"I sure would like a cleaning lady," Lula said. "Wouldn't you like to have a cleaning lady?"

I have a small one-bedroom, one-bath apartment I share with a hamster. I have the bare minimum in furniture, one fry pan, one pot, and once a month I borrow my mother's vacuum cleaner. I suspect a cleaning lady would be overkill.

"You know what the first thing I'd have a cleaning lady do?" Lula said. "Baseboards. I hate doing baseboards. Most people would probably say they wanted the cleaning lady to do the toilet, but not me. It'd be baseboards."

I wasn't sure if my apartment even had baseboards. "I don't spend a lot of time in my apartment."

"Yeah, but when you're there you want it to be your favorite spot, right? It has to reflect your personality. Like, wall treatment is important. It gotta put you in a good mood. That's why my walls are orange. Orange is a good all-purpose color. It's the new neutral. And it goes good with my favorite color, which is leopard. I did a lot of accessorizing with leopard. I re-covered my most comfy chair in leopard, and I got a leopard bedspread. Now, if we want to talk about your apartment, it's pretty bare-ass. You might want me to help you redecorate someday being that it's one of my hobbies."

"I'll think about it."

"It could even be a bonding experience."

"You don't think we're bonded enough?"

"There's all kinds of bonding," Lula said. "This would be decorator bonding. We never done that before."

FIVE.

CONNIE LOOKED UP from her computer when Lula and I walked into the bonds office. "How'd it go?"

"We got skunked for the day," Lula said. "We met the girlfriend, but we didn't see no Sunny."

"You should try later tonight," Connie said. "He has to be staying somewhere, and it obviously isn't in his apartment on Fifteenth Street."

"Stephanie got a hot date tonight," Lula said. "She can't be staking out Sunny. She gotta be concentrating on Ranger."

"It's not a date," I said. "It's work." I was almost certain of it.

A black shadow scuttled past the large plate glass window that faced the street, and we all sucked in air.

"What was that?" Lula asked. "That better not be what I'm thinking it was, because I'm thinking it was something scares the heck out of me."

The front door banged open, and Joe's Grandma Bella marched in. "I thought I would find you here," she said, glaring at me.

Her gray hair was pulled back into a bun. Her brows were thick and black. Her eyes were fierce, like the eyes of an eagle about to snatch up an unsuspecting rabbit and rip it to shreds.

"I put the eye on you!" Bella said, pointing her finger at me.

Connie ducked down behind her desk, and Lula jumped away and pressed herself against the wall.

"You're not supposed to be giving people the eye," I said to Bella. "I'm going to tell Joe's mother on you."

"Joe's mother give you good too," Bella said. "You no friend of this family. You hunt down Sunny."

"It's my job."

"My job to give you the eye. Stop you in your tracks." She scrunched up her face. "You ready?"

I blew out a sigh. "Yeah."

Bella pulled her lower eyelid down with her finger and stared at me.

"Okay," she said, releasing the lid. "I got you for sure. I give you a big one." She shook her finger at me. "You get new job."

She whirled around, marched out the door, and stalked down the street.

"I think I wet my pants," Lula said.

Connie came out from behind her desk. "That is one crazy old lady."

"So what did she do to you?" Lula asked me. "Do you feel any different?"

"No."

"Well, I don't see your teeth falling out yet. And you haven't grown a tail like a donkey," Lula said. "That's gotta be a good sign."

I hiked my messenger bag up onto my shoulder. "There's no such thing as the eye."

"Sure," Lula said. "We know that. But just in case, you might want to stop by the church and burn a candle or something."

It was a little after five when I got home. I hung my bag on a hook in the foyer and went into the kitchen. I said hello to Rex, asked him about his day, and gave him another Ritz cracker. Being that Rex lives in an aquarium and not much goes on, he didn't have a lot to say.

I looked around my kitchen and living room and had to admit there might be something to Lula's assessment of my decorating. I really hadn't done much to spruce things up after the last explosion when Ranger's friend blew himself up in my foyer. I added Decorate apartment to make it a special place to my mental to-do list, then tabled the project for a better time.

I wasn't sure if my Ranger date involved dinner, so I made myself a peanut butter and olive sandwich. I know this combination looks odd what with the lumps from the olives, but it contains major food groups, it doesn't involve cooking, and the olives keep the peanut butter from sticking to the roof of your mouth.

I took a shower and brushed my hair out into a bunch of soft curls that skimmed my shoulders. I went with an extra swipe of mascara, some smudgy liner, and shiny lip gloss. I had a closet full of jeans and T-shirts, but my choices for dresses were limited. I had a very sexy red dress with a swirly skirt, a professional-looking suit, a blue dress I wore to family functions, and a black dress that was moderately to pretty damn sexy.

I settled on the black dress, tugged it over my hips, zipped it up, and checked in the mirror to make sure my boobs weren't falling out too much. I shoved my feet into black spike-heel pumps and transferred essentials from my messenger bag to a small red evening clutch.

I was thinking if this was work-related I probably should take my gun, but the gun wouldn't fit in the clutch, and truth is, I didn't have any bullets anyway.

I felt a change in air pressure, got a hot flash, and Ranger knocked once and opened the door to my apartment. He was wearing a perfectly tailored black suit, and a black shirt open at the neck. He looked me up and down, and the corners of his mouth hinted at a smile. I assumed this meant he liked the dress.

