Hard Eight

I ate a bag of raw dough a week. I considered it to be one of the four major food groups.

“I always eat raw cookie dough,” I said.

“Me, too,” Kloughn said. “I eat raw cookie dough all the time. I don’t believe that stuff about the cancer.” He looked into the bag and tentatively took out a frozen lump of dough. “So what do you do here? Do you, like, nibble on it? Or do you put it all in your mouth at once?”

“You’ve never had raw cookie dough, have you?”

“No.” He took a bite and chewed. “I like it,” he said. “Very good.”

I glanced down at my watch. “You’re going to have to go now. I have some unfinished business to take care of.”

“Is it bounty hunter business? You can tell me. I won’t tell anybody, I swear. What are you doing? I bet you’re going after someone. You were waiting for nighttime, right?”

“Right.”

“So who are you going after? Is it anyone I know? Is it, like, a high-profile case? A killer?”

“It’s no one you know. It’s domestic abuse. A repeat offender. I’m waiting until he passes out in a drunken stupor, and then I’m going to capture him when he’s unconscious.”

“I could help you—”

“No!”

“You didn’t let me finish. I could help you drag him to the car. How are you going to get him to the car? You’re going to need help, right?”

“Lula will help me.”

“Lula has class tonight. Remember she said she had to go to school tonight. Do you have anyone else who helps you? I bet you don’t have anyone else, right?”

I was getting an eye twitch. Tiny, annoying muscle contractions below my right lower lid. “Okay,” I said, “you can come with me, but you can’t talk. No talking.”

“Sure. No talking. My lips are sealed. Look at me, I’m locking my lips and throwing the key away.”

**********************

I PARKED HALF a block from Andy Bender’s apartment, positioning my car between pools of light thrown by overhead halogens. Traffic was minimal. Vendors had closed up shop for the day, switching to nighttime pursuits of hijacking and shoplifting. Residents were locked behind closed doors, beer can in hand, watching reality television. A nice break from their own reality, which wasn’t all that terrific.

Kloughn gave me a look that said now what?

“Now we wait,” I told him. “We make sure nothing unusual is going on.”

Kloughn nodded and made the zippered mouth sign again. If he made the zippered mouth sign one more time I was going to smack him in the head.

After a half hour of sitting and waiting I was convinced that I didn’t want to sit and wait anymore. “Let’s take a closer look,” I said to Kloughn. “Follow me.”

“Shouldn’t I have a gun or something? What if there’s a shoot-out? Do you have a gun?

Where’s your gun?”

“I left my gun home. We don’t need guns. Andy Bender has never been known to carry a gun.” Best not to mention he prefers chain saws and kitchen knives. I approached Bender’s unit as if I owned it. Bounty hunter rule number seventeen—

don’t look sneaky. Lights were on inside. The windows were curtained, but the curtains were a skimpy fit, and it was possible to look around the fabric. I put my nose to the window and stared in at the Benders. Andy was in a big, overstuffed recliner, feet up, open bag of chips on his chest, dead to the world. His wife sat on the tattered couch, eyes glued to the television.

“I’m pretty sure we’re doing something illegal,” Kloughn whispered.

“There’s all kinds of illegal. This is one of those things that’s only a little illegal.”

“I guess it’s okay if you’re a bounty hunter. There are special rules for bounty hunters, right?”

Right. And there really is an Easter bunny.

I wanted to get into the apartment, but I didn’t want to wake Bender. I walked around the building and carefully tried Bender’s back door. Locked. I returned to the front and found that door locked, too. I gave a couple light raps on the door with my knuckles, hoping to get the wife’s attention without waking Bender.

Kloughn was looking in the window. He shook his head. No one was getting up to answer the door. I rapped louder. Nothing. Bender’s wife was concentrating on the television show. Damn. I rang the bell.

Kloughn jumped away from the window and rushed to my side. “She’s coming!”

The door opened, and Bender’s wife stood flat-footed in front of us. She was a large woman with pale skin, and a dagger tattooed on her arm. Her eyes were red-rimmed and dull. Her face expressionless. She wasn’t as wasted as her husband, but she was well on the way. She took a step back when I introduced myself.

“Andy don’t like to be disturbed,” she said. “He gets in a real bad mood when he’s disturbed.”

“Maybe you should go to a friend’s house, so you’re not here if Andy gets disturbed.”

Last thing I wanted was for Andy to beat on his wife because she let us disturb him. She looked at her husband, still asleep in his chair. Then she looked at us. And then she took off, out the door, disappearing into the darkness.

Kloughn and I tiptoed up to Bender and took a closer look.

“Maybe he’s dead,” Kloughn said.

“I don’t think so.”

“He smells dead.”

“He always smells like that.” I was prepared this time. I had my stun gun with me. I leaned forward, pressed my stun gun to Bender, and hit the juice button. Nothing happened. I examined the stun gun. It looked okay. I put it to Bender again. Nothing. Goddamn electronic piece of shit. Okay, go to backup plan. I grabbed the cuffs I had tucked into my back pocket and quietly clicked a bracelet on Bender’s right wrist. Bender’s eyes flew open. “What the hell?”

I pulled his cuffed hand across his body and secured the second bracelet onto his left wrist.

“Goddamn,” he yelled. “I hate being disturbed when I’m watching television! What the fuck are you doing in my house?”

“The same thing I was doing in your house yesterday. Bond enforcement,” I said.

“You’re in violation of your bond. You need to reschedule.”

He glared at Kloughn. “What’s with the dough boy?”

Kloughn handed Bender his business card. “Albert Kloughn, attorney at law.”

“I hate clowns. They creep me out.”

Kloughn pointed to his name on the card. “K-l-o-u-g-h-n,” he said. “If you ever need a lawyer, I’m real good.”

“Oh yeah?” Bender said. “Well, I hate lawyers even more than clowns.” He jumped forward and knocked Kloughn on his ass with a head butt to Kloughn’s face. “And I hate you,” he said, lunging at me, head down.

I sidestepped and tried the stun gun on him again. No effect. I ran after him and made another stab. He never broke stride. He was across the room, through the open front door. I threw the stun gun at him. It bounced off his head, he yelled ouch, and he was gone, into the darkness.

I was torn between following after him and helping Kloughn. Kloughn was on his back, blood trickling from his nose, mouth open, eyes glazed. Hard to tell if he was just stunned or in a genuine coma.

“Are you okay?” I yelled at Kloughn.

Kloughn didn’t say anything. His arms were in motion, but he wasn’t making any progress at getting up. I went to his side and dropped to one knee.

“Are you okay?” I asked again.

His eyes focused, and he reached for me, grabbing a handful of shirt. “Did I hit him?”

“Yeah. You hit him with your face.”

“I knew it. I knew I’d be good under pressure. I’m pretty tough, right?”

“Right.” God help me, I was starting to like him.

I dragged him up and got him some paper towels from the kitchen. Bender was long gone, along with my cuffs. Again.

I retrieved the useless stun gun, packed Kloughn into the CR-V, and took off. It was a cloudy, moonless night. The projects were dark. Lights burned behind drawn shades but did nothing to illuminate lawns. I drove along the streets surrounding the projects, searching the shadows for movement, staring into the occasional uncurtained window. Kloughn had his head tipped back with the towels stuffed up his nose. “Does this happen a lot?” he asked. “I thought it would be different. I mean, this was pretty fun, but he got away. And he didn’t smell good. I didn’t expect him to smell that bad.”

I looked over at Kloughn. He seemed different. Crooked, somehow. “Has your nose always curved to the left?” I asked him.

He gingerly touched his nose. “It feels funny. You don’t think it’s broken, do you? I’ve never had anything broken before.”

It was just about the most broken nose I’d ever seen. “It doesn’t look broken to me,” I said. “Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor look at it. Maybe we should make a quick stop-off at the emergency room.”

5

I OPENED MY eyes and looked at the clock: 8:30. Not exactly an early start to the day. I could hear rain spattering on my fire escape and on my windowpane. My feeling on rain is that it should only occur at night when people are sleeping. At night, rain is cozy. During the day, rain is a pain in the gumpy. Another screwup on the part of creation. Like waste management. When you’re planning a universe you have to think ahead. I rolled out of bed and sleepwalked to the kitchen. Rex was done running for the night, sound asleep in his soup can. I got coffee going and shuffled to the bathroom. An hour later I was in my car, ready to start the day, not sure what to do first. Probably I should pay a condolence visit on Kloughn. I’d gotten his nose broken. By the time I’d dropped him at his car, his eyes were black and his nose was being held straight by a Band-Aid. Problem is, if I go see him now, I run the risk of having him latch onto me for the day. And I really didn’t want Kloughn tagging along. I was fairly inept when left to my own devices. With Kloughn tagging along, I was a disaster waiting to happen. I was sitting in my lot, staring out the rain-smeared window, and I realized there was a plastic sandwich bag attached to my windshield wiper. I opened the door and snatched the bag off the wiper. There was a note-size piece of white paper folded four times inside the bag. The message on the paper was written in black marker.

Did you like the snakes?

Wonderful. Just the way I wanted to start my day. I returned the note to the bag and put the bag in the glove compartment. On the seat beside me were the two FTA folders Connie had given me. Andrew Bender, still at large. And Laura Minello. I’d go out and capture one of them this morning, but I didn’t have any handcuffs. And I’d rather poke myself in the eye with a fork than get another pair of cuffs from the office. That left Annie Soder.

I put the CR-V in gear and drove to the Burg. I parked in front of my parents’ house, but I knocked on Mabel’s door.

“Who did Evelyn hang out with when she was a kid?” I asked Mabel. “Did she have a best friend?”

“Dotty Palowski. They went all through grade school together. High school, too. Then Evelyn got married and Dotty moved away.”

“Did they stay friends?”

“I think they lost touch. Evelyn kept more and more to herself after she married.”

“Do you know where Dotty is now?”

“I don’t know where Dotty’s living but her folks are still here in the Burg.”

I knew the family. Dotty’s parents lived on Roebling. There were some aunts and uncles and cousins in the Burg, too. “I need one more thing,” I said to Mabel. “I need a list of Evelyn’s relatives. All of them.”

I had the list in my hand when I left. It wasn’t a long list. An aunt and an uncle in the Burg. Three cousins, all in the Trenton area. A cousin in Delaware. I jumped the railing that divided the porches and went next door to see Grandma Mazur.

“I went to the Shleckner viewing,” Grandma said. “I’m telling you, that Stiva is a genius. When it comes to morticians, you can’t beat Stiva. You know how old Shleckner had all those big scabby things on his face? Well, Stiva covered them all somehow. And you couldn’t even tell Shleckner had a glass eye. They both look just the same. It was a miracle.”

“How do you know about the glass eye? Didn’t they have his eyes closed?”

