"She was supposed to start work today," he said.
"She did. She and Connie were doing something with Sharepoint when I left. No idea what. She's hanging with Ella tonight, and I do feel bad for leaving her alone, but I needed to think before this case actually goes cold."
"The good news is the house is almost finished, so you won't have this problem anymore."
We were in the process of building a house. Ranger assured me that it wasn't taking for-frigging-ever. In fact, he said that things were going relatively smoothly, and very quickly. To me, it felt like it was taking a million years. Weeks and weeks of planning the layout of the building and not just from an aesthetic point of view. Captain Paranoid was building a house, with Scooby Doo. You'd better believe it was basically going to be Fort Knox disguised as a 2000 square foot bungalow.
I grabbed a shirt from my bag, and I pulled it on, "Do you buy Leitrim's story?" I asked.
"That he's a dickhole? I might not have phrased it that way, but the sentiments are the same."
"How would you have phrased it?"
"It doesn't translate," Ranger said. "I'm not happy that he's violating the restraining order, and I don't really care what his motivations are. I'm more interested in this van. There can't be many left in the US period, let alone New Jersey. It shouldn't take us long to track down, which means these guys aren't professionals. Look up how long it was in production and maybe we can narrow down the model year?"
I did a quick Google search of the van, clicked on Wikipedia, and got the information we were looking for.
"Looks like this version was built between 1993 and 1996 before they went with the more boring boxy version of other minivans," I said.
Ranger did a check and came up with five of them in New Jersey, and two in Massachusetts. So not a vast number of cars at all. This one was mostly black, and we were able to narrow the field further to two. One of which had been reported stolen, two months ago. From Boston.
"I'd be willing to bet that's the car," I said. He nodded.
He finished his dinner and looked at his watch. "I have to go. Don't go to the University without me tomorrow."
"Okay," I said. "Don't get shot."
"I'll do what I can," he said. "And I'll move your car into the garage."
"You don't trust it on the street?"
"Not your car. The Sat Nav might get ideas and decide to crash the car into the house."
He went to do his thing, and I went to bed. The next morning I woke up, alone, but not because Ranger hadn't come back to bed. His pillow had been used, and his clothes were in the laundry hamper. I guess that I was out cold when he came in, so he hadn't woken me up. I showered and decided to dress in something other than my usual clothes. For one, it was an absolutely beautiful day, and for another, it occurred to me that if I were going to spend another fifty million hours in the car, a dress would be way more comfortable.
I'd tossed one in my bag just in case, and it happened to be one that Ella had packed for me when Ranger aand I went South, and then I'd never worn in Florida because it was black. It just a simple, knee length, sleeveless cotton dress, with a little spandex in it to make it stretchy, and pockets to make it a little bit of amazing. I put on a pair of Keds to go with it and went out to the kitchen to forage for breakfast. The coffee was already on, and Ranger was sitting on the sofa going over Angie's forensic report, and it looked like he'd organized everything.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"Almost 10:00," he said. "What the hell were you dreaming about? I had to sleep on the sofa."
"Really?"
"Yeah, you hit me. Twice pretty hard. I tried waking you up, but it didn't help. I figured the sofa was safer."
"I don't remember dreaming at all," I said. "Sorry."
"Something bothering you?"
"Not more than usual," I said. "I didn't sleep well the other night either. I keep feeling like I've forgotten something important."
"Any idea what?"
"Nope," I said. We had some breakfast together, and we got into one of the Endless quad cab trucks Ranger drives. We drove to the University, and when they said it was a small, private institution, they weren't kidding. There were three buildings, plus dorms that made up the entire campus, but it was pretty, and intimate in its construction. They all faced a central garden area, and there were students camped out at picnic tables, some reading, others just hanging out. Ranger and I went into the administrative building, the ground floor of which was apparently the cafeteria. Some students directed us to the elevators, and we rode them to the sixth floor.
Greg Neudendorf was the head of Student Relations. He was six feet, about fifty-two, and his reaction to our arrival was...we'll go with curious. It's more polite than fucking bizarre.
He looked at us both, and paled slightly and then sucked in his gut, and puffed out his chest. Ranger folded his arms across his chest but didn't say anything. Neudendorf immediately backed down and tried to deflate himself without letting go of his sucked in paunch. I don't know what he was going for there, but his current posture just made him look constipated.
"Hello, how may I help you?" He asked. "Are you looking to apply to our institution?"
"No," Ranger said.
"My name is Stephanie Manoso. I'm a private investigator, and a missing person investigation has brought me here."
"Who's your partner?"
"Muscle," Ranger said. It was actually impossible for Ranger to look like he was all brawn and no brain. I mean there were men on his staff who had a similar build who you were pretty sure needed a wind-up key to get their grey matter firing, but Ranger wasn't like that. Ranger was brawn and pretty much always the smartest guy in the room, and you knew it looking at him. The single word routine was for intimidation purposes, and I wanted to know why. I didn't ask him though, he usually told me when things were all said and done.
"I see," Greg said with a gulp. He looked at me, "Who is missing? And how can we help?"
"A man named Waldo Dickerson," I said. "He's an alumnus."
"Wally's missing? Since when?"
"He's been gone for about three weeks now," I said.
"Does Sadie know?"
"Sadie?" I asked.
"Sadie Moore," he said. "She's a student here, and she's been working closely with him on her Master's research."
"Why?" I asked.
"She stumbled on his research while she was trying to decide what to do with her own. She figured she could adopt the same principals to her own work, and since he's an old friend of her mother's she has been consulting with him from the beginning."
"How do you know Wally?" I asked.
"He was graduating the year I started here, and I don't know if you've noticed, but it's not exactly a large institution. It's like living in a small town. Everybody knows everybody."
