382AN: I'm back, and thank you all for your patience! For those of you opening this, who haven't read Thursday and Friday, while this story is a continuation of both, it can stand alone. As usual anything familiar belongs to JE and the mistakes are all mine. The story picks up right where Friday ends.
The night air was still, and a little sticky, like we might get rain later, but I was seriously doubting it was going to happen. The Fourth of July picnic was also serving as our belated wedding reception, and the combined powers of my mother, Ranger's mother, and Ranger's grandmother Rosa were willing the weather to hold. Even God knew better than to disobey them.
A portable dance floor had been set up on the lawn of the Chesterfield Estate we'd booked for the reception. The capacity of the ballroom of the estate was 200, but it was entirely possible there were four håundred people there that night. The estate had been very accommodating, setting up tents for the bar, and providing luxury port-a-potties for the event, but they weren't letting us inside because of fire-code. If it rained, we were getting soaked.
I was standing next to Ranger eating a hot dog and drinking a beer. The sun had just set, the sky was pink, orange and purple, and I was enjoying myself. My mother came over to me, all smiles, and she scanned my outfit. "Did the other dress not fit?"
"Lunchbox got at it," I said. Lunchbox was Ranger's bird, and he'd obligingly shredded the monstrosity of a dress my mother had picked out for me. I'd have melted in it anyway. It was long sleeved and wool. The dress I was wearing, was a light blue silk sundress with a floaty skirt.
"Why can't you have a normal pet?" My mother asked.
"I do have a normal pet," I said, "I have a hamster. The larcenous, destructive, lock-picking bird belongs to Ranger."
"Well, I suppose this is okay. I still think that green would have looked good on you," she said. "Now, I want you to remember your first wedding."
"Why the fuck would I want to do that?" I asked. The question came out of me before I could censor the f-bomb. Usually, I could control it around my mother. I'd been swearing since I was a little kid, but everyone knew you pretended that you didn't know how to cuss, in front of your mother. From the look on mom's face, I was pretty sure I was grounded now.
"I'm sorry Carlos," mom said, "I did raise her better than that."
"I've heard worse," Ranger said.
"No doubt you have," she said and glared at me like it was my fault men in the military cussed. "Anyway, the reason I am bringing this up is your first dance is coming up now that the sun is down, and we want the pictures while the sky is still so pretty."
"Nope," I said. I was not doing that. I loved Ranger, and I would totally dance with him tonight, but not alone while everyone stood in a circle watching us. I wasn't doing that now. No way, nuh uh, not going to happen. The reason she wanted me to remember my first wedding was that I got so nervous trying to dance with my first husband (while wearing a wedding gown with a badly bustled train) that I was blushing this ugly blotchy blush that prompted Dickie to ask if I was having an allergic reaction. I stepped backward, tripped on the train, and my asshole husband didn't bother to help me out at all, and I went down flashing my sexy white lingerie at everyone.
We all pretended it hadn't happened, but it did, and I always sort of thought of that as an omen for the marriage. I knew Ranger wouldn't let me bail, but I also knew that the cell phone moratorium we had on for the evening was going to end the second we stepped on the dance floor as everyone who was at my first wedding prepared for a re-run of the incident.
"You have to," my mother said. "I paid a lot for that photographer, and you're going out there."
I looked pleadingly up at Ranger; he offered me his hand, and as we walked towards the dance floor, I gave him the context of the conversation with my mother.
"I know how you can avoid flashing the crowd your underwear," Ranger said. "Come with me."
We detoured away from the party to the port-a-potties, and we went behind them. Ranger looked around to make sure nobody was watching and knelt in front of me. "Put your hands on my shoulders."
I did as he said, and he gave me a wicked grin before he reached up my skirt and yanked my panties down. "Ranger!" I hissed. He grasped one of my ankles, lifted my foot, and unhooked my underwear from my shoe, and then did the same with the other. He stood up and stuffed my unmentionables in his pants pocket.
"Now you can't flash people your underwear. Only I'll get to know what it looks like."
"I can't dance without my underwear; not in front of my mom!"
"How is she going to know?"
"When I moon everyone," I said.
"And if I told you this is all part of a plan?" He said with a raised eyebrow.
"Well am I going to like this plan?" I asked.
"I've disabled the alarms on an exhibit in that mansion back there."
"What sort of exhibit?" I asked.
"A three-hundred-year-old bed that can sleep twelve. It used to belong in an Inn, and it is supposed to have seen a few thousand wedding nights, and who knows how many other escapades. Apparently, it's haunted by some excitable spirits, and it's supposed to heighten the experience."
"You want to have sex in a haunted museum exhibit?" I said.
His dark eyes flashed, and holy cow, yes he did. Ranger was into the idea of a ghost orgy. Who knew? "It'll have to be quick," he said.