“Yeah, but they might have come open for a second while I was standing there. It might have happened when I accidentally dropped my reading glasses into the casket.”

“Hmmm,” I said to Grandma.

“Well, you can’t blame a person for wondering about those things. Wasn’t my fault, either. If they’d left his eyes open I wouldn’t have had to wonder.”

“Did anyone see you prying Shleckner’s eyes open?”

“No. I was real sneaky.”

“Did you hear anything useful about Evelyn or Annie?”

“No, but I got an earful about Steven Soder. He likes to drink. And he likes to gamble. The rumor is that he’s lost a lot of money, and that he lost the bar. The story goes that he lost the bar in a card game a while back, and now he’s got partners.”

“I’ve heard some of those same rumors. Anyone give names to the partners?”

“Eddie Abruzzi is what I heard.”

Oh boy. Why am I not surprised at this?

I was in my car, ready to roll, when my cell phone rang. It was Kloughn.

“Boy, you should see me,” he said. “I’ve got two black eyes. And my nose is swollen. At least it’s straight now. I was real careful how I slept on it.”

“I’m sorry. Really, really sorry.”

“Hey, no biggie. I guess you have to expect stuff like this when you’re a crime fighter. So what are we doing today? Are we going after Bender again? I have some ideas. Maybe I could meet you for lunch.”

“See, here’s the thing… I usually work alone.”

“Sure, but once in a while you work with a partner, right? And I could be that partner sometimes, right? I got myself all prepared. I got a black hat with BOND

ENFORCEMENT printed on it this morning. And I got pepper spray and handcuffs…”

Handcuffs? Be still, my fast-beating heart. “Are these regulation handcuffs with a key and everything?”

“Yeah. I got them at that gun store on Rider Street. I would have gotten a gun, too, but I didn’t have enough money.”

“I’ll pick you up at twelve.”

“Oh boy, this is going to be great. I’ll be all ready. I’ll be at my office. Maybe we can get fried chicken this time. Unless you don’t want fried chicken. If you don’t want fried chicken, we could get a burrito, or we could get a burger, or we could—”

I made crackling sounds into the phone. “Can’t hear you,” I yelled. “You’re breaking up. See you at twelve.” And I disconnected.

I cruised out of the Burg and turned onto Hamilton. In a few minutes I was at the office. I parked at the curb behind a new black Porsche, which I suspected belonged to Ranger. Everyone looked over when I swung through the door. Ranger was at Connie’s desk. He was dressed in SWAT black, again. He caught my eye, and I felt my stomach do a nervous roll.

“I had a friend working the emergency room last night, and she told me you came in with a little guy who was all busted up,” Lula said.

“Kloughn. And he wasn’t all busted up. He just had a broken nose. Don’t ask.”

Vinnie was lounging in the doorway to his inner office. “Who’s this clown?” Vinnie asked.

“Albert Kloughn,” Ranger said. “He’s an attorney.”

I stopped short of asking how Ranger knew Kloughn. The answer was obvious. Ranger knew everything.

“Let me guess,” Vinnie said to me. “You need another pair of cuffs.”

“Wrong. I need an address. I need to talk to Dotty Palowski.”

Connie fed the name to the search system. A minute later the information started coming in. “She’s Dotty Rheinhold now. And she’s living in South River.” Connie printed the page and handed it over to me. “She’s divorced with two kids, and she works for the Turnpike Authority in East Brunswick.”

Ordinarily I’d stay to chat, but I was afraid someone would ask about Kloughn’s nose.

“Gotta run,” I said. “Things to do.”

I paused just outside the office door. I was sheltered by a small overhead awning. Beyond the awning, the rain fell in a relentless drizzle that didn’t measure up to downpour status but was enough to ruin my hair and soak into my jeans.

Ranger followed me out. “It might be good to keep more than one bullet in your gun, babe.”

“You heard about the snakes?”

“I ran into Costanza. He was looking at life through the bottom of a beer glass.”

“I’m not having much luck finding Annie Soder.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“Jeanne Ellen can’t find her, either?”

“Not yet.”

Our eyes held for a moment. “Which team are you on?” I asked.

He tucked my hair behind my ear, his fingertips brushing feather light across my temple, his thumb at the line of my jaw. “I have my own team.”

“Tell me about Jeanne Ellen.”

Ranger smiled. “The information would have a price.”

“And the price would be what?”

The smile widened. “Try not to get too wet today,” he said. And he was gone. Damn. What’s with the men in my life? Why do they always leave first? Why don’t I ever walk away and leave first? Because I’m a dope, that’s why. I’m a big dope.

**********************

I PICKED KLOUGHN up at the Laundromat. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans, wearing his new bond enforcement hat. And he had brown tassel loafers on his feet. The pepper spray was clipped to his belt. The cuffs had been shoved into his back pocket. His eyes and nose were an alarming shade of black, blue, and green.

“Wow,” I said. “You look awful.”

“It’s the tassels, right? I wasn’t sure if the tassels went with the outfit. I could go home and change. I could have worn black shoes, but I thought they were too dressy.”

“It’s not the tassels, it’s your eyes and nose.” Okay, and it’s the tassels. Kloughn got in and buckled his seat belt. “I guess that’s all part of the job. Gotta get physical sometimes, right? Goes with the territory, you know what I mean?”

“Your territory is law.”

“Yeah, but I’m an assistant bond enforcer, too, right? I’m walking the mean streets with you, right?”

You see, Stephanie, I told myself, this is what happens when you run your credit card up buying nonessentials like shoes and underwear and then can’t afford to buy handcuffs.

“I was going to get a stun gun,” Kloughn said, “but yours didn’t work last night. What’s with that? You pay good money for these things and then they don’t work. That’s always the way, isn’t it? You know what you need? You need a lawyer. You were mislead by product promises.”

I stopped for a light and pulled the stun gun out of my bag and checked it over. “I don’t understand this,” I said to Kloughn. “It’s always worked just fine.”

He took the stun gun from me and turned it around in his hand. “Maybe it needs batteries.”

“No. They’re new. They test out okay.”

“Maybe you were doing it wrong?”

“Hardly. It’s not that complicated. You press the prongs against someone’s skin and push the button.”

“Like this?” Kloughn said, pressing the prongs against his arm, pushing the button. He gave a tiny squeak and slumped in his seat.

I took the stun gun from his inert hand and studied it. It seemed to work okay now. I dropped the stun gun back into my bag, drove back to the Burg, and stopped at Corner Hardware. Corner Hardware was a ramshackle affair that had been in existence for as long as I could remember. The store itself occupied two adjoining buildings with a door carved into the common wall. The floor was unvarnished wood and cracked linoleum. The shelves were dusty, and the air smelled of fertilizer and socket wrenches. Everything you might need could be found in the store at a price higher than could be found elsewhere. The advantage to Corner Hardware was the location. It was in the Burg. No need to drive down Route 1 or go to Hamilton Township. The additional advantage for me today was the fact that no one at Corner Hardware would think it odd that I was schlepping around with a guy with two black eyes. Everyone in the Burg would have heard about Kloughn.

By the time I got to the hardware store, Kloughn was starting to come around. His fingers were twitching, and he had one eye open. I left Kloughn in the car while I ran into the store and bought twenty feet of medium-weight chain and a padlock. I had a plan for capturing Bender.

I dumped the twenty feet of chain onto the street behind the CR-V. I got the cuffs from Kloughn’s back pocket, and I attached one end of the chain to one of the bracelets. Then I padlocked the other end of the chain to the tow hitch on my car. I tossed the remaining chain and cuffs into the back window and got behind the wheel. I was soaked, but it was worth it. No way was Bender going to run off with my cuffs this time. The instant I cuffed Bender, he’d be attached to my car.

I drove across town, idled one block over from Bender’s apartment, and dialed his number. When he answered I hung up.

“He’s home,” I told Kloughn. “Let’s roll.”

Kloughn was examining his hand, wiggling his fingers. “I feel kind of tingly.”

“That’s because you zapped yourself with my stun gun.”

“I thought it didn’t work.”

“I guess you fixed it.”

“I’m real handy,” Kloughn said. “I’m good at all kinds of things like that.”

I jumped the curb in front of Bender’s apartment, drove across the mud yard, and parked with my rear bumper pressed to Bender’s front stoop. I leaped out of the car, ran to Bender’s door, and barged into his living room.

Bender was in his chair, watching television. He saw me enter and went bug-eyed and slack-jawed. “You!” he said. “What the fuck?” A second later he was out of his chair, bolting for the back door.

“Grab him,” I yelled to Kloughn. “Gas him. Trip him. Do something! ”

Kloughn took a flying leap and caught Bender by the pants leg. Both men went down to the floor. I threw myself on Bender and cuffed him. I rolled off, elated. Bender scrambled to his feet and ran for the door, dragging the chain behind him. Kloughn and I did a high five.

“Boy, you’re smart,” Kloughn said. “I would never have thought of hooking him up to the bumper. I gotta hand it to you. You’re good. You’re really good.”

“Make sure the back door is locked,” I said to Kloughn. “I don’t want the apartment burgled.” I clicked the television off, and Kloughn and I walked to the door just in time to see Bender drive off in my CR-V.

Shit.

“Hey,” Kloughn yelled to Bender, “you’ve got my handcuffs!”

Bender had his arm out the window, holding the door on the driver’s side closed. The chain snaked from the door to the back bumper, a loop of chain dragging on the ground, sending up sparks. Bender raised his arm and gave us the finger just before turning the corner and disappearing from view.

“I bet you left the key in the ignition,” Kloughn said. “I think that might be illegal. I bet you didn’t lock your door, either. You should always take the key and lock the door.”

I gave Kloughn my bitch look.

“Of course, these were special circumstances,” he added.

**********************

KLOUGHN HUDDLED UNDER the small overhang that protected the front stoop to Bender’s apartment. I was at curbside, in the rain, sopping wet, waiting for the blue-andwhite. You reach a point with rain where it just doesn’t matter anymore. I’d hoped to get Costanza or my pal Eddie Gazarra when I’d put the call in for a stolen vehicle. The car that responded wasn’t either.

“So you’re the famous Stephanie Plum?” the cop said.

“I almost never shoot people,” I said, sliding onto the backseat of the cruiser. “And the fire in the funeral parlor wasn’t my fault.” I leaned forward and water dripped from the tip of my nose onto the floor of the car. “Usually Costanza answers my calls,” I said.

“He didn’t win the pool.”

“There’s a pool?”

“Yeah. Participation really dropped after that thing with the snakes.”

Fifteen minutes later the blue-and-white left, and Morelli showed up.

“Listening to your radio again?” I asked.

“I don’t have to listen to my radio anymore. As soon as your name pops up somewhere in the system, I get forty-five phone calls.”

I did a small grimace, which I hoped was endearing. “Sorry.”

“Let me get this straight,” Morelli said. “Bender drove away chained to the car.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“And your handbag was in the car?”

