"Do we know any more about last night?" I asked.

"Tank saw Joyce at the fire scene, and it sounded like she had Smullen's girlfriend with her. Other than that, no."

We got into the turbo and Ranger drove out of the garage. I had my coffee in the turbo's cup holder, the bagel in one hand and a mascara wand in the other.

"Don't jerk around," I said to Ranger. "I could go blind doing this."

"Wouldn't it be safer to do without?"

"Yeah, but I hide behind it. I put it on when I need to feel brave."

"You don't need to feel brave today. Nothing bad is going to happen at this meeting."

"I've been sleeping in your bed, and I've got your name embroidered on my underpants, and now I'm going into a meeting where your air space is going to intersect with Morelli's."

"Babe, nothing's been happening in my bed, and no one's going to see your underpants in this meeting unless you go goofy."

We parked in the public lot and crossed the street to the municipal building. Ranger had meeting instructions, so we ignored the cop-in-a-cage and went directly to a conference room. There were six men already seated. Ranger and I took our seats, and that left one chair empty. Morelli. Morelli's chair was directly opposite mine. Ranger was to my right. Already I was sweating the seating arrangement.

The conference room door opened, and Morelli entered. He nodded to everyone and claimed his place at the table. He looked across at me and smiled. The smile was small and intimate, and his brown eyes softened just a little for just a moment. He was in jeans and a cream sweater with the sleeves pushed to his elbows.

I had no idea what was going on inside Morelli or Ranger. They looked perfectly at ease and in control. Both of them were good at hiding emotion. Both were good at compartmentalizing. I wasn't good at any of that stuff. I was a wreck inside.

"Sorry I'm late," Morelli said. "I had to wait for the babysitter."

Everyone knew Morelli had someone locked down.

"You called this," Targa said to Morelli. "You want to run it?"

"Stephanie and Ranger have information they want to share with us," Morelli said. "And they're hoping we have information to share with them." His eyes went first to me and then to Ranger. The eyes didn't say anything. Morelli was in cop mode.

"For reasons that are obvious, Stephanie and I have been looking for Dickie Orr," Ranger said. "Stephanie was looking for him in the warehouse when the fire started. And we were in the apartment building last night when that fire occurred. We know that all three fire victims were dead before the fire. We know there was an accelerant in the apartment. I called 911 and did a fast search, but I didn't find anything that looked like a bomb. And for that matter, in both instances, there was no explosion of any significance."

"You saw the victims before the fire?" Targa asked.

"Stephanie saw Smullen. We both saw the two bodies in the apartment building. All three had been burned beyond recognition. The scorch trail suggested flamethrower."

"The accelerant was gasoline," Roiker said. "We found the cans."

"Do you know how it was ignited?" Ranger asked.

"Both times it started in a kitchen. In the case of the warehouse, it was a corner set aside for a cooler and a microwave and a toaster. The lab guys are still working, but it looks like someone rammed something that would burn into the toaster… Hell, it could have been one of those breakfast tart things. The pop-up mechanism was disabled and the toaster was wired with an interior timer. We suspect the toaster was fitted with a fuse to make sure the flames reached the accelerant, but there was no evidence of it."

"The flaming toaster bomb," Marty Gobel said. "We see a lot of them."

Morelli cracked a smile and Ranger nudged my knee with his.

"Have you identified the victims from the apartment fire?" Ranger asked.

"Working on it. Not a lot left of them. The explosion was set closer and the fire burned hotter."

"We saw Rufus Caine enter the building. And we believe he was meeting Victor Gorvich," Ranger said. "Tank was watching, and he didn't see either man come out the front of the building. Someone rappelled out a back window."

Ranger didn't share information on the drug connection or the missing $40 million, and no one mentioned Dickie Orr.

Five minutes before the meeting closed, Morelli's phone buzzed and he went outside to take the call and never returned. At eleven o'clock, Ranger and I left the building and buckled ourselves into the Porsche.

"Do you think he was pulling our leg on the toaster?" I asked Ranger.

"No. He's not that clever. I did a fast run through the apartment, looking for an incendiary, and didn't see anything. Smullen's girlfriend had taken everything except the couch and the toaster. I saw the toaster and didn't give it a second look."

"Next time we enter a building soaked in gasoline, we'll think to unplug the toaster."

Ranger glanced in his rearview mirror when we were a block from RangeMan. "It looks like Joyce got her Mercedes running."

I turned and looked out the back window. Joyce was a car length behind us.

"I have to give her credit," I said. "She's good."

"She's too good," Ranger said. "She's finding us on the road."

He keyed himself into the underground garage and parked in his space in front of the elevator.

"Do you have plans for today?" he asked me. "I can give you paperwork if you haven't anything better to do."

"I have two skips I'm working on. I thought I'd check on them."

"If you're going to leave your bag anywhere, please take the monitor with you. Put it in your pocket."

"Is it okay if I only take one?"

"How many do you have?"

"Three."

Ranger sat there for a beat. "I only planted one."

"Shit."

We rode the elevator to Ranger's apartment, went inside, and I emptied my bag onto the kitchen counter.

Ranger picked a pen out of the mess. "This is mine."

I took it from him and put it into my pocket.

"This lipstick is another one," I said, handing him the tube.

"I'm guessing this is from Joyce," Ranger said. "You can buy these in The Spy Store."

"And the third." I gave him what looked like a menthol cough drop in a paper wrapper.

"This is good," Ranger said, examining the cough drop. "Super small. Well disguised. How did you discover it?"

"I tried to eat it."

"That's the flaw. You can write with my pen."

"This is so creepy. Three people planted a transmitter on me, and I never knew they were doing it. What else am I missing? We know one of the transmitters belongs to you, and you planted it on me to protect me. We suspect the second belongs to Joyce, and she wanted me to lead her to Dickie. So what does this third one represent?"

"It could be as simple as one more person with the same agenda as Joyce. One of the partners who thought you might lead him to Dickie and the money. Maybe someone was casting a wide net. Maybe Joyce is walking around with a transmitter in her bag too."

"You don't want me to freak over this."

"I don't want you to get bogged down in negative emotion. And the truth is, we aren't sure what these toys do. I'm going to take them downstairs and give them to one of my tech guys."

"Omigod, I just had a thought. I killed Rufus Caine! If the cough drop is a transmitter, the owner would have known we visited Rufus. He would have known we were at the club. And he would have known we followed Rufus to the apartment."

"You didn't kill Rufus. And even if you did, it wouldn't be much of a loss."

"Death by flamethrower is gruesome."

"That's the appeal. The threat is demoralizing. It instills fear. And fear can be a controlling, paralyzing emotion. There are paramilitary groups that make good use of flamethrowers. It's not an especially effective way to kill a man, but it sends a message."