09 To the Nines (4 page)

“Well,” she said to me, with a head wag. “I see you've cleaned yourself up. You must be a terrible burden to your mother. I am feeling so sorry for her not to have a proper daughter.”

I narrowed my eyes and opened my mouth to speak and Ranger leaned into me and rested a hand on my shoulder. Probably he thought I was going to do something rash, like call Mrs. Apusenja a fat cow. And in fact he was right. Fat cow was on the tip of my tongue.

“I thought it might be helpful to see Singh's room,” Ranger said to Mrs. Apusenja.

“Will you be bringing this one in with you?”

Rangers grip on me tightened. “This one's name is Stephanie,” Ranger said pleasantly. “And yes, she'll be coming with me.”

“I suppose it will be all right,” Mrs. Apusenja said grudgingly “I will expect you to be careful. I keep a very nice house.” She stepped back from the door and motioned us in to the living room. “This is the formal parlor,” she said proudly “And beyond that is the dining room. And then the kitchen.”

Ranger and I stood speechless for a moment, taking it all in. The house was filled to the bursting with overstuffed furniture, end tables, lamps, trinkets, dried flowers, faded photos, stacks of magazines and bowls of fake fruit. And elephants. There were ceramic elephants, elaborate elephant couch pillows, elephant clocks, foot stools, and planters. Elephants aside, there was no dominant style or color. It was a garage sale waiting to happen.

I watched Ranger scan the room and I suspected he was doing a mental grimace. It would be easy to miss a note in the mess. For that matter, it would be easy to miss Singh. He could be slouched in a chair somewhere and never be noticed.

Mrs. Apusenja led the way upstairs, across the short hallway to a small bedroom. She was wearing pink rubber flip-flops that slapped against her heels and hit the floor at an angle so her heel was always half off the shoe. Her toenails were massive, painted a virulent shimmering purple. I was directly behind her and from my angle her ass looked to be about three feet across.

“This is Samuel's room,” she said, gesturing to the open door. “It's so sad that it's empty. He was such a nice young man. So polite. Very respectful.” She said this cutting a look back at me, sending the message that she knew I had none of those wonderful qualities.

Ranger and I stepped inside the room and I was hit with a wave of claustrophobia. The double bed was neatly made, covered with a green, yellow, and purple-flowered quilted bedspread that shouted yikes. The curtains matched the bedspread and hung over seasick green sheers. The walls were plastered with outdated calendars and thumb-tacked posters, subjects ranging from Winnie the Pooh to Springsteen, the Starship Enterprise, and Albert Einstein. There was a night-stand beside the bed and a small desk and rickety chair wedged between the bed and the wall.

“You see, it's such a nice room,” Mrs. Apusenja said. “He was lucky to have this room. We have a room in the basement that we also rent out on occasion, but we gave Samuel this room because I knew he would be a suitor for Nonnie.”

Ranger rifled through the nightstand and desk drawers. “Was Samuel unhappy about anything?”

“No. He was very happy. Why would he be unhappy? He had everything. We even allowed him kitchen privileges.”

“Have you notified his family of his disappearance?”

“I have. I thought perhaps he was suddenly called home, but they have heard nothing from him.”

Ranger moved on to the desk. He opened the middle drawer and extracted Singh's passport. “New York is his only entry.”

“This was his first time away from home,” Mrs. Apusenja said. “He was a good boy. He was not one of those good-for-nothing wanderers. He came here to make money for his family in India.”

Ranger returned the passport to the drawer and continued his search. He abandoned the desk and went to the closet. “What's missing from the room?” Ranger asked Mrs. Apusenja. “What did Singh take with him?”

“So far as I know, just the clothes he was wearing. And his backpack, of course.”

Ranger turned to look at her. “Do you know what he carried in his backpack?”

“His computer. He was never without his computer. It was a laptop. It always went to work with him. Samuel was very smart. That's how he got such a good job. He said he got his job over the Internet.”

“Do you know his email address?” I asked.

“No. I don't know anything about that. We don't own a computer. We have no need for such a thing.”

“How did Samuel get to work?” Ranger asked.

“He drove himself.”

“Has his car been found?”

“No. He just drove away in the car and that was the last we saw of him and the car. It was a gray Nissan Sentra ... an older model.”

Ranger did a quick search of the bathroom and Nonnie's room and we all moved downstairs to search the kitchen.