“Yep.”

Morelli looked over at Kloughn. “Who’s the little guy in the tassel loafers and black eyes?”

“Albert Kloughn.”

“And you brought him along because… ?”

“He had the handcuffs.”

Morelli struggled not to smile and lost. “Get in the truck. I’ll take you home.”

We dropped Kloughn off first.

“Hey, you know what?” Kloughn said. “We never had lunch. Do you think we should all go to lunch? There’s Mexican just down the street. Or we could catch a burger, or an egg roll. I know a place that makes good egg rolls.”

“I’ll call you,” I said.

He waved us out of sight. “That’ll be great. Call me. Do you have my number? You can call anytime. I hardly ever sleep, even.”

Morelli stopped for a light, looked at me, and shook his head.

“Okay, so I’m wet,” I said.

“Albert thinks you’re cute.”

“He just wants to be part of the gang.” I brushed a clump of hair from my face. “How about you? Do you think I’m cute?”

“I think you’re crazy.”

“Yes. But besides that, you think I’m cute, right?” I gave him my Miss America smile and fluttered my lashes.

He glanced over at me, stone-faced.

I was feeling a little like Scarlett O’Hara at the end of Gone with the Wind when she’s determined to get Rhett Butler back. Problem was, if I got Morelli back, I wasn’t sure what I’d do with him.

“Life is complicated,” I said to Morelli.

“No shit, cupcake.”

**********************

I WAVED GOOD-BYE to Morelli and dripped through the lobby to my building. I dripped in the elevator, and I dripped down the hall to my next-door neighbor, Mrs. Karwatt. I got my spare key from Mrs. Karwatt and then I dripped into my apartment. I stood in the middle of my kitchen floor and peeled my clothes off. I toweled my hair until it stopped dripping. I checked my messages. None. Rex popped out of his soup can, gave me a startled look, and rushed back into the can. Not the sort of reaction that makes a naked woman feel great… even from a hamster.

An hour later I was dressed in dry clothes, and I was downstairs waiting for Lula.

“Okay, let me get this straight,” Lula said when I settled into her Trans Am. “You need to do surveillance and you don’t got a car.”

I held my hand up to ward off the next question. “Don’t ask.”

“I’m hearing ‘don’t ask’ a lot lately.”

“It was stolen. My car was stolen.”

“Get out!”

“I’m sure the police will find it. In the meantime, I want to take a look at Dotty Palowski Rheinhold. She’s living in South River.”

“And South River is where? ”

“I’ve got a map. Turn left out of the lot.”

South River jug-handles off Route 18. It’s a small town squashed between strip malls and clay pits and has more bars per square mile than any other town in the state. The entrance provides a scenic overlook of the landfill. The exit crosses the river into Sayreville, famous for the great dirt swindle of 1957 and Jon Bon Jovi. Dotty Rheinhold lived in a neighborhood of tract houses built in the sixties. Yards were small. Houses were smaller. Cars were large and plentiful.

“You ever see so many cars?” Lula said. “Every house has at least three cars. They’re everywhere.”

It was an easy neighborhood for surveillance. It had reached an age where houses were filled with teenagers. The teenagers had cars of their own, and the teenagers had friends who had cars. One more car on the street would never be noticed. Even better, this was suburbia. There were no front-porch-stoop sitters. Everyone migrated to the postage stamp-size backyards, which were crammed full of outdoor grills, above-ground pools, and herds of lawn chairs.

Lula parked the Trans Am one house down and across the street from Dotty. “Do you think Annie and her mom are living with Dotty?”

“If they are, we’ll know right away. You can’t hide two people in your cellar with kids underfoot. It’s too weird. And kids talk. If Annie and Evelyn are here, they’re coming and going like normal house guests.”

“And we’re going to sit here until we figure this out? This sounds like it could take a long time. I don’t know if I’m prepared to sit here for a long time. I mean, what about food?

And I have to go to the bathroom. I had a super-size soda before I picked you up. You didn’t say anything about a long time.”

I gave Lula the squinty eye.

“Well, I gotta go,” Lula said. “I can’t help it. I gotta wee.”

“Okay, how about this. We passed a mall on the way in. How about if I drop you at the mall, and then I take the car and do the surveillance.”

Half an hour later, I was back at the curb, alone, snooping on Dotty. The drizzle had turned to rain and lights were on in some of the houses. Dotty’s house was dark. A blue Honda Civic rolled past me and pulled into Dotty’s driveway. A woman got out and unbuckled two kids from kiddie seats in the back. The woman was shrouded in a hooded raincoat, but I caught a look at her face in the gloom, and I was certain it was Dotty. Or, to be more precise, I was certain it wasn’t Evelyn. The kids were young. Maybe two and seven. Not that I’m an expert on kids. My entire kid knowledge is based on my two nieces.

The little family entered the house and lights went on. I put the Trans Am into gear and inched my way up until I was directly across from the Rheinholds‘. I could clearly see Dotty now. She had the raincoat off, and she was moving around. The living room was in the front of the house. A television was switched on in the living room. A door opened off the living room, and the room beyond was obviously the kitchen. Dotty was traveling back and forth across the doorway, from refrigerator to table. No other adult appeared. Dotty made no move to draw the living room curtains.

The kids were in bed and their bedroom lights were out by 9:00. At 9:15 Dotty got a phone call. At 9:30 Dotty was still on the phone, and I left to pick Lula up at the mall. A block and a half from Dotty’s house, a sleek black car slid by me, traveling in the opposite direction. I caught a glimpse of the driver. Jeanne Ellen Burrows. I almost took the curb and ran across a lawn.

Lula was waiting at the mall entrance when I got there.

“Get in!” I yelled. “I have to get back to Dotty’s house. I passed Jeanne Ellen Burrows when I was leaving the neighborhood.”

“What about Evelyn and Annie?”

“No sign of them.”

The house was dark when we returned. The car was in the driveway. Jeanne Ellen was nowhere to be found.

“You sure it was Jeanne Ellen?” Lula asked.

“Positive. All the hair stood up on my arm, and I got an ice-cream headache.”

“Yep. That would be Jeanne Ellen.”

**********************

LULA DROPPED ME at the door to my apartment building. “Anytime you want to do surveillance, you just let me know,” Lula said. “Surveillance is one of my favorite things.”

Rex was in his wheel when I came into the kitchen. He stopped running and looked at me, eyes bright.

“Good news, big guy,” I said. “I stopped at the store on the way home and got supper.”

I dumped the contents of the bag on the counter. Seven Tastykakes. Two Butterscotch Krimpets, a Coconut Junior, two Peanut Butter KandyKakes, Creme-filled Cupcakes, and a Chocolate Junior. Life doesn’t get much better than this. Tastykakes are just another of the many advantages of living in Jersey. They’re made in Philly and shipped to Trenton in all their fresh squishiness. I read once that 439,000 Butterscotch Krimpets are baked every day. And not a heck of a lot of them find their way to New Hampshire. All that snow and scenery and what good does it do you without Tastykakes?

I ate the Coconut Junior, a Butterscotch Krimpet, and a KandyKake. Rex had part of the Butterscotch Krimpet.

Things haven’t been going too great for me lately. In the past week I’ve lost three pairs of handcuffs, a car, and I’ve had a bag of snakes delivered to my door. On the other hand, things aren’t all bad. In fact, things could be a lot worse. I could be Living in New Hampshire, where I would be forced to mail order Tastykakes.

It was close to twelve when I crawled into bed. The rain had stopped and the moon was shining between the broken cloud cover. My curtains were drawn, and my room was dark.

An old-fashioned fire escape attached to my bedroom window. The fire escape was good for catching a cool breeze on a hot night. It could be used to dry clothes, quarantine house plants with aphids, and chill beer when the weather turned cold. Unfortunately, it was also a place where bad things happened. Benito Ramirez had been shot to death on my fire escape. As it happens, it isn’t easy to climb up my fire escape, but it isn’t impossible, either.

I was laying in the dark, debating the merits of the Coconut junior over the Butterscotch Krimpet, when I heard scraping sounds beyond the closed bedroom curtains. Someone was on my fire escape. I felt a shot of adrenaline burn into my heart and flash into my gut. I jumped out of bed, ran into the kitchen, and called the police. Then I took the gun out of the cookie jar. No bullets. Damn. Think, Stephanie—where did you put the bullets? There used to be some in the sugar bowl. Not anymore. The sugar bowl was empty. I rummaged through the junk drawer and came up with four bullets. I shoved them into my Smith & Wesson five-shot .38 and ran back into my bedroom. I stood in the dark and listened. No more scraping sounds. My heart was pounding, and the gun was shaking in my hand. Get a grip, I told myself. It was probably a bird. An owl. They fly at night, right? Silly Stephanie, freaked out by an owl. I crept to the window and listened again. Silence. I opened the curtain a fraction of an inch and peeked out.

Yikes!

There was a huge guy on my fire escape. I only saw him for an instant, but he looked like Benito Ramirez. How could that be? Ramirez was dead.

There was a lot of noise, and I realized I’d fired all four rounds through my window, into the guy on my fire escape.

Rats! This isn’t a good thing. First off, I might have killed someone. I hate when that happens. Second, I haven’t a clue if the guy had a gun, and the law frowns on shooting unarmed people. The law isn’t even all that fond of citizens shooting armed people. Even worse, my window was trashed.

I ripped the curtain aside, and pressed my nose to the window pane. No one out there. I looked more closely and saw that I’d blasted a life-size cardboard cutout. It was laying flat on the fire escape and there were a bunch of holes in it.

I was standing there dumbfounded, breathing heavy with the gun still in my hand, when I heard the police siren whining in the distance. Good going, Stephanie. The one time I call the police, and it turns out to be an embarrassing false alarm. An evil prank. Like the snakes.

So who would do something like this? Someone who knew about Ramirez getting killed on my fire escape. I gave up a sigh. The entire state knew about Ramirez. It was in all the papers. Okay, someone who had access to a life-size cutout. There had been a lot of the cutouts floating around when Ramirez was fighting. Not many of them floating around now. One person came to mind. Eddie Abruzzi.

A blue-and-white pulled into my parking lot, lights flashing, and a uniform got out. I opened my window and leaned out. “False alarm,” I yelled down. “Nobody here. It must have been a bird.”

He looked up at me. “A bird?”

“I think it was an owl. A real big owl. Sorry you got called out.”

He waved, got back into the car, and drove off.

I closed and locked the window, but it was an empty gesture since a lot of the glass was missing. I ran into the kitchen and ate the Chocolate Junior.

**********************

I WAS HALF-ASLEEP, contemplating the nutritional value of a Creme-filled Cupcake for breakfast, when there was a knock at my door.

It was Tank, Ranger’s right-hand man. “Your car turned up at a chop shop,” he said. He handed my bag over to me. “This was on the floor in the back.”

