"It's your job," Morelli said.

"It's your expectations."

He put his cereal bowl in the sink and buckled his gun onto his belt.

"Yeah, my expectations are that you'll give up your job."

"Are we fighting?"

"Am I yelling and waving my arms?"

"No."

"Then we aren't fighting." He crooked an arm around my neck and kissed me. "I have to go. I'm working with Phil Panchek. He hates being baffled without me."

"Marty Gobel never called to talk to me. Does that mean I'm off the hook?"

"No. It means he's dreading talking to you for fear you don't have an alibi, and he's procrastinating as long as possible."

Bob was leaning against me. "Are you taking Bob?"

"Yeah, I'll drop him off at my house. He has a routine. He eats the couch. He takes a nap. He gnaws on a dining room table leg. He takes a nap. He spreads the garbage all over the kitchen floor. He takes a nap."

I fondled Bob's ear. "You're lucky you have a dog who can amuse himself while you're gone."

Morelli shrugged into his jacket and clipped Bob's leash on him. "Later."

I finished my coffee and cereal and hand-washed the dishes. I took a shower and put in the minimum effort on my hair. Truth is, the minimum effort isn't that far removed from the maximum effort, and my hair pretty much looks the same no matter what I do with it. I applied some mascara and looked myself in the eye in the mirror.

"Today is the day," I said to myself. "Time to get serious. If you don't catch someone soon, you'll get kicked out of your apartment."

I got dressed in my lucky jeans and my lucky black sweater. It was still cold, but it wasn't snowing or sleeting, so I traded my fake Uggs for running shoes… just in case I had to chase down Diggery. I had cuffs in my back jeans pocket. Pepper spray in my jacket pocket. A stun gun clipped to my belt. I went to the kitchen and took my gun out of my cookie jar. It was a little five-shot Smith & Wesson. I spun the barrel. No bullets. I looked in the jar. No bullets. I rummaged through kitchen drawers. No bullets. I put the gun back into the cookie jar. I didn't really want to shoot anyone today anyway.

I got bundled up in my parka and scarf and gloves, and went out to the Vic. I crawled in and plugged the key into the ignition. It took a while, but the engine finally caught. All right, so I didn't have a great car. No big deal, I told myself. At least it was running. And today was the day it was all going to turn around. I was going after Diggery first and then Coglin. And then I was going to plow through the rest of the cases.

I took Broad and headed for Bordentown. It was just past rush hour, and traffic was heavy but moving. The cloud cover had finally lifted and the sky was as blue as it gels in Jersey. I was on Route 206, cruising along, listening to the radio, when the grinding sound coining from under the hood turned into BANG, BANG, BANG and the car coasted to a stop at the side of the road. It wasn't entirely unexpected, but it left me breathless all the same. Another example that sugar isn't pixie dust, and wish as hard as you might, it won't make you invisible.

I was sitting there trying to keep from crying, running through my options, and Ranger called.

"Babe, you're stopped on Route 206. What's up?"

I remembered the gizmo in my bag. RangeMan was monitoring me. "My car died."

Fifteen minutes later, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Ranger pull in behind me. He got out of his car and into mine. Ranger didn't smile a lot, but clearly he was amused.

"I don't know how you do it," Ranger said. "In a matter of days, you've managed to turn a perfectly good piece-of-shit car into something so fucked up it's a work of art."

"It's a gift."

"The bullet hole in the rear window?"

"Joyce Barnhardt," I told him. "She's unhappy with me because she thinks I killed Dickie."

"And the crud on the dash?"

"Squirrel bomb."

He looked incredulous for a moment and then burst out laughing. In all the time I'd known Ranger, this was maybe the third time I'd seen him actually laugh out loud, so it turned out to be worth getting squirrel-bombed.

Ranger dropped back to a smile and tugged me out of the car. He kicked the door closed, slung an arm around my shoulders, and walked me back to his Porsche Cayenne. "Where were you going?" he asked.

"I'm looking for Simon Diggery," I said. " I stopped by his double-wide on Tuesday, but no one was home. I thought I'd try again."

Ranger opened the Cayenne door for me. "I'll go with you. If we're lucky, we might get to see his snake eat a cow."

I looked back at the Vic. "What about my car?"

"I'll have it picked up."

Ranger didn't bother parking out of sight of Diggery's trailer. He drove the Cayenne onto the blighted grass and pulled up between the trailer and the stand of hardwoods. We got out of the Porsche, and he gave me his gun.

"Stay here and shoot anyone who makes a run for it, including the snake."

"How do you know I don't have my own gun?"

"Do you?"

"No."

Ranger did another one of those almost sighing things and jogged around to Diggery's front door. I heard him rap on the door and call out. There was the sound of the rusted door opening and closing and then silence. I held my ground.

After a couple minutes, Ranger reappeared and motioned for me to join him.

"Simon is off somewhere, but the uncle is here. And stay away from the sink," Ranger said.

I gave him his gun back, followed him into the trailer, and immediately checked out the kitchen area. The snake was sprawled on the counter, its head in the sink. I guess it was thirsty. The uncle was at the small built-in table.

The uncle wasn't much older than Simon Diggery, and the family resemblance was there, blurred over a little by hard drinking and an extra fifty pounds. He was wearing black socks and ratty bedroom slippers and huge boxer shorts.

"Give you a quarter if you pull your shirt up," Bill Diggery said to me.

" Ill give you a quarter if you put your shirt on," I told him.

Ranger was against the wall, watching Diggery. "Where's Simon?" Ranger asked.

"Don't know," Bill said.

"Think about it," Ranger told him.

"He might be at work."

"Where is he working?"

"Don't know."

Ranger's eyes flicked to the snake and back to Bill. "Has he been fed today?"

"He don't eat every day," Bill said. "He probably ain't hungry."

"Steph," Ranger said. "Wait outside so I can talk to Bill."

"You aren't going to feed him to the snake, are you?"

"Not all of him."

"As long as it's not all of him," I said. And I let myself out.

I closed the door and waited for a couple minutes. I didn't hear any screams of pain or terror. No gunshots. I hunkered down in my jacket and shoved my hands into my pockets to keep warm. A couple more minutes passed, and Ranger came out, closing the door behind him.

"Well?" I asked.

"Simon is working in the food court at Quakerbridge Mall. Bill didn't know more than that."

"Did you feed Uncle Bill to the snake?"

"No. He was right… the snake wasn't hungry."

"Then how did you get him to talk?"

Ranger slid an arm around me, and I felt his lips brush my ear when he spoke. "I can be very persuasive."

No kidding.

Quakerbridge is on Route One, northeast of Trenton. It seemed like a long way for Diggery to drive for an odd job in a food court, but what the heck, maybe Diggery was lucky to get it. And maybe he had a better car than I did. That thought brought me up to a sobering reality. Diggery for sure had a better car than I did because I had no car at all.

Ranger drove out of Diggery's neighborhood and headed north. We were on Route 206, and I was dreading the section of highway where I'd left the Vic. I didn't want to see the poor, sad, broken-down car. It was a reminder of what was wrong with my life. Crappy job, hand-to-mouth existence, no future I was willing to commit to. If it was June and the sun was shining, I might feel different, but it was cold and the clouds had returned and a mist had started to fall.