"You should be careful, because when they get that big and all red and filled with pus they can leave scars."

My fingers flew to my chin before I could stop them. God, she was right. The zit felt huge. It was growing. Damn! My emergency reaction mode kicked in, and the message it sent to my brain was Flee! Hide!

"I should be moving along, anyway," I said, backing away. "Tell Dickie I didn't want anything special. I was in the neighborhood and I thought I'd say hello."

I let myself out, took the stairs, and rushed through the lobby and out the door. I crammed myself into the Buick and yanked at the rearview mirror so I could see my zit.

Gross!

I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes. Bad enough I had the zit from hell, but Cynthia Lotte had out-ruded me. I'd found out nothing for Ranger. The only thing I knew about Lotte was that she looked good in gray and had pushed my button. One mention of my pimple, and I was out the door.

I looked back at the Shuman Building and wondered if Ramos had done business with Dickie's firm. And what sort of business? It would have made sense for Lotte to have met Ramos that way. Of course, she could also have met him on the street. The Ramos office building was only a block away.

I put the Buick into gear and slowly cruised past the Ramos building. The crime scene tape had been removed, and I could see workmen in the lobby. The service road that ran past the rear door was clogged with repair trucks.

I doubled back through town, stopping at the Radio Shack on Third.

"I need some kind of an alarm," I told the kid at the register. "Nothing fancy. Just something that tells me when my front door gets opened. And stop staring at my chin!"

"I wasn't staring at your chin. Honest! I didn't even notice that big zit."

A half-hour later I was on my way to the office to get Bob. Sitting in a little bag, on the seat beside me, was a small motion detector gizmo for my front door. I told myself it was necessary for general security, but truth is, I knew it had one purpose: to alert me whenever Ranger broke in to my apartment. And why did I feel the need for the gizmo? Did it have anything to do with fear? No. Although there were times when Ranger could be scary. Did it have to do with distrust? Nope. I trusted Ranger. The fact is, I got the gizmo because just once I wanted to have the advantage. It was driving me nuts that Ranger could get into my apartment without even waking me.

I stopped at Cluck-in-a-Bucket and got a barrel of chicken nuggets for lunch. I figured that was best for Bob. No bones to hork up.

Everyone's eyes got bright when I walked through the door with my barrel of nuggets.

"Bob and me were just thinking about chicken," Lula said. "You must have read our minds."

I took the lid off the barrel, set the lid on the floor, and dumped a bunch of nuggets onto it for Bob. I took a nugget for myself and handed the rest off to Lula and Connie. Then I called my cousin Bunny at the credit bureau.

"What have you got on Cynthia Lotte?" I asked Bunny.

A minute later she was back with the answer. "Not much here," she said. "A recent car loan. Pays her bills on time. No derogatory information. Lives in Ewing." The phone went silent for a couple beats. "What are you looking for?"

"I don't know. She works for Dickie."

"Oh." As if that explained it all.

I got Lotte's address and phone and said adios to Bunny.

The next person I called was Morelli. None of his numbers picked up so I left a message on his pager.

"That's funny," Lula said. "Didn't you put those nuggets on the bucket lid? I can't find that bucket lid anywhere."

We all looked at Bob. He had a small piece of cardboard stuck to his lip.

"Dang," Lula said. "He makes me look like an amateur."

"So, do you notice anything unusual about me?" I asked.

"Only that you got a big zit on your chin. Must be that time of the month, huh?"

"It's stress!" I stuck my head in my shoulder bag and looked for concealer. Flashlight, hairbrush, lipstick, Juicy Fruit gum, stun gun, tissues, hand lotion, pepper spray. No concealer.

"I've got a Band-Aid," Connie said. "You could try to cover it with a Band-Aid."

I stuck the Band-Aid over the pimple.

"That's better," Lula said. "Now it looks like you cut yourself shaving."

Great.

"Before I forget," Connie said, "a call came in about Ranger while you were on the phone with the credit bureau. There's a warrant written for his arrest in connection with the Ramos murder."

"How does the warrant read?" I asked.

"Wanted for questioning."

"That's how it started with O.J.," Lula said. "They just wanted him for questioning. And look how that turned out."

I wanted to check on Hannibal's town house, but I didn't want to drag Mitchell and Habib over with me.

"I need a diversion," I said to Lula. "I need to get rid of those guys in the carpet car."

"Do you mean you want to get rid of them? Or do you mean you don't want them following you?"

"I don't want them following me."

"Well, that's easy." She took a.45 out of her desk drawer. "I'll just shoot out a couple tires."

"No! No shooting!"

"You always got all these rules," Lula said.

Vinnie stuck his head out of his office. "How about the burning bag thing?"

We swiveled our heads in his direction.

"Usually you do it as a gag on somebody's front porch," Vinnie said. "You put some dog shit in a bag. Then you put the bag on the sucker's front porch and ring the bell. Then you set the bag on fire and run like hell. When the mark opens the door he sees the bag burning and stomps on it to put it out."

"And?"

"And then he gets dog shit all over his shoe," Vinnie said. "If you did it to these guys and they got dog shit all over their shoes they'd be distracted, and you could drive away."

"Only we haven't got a front porch," Lula said.

"Use your imagination!" Vinnie said. "You put it just behind the car. Then you sneak away and someone from the office here yells out at them that something's burning under their car."

"I kinda like the sound of that," Lula said. "Only thing is, we need some dog poop."

We all turned our attention to Bob.

Connie took a brown paper lunch bag from her bottom drawer. "I've got a bag and you can use the empty chicken bucket as a pooper-scooper."

I snapped the leash on Bob, and Lula and Bob and I went out the back door and walked around some. Bob tinkled about forty times, but he didn't have any contributions for the bag.

"He don't look motivated," Lula said. "Maybe we should take him over to the park."

The park was only two blocks away, so we walked Bob to the park and stood around waiting for him to answer nature's call. Only nature wasn't calling Bob's name.

"You ever notice how when you don't want dog poop it just seems to be everywhere?" Lula said. "And now when we want some…" Her eyes opened wide. "Hold the phone. Dog at twelve o'clock. And it's a big one."

Sure enough, someone else was walking their dog in the park. The dog was big and black. The old woman at the other end of the leash was small and white. She was wearing low-heeled shoes and a bulky brown tweed coat, and she had her gray hair stuffed into a knit hat. She was holding a plastic bag and a paper towel in her hand. The bag was empty.

"I don't mean to blaspheme or anything," Lula said. "But God sent us this dog."

The dog suddenly stopped walking and hunched over, and Lula and Bob and I took off across the grass. I had Bob on the leash, and Lula was waving the chicken bucket and paper bag, and we were running full tilt when the woman looked up and saw us. The color drained from her face, and she staggered backward.

"I'm old," she said. "I haven't got any money. Go away. Don't hurt me."