“And my car?”

“In your parking lot.” He gave me my keys. “The car’s fine except for a chain attached to the tow. We didn’t know what the chain was all about.”

I closed and locked the door after Tank, stumbled into the kitchen, and ate the package of cupcakes. I told myself it was okay to eat the cupcakes because it was a celebration. I had my car back. Calories don’t count if they’re connected to a celebration. Everyone knows this.

Coffee would taste good, but it seemed like a lot of work this morning. I had to change the filter, add the coffee and water, and push the button. Not to mention, if I had coffee I might wake up, and I didn’t think I was ready to face the day. Better to go back to bed. I’d just crawled into bed when the doorbell rang again. I put the pillow over my head and closed my eyes. The doorbell kept ringing. “Go away,” I yelled. “Nobody’s home!” Now there was knocking. And more ringing. I threw the pillow off and heaved myself out of bed. I stomped to the door, wrenched it open, and glared out. “What?”

It was Kloughn. “It’s Saturday,” he said. “I brought doughnuts. I always have doughnuts on Saturday morning.” He looked more closely. “Did I wake you up? Boy, you don’t look all that good when you wake up, do you? No wonder you’re not married. Do you always sleep in sweats? How’d you get your hair to stick out like that?”

“How’d you like to have your nose broken a second time?” I asked. Kloughn pushed past me, into my apartment. “I saw the car in the parking lot. Did the police find it? Do you have my handcuffs?”

“I don’t have your handcuffs. And get out of my apartment. Go away.”

“You just need some coffee,” Kloughn said. “Where do you keep the filters? I’m always a cranky pants in the morning, too. And then I have my coffee, and I’m a new person.”

Why me? I thought.

Kloughn got the coffee out of the refrigerator and started the machine. “I didn’t know if bounty hunters worked on Saturday,” he said. “But I thought better safe than sorry. So here I am.”

I was speechless.

The front door was still open, and there was a rap on the doorjamb behind me. It was Morelli. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Kloughn said. “I just brought jelly doughnuts.”

Morelli gave me the once-over. “Frightening,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I had a bad night.”

“That’s what they tell me. I understand you were visited by a large bird. An owl?”

“So?”

“The owl do any damage?”

“Nothing worth mentioning.”

“I’m seeing more of you now than I did when we were living together,” Morelli said.

“You aren’t doing all this stuff just to have me stop around, are you?”

6

“OH JEEZ, I didn’t know you two used to live together,” Kloughn said. “Hey, I’m not trying to cut in on anything. We just work together, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“So, is this the guy you’re engaged to?” Kloughn asked.

A smile twitched at the corner of Morelli’s mouth. “You’re engaged?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Morelli reached into the bag and selected a doughnut. “I don’t see a ring on your finger.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Kloughn’s voice was apologetic. “She hasn’t had any coffee yet.”

Morelli took a bite of doughnut. “You think coffee will help?”

They both looked at me.

I pointed stiff-armed to the door. “Out.”

I slammed the door after them and slid the security bolt. I leaned against the door and closed my eyes. Morelli had looked great. T-shirt and jeans and a red flannel shirt worn open like a jacket. And he’d smelled good, too. The scent still lingered in my foyer, mingling with jelly doughnuts. I took a deep breath and had a lust attack. The lust attack was followed by a mental head slap. I sent him away! What was I thinking? Oh yeah, now I remember. I was thinking he’d just said I was frightening. Frightening! I’m having a hot flash over a guy who thinks I’m frightening. On the other hand, he did stop by to see if I was okay.

I was running this through while I walked to the bathroom. I was up and awake now. Might as well get on with the day. I switched the light on and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Eeeek! Frightening.

**********************

I THOUGHT SATURDAY would be a good day to follow Dotty around. I had no real reason to think she was helping Evelyn. Only instinct. But sometimes instinct is all you need. There’s something special about childhood friendships. They might be set aside for reasons of convenience, but they’re seldom forgotten.

Mary Lou Molnar has been my best friend for as long as I can remember. Truth is, we haven’t got a whole lot in common anymore. She’s Mary Lou Stankovik now. She’s married and has a couple kids. And I’m living with a hamster. Still, if I had to tell someone a secret, it would be Mary Lou. And if I was Evelyn, I’d turn to Dotty Palowski. It was close to ten by the time I reached South River. I cruised past Dotty’s house and parked a short distance down the street. Dotty’s car was in the driveway. A red jeep was parked curbside. Not Evelyn’s car. Evelyn drove a nine-year-old gray Sentra. I pushed my seat back and stretched my legs. If I was a man lurking in front of a house, I’d be suspect. Fortunately, no one paid much attention to a woman.

Dotty’s front door opened, and a man stepped out. Dotty’s two kids jumped out after him and ran around him in circles. He took them by the hand, and they all walked to the jeep and got in.

The ex-husband on visitation day.

The jeep pulled away and five minutes later Dotty locked the house up and got into her Honda. I followed her easily, out of the neighborhood, onto the highway. She wasn’t looking for a tail. Never picked me up in her rearview mirror.

We went straight to one of the strip malls on Route 18 and parked in front of a chain bookstore. I watched Dotty get out of her car and cross the lot to the store. She was barelegged, wearing a sundress with a sweater. I would have been cold in the outfit. The sun was shining but the air was cool. I guess Dotty had run out of patience for warm weather. She pushed through the doors and went straight for the coffee bar. I could see her through the plate glass window. She ordered a coffee and took it to a table. She sat with her back to the window and looked around. She checked her watch and sipped her coffee. She was waiting for someone.

Please let it be Evelyn. It would make everything so easy.

I left my car and walked the short distance to the store. I browsed the section to the rear of the coffee bar, staying hidden behind racks of books. I didn’t know Dotty personally, but I worried that she might recognize me, all the same. I scanned the store for Evelyn and Annie. I didn’t want them to see me, either.

Dotty looked up from her coffee and focused. I followed her line of sight, but I didn’t see Annie or Evelyn. I was looking so intently for Annie and Evelyn that I almost missed the red-haired guy making his way toward Dotty. It was Steven Soder. My first reaction was to intercept him. I didn’t know what he was doing here, but he was going to ruin everything. Evelyn would run when she saw him. And then it hit me, brain surgeon that I am. Dotty was waiting for Soder.

Soder got a coffee and took it to Dotty’s table. He sat across from her and slouched in his chair. An arrogant posture. I could see his face, and he didn’t look friendly. Dotty leaned forward and said something to Soder. He made a crooked smile that was close to a snarl and nodded his head. They had a brief conversation. Soder stuck his finger in Dotty’s face and said something that turned Dotty white. He stood, made one last parting remark, and left. His coffee remained, untouched, on the table. Dotty collected herself, made certain Soder was out of sight, and then she left, too. I followed Dotty to the parking lot. She got into her car, and I ran for mine. Hold the phone. No car. Okay, I know I’m a little dingy sometimes, but I usually remember where I’ve parked the car. I trotted up and down the aisle. I tried one aisle over. No car. Dotty pulled out of her space and headed for the exit. A sleek black car followed a short distance behind Dotty. Jeanne Ellen.

“Damn!”

I rammed my hand into my bag, found my cell phone, and pounded out Ranger’s number.

“Call Jeanne Ellen and find out what she did with my car,” I said to Ranger. “Now! ”

A minute later Jeanne Ellen called me. “I might have seen a black CR-V in front of the deli,” she said.

I punched the end button so hard I broke a nail. I dropped the phone back into my bag and stomped off, down the strip mall to the deli. I found my car and checked it over. There were no scratch marks from where Jeanne Ellen had popped the lock. No loose wires from hot-wiring. Somehow she’d gotten into the car and moved it without leaving a trace of herself. This was a trick Ranger could easily accomplish, and I couldn’t hope to pull off. The fact that Jeanne Ellen could do it really grated on me. I left the strip mall and returned to Dotty’s house. No one was home. No car in the driveway. Probably Dotty had taken Jeanne Ellen straight to Evelyn. Fine. Who cares. I’m not even making any money on this. I did an eye roll. It wasn’t fine. If I go back to Mabel with nothing, she’ll start bawling again. I’d walk on molten lava and shards of glass before I’d face more of Mabel crying.

I hung around until early afternoon. I read the paper, filed my nails, organized my shoulder bag, and talked on my cell phone with Mary Lou Stankovik for a half hour. My legs were twitchy from the confinement, and my butt was asleep. I’d had a lot of time to think about Jeanne Ellen Burrows, and none of the thoughts were friendly. In fact, after about an hour of Jeanne Ellen Burrows thinking I was darn cranky, and I’m not sure, but I think steam might have started escaping from the top of my head. Jeanne Ellen had bigger boobs and a smaller ass than me. She was a better bounty hunter. She had a nicer car. And she had leather pants. I could deal with this. What I couldn’t deal with was her involvement with Ranger. I’d thought their relationship had ended, but clearly I was wrong. He knew where she was every minute of the day.

While she had a relationship, I had the threat of a single night of gorilla sex hanging over my head. Okay, so I’d made the deal during a moment of professional desperation. His aid in exchange for my body. And yes, maybe it had been flirty and fun, in a scary sort of way. And true, I’m attracted to him. I mean, I’m only human, for crying out loud. A woman would have to be dead not to be attracted to Ranger. And it’s not like I’m having any luck getting Morelli into my bed these days.

So here I am with my one night. And there’s Jeanne Ellen with some sort of relationship. Well, forget it. I’m not fooling around with a man who’s possibly in a relationship. I dialed Ranger and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel while I waited for the connection.

“Yo,” Ranger said.

“I owe you nothing,” I said. “The deal is off.”

Ranger was silent for a couple beats. Probably wondering why he ever made the deal in the first place. “Having a bad day?” he finally asked.

“My bad day has nothing to do with this,” I said. And I hung up.

My cell phone chirped, and I debated answering. Curiosity ultimately won out over cowardice. Pretty much the story of my life.

“I’ve been under a lot of stress,” I said. “I might even be sick with a fever.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“I thought you might want to retract the part where you tell me the deal is off,” Ranger said.

There was a long silence on the phone.

“Well?” Ranger asked.

“I’m thinking.”

“That’s always dangerous,” Ranger said. And he hung up.

I was still contemplating the retraction when Dotty rolled in. She parked in her driveway, took two grocery bags from the backseat, and let herself into the house. My phone rang again. I did an eye roll and snapped my phone open. “Yes.”

“Have you been waiting long?” It was Jeanne Ellen.

I whipped my head around, looking up and down the street. “Where are you?”

“Behind the blue van. You’ll be happy to know you didn’t miss anything this afternoon. Dotty had a full day of housewifey things to do.”

“Did she know you were following her?”

