Dirty Thirty (Stephanie Plum, #30)(74)

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It was a little after eleven when Bob and I finally got to Rangeman. I parked in one of Ranger’s personal spaces and went directly to his apartment. He was waiting at the door.

Bob brushed past Ranger and trotted to his water bowl in the kitchen.

“Are you hungry?” Ranger asked me.

“Starving.”

He draped an arm around my shoulders and walked me into the kitchen. “Ella left a sandwich tray in the fridge when she heard you were coming back.”

“God bless Ella.”

Ranger took a bottle out of his wine cooler and uncorked it. “I say that a lot.” He poured out two glasses and handed one to me. “I want to know about tonight.”

“What about the sandwiches?”

He pulled out a plastic-wrapped tray of tea sandwiches and a plastic-wrapped tray of sliders. This was followed by a tray of miniature desserts.

I surveyed the sandwiches and didn’t know where to go first. I wanted to eat everything. My first choice was an egg salad tea sandwich. I ate it in one gulp and chose a chicken salad slider next.

Ranger sat back in his chair with his glass of wine. “Tell me about tonight.”

“I went to the Zelinsky viewing with Grandma, and I dropped a few hints about Plover and fake jewelry. And toward the end of the viewing Plover sort of threatened to kill me. Then Diggery called and said he had a good possibility for Stump, so Lula, Nutsy, Bob, and I went to Willow Street Cemetery to check it out.”

“And?”

“Not Stump.”

I laid waste to the sandwiches and sliders and moved on to the desserts.

“How serious was the death threat?” Ranger asked.

I shrugged. “Don’t know. His family has an impeccable reputation in Trenton, but according to Plover, his father and grandfather weren’t nice guys. Sounds like there’s a legacy of cheating and worse. So, I don’t think Plover would have a problem with killing me. He’s killed before. Maybe more people than Stump. His problem is that getting rid of me is the tip of the iceberg. There are other people involved. There’s Nutsy, Duncan Dugan, and Homeless Marcus. Does he try to kill all of us? Does he leave town, never to be seen again? He tried to intimidate Nutsy by blowing up his parents’ car, and it worked to some extent but not totally. Maybe Plover would go that route again. That’s a scary possibility because I don’t know who he would target.”

“What was his bottom line with you?”

“He said I had until midnight to give him the jewelry.”

Ranger looked at his watch. “You were finishing up the egg salad sandwiches at midnight. You’ve slowed down with the desserts. It’s almost one o’clock.”

“I should have eaten the desserts first. I’m all filled up with egg salad and roast beef. And I’m exhausted. I’m not going to be able to eat the last mini chocolate mousse.”

Ranger’s phone buzzed. He had a short conversation and hung up.

“That was the control room,” he said. “There’s a problem at your apartment. Explosion and fire. They got the notice from your security system and from police dispatch. No more information than that.”

I tried calling Lula and Nutsy but no one picked up.

“I need to be there,” I said.

Ranger was on his feet. “Leave Bob here. I’ll have someone come up to babysit him.”

We took the Porsche Batmobile and reached my apartment building in record time. The parking lot was crammed with fire trucks, EMTs, cop cars, and gawkers. My stomach was filled with food but felt hollow. My heart was beating too fast and too hard. This felt like my bad. I’d tried to do the right thing, but it had turned out hideously wrong. I’d played the tough-guy card at the funeral home, and I’d ignored the midnight deadline, and now Plover was retaliating and playing his tough-guy card.

Ranger parked at the outer perimeter of the lot, and I hit the ground running. I ran past a fire truck and caught sight of an ambulance with people clustered around it. Two of the people were Lula and Nutsy. I stopped running and bent at the waist to breathe. I’d feared the worst, and this was the best. They were on their feet, and they looked okay. Rex was safe, Bob was safe, Lula was safe, Nutsy was safe. That’s all that mattered.

Ranger wrapped an arm around me and swiped a couple tears off my cheek.

“I’m not crying,” I said. “It’s the smoky air.”

Lula spotted us and started waving and yelling. Impossible to know what she was saying over the noise of the fire trucks.

We joined Lula and Nutsy and several med techs.

“Are you okay?” I asked Lula and Nutsy.

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re as good as you could be after your apartment’s been bombed. We were lucky on account of we were in the living room playing a game on Nutsy’s Xbox. Whatever-it-was came in through the bedroom window, so we had a chance to get out. We didn’t even think twice. We were like, Holy cow. And we ran out. And then the fire alarms went off and everybody was coming out of the building, and the cops came, and the fire trucks came.”

Ranger wandered off to talk to some of the first responders.

“I tried calling you,” I said to Lula.

“Our phones are still inside,” Lula said. “There was a crash when the window got broken and then a big bang and then there was a whoosh of flames, and we didn’t waste time getting out of there.”