We were silent in the hall and elevator, Ranger being only slightly more talkative than my hamster. We crossed the parking lot to his black Porsche 911 Turbo S, and he opened the door for me. It was a great car, but not the easiest to enter in a tight short skirt and heels. I grabbed my hem with both hands and managed to get in without my skirt riding up to my belly button. Not that it would matter entirely, since Ranger had already seen my belly button. Still, he hadn't seen it lately, and I thought it was a good idea to keep it that way.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

He drove out of the lot and turned left. "We're going to a viewing at the funeral home on Hamilton."

"Is that the whole date?"

"Yes. Unless you want it to be more."

"Why did you tell me to wear a sexy dress?"

"I wanted to have something to look at besides the deceased."

"So I'm just eye candy?"

"The eye candy is a bonus. This is a viewing for Melvina Gillian. Does the name mean anything to you?"

"She was murdered. Her body was found in a Dumpster a couple weeks ago."

"She was found ten days ago. She was kept on ice until now, pending the autopsy. Rangeman provides security for her son, Ruppert. He asked me to look into her death."

"Aren't the police investigating?"

"Yes, but Ruppert wanted a private investigation as well. I don't usually do this sort of thing, but Ruppert is an important client."

"Do you have any leads?"

"In the past eighteen months three women have been found in Dumpsters in Trenton. They were all robbed and strangled. They were all in their seventies. All lived alone, in different parts of the city. So far the police haven't identified any suspects."

"I knew one of the women. Lois Fratelli. She lived in the Burg a block over from my parents."

"Did you go to her funeral?"

"No, but I went to the viewing with Grandma."

"Anyone of interest there?"

"Not that I noticed. It was packed. There are a lot of Fratellis in Trenton, and there are always lots of people who come out for a murder."

"Like your grandmother?"

"Grandma comes out to all the viewings. She gets extra dressed up for a murder."

Ranger pulled into the small lot attached to the funeral home.

"You'll never get a spot here," I said. "This lot fills up at six o'clock for a murder."

He beeped his horn and a black Rangeman SUV pulled out of a space. Ranger parked in the space, and the SUV drove away.

"So it sounds to me like I could have sent you to this viewing with your grandmother," he said, cutting the engine, "and I could have taken a night off."

"Yes, but then you would have missed seeing me in this dress."

Ranger smiled. "True."

"Why do you want me at this viewing?"

"I'm looking for a common thread. You know most of the people here. They talk to you. I want you to move around and see if you can find a connection between Melvina and Lois. Mutual friends, shared interests, a stranger who suddenly entered their life."

I got out of the Porsche, tugged my dress down, and rearranged my breasts. "What will you be doing while I'm talking to people?"

"I'll be watching you."

The funeral home had originally been a large Victorian house with a wraparound porch. Over the years it had changed hands several times and extensions had been added. This evening, men were gathered in groups on the porch. The vestibule inside was filled with women milling around the tea and cookies, then quietly maneuvering their way into the crush of people already in the viewing room. The air was heavy with the smell of funeral flowers and too many overheated bodies.

"I'm two steps behind you," Ranger said. "Do your thing."

I wormed my way through the vestibule, talking to people, keeping my eyes open for murderers. I squeezed through the door to Slumber Room No. 2 and began to make my way forward toward the open casket. I spoke to Lily Kolakowski, Ann Rhinehart, Maureen Labbe, and Sheryl Stoley. Several moderately drunk men hit on me, none of them on the good side of ninety. None of them knew Melvina Gillian.

I worked the crowd to the first row of chairs facing the deceased and picked out Grandma Mazur.

"Well, for goodness sakes," she said, spotting me. "If I'd known you were coming I would have saved you a seat. I was here when they opened the doors, and I got a real good one. You sit up front like this and you don't miss a thing. I even filled my purse with cookies on the way through the lobby." She tapped her finger to her forehead. "Always thinking."

"Did you know Melvina?"

"No. Never met her, but she looks pretty good for having been thrown into a Dumpster. They do a real good job with makeup here. I was worried they might have a closed casket, and you know how I hate that, but they got her set up so she's almost lifelike."

I scanned the room for Ranger but couldn't find him.

"You should go take a look," Grandma said to me. "I especially like the shade of lipstick they got on her. I might need a lipstick like that."

Viewings weren't my favorite thing, and looking at dead people ranked even further down the list.

"I don't want to jump the line," I said.

"Nobody will mind. It's almost closing time and there's only stragglers left. All the people who really had their heart into it have gone through." Grandma got up and nudged me over to the casket. "This here's my granddaughter," she said to the man standing to one side. "She just wants to pay some fast respects."

I nodded to him, murmured my condolences, and stepped away. When Grandma and I turned back to her chair it was filled.

"Hey," Grandma said to the woman sitting in her chair. "That's my seat."

"You got up," the woman said.

"Don't matter," Grandma said. "I only got up to pay respects, and now I'm back, and I want my chair."

"You've been hogging this chair all night," the woman said. "It's my turn now."

"Oh yeah?" Grandma said. "How'd you like a punch in the nose?"

The woman glared at Grandma. "How'd you like to spend the night in jail on an assault charge?"

"I'm a poor, frail old lady," Grandma said. "Nobody's going to arrest me on your say-so. Besides, my niece here is almost engaged to a cop."

"Did you know Melvina?" I asked the woman.