There was a pause where I assumed Jeanne Ellen was stunned that I might think she’d ever get made. “Of course not,” Jeanne Ellen said. “She didn’t have Evelyn in her day planner today.”

“Well, cheer up,” I said. “The day’s not over.”

“True. I thought I’d stay here a bit longer, but the street feels crowded with both of us sitting here.”

“And?”

“And I thought it would be a good idea for you to leave.”

“No way. You should leave.”

“If anything happens I’ll call you,” Jeanne Ellen said.

“That’s a big fib.”

“True, again. Let me tell you something that isn’t a fib. If you don’t leave, I’ll put a bullet hole in your car.”

I knew from past experience that bullet holes were very bad for resale. I disconnected, put the car in gear, and drove away. I drove exactly two blocks and parked in front of a small white ranch. I locked up and walked around the block until I was directly behind Dotty’s house, one street over. There was no activity on the street. Not a lot of life visible from Dotty’s neighbors. Everyone was still at the mall, the soccer game, the Little League game, the car wash. I cut between two houses and straddled the white picket fence that enclosed Dotty’s backyard. I crossed the small yard, and knocked on Dotty’s back door. Dotty opened the door and stared out at me, surprised to find a strange woman on her property.

“I’m Stephanie Plum,” I said. “I hope I didn’t startle you by showing up at your back door like this.”

Relief replaced surprise. “Of course, your parents live next to Mabel Markowitz. I went to school with your sister.”

“I’d like to talk to you about Evelyn. Mabel is worried about her, and I said I’d do some inquiring around. I came to the back door because the front of your house is under surveillance.”

Dotty’s mouth dropped and her eyes widened. “Someone’s watching me?”

“Steven Soder has hired a private detective to find Annie. The detective’s name is Jeanne Ellen Burrows, and she’s in a black Jaguar, behind the blue van. I spotted her when I drove up, and I didn’t want her to see me, so I came through the back.” Take that, Jeanne Ellen Burrows. Direct hit. Kapow!

“Omigod,” Dottie said. “What should I do?”

“Do you know where Evelyn is?”

“No. Sorry. Evelyn and I sort of lost touch.”

She was lying. She’d waited too long to say no. And now spots of color were booming on her cheeks. She was possibly the worst liar I’d ever seen. She was a disgrace to Burg women. Burg women were great liars. No wonder Dotty had to move to South River. I let myself into her kitchen and closed the door. “Listen,” I said, “don’t worry about Jeanne Ellen. She’s not dangerous. You just don’t want to lead her to Evelyn.”

“You mean if I knew where Evelyn was then I should be careful about going there.”

“Careful isn’t good enough. Jeanne Ellen will follow you, and you’ll never see her. Don’t go anywhere near Evelyn. Stay away from her.”

Dotty wasn’t liking this advice. “Hmmm,” she said.

“Maybe we should talk about Evelyn.”

She shook her head. “I can’t talk about Evelyn.”

I gave her my card. “Call me if you change your mind. If Evelyn gets in touch with you, and you need to go see her, please consider letting me help you. You can call Mabel and check me out.”

Dotty looked at the card and nodded. “Okay.”

I let myself out the back door and slipped through the yards to the street. I walked the half block back to my car and took off for home.

**********************

I STEPPED OUT of the elevator and felt my heart sink at the sight of Kloughn camping in my hall. He was sitting with his back to the wall, legs outstretched, arms crossed over his chest. His face brightened when he saw me, and he scrambled to his feet.

“Boy,” he said, “you’ve been gone all afternoon. Where were you? You didn’t catch Bender, did you? You wouldn’t catch him without me, would you? I mean, we’re a team, right?”

“Right,” I said. “We’re a team.” A team without handcuffs.

I let us into my apartment, and we both migrated to the kitchen. I slid a look at the answering machine. Nothing was blinking. No message from Morelli, pleading for a date. Not that Morelli ever pleaded for anything. Still, a girl could hope. Large mental sigh. I was going to spend Saturday night with Albert Kloughn. It felt like doomsday. Kloughn was looking at me expectantly. He was like a puppy, eyes bright, tail wagging, waiting to be taken for a walk. Endearing… in an incredibly annoying sort of way.

“Now what?” he asked. “What do we do now?”

I needed to think about this. Usually the problem is finding the FTA. I never had a problem finding Bender. I had a problem hanging on to him.

I opened the refrigerator and stared inside. My motto has always been, When all else fails, eat something. “Let’s make dinner,” I said.

“Oh boy, a home-cooked meal. That would really hit the spot. I haven’t eaten in hours. Okay, I had a candy bar just before you got here, but that doesn’t count, does it? I mean, it’s not like real food. And I’m still hungry. It’s not like it’s a meal, right?”

“Right.”

“What should we cook? Pasta? You got some fish? We could have fish. Or a nice steak. I still eat meat. Lots of people don’t eat meat anymore, but I still eat it. I eat everything.”

“Do you eat peanut butter?”

“Sure. I love peanut butter. Peanut butter is a staple, right?”

“Right.” I ate a lot of peanut butter. You don’t have to cook it. You only dirty one knife in the preparation. And you can count on it. It’s always the same. As opposed to picking out a piece of fish, which in my experience is risky.

I made us peanut butter and bread-and-butter pickle sandwiches. And because I had company, I added a layer of potato chips.

“This is very creative,” Kloughn said. “You get a lot of textures this way. And you don’t get your fingers greasy by eating the potato chips separately. I’ll have to remember this. I’m always looking for new recipes.”

Alright, I was going to take another shot at capturing Bender. I was going to break into his house, one more time. As soon as I located a pair of handcuffs. I dialed Lula’s number.

“So,” I said to Lula, “what’s going on tonight?”

“I’m just trying to figure out what to wear, on account of it’s Saturday. And it’s not like I’m some loser who can’t get a date. I’d be out of the house by now, but I can’t make up my mind between two dresses.”

“Do you have handcuffs?”

“Sure. I got handcuffs. You never know when you need handcuffs.”

“Maybe I could borrow them. Just for a couple hours. I need to bring Bender in.”

“You’re gonna go get Bender tonight? You need help? I could cancel my date. Then I wouldn’t have to decide on a dress. You have to come over here to get the cuffs anyway. You might as well take me with.”

“You don’t actually have a date, do you?”

“I could if I wanted.”

“I’ll pick you up in a half hour.”

LULA WAS IN the front seat, and Kloughn was in the backseat. We were parked in front of Bender’s apartment, trying to decide on the best approach.

“You watch the back door,” I said to Lula. “And Albert and I will go in the front door.”

“I don’t like that plan,” Lula said. “I want to go in the front door. And I want to be the one holding the cuffs.”

“I think Stephanie should hold the cuffs,” Kloughn said. “She’s the bounty hunter.”

“Hunh,” Lula said. “What am I, chopped liver? And besides, they’re my cuffs. I should get to hold them. Either I hold them, or you haven’t got no cuffs.”

“Fine!” I said to Lula. “You go in the front door, and you hold the cuffs. Just make sure you get them on Bender.”

“What about me?” Kloughn wanted to know. “Where do I go? Do I take the back door?

What do I do back there? Do I bust in the door?”

“No! No door busting. You stand there and wait. Your job is to make sure Bender doesn’t escape from the back door. So if the back door opens and Bender runs out, you have to stop him.”

“You can count on me. He won’t get past me. I know I look pretty tough, but I’m even tougher than that. I’m real tough.”

“Right,” Lula and I said in unison.

Kloughn went around back, and Lula and I marched up to the front door. I rapped on the door and Lula and I stood to either side. There was the unmistakable sound of a shotgun ratcheting back, Lula and I gave each other an oh shit look, and Bender blasted a two-foot hole in his front door.

Lula and I took off, running. We dove into the car headfirst, there was another shotgun blast, I scrambled behind the wheel and took off, tires smoking. I whipped the car around the side of the building, jumped the curb, and skidded to a stop inches from Kloughn. Lula grabbed Kloughn by the front of his shirt, pulled him into the car, and I rocketed away.

“What happened?” Kloughn asked. “Why are we leaving? Wasn’t he home?”

“We changed our mind about getting him tonight,” Lula said. “We could have got him if we really wanted, but we changed our mind.”

“We changed our mind because he shot at us,” I said to Kloughn.

“I’m pretty sure that’s illegal,” Kloughn said. “Did you shoot back?”

“I was thinking about it,” Lula said, “but you gotta fill out a lot of papers when you shoot someone. I didn’t want to take the time tonight.”

“At least you got to hold the cuffs,” Kloughn said.

Lula looked down at her hands. No cuffs. “Uh-oh,” Lulu said. “I must have dropped the cuffs in the excitement of the moment. It wasn’t that I was scared, you know. I just got excited.”

On the way through town I stopped at Soder’s bar. “This will only take a minute,” I told everyone. “I need to talk to Steven Soder.”

“Fine by me,” Lula said. “I could use a drink.” She looked over at Kloughn. “How about you, Pufnstuf?”

“Sure, I could use a drink, too. It’s Saturday night, right? You gotta go out and have a drink on Saturday night.”

“I could have had a date,” Lula said.

“Me, too,” Kloughn said. “There are lots of women who want to go out with me. I just didn’t feel like being bothered. Sometimes it’s good to take a night off from all that stuff.”

“Last time I was in this bar I sort of got thrown out,” Lula said. “You don’t suppose they’re gonna hold a grudge, do you?”

Soder saw me when I walked in. “Hey, it’s Little Miss Loser,” he said. “And her two loser friends.”

“Sticks and stones,” I said.

“Have you found my kid yet?” A taunt, not a question.

I shrugged. The shrug said maybe I have, but then again maybe I haven’t.

“Looooser,” Soder sang.

“You should learn some people skills,” I said to him. “You should be more civil to me. And you should have been nicer to Dotty earlier today.”

That got him standing up straighter. “How do you know about Dotty?”

Another shrug.

“Don’t give me another one of them shrugs,” he said. “That birdbrain ex-wife of mine is a kidnapper. And you better tell me if you know anything.”

I had him wondering about the extent of my knowledge. Probably not smart, but definitely satisfying.

“I’ve changed my mind about wanting a drink,” I said to Lula and Kloughn.

“Okay by me,” Lula said. “I don’t like the atmosphere in this bar anyway.”

Soder took another look at Kloughn. “Hey, I remember you. You’re the jerk-off lawyer who represented Evelyn.”

Kloughn beamed. “You remember me? I didn’t think anyone would remember. Boy, how about that.”

“Evelyn got control of the kid because of you,” Soder said. “You made a big issue about this bar. You put my kid with a drugged-up moron, you incompetent fuck.”

“She didn’t look drugged-up to me,” Kloughn said. “Maybe a little… distracted.”

“How about if I distract my foot up your ass,” Soder said, making for the end of the long oak bar.

Lula shoved her hand into her big leather shoulder bag. “I got Mace in here, somewhere. I got a gun.”

