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“Any ideas on what it is that he's trying to recover?”
“None. Not a clue. I've been through the house, and I didn't find anything unusual. Of course, I wasn't looking for secret hiding places. I was looking for something to direct me to Evelyn.”
Ranger closed the front door behind us and made sure it was locked.
The sun was low in the sky when we got to Evelyn's house. Ranger did a drive-by. “Do you know the people on this street?”
“Almost everyone. Some I know better than others. I know the woman next door to Dotty. Linda Clark lives two houses down. The Rojacks live in the corner house. Betty and Arnold Lando live across the street. The Landos are in a rental, and I don't know the family next to them. If I was looking for a snitch, my money would be on someone in the family next to the Landos. There's an old man who always seems to be home. Sits out on the porch a lot. Looks like he used to break kneecaps for a living, about a hundred years ago.”
Ranger parked in front of Carol Nadich's half of the house. Then we walked around the house and entered Evelyn's half through the back door. Ranger didn't have to break a window to get in. Ranger inserted a small slender tool into the lock, and ten seconds later the door was open.
The house seemed just as I remembered. Dishes in the drain. Mail neatly stacked. Drawers closed. None of the signs of search that we'd seen in Dotty's house.
Ranger did his usual walk-through, starting in the kitchen, eventually moving upstairs into Evelyn's room. I was following behind him when I had a sudden flashback. Kloughn telling me about Annie's drawings. Scary drawings, Kloughn had said. Bloody.
I wandered into Annie's room and flipped pages on the pad on her desk. The first page contained a house drawing similar to the one downstairs. After that came a page of scribbles and doodles. And then the childish drawing of a man. He was laying on the ground. The ground was red. Red spurted from the man's body.
“Hey,” I called to Ranger. “Come look at this.”
Ranger stood beside me and stared at the drawing. He turned the page and found a second drawing with red on the ground. Two men were laying in the red. Another man pointed a gun at them. There were a lot of erasure marks around the gun. I guess guns are hard to draw.
Ranger and I exchanged glances.
“It could just be television,” I said.
“It wouldn't hurt to take the pad with us, in case it isn't.”
Ranger finished his search of Evelyn's room, moved to Annie's, and then to the bathroom. He stood hands on hips when he'd completed the search of the bathroom.
“If there's something here, it's well hidden,” he said. “It would be easier if I knew what we were looking for.”
We left the house the same way we came. Abruzzi wasn't waiting for us on the back porch. And Abruzzi wasn't waiting for us by Ranger's truck. I sat next to Ranger and I looked up and down the street. No sign of Abruzzi. I was almost disappointed.
Ranger rolled the engine over, drove to my parents' house, and parked behind my car. The sun had set and the street was dark. Ranger cut his lights and turned to see me better.
“Are you spending the night here again?”
“Yes. My apartment's still sealed. I imagine I'll get it back tomorrow.” Then what? An involuntary shiver sent my lower back into spasm. My couch had death cooties.
“I see you're excited about returning,” Ranger said.
“I'll figure it out. Thanks for helping me today.”
“I feel cheated,” Ranger said. “Usually when I'm with you a car explodes or a building burns down.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Life is a bitch,” Ranger said. He reached out and grabbed me by my jacket sleeves, hauled me across the console, and kissed me.
“Now you kiss me?” I said. “What was the deal when we were alone in my apartment?”
“You had three glasses of wine, and you fell asleep.”
“Oh yeah. Now I remember.”
“And you went into a panic attack at the thought of sleeping with me.”
I was sprawled across the console, wedged behind the wheel, half sitting on Ranger's lap. His lips brushed against mine when he spoke and his hands were warm against my T-shirt.