I looked back at the house. "After our dance?"
He nodded. I took his hand, and half dragged him back to the dance floor. Mom saw us come back and she spoke to the DJ, and then shoved me onto the dance floor. Tony Bennet started playing, and Ranger slipped his hand around my waist.
We were about a minute into the song when Ranger slid his hand down my back and over my ass, and I was about to admonish him for groping me in front of family, when the wind took my skirt, and he pressed me against him, so that it didn't flare up, and I didn't flash the crowd.
I swear to God he'd done this a second before the breeze hit us, and I stared up at him wondering how the fuck he knew that was going to happen. Ranger's good, but he's not that good.
"How?" I asked.
He grinned, leaned in and whispered, "I'm Batman."
I burst out laughing and forgot about the horror of my first wedding and the awful dancing, and just enjoyed moving with Ranger on the dance floor. We mingled after the song ended, and everyone else had joined us on the dance floor. As soon as there was an opening, and we were confident we wouldn't be missed, Ranger and I made for the house by way of one of the booze tents.
He unlocked the door as if the lock wasn't even there, and punched in a code on the Rangeman security panel on the wall. A light blinked, the alarm disengaged, the door closed and the system re-engaged as if it had never turned off. I was willing to bet only Ranger knew that code.
He took my hand and led me through the house and up the stairs, under a velvet rope, and into a master bedroom. I don't really know what I was expecting when he told me it was a bed that slept twelve, but I wasn't expecting something that big. It was a four poster bed, that looked like someone had pushed three, short, king-sized mattresses together. It was huge, and the bedding seemed really soft.
"It's made of feathers," Ranger said.
I had this irrational thought that a bunch of horny lovers didn't haunt the bed, but instead, it was haunted by flocks of naked chickens. That thought quickly changed when Ranger slid his hand up my thigh, and he started kissing me. The air in the room was charged, with either energy from the impending weather, or from the ghosts in the bed; I didn't care which. He backed me up against the mattress, and I fell back onto the soft, bed. It creaked a little, but I was reasonably sure it could take our weight if it were meant to sleep a dozen people.
With that thought, I backed further onto the bed. If we were going to use the bed, it was probably a good idea to use as much as possible. You know, just to make sure we hit all of the extra haunted spots. Ranger's mouth was on the inside of my thigh, working his way to the promised land when I heard the creak outside of footsteps. Ranger had me off the bed, and into the closet before I registered what we were doing there.
The change of venue barely stalled Ranger, as he pushed me up against the closet wall, he hiked my leg up over his hip, and he ground against me. I reached for his belt, and he suddenly grabbed my hand with his left hand and covered my mouth with his right. He only covered it for a second, and then he put his finger to his lips, motioning for me to be quiet. He knelt again and drew a gun from his ankle holster.
I heard footsteps in the other room and wished Batman had his utility belt on him. Rangeman ran security here so Ranger wouldn't draw on one of his men, and if it were another couple with the same idea we had, Ranger would be inside me right now. No there was a threat out there, and I wanted a weapon. "Text Tank," Ranger whispered in my ear and handed me his phone. I did as directed, and we listened to what was going on in the room.
"You're sure they're in here?" A voice said.
"Anton told me he hid them under the mattress," another voice said.
"And you're sure we should be doing this when there are four hundred people out there?"
"Yeah," he said. "It's the boss of the security company's wedding, and the new wife is a disaster magnet; everyone will be watching the yard, not the house."
That was actually pretty sound reasoning. If there was going to be trouble, it was going to be wherever I was. In fact, the men in the room out there didn't realize that they were illustrating their point beautifully. I thought it was sort of poetic. We listened hard and didn't hear anything except for a scraping sound, and I swear to God I thought I heard Jingle Bell Rock playing somewhere.
"No use man," the first voice said, "I can't get all the way over. There's a big support beam down the middle of the bed, and I can't get under it. He must have come at it from the other side."
"How? The bed is against the wall."
"He said the bed was in the middle of the room. They musta moved it."
"We'll have to just cut through the mattress."
I wouldn't do that if I were you, I thought. Thousands of poultry-guiests were going to come after them if they did that.
"No asshole, not through the quilt. My Grandma would string us up by our balls if we did that. It's hand stitched, do you have any idea how many hours hat would have taken?"
"Sorry."
Ranger very slowly unlatched the door and pushed it opened. One man was walking on the pillows of the bed, and the other was on the floor at the foot of the bed, and they were carefully folding the quilt halfway across the mattress. The guy on the bed, was Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, except with the right amount of fingers for a nonanimated person, and he was orange from spray tan, instead of yellow from living in Springfield. He was dressed all in black, and had taken his shoes off before getting on the bed. His white socks stood out against the black of his jeans.