I turned Kloughn around and pushed him toward the door. “Go,” I yelled in his ear.

“Run for the car!”

Lula still had her head down, rummaging in her bag. “I know I’ve got a gun in here.”

“Forget the gun!” I said to Lula. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“The hell,” Lula said. “This guy deserves to get shot. And I’d do it if I could just find my gun.”

Soder rounded the bar and charged after Kloughn. I stepped in front of Soder, and he gave me a two-handed shove.

“Hey, you can’t shove her like that,” Lula said. And she smacked Soder in the back of his head with her bag. He whirled around, and she hit him again, this time catching him in the face, knocking him back a couple feet.

“What?” Soder said, dazed and blinking, swaying slightly.

Two goons started at us from the other end of the bar, and half the room had guns drawn.

“Uh-oh,” Lula said. “Guess I left my gun in my other handbag.”

I grabbed Lula by the sleeve and gave her a yank toward the door, and we both took off running. I beeped the car open with my remote, we all jumped in, and I zoomed away.

“Soon as I find my gun, I’ve got a mind to go back there and pop a cap up his ass,” Lula said.

In all the time I’ve known Lula, I’ve never known her to pop a cap up anyone’s ass. Unjustified bravado was high on our list of bounty hunter talents.

“I need a day off,” I said. “I especially need a day without Bender.”

**********************

ONE OF THE good things about hamsters is that you can tell them anything. Hamsters are nonjudgmental as long as you feed them.

“I have no life,” I said to Rex. “How did it come to this? I used to be such an interesting person. I used to be fun. And now look at me. It’s two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, and I’ve watched Ghostbusters twice. It’s not even raining. There’s no excuse, except that I’m boring.”

I glanced over at the answering machine. Maybe it was broken. I lifted the phone receiver and got a dial tone. I pushed the message button and the voice told me I had no messages. Stupid invention.

“I need a hobby,” I said.

Rex sent me a yeah, right look. Knitting? Gardening? Decoupage? I don’t think so.

“Okay, then how about sports? I could play tennis.” No, wait a minute, I’d tried tennis and I sucked. What about golf? Nope, I sucked at golf, too.

I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and the top button was open on my jeans. Too many cupcakes. I got to thinking about Steven Soder calling me a loser. Maybe he was right. I scrinched my eyes closed to see if I could pop out a pity tear for myself. No luck. I sucked my stomach in and buttoned my pants. Pain. And there was a roll of fat hanging over the waistband. Not attractive.

I stomped into my bedroom and changed into running shorts and shoes. I was not a loser. I had a small roll of fat hanging over my waistband. No big deal. A little exercise and the fat would disappear. And there’d be the added benefit of endorphins. I didn’t exactly know what endorphins were but I knew they were good and you got them from exercise.

I got into the CR-V and drove to the park in Hamilton Township. I could have gone running from my back door but where’s the fun in that? In Jersey we never miss an opportunity for a car trip. Besides, the driving gave me prep time. I needed to psych myself up for this exercise stuff. I was going to really get into it this time. I was going to run. I was going to sweat. I was going to look great. I was going to feel great. Maybe I’d actually take up running.

It was a glorious blue-sky day, and the park was crowded. I got a spot toward the back of the lot, locked the CR-V up, and walked to the jogging path. I did some warm-up stretches and took off at a slow run. After a quarter mile I remembered why I never did this. I hated it. I hated running. I hated sweating. I hated the big, ugly running shoes I was wearing.

I pushed through to the half-mile mark where I had to stop, thank God, for a stitch in my side. I looked down at the fat roll. It was still there.

I made it to a mile and collapsed onto a bench. The bench looked out over the lake where people were rowing around in boats. A family of ducks floated close to the shore. Across the lake, I could see the parking lot and a concession stand. There was water at the concession stand. There was no water by my bench. Hell, who was I kidding? I didn’t want water, anyway. I wanted a Coke. And a box of Cracker Jacks.

I was looking out at the ducks, thinking there were times in history when fat rolls were considered sexy, and wasn’t it too bad I didn’t live during one of those times. A huge, shaggy, prehistoric, orange beast bounded over to me and buried his nose in my crotch. Yipes. It was Morelli’s dog, Bob. Bob had originally come to live at my house but after some shifting around had decided he preferred living with Morelli.

“He’s excited to see you,” Morelli said, settling next to me.

“I thought you were taking him to obedience school.”

“I did. He learned how to sit and stay and heel. The course didn’t address crotch sniffing.” He looked me over. “Flushed face, the hint of sweat at the hairline, hair pulled into a ponytail, running shoes. Let me take a guess here. You’ve been exercising.”

“And?”

“Hey, I think it’s great. I’m just surprised. Last time I went running with you, you took a detour into a bakery.”

“I’m turning over a new leaf.”

“Can’t button your jeans?”

“Not if I want to breathe at the same time.”

Bob spotted a duck on the bank and raced after it. The duck took to the water, and Bob splashed in up to his eyeballs. He turned and looked at us, panic stricken. He was possibly the only retriever in the entire world who couldn’t swim. Morelli waded into the lake and dragged Bob back to the shore. Bob slogged onto the grass, gave himself a shake, and immediately ran off, chasing a squirrel.

“You’re such a hero,” I said to Morelli.

He kicked his shoes off and rolled his slacks to his knees. “I hear you’ve been up to some heroics, too. Butch Dziewisz and Frankie Burlew were in Soder’s bar last night.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Of course it was your fault,” Morelli said. “It’s always your fault.”

I did an eye roll.

“Bob misses you.”

“Bob should call me sometime. Leave a message on my machine.”

Morelli slouched back on the bench. “What were you doing in Soder’s bar?”

“I wanted to talk to him about Evelyn and Annie, but he wasn’t in a good mood.”

“Did his mood take a downturn before or after he got clocked with the shoulder bag?”

“He was actually more mellow after Lula hit him.”

“Dazed, was the word Butch used.”

“Dazed could be accurate. We didn’t stay around long enough to find out.”

Bob returned from the squirrel chase and woofed at Morelli.

“Bob’s restless,” Morelli said. “I promised him we’d walk around the lake. Which direction are you headed?”

It was one mile if I retraced my steps and three miles if I continued around the lake with Morelli. Morelli looked very fine with his pants rolled up, and I was sorely tempted. Unfortunately, I had a blister on my heel, I still had a cramp in my side, and I suspected I wasn’t at my most attractive. “I’m headed for the lot,” I said. There was an awkward moment where I waited for Morelli to prolong our time together. I would have liked him to walk back to the car with me. Truth is, I missed Morelli. I missed the passion, and I missed the affectionate teasing. He never tugged at my hair anymore. He didn’t try to look down my shirt or up my skirt. We were at an impasse, and I was at a loss as to how to end it.

“Try to be careful,” Morelli said. We stared at each other for a moment, and we each went our own way.

7

I LIMPED BACK to the concession stand and got a Coke and a box of Cracker Jacks. Cracker jacks don’t count as junk food because they’re corn and peanuts, which we know to be high in nutrition. And they have a prize inside.

I walked the short distance to the water’s edge, opened the box of Cracker jacks, and a goose rushed up to me and pecked me in the knee. I jumped back, but he kept coming at me, honking and pecking. I threw a Cracker Jack as far as I could, and the goose scrambled after it. Big mistake. Turns out, tossing a Cracker Jack is the goose equivalent to a party invitation. Suddenly geese were rushing at me from every corner of the park, running on their stupid goose webbed feet, waggling their fat goose asses, flapping their big goose wings, their beady, black goose eyes fixed on my Cracker Jacks. They fought among themselves as they charged me, squawking, honking, viciously snapping, jockeying for position.

“Run for your life, honey! Give them the Cracker Jacks,” an old lady yelled from a nearby bench. “Throw them the box, or those honkers’ll eat you alive!”

I held tight to my box. “I didn’t get to the prize. The prize is still in the box.”

“Forget the prize!”

There were geese flying in from across the lake. Hell, for all I knew they could have been flying in from Canada. One of them hit me square in the chest and sent me sprawling. I let out a shriek and lost my grip on the box. The geese attacked with no regard for human or goose life. The noise was deafening. Goose wings beat against me, and goose toenails ripped holes in my T-shirt.

It seemed like the feeding frenzy lasted for hours, but in fact it was maybe a minute. The geese departed as quickly as they came, and all that was left were goose feathers and goose poop. Huge, gelatinous gobs of goose poop… as far as the eye could see. An old man was on the bench with the old woman. “You don’t know much, do you?” he said to me.

I picked myself up, crept to my car, opened the door with the remote, and numbly wedged myself behind the wheel. So much for exercise. I drove on autopilot out of the lot and somehow found my way to Hamilton Avenue. I was a couple blocks from my apartment building when I sensed movement on the seat next to me. I turned my head to look, and a spider the size of a dinner plate jumped at me.

“Eeeeyow! Holy shit! HOLY SHIT! ” I sideswiped a parked car, took the curb, and came to a stop on a patch of lawn. I threw my door open and hurled myself out of the car. I was still jumping around, shaking my hair out, when the first cops arrived.

“Let me get this straight,” one of the cops said. “You almost totaled the Toyota that’s parked at the curb, not to mention major damage on your CR-V, because you were attacked by a spider?”

“Not just a spider. We’re talking more than one. And big. Possibly mutant spiders. A herd of mutant spiders.”

“You look familiar,” he said. “Aren’t you a bounty hunter?”

“Yes, and I’m very brave. Except for spiders.” And except for Eddie Abruzzi. Abruzzi knew how to frighten a woman. He knew all the creepy crawly things that were demoralizing and irrationally frightening. Snakes and spiders and ghosts on fire escapes. The cops exchanged a glance that said girls… and swaggered off to the CR-V. They poked their heads inside and a moment later there was a double shriek, and the car door was slammed shut.

“Jesus freaking Christ,” one of them yelled. “Holy crap!”

After a brief discussion it was decided this was beyond the ability of a simple exterminator and, once again, Animal Control was called. An hour later, the CR-V was pronounced spider-free, I possessed a ticket for reckless driving, and I’d exchanged insurance information with the owner of the parked car.

I drove the remaining couple blocks, parked the CR-V, and stumbled into my building. Mr. Kleinschmidt was in the lobby.

“You look terrible,” Mr. Kleinschmidt said. “What happened to you? Are those goose feathers stuck to your shirt? And how’d your shirt get all ripped and grass stained?”

“You don’t want to know,” I told him. “It’s really ugly.”

“I bet you were feeding the geese at the park,” he said. “You never want to do that. Those geese are animals.”

I gave up a sigh and stepped into the elevator. When I let myself into my apartment I realized something was different. My message light was blinking. Yes. Finally! I punched the button and leaned forward to listen.

“Did you like the spiders?” the voice asked.

