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After five minutes the door opened and Nutsy walked out. He looked at me and rolled his eyes.
“We’re getting picked up in front of the Cake Bakery two blocks from here,” I said to him. “Let’s go for a stroll.”
“I can’t believe all this happened because I wrote a story,” he said. “My life made more sense when I was doing ridiculous stunts. Or being a clown.”
“How did it go with Plover?”
“Great. He grabbed me and got right up in my face and said he would kill me and my parents and my grandmother and all my mother’s cats. Good thing I was prepared for that. I got to use the lines about it making me angry and that I wasn’t in the mood to negotiate. And his comeback was that there was no negotiation. So, I said, ‘Does that mean you don’t want your fake jewelry back? Because right now it’s with a friend in a box addressed to your insurance company.’ And then he said he didn’t have two hundred thousand dollars. So, I said, ‘How about a hundred thousand dollars?’ And he thought about it for a beat and said he would need a day to come up with the money. So, I’m supposed to call him tomorrow at noon.”
We got to the Cake Bakery, and since I didn’t see Ranger andthe Explorer, I scooted inside and bought a cake. I came out just as Ranger parked at the curb.
Nutsy sat in back with Bob, and I got in front and kept the cake box on my lap.
Ranger pulled into traffic. “You can remove the medallion,” he said to Nutsy. “It cut out for about three minutes. All I heard was static.”
“That must have been when he grabbed me,” Nutsy said. “I told him I had his jewelry, and I knew he wanted it back, and he grabbed the front of my shirt and went psycho.”
“What’s the bottom line,” Ranger said.
“He bargained me down to a hundred thousand dollars and said he needed a day to raise it. I’m supposed to call him tomorrow at noon.”
“I’m going to drop you off at Stephanie’s apartment,” Ranger said. “I want you to stay there. Do not go out.”
“Sure,” Nutsy said. “No problem. Only thing is I could use some ice cream. Butter pecan or mint chocolate chip. Chocolate is good too.”
We made sure that Nutsy was safely locked away in my apartment with a gallon of ice cream, and Ranger drove out of my parking lot.
“I missed a piece of the conversation at Plover’s,” Ranger said. “Did Plover really grab Nutsy or did he intentionally block the transmission?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I couldn’t see them. I was outside.”
Ranger turned onto Hamilton Avenue. “I have to get back to Rangeman. I have meetings until four. After four we can look for Marcus. Do you want to hang in my apartment until then?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll come back at four. I should check in at the office.”
“And eat the cake you bought?”
“Yes. And eat the cake.”
I’d gotten a twelve-layer carrot cake with a massive amount of cream cheese frosting. I put the cake on Connie’s desk and handed Lula and Connie each a fork, and we dug in. Bob was deprived of cake due to his lactose issue.
“This is an excellent cake,” Lula said. “It has the perfect ratio of sponge layer to frosting. I might want to bake a cake like this. Now that I have an oven, I could see if I want to be a pastry chef. It could open up a whole new profession for me. I could end up on one of those cake-baker shows. They like having voluptuous but classy women like me on those shows. Especially if you can bake a cake.”
Halfway through the cake I put my fork down. “I can’t eat any more,” I said.
“That’s ’cause you’re an amateur,” Lula said. “You don’t know how to pace yourself. You just jump in and gobble. I practice mindful consumption.”
“It looked to me like you were gobbling,” Connie said.
“Okay, but it was mindful gobbling,” Lula said.
“Did I miss anything this morning?” I asked.
“We got a new FTA,” Connie said. “Your old friend Simon Diggery.”
Simon Diggery is a professional grave robber. He’s wily but relatively harmless. He lives in a decrepit trailer with his fifty-pound pet boa constrictor, Ethel, and sometimes with his cousin, Snacker.
“What did he do this time?” Lula asked. “Did he get caught digging someone up again?”
