“We got a complaint about some pervert sitting in a Buick, looking in people's windows with binoculars.”
“I'm checking out a Mo sighting.”
Costanza reached for the binoculars and looked the building over. “Are you going to be checking it out much longer?”
“No. I'm done. I don't know why I even came back here tonight. I just have this feeling, you know?”
“Nobody ever takes their clothes off in this neighborhood,” Costanza said, still going window to window. “Have you talked to Reverend Bill?”
“Not yet.”
“You should go do that while I keep an eye on things. I've got a second-floor apartment that looks promising.”
“You think Mo might be there?”
“No. I think a naked woman might be there. Come on, sweetheart,” Carl crooned, watching the woman in the window, “unbutton your shirt for Uncle Carl.”
“You're sick.”
“I live to serve,” Costanza said.
I crossed the street and tried to peek past the curtains covering the two plate-glass windows in the front of the Freedom Church. I didn't get much mileage from that, so I opened the door and looked inside.
The entire downstairs portion was essentially one large room, set up auditorium style with a bunch of folding chairs arranged in rows and a raised platform set against the back wall. The platform had some blue material tacked to it to make a skirt. A lectern stood in the middle of the platform. I assumed this was the pulpit.
A man was stacking books at one end of the platform. He was medium height, medium weight and had a head like a bowling ball. He wore round tortoiseshell glasses, and had pink scrubbed-clean skin, and looked like he should be saying things like, “Okley dokley, neighbor.” I recognized him from his press photos. It was Reverend Bill.
He straightened and smiled when he saw me. His voice was soft and pleasantly melodic. Easy to imagine him in a choir robe. Hard to imagine him throwing cow's blood, but I guess when the moment seizes you . . .
“Of course I know Moses Bedemier,” he said affably. "Everyone knows Uncle Mo. He packs one heck of an ice cream cone.
“A couple people have reported seeing him here on Montgomery recently.”
“You mean since his disappearance?”
“You know about that?”
“Several of our parishioners are from the burg. Everyone has been concerned. This is pretty strange behavior for a man as stable as Mo Bedemier.”
I gave Reverend Bill my card. “If you should see him, I'd appreciate a call.”
“Of course.” He silently stared at the card, lost in thought, serious. “I hope he's okay.”
Stephanie Plum 3 - Three To Get Deadly
9
I didn't want Ranger showing up in my bedroom at the crack of dawn again, so I made sure my windows were locked and the bolt thrown on my front door. Then, to be extra sure, I jury-rigged a tower of pots and pans in front of the door, so that if the door was opened the pots would come crashing down and wake me up. I'd done this once before with a tower of glasses. It had worked like a charm except for the broken glass all over the floor and the necessity of drinking from paper cups until my next paycheck arrived.
I reread my scribblings on the steno pad, but no wondrous revelation jumped off the page at me.
At 5 A.M. the pots clattered to the floor, and I rushed out in my flannel nightshirt to find Ranger smiling in my foyer.
“Hey babe,” Ranger said.
I picked my way around the pots and examined my door. The two Yale locks were intact, the bolt was thrown, the chain was attached. My conclusion was that Ranger had knocked the pots over when he slid under the doorjamb.
“I don't suppose it would do me any good to ask how you got in,” I said.