I was still standing in the kitchen, sort of dumbstruck by the day, when Morelli showed up. He rapped once on the front door, and the unlocked door swung open. Bob bounded in and began running around, investigating.

“I understand you had a spider problem,” Morelli said.

“That’s an understatement.”

“I saw your CR-V in the lot. You trashed the whole right side.”

I played the phone message for him.

“It’s Abruzzi,” I said. “It’s not his voice on the tape, but he’s behind this. He thinks this is some war game. And someone must have followed me to the park. Then they unlocked my car and dumped a load of spiders into it while I was running.”

“How many spiders?”

“Five large tarantulas.”

“I could talk to Abruzzi.”

“Thanks, but I can handle it.” Yeah, right. That’s why I ripped the door off a parked car. Truth is, I’d love to have Morelli step in and make Abruzzi go away. Unfortunately, it would send a bad message: Dopey, helpless female needs big strong man to get her out of unfortunate mess.

Morelli gave me the once-over, taking in the grass stains, goose feathers, and rips in my shirt. “I got Bob a hot dog after we walked around the lake, and there was a lot of talk at the concession stand about a woman who’d been attacked by a flock of geese.”

“Hmm. Imagine that.”

“They said she provoked the attack by feeding one of the geese a Cracker Jack.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” I said. “Damn stupid geese.”

Bob had been roaming the apartment. He came into the kitchen and smiled up at us. A piece of toilet paper dangled from his lips. He opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out. “Kack! ” His mouth opened wider, and he horked up a hot dog, a bunch of grass, a lot of slime, and a wad of toilet paper.

We both stared at the steaming pile of dog barf.

“Well, I guess I should be going now,” Morelli said, looking to the door. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Wait a minute. Who’s going to clean this up?”

“I’d like to help, but… oh man, that smells really bad.” He had his hand over his nose and mouth. “Gotta go,” he said. “Late. Something to do.” He was in the hall. “Maybe you should just leave and rent a new apartment.”

Another opportunity to use the bitch look.

**********************

I DIDN’T SLEEP well… which I’m sure is normal after you’ve been attacked by killer geese and mutant spiders. At six o’clock I finally hauled myself out of bed, took a shower, and got dressed. I decided I needed a treat after the crappy night, so I packed myself off in the CR-V and drove into town to Barry’s Coffees. There was always a line at Barry’s but it was worth it because he had forty-two different kinds of coffee, plus all the exotic espresso drinks.

I ordered a double skinny caramel mochaccino and took my drink to the window bar. I squeezed in next to an old lady with chopped-off, spikey hair dyed flame red. She was short and round, with apple cheeks and an apple shape. She was wearing large turquoise and silver earrings, elaborate rings on every gnarled finger, a white polyester warm-up suit, and platform Skechers. Her eyes were heavily gunked with mascara. Her dark red lipstick had been transferred to her cappuccino cup.

“Hey, honey,” she said in a two-pack-a-day voice. “Is that a caramel mochaccino? I used to drink them but they gave me the shakes. Too much sugar. You keep drinking them you’re gonna get diabetes. My brother has diabetes and they had to cut his foot off. It was real ugly. First his toes turned black, and then the whole foot, and then his skin started falling off in big clumps. It was like a shark had got hold of him and ripped off chunks of meat.”

I looked around for another place to stand while I drank my coffee, but the place was packed.

“He’s in a nursing home now on account of he can’t get around so good,” she said. “I visit him when I can, but I got things to do. You get to be my age and you don’t want to sit around wasting time. I could wake up any morning and be dead. Of course I keep myself in real good shape. How old do you think I am?”

“Eighty?”

“Seventy-four. I look better some days than others,” she said. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Stephanie.”

“My name’s Laura. Laura Minello.”

“Laura Minello. That sounds familiar. Are you from the Burg?”

“Nope. I’ve lived all my life in North Trenton. Cherry Street. I used to work at the Social Security office. Worked there for twenty-three years, but you wouldn’t remember me from there. You’re too young.”

Laura Minello. I knew her from somewhere, but I couldn’t place it. Laura Minello gestured at a red Corvette parked in front of Barry’s. “See that fancy red car? That’s my car. Pretty slick, hunh?”

I looked at the car. And then I looked at Laura Minello. Then I looked at the car again. Holy cow. I dug around in my shoulder bag, searching for the papers Connie had given me.

“Have you had the car long?” I asked Laura.

“Couple days.”

I pulled the papers out of my bag and scanned the top page. Laura Minello, accused of grand theft auto, age seventy-four. Residence on Cherry Street.

God works in mysterious ways.

“You stole that Corvette, didn’t you?” I asked Minello.

“I borrowed it. Old people are allowed to do things like that so they can go for the gusto before they croak.”

Oh boy. I should have looked at the bond agreement before I accepted the file from Connie. Never take on old people. It’s always a disaster. Old people think conveniently. And you look like a jerk when you apprehend them.

“This is a strange coincidence,” I said. “I work for Vincent Plum, your bail bondsman. You missed a court date, and you need to reschedule.”

“Okay, but not today. I’m going to Atlantic City. Just pencil something in for me next week.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

A blue-and-white cruised by Barry’s. It stopped just beyond the red Vette and two cops got out.

“Uh-oh,” Laura said. “This don’t look good.”

One of the cops was Eddie Gazarra. Gazarra was married to my cousin, Shirley the Whiner. Gazarra checked the plate on the Vette, and then he walked around the car. He went back to the blue-and-white and made a call.

“Damn cops,” Laura said. “Haven’t got anything better to do than to go around and bust senior citizens. There should be a law against it.”

I rapped on the coffeehouse window and caught Gazarra’s attention. I pointed to Laura sitting next to me and smiled. Here she is, I mouthed to Gazarra.

**********************

IT WAS CLOSE to noon, and I was parked in front of Vinnie’s office, trying to muster the courage to go inside. I’d followed Gazarra and Laura Minello back to the station, and I’d gotten a body receipt for Minello. The body receipt would get me fifteen percent of Minello’s bond. And the fifteen percent would make an essential contribution toward this month’s rent. Ordinarily the delivery of a body receipt is a happy occasion. Today it would be marred by the fact that in the pursuit of Andrew Bender I’d lost four pairs of cuffs. Not to mention that on all occasions I’d looked like a complete idiot. And Vinnie was in residence, lurking in his lair, anxious to remind me of all this. I set my teeth, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door.

Lula stopped filing when I walked in. “Hey, jellybean,” Lula said. “What’s new?”

Connie looked up from her computer. “Vinnie’s in his office. Break out the garlic and crosses.”

“What kind of mood is he in?”

“Are you here to tell me you captured Bender?” Vinnie yelled from the other side of his closed door.

“No.”

“Then I’m in a bad mood.”

“How can he hear with the door closed?” I asked Connie.

She raised her hand, middle finger extended.

“I saw that,” Vinnie yelled.

“He had video and sound installed so he doesn’t miss something,” Connie said.

“Yeah, it’s secondhand,” Lula said. “It came out of the adult video store that closed. I wouldn’t touch it without rubber gloves.”

Vinnie’s door opened, and Vinnie stuck his head out. “Andy Bender is a drunk, for crissake. He wakes up in the morning, falls into a can of beer, and never climbs out. He should have been a gift. Instead, he’s making you look like a moron.”

“He’s one of them crafty drunks,” Lula said. “He can even run when he’s drunk. And he shot at us last time. You’re gonna have to pay me more if I’m gonna get shot at.”

“You two are pathetic,” Vinnie said. “I could catch this guy with one hand tied behind my back. I could catch this guy blindfolded.”

“Hunh,” Lula said.

Vinnie leaned forward. “You don’t believe me? You think I couldn’t bring this guy in?”

“Miracles happen,” Lula said.

“Oh yeah? You think it would take a miracle? Well, I’ll show you a miracle. You two losers be here at nine tonight, and we’ll take this guy down.”

Vinnie pulled his head back inside his office and slammed the door shut.

“Hope he’s got cuffs,” Lula said.

I gave Connie the body receipt for Laura Minello and waited while she wrote my check. We all turned and looked when the front door opened.

“Hey, I know you,” Lula said to the woman who walked into the office. “You tried to kill me.”

It was Maggie Mason. We’d met her on a previous case. Our relationship with Maggie had started out bad, but had ended up good.

“You still mud wrestling at The Snake Pit?” Lula asked.

“The Snake Pit closed down.” Maggie did a shit happens shrug. “It was time for me to get out anyway. Wrestling was fun for a while, but my dream was always to open a bookstore. When the Pit folded I persuaded one of the owners to go into business with me. That’s why I stopped in. We’re going to be neighbors. I just signed a lease on the building next door.”

I WAS SITTING in front of Vinnie’s office, in my wrecked car, wondering what to do next, and my cell phone rang.

“You gotta do something,” Grandma Mazur said. “Mabel was just over, for the fortieth time. She’s driving us nuts. First off, she bakes all day, and now she’s giving the stuff to us because she hasn’t got any more room in her house. She’s wall-to-wall bread. And this last time, she started crying. Crying. You know how we don’t do good with crying here.”

“She’s worried about Evelyn and Annie. They’re the only family she has left.”

“Well, find them,” Grandma said. “We don’t know what to do with all these coffee cakes.”

I drove to Key Street and parked across from Evelyn’s house. I thought about Annie sleeping in her bedroom upstairs, playing in the small backyard. A little girl with curly red hair and large serious eyes. A kid who was best friends with my niece, the horse. What kind of a kid would buddy up with Mary Alice? Not that Mary Alice isn’t a great kid, but let’s face it, she’s a couple inches off average. Probably Mary Alice and Annie were both on the outside looking in, needing a friend. And they found each other. Talk to me, I said to the house. Tell me a secret. I was sitting there, waiting for the house to say something, and a car pulled up behind me. It was the big black Lincoln with two men in the front. I didn’t have to think too long or hard to figure out it was Abruzzi and Darrow.

The smart thing would be to take off and not look back. Since I had a long history of rarely doing the smart thing, I locked my door, cracked the window on the driver’s side, and waited for Abruzzi to come talk to me.

“You’ve got your door locked,” Abruzzi said when he walked over. “Are you afraid of me?”

“If I was afraid of you, I’d have the motor running. Do you come here often?”

“I like to keep an eye on my properties,” he said. “What are you doing here? You aren’t planning on breaking in again, are you?”

“Nope. I’m just sightseeing. Strange coincidence that you always show up when I’m here.”

“It’s not a coincidence,” Abruzzi said. “I have informants everywhere. I know everything you do.”

“Everything?”

He shrugged. “Many things. For instance, I know you were at the park on Sunday. And then you had an unfortunate accident with your car.”

“Some moron thought it would be cute to put spiders in my car.”

“Do you like spiders?”

“They’re okay. Not as much fun as bunnies, for instance.”