We were still in the kitchen when Nonnie came home.

“Have you found Boo?” Nonnie asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “Sorry.”

“It's difficult to concentrate on my work with him missing like this,” Nonnie said.

“Nonnie is a manicurist at Classy Nails in the mall,” Mrs. Apusenja said. “She is one of their most popular girls.”

“I never skimp on the top coat,” Nonnie said. “That's the secret to a superior manicure.”

It was a few minutes after six when Ranger and I left the Apusenjas. There was still time to make dinner at my parents' house, but I was losing enthusiasm for the experience. I was thinking I'd had enough chaos for one day. I was thinking maybe what I wanted to do was get take-out pizza and go home and watch a bad movie.

Ranger lounged against my car, arms crossed over his chest. “What do you think?”

“Nonnie never asked about Singh. She only asked about Boo.”

“Not exactly the distraught fiancee,” Ranger said.

“If we believe everything we hear, we've got a nice geeky guy who got himself engaged and disappeared along with the dog.”

“The dog could be a coincidence.”

“I don't think so. My Spidey Sense tells me the disappearances are related.”

Ranger grinned at me. “Your Spidey Sense tell you anything else?”

“Is that a mocking grin?”

“It's the grin of a man who loves you, babe.”

My heart skipped around a little and I got warm in places only Morelli should be warming. “Love?”

“There's all kinds of love,” Ranger said. “This kind doesn't come with a ring attached.”

“Nice, but you avoided answering my question about the mocking grin.”

He gave my ponytail a playful tug.

“I'm going back to TriBro tomorrow,” I said. “I'll make a pest of myself. Find out about the Internet job search. Talk to coworkers. If it's anything other than a random murder, I should be able to get a lead.”

I decided against the family dinner and instead I stopped at Pino's on the way home. I slid the Pino's pizza box onto my kitchen counter, kicked my shoes off, and got a beer out of the fridge. I punched the message button on my machine and listened to my messages while I ate.

“Stephanie? It's your mother. Hello? Are you there?” Disconnect.

Second message. “Bad news. I'm gonna punk out on lunch tomorrow. The kids are sick.” It was my best friend, Mary Lou. Mary Lou and I grew up together. We went to school together and we were married within months of each other. Mary Lou's marriage stuck and she had a pack of kids. My marriage lasted about twenty minutes and ended in a screaming divorce.

The third message was from Vinnie. “What are you doing at home listening to this dumb machine? Why aren't you out looking for Singh? I'm dying here, for crissake. Do something!”

And my mother again. “I didn't want anything the first time. You don't have to call me back.”

I erased the messages and dropped a tiny piece of pizza into Rex's cage. Rex is my hamster roommate. He lives in a glass aquarium in my kitchen and sleeps in a Campbell's tomato soup can. Rex rushed out of his soup can, shoved the pizza into his cheek pouch, and scurried back to the can. Quality pet time.

I carted the pizza box, the beer, and my purse into the living room, flopped onto the couch, powered up the television, and found a Seinfeld rerun. A couple months ago I entered the computer age and bought myself an Apple iBook. I keep the iBook on my coffee table so I can check my mail and watch television at the same time. Am I a multi-tasker, or what?

I opened the iBook and signed on. I deleted the junk mail advertising Viagra, mortgage rates, and porn sites. A single message was left. It was from Andrew Cone. If I can be of any further help, don't hesitate to call.

The phone jarred me awake at 7:00 A.M.

“Something just came across my desk that I thought you might want to see,” Morelli said. “I'm at the station and I have a few things to do and then I'll come over.”

I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom. I did the shower thing and the hair thing and a half-assed job at the makeup thing. I got dressed in my usual uniform of T-shirt and jeans and felt ready to face the day. I made coffee and treated myself to a strawberry Pop Tart, feeling righteous because I'd resisted the S'mores Pop Tart. Best to have fruit for breakfast, right? I gave a corner of the Pop Tart to Rex and sipped my coffee.

I was pouring myself a second cup of coffee when Morelli arrived. He backed me against a wall, made certain there were no spaces between us, and he kissed me. His pager buzzed and he did some inventive cussing.

“Trouble?” I asked.

He looked at the display. “The usual crap.” He stepped back and pulled a folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. “I knew there was some sort of mess associated with TriBro, so I ran a search for you. It turned up this newspaper article from two years ago.”