The second guy had dust marks on his back and a dust bunny riding a parrot on his right shoulder. He was wearing faded jeans, a man bun, and had a Jack Sparrow goatee.
Cletus knelt down on the pillows and jabbed his knife into one of them. Now seriously that was just wasteful. If they were looking for whatever underneath a mattress, why not move the pillows too?
"Stop," Ranger said.
Both men froze and looked at Ranger. Jack Dust Bunny, pulled a gun and pointed it at me; it was bright green and made of plastic. I tilted my head and looked at it.
"Really?" I said. "He's got a 9mm, and that's a water gun. Do you really think you have a chance?"
"You don't know what's in it," Cletus said.
"Water?" I guessed.
"Maybe it's acid," Cletus said.
"Is it?" Ranger asked.
"No," Cletus said, "But it could be."
Cletus then picked up his knife, and held it threateningly at Ranger, forgetting that there was a pillow impaled on it. He went to shake the pillow off and started spraying feathers everywhere. He lost grip of the knife and it flew up and jammed in the framing of the four-poster. In the chaos, the guy with the water gun started firing it, and it jammed with feathers, so he threw it at Ranger. Ranger didn't so much as blink as it flew past him and hit the wall.
"Are you finished?" Ranger asked. His shirt wasn't even wet. It was a cheap water pistol and it had about a two-foot range.
Cletus threw a pillow at Jack, and Jack ripped the pillow open, but I guess only the one Cletus was playing with was an authentic feather and the rest were cheap pillow forms because all he succeeded in doing was revealing a bunch of fiber-fill. He tried to fluff it out into a cloud to throw at us, and when that didn't work he tried to form it into snowballs.
During all of this Tank came into the room, and made eye contact with Ranger, looking for orders. Ranger shrugged.
"Run George!" Jack said.
"What?" Cletus asked.
"While they are distracted!"
I watched Cletus jump off of the bed and run full on into Tank. He bounced off of the big guy and fell into Jack, who tagged me with a snowball (which was surprisingly robust) and labeled me in the hollow of my shoulder. Jack hit the ground with a thud and whacked his head off the floor, going lights out. Cletus freaked out at us because we'd killed his friend, and decided that the least threatening of the three of us was Tank and decided he was going to tackle him.
He went low, and head-butted Tank in the groin and Tank went down but had the presence of mind to grab Cletus around the ankle. Cletus went sprawling onto the ground and scrambled to try to get away from the giant paw that had a death grip around his ankle.
Ranger calmly walked over to Tank and took some Flexi-cuffs from his belt, and fastened them around Cletus's wrists and ankles, and then did the same thing to Jack.
While he was doing this, I reached down and picked up the fluff ball that labeled me and looked inside it. There I found a black velvet bag, vacuum packed by one of those food savers machines. I went to the pillow that had been used as a weapon and looked inside revealing three more bags like this.
"Uhh, Ranger?" I said.
He turned to look at me, and he took one of the bags. He used a pocket knife to open the food saver bag, and pulled out the velvet pouch. He dumped a bunch of stones out onto his hand. "That would be a bag of sapphires," Ranger said. "And the Anton they are talking about it probably Anton Mergeller."
"Who the hell is that?" I asked.
"He's a small-time thief who is a prime suspect in two jewelry store robberies, where he grabbed pouches of loose stones and stashed them somewhere. His lawyer has a compelling stack of circumstantial evidence that points to collusion between the store owners who he claims are selling the stones on the black market to cover some debts. Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday, and if the prosecution has no rebuttal witnesses, Mergeller is probably going to get off."
"Oops," I said.
Ranger nodded. "All they had to do was wait a few more days. Once acquitted, they can't charge him again for the same crime."
Ranger nodded again. Tank looked a little grey, but he was somewhat recovered. Ranger hauled him to his feet. "You Good?"
"Yep," Tank said.
Ranger turned to me, "Call Morelli."
"Not a good idea, boss. I saw him as I was coming up here. He had his tongue down some girl's throat, and I'm pretty sure they are both completely shit-faced."
"Good for him," I said. "But the problem is that everyone else I know on the Force is downstairs, and it's an open bar. None of them are going to be sober."
If I went downstairs and did manage to find a sober cop to come upstairs, they wouldn't ask potentially sticky questions like, what Ranger and I in the closet in the first place, and that would give us a chance to come up with a plausible reason that wasn't that we wanted to see about a ghost orgy. Also, if they did ask why we were upstairs, and Ranger gave them his blank face that said, 'Move on if you want to keep all of your fingers,' they generally moved on.
Since they were probably all drunk I'd have to give my statement to someone I didn't know, and they would for sure ask us why we were upstairs, and they might not understand the blank face.
Ranger had the same thought, so he called the D.A. It was just easier that way.