The beginnings of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “I could turn that around.”
“I’m talking about Nutsy.”
Ranger pushed back in his chair. “Does the name Emmett mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Emmett Kelly was a famous clown, Weary Willie. He wore old clothes, and he had a sad face, and he depicted the hobos of the depression. I’m guessing Emmett is Manley’s pen name.”
“How do you know about Emmett?”
“I grew up in a multigenerational household in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood in Newark. My grandparents loved the circus and they loved Emmett the clown. On our living room wall, next to the television, there was a picture of Emmett. He had equal billing with a crucifix and a picture of Jesus Christ.”
“Wow, I have a whole new insight into you now.”
“Fortunately, I know you’re being a wiseass.”
“Okay, so moving along, Andy is writing short stories and screenplays and maybe video games.”
“Maybe,” Ranger said. “I’ll take a closer look at his story and his screenplays tonight. If you want to really improve the evening, we can do it together.”
“Tempting, but no.”
“Right now, it’s only tempting,” Ranger said. “In the not-so-distant future it will be all-consuming.” Ranger stood and kissed the top of my head. “Think about it.”
Jeez. Truth is, it was pretty consuming now, but I was a good Catholic girl. Okay, so I never went to church, and I wasn’t sure about God. I mean, who was he anyway? What I had was fear of eternal damnation and a set of values that were burned into my soul. Mostly they were the ten commandments and the Constitution of the United States. I couldn’t repeat verbatim what any of them were, but they were stuck in the dark recesses of my brain, keeping me on the straight and narrow… most of the time. At least some of the time.
Ranger pocketed the flash drive and looked at Bob sprawled on the couch. “Where does he sleep?”
“In bed with me,” I said.
“How long is he going to be here?”
“I don’t know. Until Morelli returns.”
“Babe,” Ranger said. And he left.
Maybe Morelli knew exactly what he was doing when he left Bob with me.
CHAPTER FIVE
It took me a couple beats to wake up enough to realize my phone was ringing. I snatched it off my nightstand and squinted at the caller ID. Ranger.
“Yuh,” I said.
“I’m coming in,” Ranger said. “I didn’t want to startle you.”
“Wait. What?”
I looked at the time. It was five thirty… in the morning. It was dark out. Bob was still asleep. And the man of mystery was breaking into my apartment. I had a bump-proof lock, a dead bolt, and a chain. None of this stopped Ranger from popping in. It was as if he could slide under the door like smoke.
My bedroom light switched on and Ranger walked in. He was in black Rangeman fatigues and wide awake. I was snuggled under the covers in a T-shirt and pajama bottoms and barely awake. Bob half opened his eyes and went back to sleep.
“Not now,” I said, sliding farther under the covers.
Ranger was standing alongside the bed. “We can do this the easy, more politically correct way where you get out of bed on your own, or we can do it the fun way where I drag you out.”
“My lips are still sealed,” I said.
“I didn’t come to unseal your lips,” Ranger said. “I want to check out Dugan’s house and you have a legal right to enter.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the middle of the night. It’s still dark out. Bob isn’t even awake.”
“It’s the perfect time to do an enter and search.”
“Why are you interested in Dugan? I thought you were looking for Nutsy.”
“Did you read the stories and screenplays on Nutsy’s hard drive?”
“No, not yet.”
“One of them is about a man who worked in a button factory for twenty years. He has an epiphany that he’s boring and cowardly, running away from having a full life.”
I sat up in bed. “So, he robs a jewelry store?”
“Yes.”
“You’re kidding. Does it end well?”
“He turns into a suave, professional jewel thief—like David Niven in the old Pink Panther movies.”
“I didn’t know you were a Pink Panther fan.”
Ranger pulled a T-shirt and a pair of jeans out of my dresser and tossed them at me. “It’s mentioned as a footnote. I googled it.” Underwear followed the T-shirt and jeans. Pink lace. No doubt Ranger thought this was daytime wear.
Bob was on his feet on the bed. He gave himself an ear-flapping shake and jumped down.
I gathered my clothes up. “Take Bob for a walk while I get dressed. His leash is on the hook by the door.”
I took a five-minute shower, towel-dried my hair, and didn’t waste time with makeup. I was in the kitchen when Ranger returned with Bob. I had coffee already poured into a travel mug. I grabbed a couple protein bars and shoved them into my sweatshirt pocket.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re ready to go.”
“There’s no we,” Ranger said. “Bob is going to sit this one out.”
“If I leave him here alone, he’ll eat my couch.”
“I’ll buy you a new couch.”
It was difficult to argue against the offer of a new couch. I scooped some dog kibble into Bob’s bowl, gave him fresh water, and followed Ranger out of the building to his Porsche Cayenne.
“Were there any other interesting stories on the flash drive?” I asked him.
“？‘Big Below’ was about a subterranean civilization of devil worshippers that was being threatened by fracking.”
I buckled myself in beside Ranger and unwrapped my protein bar. “I like the devil-worshipper part, but fracking is kind of yesterday.”
“Other than ‘Big Below,’ the stories and screenplays all featured the button-factory worker, Dwayne Dreary.”
“Jeez.”
“His jewel-thief pseudonym was Duncan Dare.”
“I went through ‘Duncan Dare’s’ house yesterday. He’s very neat. The opposite of Nutsy. The one thing their places have in common is the complete absence of electronic devices. It’s hard to imagine these two guys being friends, they are such polar opposites. But they must know each other pretty well if Nutsy is writing stories with Duncan as the lead.”
“Unfortunately for Duncan Dugan, he doesn’t seem to have the skills of the fictional Duncan Dare. Duncan Dare succeeded at everything. He got the jewels. He got the beautiful women. His true identity was never revealed.”
“And he never fell off a ledge and broke all his bones.”
“Not in the material I read,” Ranger said. “While we’re on the subject of Nutsy Manley, someone blew up his parents’ car last night. We picked it up on the police band. No one was hurt.”
“Do you know who exploded the car?”
“No. And the police don’t seem to know either.”
Ranger drove down Faucet Street. Lights were on in a few houses. Early risers getting ready for work. No activity on the street. Seventy-two Faucet was dark. Ranger turned at the corner and drove down the alley so we could see Dugan’s house from the back. No cars parked in his yard. No lights on in his house. Ranger pulled to the side of the alley several houses away and we walked back to Dugan’s house.