I took the paper from Morelli and read the headline. “Bart Cone Charged in Paressi Slaying.” The article went on to say that hikers had stumbled over the body of Lillian Paressi just hours after Paressi had been killed with a single shot to the head at close range. The murder had occurred in a wooded area just north of Washington's Crossing State Park. Cone had been spotted leaving the scene and police claimed to have physical evidence linking Cone to the murder.

“What happened?” I asked Morelli.

"He was released. The witness who reported Cone fleeing from the scene recanted part of his story. And the physical evidence tested out negative. Cone had been carrying a twenty-two when the police picked him up for questioning. Paressi had been shot with a twenty-two, but ballistics ruled out Cones gun as the murder weapon. And there wasn't a DNA match-up. Paressi had been sexually assaulted after her death and the DNA didn't match to Cone.

“As I remember, the guys assigned to the case still thought Cone killed Paressi. They just couldn't get anything to stick on him. And the case has never been solved.”

“Was there a motive?”

“No motive. They were never able to develop a connection between Paressi and Cone.”

“Bart Cone isn't exactly Mr. Nice Guy, but it's hard to see him as a killer.”

“Killers come in all sizes,” Morelli said.

THREE

Morelli walked me to my car, gave me a dismissive kiss on the forehead, and told me to be careful. He was driving a Piece Of Shit cop car that was parked next to my Ford. It was a Crown Vic that probably had originally been dark blue, but had now faded to a color that defied description. Paint was scraped off the right rear, and part of the back bumper was ripped away. A Kojak light was rolling around on the floor in the back.

“Nice car,” I said to Morelli.

“Yeah, I had a hard choice to make between this and the Ferrari.” He angled into the Vic, cranked it over, and rolled out of the lot.

It was early morning, but already the day was heating up. I could hear the drone of traffic, not far off on Hamilton. The sky was murky above me and I felt the rasp of ozone in the back of my throat. As the day wore on cars, chemical plants, and backyard barbecues would make their contribution to the stew that cooked over Jersey. Fancy-pants wimps in L.A. rated their pollution and curtailed activity. In Jersey we just call it air and get on with life. If you're born in Jersey, you know how to rise to a challenge. Bring on the Mob. Bring on bad air. Bring on taxes and obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and macaroni at every meal. Nothing defeats us in Jersey.

First thing on my activities list was a drive around the Apusenja neighborhood, keeping my eyes peeled for Boo and Singh. Sometimes missing persons turned up surprisingly close to home. They moved in with neighbors, hid out in garages, and sometimes turned up dead in a Dumpster.

Neither Boo nor Singh showed up after fifteen minutes of searching, so I headed across town to Route 1 and TriBro.

I still didn't have a clear idea of TriBro's product. Parts for slot machines. What did that mean? Gears? Handles? Bells and whistles? Not that it mattered. What mattered was squeezing a lead out of someone.

Black Bart hadn't been impressed with my charm or cleavage. I didn't think I'd get a lot of help from him. Clyde was eager, but not real bright. Andrew seemed like my best shot. I took the turnoff to TriBro and called Andrew on my cell phone.

“Guess what?” I said. “I'm in the neighborhood. Can I take a couple more minutes of your time?”

“Absolutely.”

Absolutely was a good answer. Very positive. No sign of annoyance. No lecherous side remark. Professional. Andrew was definitely the brother of choice.

I parked in the lot, entered the lobby, and was immediately directed to Andrew's office. More good luck. No Bart or Clyde to slow me down. I took a chair across from Andrew and thanked him for seeing me.

“TriBro has an interest in finding Singh,” he said. “We signed for the visa bond. If Singh skips, TriBro pays the bill.”

“Do you have other employees on work visas?”

“Not now, but we have in the past. And I have to tell you, Singh isn't the first to disappear.”

I felt my eyebrows raise.

“It's nothing suspicious,” Andrew said. “In fact, I find it understandable. If I was in a similar position I might disappear, too. These men come to work for three months and are seduced by the potential for success. Everything is within their reach . . . rental movies, burgers, designer jeans, a new car, microwave popcorn, and frozen waffles. I have some sympathy for their flight, but at the same time TriBro can't keep absorbing bond losses. If this sort of thing continues we'll have to stop using visa workers. And that would be a shame, because they make very good temporary employees.”