"What do you know about his time here?"
"I know we were lucky to get him," he said, "He was offered scholarships to a lot of different universities. We were just starting to make a name for ourselves, and we pulled out all of the stops to get him to choose the smaller school."
"In the end why did he decide to come here?"
"We offered him a full ride scholarship," he said.
"Surely you weren't the only place to do that? I've heard that he was almost a shoo-in for the bigs. Why wouldn't he put himself on a team with a bigger chance of getting noticed?"
"We offered his girlfriend the same deal, minus the sports, of course."
"She wouldn't have gotten in if he'd chosen another school?"
"Probably not," he said. "I know it's wrong, but we were trying to establish ourselves. Abby was pretty smart too but had no money. No way she was going to University without a scholarship."
"Did she know that's why she was offered the scholarship?" I asked.
"Not so far as I know," he said. "Anyway, it was a waste in the end. That accident in his final year."
"What happened? We've been having difficulty getting an incident report."
"Well, he was driving back from Foxborough, and another car wandered into his lane. He went down a steep embankment and rolled his car several times. He's lucky to be alive. The insurance company sued the other driver because his medical bills were enormous. He got a settlement large enough to cover the remainder of his education as well as the hospital and rehab bills."
"You didn't honor the scholarship after he was injured?"
"If he'd been injured while he was playing, sure, but he wasn't. It happened off campus and wasn't related to the school in any way. You didn't drive all the way down here to ask me about his accident did you?"
"No," I said. "We're trying to trace some Muppet Baby costumes, and we were told that your school has a full set on hand."
"We don't have Gonzo, but we have the others," he said.
"Where's Gonzo?" Ranger asked.
"He got ruined years ago," he said. "I can show you the others if you want."
"Please," I said. I looked at Ranger. This guy was lying to us about Gonzo, but what would the point of that be?
Greg got to his feet and started showing us to the door when Ranger stopped to tie his shoe.
"What do the costumes have to do with anything?" Greg asked.
"We heard that he may have been involved in a prank that went wrong. It involved some muppet costumes and a Thanksgiving parade. We thought it might be related to that."
"The Thanksgiving prank was in the 80's. He would have still been in high school."
"No stone unturned," I said. "Frankly the reason I was hired is because the police are completely stumped. It's like Dickerson has fallen off of the face of the planet. I'm not Sherlock Holmes, I'm not going to outsmart the police in their investigations. What I have is the time they don't have to chase down all of these small leads, and hopefully one of them pans out."
"Why are they giving Wally special attention, and why aren't the Feds involved?"
"They have even less time to deal with it than TPD does," I said.
Ranger emerged from the office with his shoes now tied, and Greg hadn't noticed that it had taken Ranger an inordinate amount of time to complete this task. In the time it had taken Ranger to tie his laces, he could have also planted a bug, and probably a virus on Greg's hard drive. Or he could have just been tying his shoe, and one of his laces broke. Then again, a broken shoelace is something that occurs to mere mortals, and would never happen to Ranger, so probably he'd planted a listening device.
Greg led us out of the administrative building across the quad to the residences and led us down to the basement. He produced some keys and unlocked a storage room. The room was dark, cramped and instead of lockers, there were cages. It was kind of creepy and dungeon like. I had this sudden feeling like I was going to find myself in one of these cages before the case was out.
Ranger's hand was warm on the back of my neck, and I forced myself to relax. He had my back down here. Greg unlocked one of the lockers and motioned for me to go inside.
"No," Ranger said. "You first."
"It's small, there isn't room for both of us," Greg said.
Ranger took hold of the cage door and closed it. He took the keys from Greg, planted his hand on the center of Greg's chest and pushed him to the other side of the door, and opened the cage again, trapping Greg in the corridor on the other side. Ranger stood there, holding the door, like an immovable boulder. When Greg went to protest, Ranger casually lifted the back of his shirt to show Greg his gun. Greg's stopped complaining.
"You're not very trusting," Greg pouted.
"Nope," Ranger said. I walked into the cage, and sure enough, there were three of our muppets from that night. Animal, Miss Piggy, and Rowlf were there, and Ranger was right. He winged Piggy.
"These are the costumes," I said. "There's blood on this one."
Ranger pulled out a pair of cuffs and used them chain the cage door open to the cage across the corridor so Greg couldn't close us in.
"What's this about?" I muttered and nodded to Greg, once Ranger was next to me.
"I don't trust him," Ranger said. Louder he said, "You're missing muppets."
"It's Frosh Week," Greg said. "They get used a lot around now."
"I'm going to need them located," Ranger said. He walked out of the locker and released the cuffs, and then he reached into one of his many pockets and produced a heavy duty padlock that opened with a fingerprint. He waited until I was out and he put the lock on the cage.
"These are evidence," he said and pulled out his phone.
To say that Greg was thrilled with this idea was probably an oversell. He took a swing at me, and I managed to duck, causing him to punch the cage door. Ranger used Greg's momentum to shove him harder into the chainlink door. Greg bounced off of it. He fell and got up and then rushed Ranger. I heard Ranger's t-shirt rip, as Greg desperately tried to bite him. He was shaking his head like a dog, so in defense of my man, I grabbed Greg's ear and pulled him off of Ranger. As soon as he was loose, Ranger picked Neudendorf up by the front of his shirt and tossed him back down the corridor and drew his gun.
Greg froze solid and looked like he was going to mess himself. Ranger handed me the gun and unlocked the padlock again. He secured Greg at the end of the corridor again, and when Greg got to his feet and rushed the cage Ranger slammed the door against his face, and Greg fell, clutching his nose.
"Stay," Ranger said.