“I understand you hit a parked car.”

“One of the spiders took me by surprise.”

“The element of surprise is important in a battle.”

“This isn’t a battle. I’m trying to put an old woman’s mind at ease by finding a little girl.”

“You must think I’m stupid. You’re a bounty hunter. A mercenary. You know perfectly well what this is about. You’re in this for the money. You know what the stakes are. And you know what I’m trying to recover. What you don’t know is who you’re dealing with. I’m toying with you now, but at some point the game will get boring for me. If you haven’t come over to my side by the time I get bored with the game, I’ll come after you with a vengeance, and I’ll rip the heart out of your body while it’s still beating.”

Yikes.

He was dressed in a suit and tie. Very tasteful. Looked expensive. No gravy stains on the tie. He was insane, but at least he dressed well.

“Guess I’ll go now,” I said. “You probably want to go home and get medicated.”

“Nice to know you like bunnies,” he said.

I cranked the engine over and took off. Abruzzi stood there, staring after me. I checked my rearview mirror for a tail. Didn’t see anyone. I wiggled around a couple streets. Still no tail. I had a bad feeling in my stomach. It felt a lot like horror. I drove past my parents’ house and noticed Uncle Sandor’s Buick was parked in the driveway. My sister was using the Buick until she saved enough money to get her own car. But my sister was supposed to be at work. I pulled in behind her and popped into the house. Grandma Mazur, my mom, and Valerie were all at the kitchen table. They had coffee in front of them but no one was drinking.

I opted for a soda and took the fourth chair. “What’s up?”

“Your sister got fired from her job at the bank,” Grandma Mazur said. “She got into a fight with her boss, and she got herself fired, on the spot.”

Valerie fighting with someone? Saint Valerie? The sister with the disposition of vanilla pudding?

When we were kids Valerie always turned her homework in on time, made her bed before going to school, and was thought to bear an uncanny resemblance to the serene plaster statues of the Virgin Mary found on Burg lawns and in Burg churches. Even Valerie’s period came and went with serenity, always arriving on schedule to the minute, the flow delicate, the mood swings going from nice to nicer.

I was the sister who got cramps.

“What happened?” I asked. “How could you get into a fight with your boss? You just started that job.”

“She was unreasonable,” Valerie said. “And mean. I made one tiny mistake, and she was horrible about it, yelling at me in front of everyone. And before I knew it I was yelling back. And then I got fired.”

“You yelled?”

“I haven’t been myself lately.”

No shit. Last month she decided she was going to try being a lesbian, and this month she was yelling. What was next? Full head rotation?

“So what was the mistake?”

“I spilled some soup. That’s all I did. I spilled a little soup.”

“It was one of them Cup-a-Soup things,” Grandma said to me. “It had them itty-bitty noodles in it. Valerie dumped the whole thing onto a computer, and it seeped between the cracks and blew out the system. They just about had to shut the bank down.”

I didn’t want bad things to happen to Val. Still, it was kind of nice to see her screw up after a lifetime of perfection.

“I don’t suppose you remember anything new about Evelyn?” I asked Valerie. “Mary Alice said she and Annie were best friends.”

“They were school friends,” Valerie said. “I don’t remember ever seeing Annie.”

I looked over at my mother. “Did you know Annie?”

“Evelyn used to bring her around when she was younger, but they stopped visiting a couple years ago when Evelyn started having problems. And Annie never came to the house with Mary Alice. For that matter, I don’t think Mary Alice ever talked about Annie.”

“Least not so we could understand,” Grandma said. “She might of said something in horse talk.”

Valerie was looking depressed, pushing a cookie around on the kitchen table with her finger. If I was depressed, the cookie would be history. Come to think of it…

“Do you want that cookie?” I asked Valerie.

“I bet those little soup noodles looked like worms,” Grandma said. “Remember when Stephanie got worms? The doctor said they came off the lettuce. He said we didn’t wash the lettuce good enough.”

I’d forgotten about the worms. Not one of my favorite childhood memories. Right up there with the day I vomited spaghetti and meatballs on Anthony Balderri. I finished my soda, ate Valerie’s cookie, and went next door and checked in with Mabel.

“Anything new?” I asked Mabel.

“I got another call from the bail bonds company. They won’t just come in here and throw me out, will they?”

“No. It’ll have to go through legal channels. And the bond company involved is reputable.”

“I haven’t heard from Evelyn since she left,” Mabel said. “I thought for sure I’d hear from her by now.”

I returned to my car, and I tapped a call in to Dotty.

“It’s Stephanie Plum,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

“That woman you told me about is still sitting in front of my house. I even took the day off because she’s creeping me out. I called the police, but they said they couldn’t do anything.”

“Do you have my card with my pager number?”

“Yes.”

“Call me if you need to see Evelyn. I’ll help you get past Jeanne Ellen.”

I disconnected and did a palms-up in the car, all by myself. What more could I do?

I jumped when my phone rang. It was Dotty calling back. “Okay, I need help. I’m not saying I know where Evelyn is staying. I’m just saying I need to go somewhere, and I can’t be followed.”

“Understood. I’m about forty minutes away.”

“Come in through the back again.”

So maybe Jeanne Ellen was doing me a favor. She’d put Dotty into a situation where she needed me. How bizarre is that?

First thing I did was stop by the office and get Lula.

“Let’s rock and roll,” Lula said. “I’ll distract the heck out of Jeanne Ellen. I’m the queen of distraction.”

“Great. Just remember, no shooting.”

“Maybe a tire,” Lula said.

“Not a tire. Nothing. No shooting.”

“I hope you realize this puts a big crimp in my distracting.”

Lula was wearing the new boots with a lemon yellow spandex miniskirt. I didn’t think she’d have a distraction problem.

“This is the plan,” I said when we got to South River. “I’m going to park one street over from Dotty, and we’ll go in through the back. Then you can keep Jeanne Ellen busy while I take Dotty to Evelyn.”

I took the shortest path through the yards and knocked once on Dotty’s back door. Dotty opened the door and stifled a scream. “Holy Jesus,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting…

two people.”

What she wasn’t expecting was a plus-size black woman bulging out of a tiny yellow skirt.

“This is my partner, Lula,” I said. “She’s good at creating a distraction.”

“No kidding.” Dotty was dressed in jeans and sneakers. She had a bag of groceries on the kitchen table and a two-year-old under her arm.

“This is my problem,” Dotty said. “I have a friend who has no food in the house and can’t go out to get any. I want to take these groceries to her.”

“Is Jeanne Ellen out front?”

“She left about ten minutes ago. She does that. She’ll sit there for hours, and then she’ll go away for a while, but she always comes back.”

“Why don’t you take the groceries to your friend when Jeanne Ellen leaves?”

“You said not to do that. You said even if I didn’t see her she’d follow me.”

“Good point. Okay, here’s the plan. You and I will cut through the back and take my car. And Lula will drive your car. Lula will make sure we’re not followed, and she’ll decoy Jeanne Ellen off, if Jeanne Ellen appears.”

“No good,” Dotty said. “I have to go alone. And I need someone to sit with the kids. My sitter just punked out on me. It’s going to have to be that I cut through the yard and use your car, and you take care of the kids. I won’t be long.”

Lula and I shouted no simultaneously.

“Not a great idea,” I said. “We don’t baby-sit. We don’t actually know anything about kids.” I looked over at Lula. “Do you know anything about kids?”

Lula shook her head vigorously. “I don’t know nothing about kids. I don’t want to know nothing about kids, either.”

“If I don’t get this food to Evelyn she’s going to go out and get it herself. If she’s recognized, she’ll have to move on.”

“Evelyn and Annie can’t stay hidden forever,” I said.

“I know that. I’m trying to straighten things out.”

“By talking to Soder?”

The surprise was obvious on her face. “You were watching me, too.”

“Soder didn’t look happy. What were you arguing about?”

“I can’t tell you. And I need to go. Please let me go.”

“I want to talk to Evelyn on the phone. I need to know she’s okay. If I can talk to her on the phone, I’ll let you go. And Lula and I will baby-sit.”

“Hold on here,” Lula said. “That don’t sound like a deal to me. Kids spook me out.”

“Okay,” Dottie said. “I don’t see where it’ll harm anything to let you talk to Evelyn.”

She went to the living room to dial. There was a brief conversation, Dotty returned, and passed the phone to me.

“Your grandmother is worried,” I told Evelyn. “She’s worried about you and Annie.”

“Tell her we’re alright. And please stop looking for us. You’re just making things more complicated.”

“I’m not the person you have to worry about. Steven’s hired a private investigator, and she’s good at finding people.”

“Dotty told me.”

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“I can’t talk now. I have to get things straightened out first.”

“What things?”

“I can’t talk about it.” And she hung up.

I gave Dotty the keys to my car. “Keep your eyes open for Jeanne Ellen. Check your rearview mirror for a tail.”

Dotty grabbed the bag of groceries. “Don’t let Scotty drink out of the toilet,” she said. And then she took off.

The two-year-old was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, looking at Lula and me like he’d never seen humans before.

“You think that’s Scotty?” Lula asked.

A little girl appeared in the doorway leading to the bedrooms. “Scotty is a dog,” she said.

“My brother’s name is Oliver. Who are you?”

“We’re the baby-sitters,” Lula said.

8

“WHERE’S BONNIE?” THE little girl asked. “Bonnie always baby-sits for Oliver and me.”

“Bonnie punked out,” Lula said. “So you get us.”

“I don’t want you to baby-sit for me. You’re fat.”

“I’m not fat. I’m a substantial woman. And you better watch what you say on account of you say things like that in first grade and they’ll kick your ass out of school. I bet they don’t put up with that kind of talk in first grade.”

“I’m going to tell my mother you said ass. She won’t pay you after she finds out you said ass. And she won’t ever have you baby-sit again.”

“And what’s the bad news?” Lula asked.

“This is Lula. And I’m Stephanie,” I said to the little girl. “What’s your name?”

“My name is Amanda, and I’m seven years old. And I don’t like you, either.”

“Bet she’s gonna be a treat when she’s old enough for PMS,” Lula said.

“Your mom shouldn’t be long,” I said to Amanda. “How about we put the television on?”

“Oliver won’t like that,” Amanda said.

“Oliver,” I said, “do you want to watch television?”

Oliver shook his head. “No,” he yelled. “No, no, no!” And he started crying. Loud.

“Now you did it,” Lula said. “Why’s he crying? Man, I can’t hear myself think. Somebody get him to stop.”

I bent down to Oliver’s level. “Hey, big guy,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

“No, no, no!” he yelled. His face was brick red, scrinched up in anger.

“He keep frowning like that and he’s gonna need Botox,” Lula said. I felt around in the diaper area. He didn’t seem wet. He didn’t have a spoon stuck up his nose. No limbs seemed to be severed. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” I said. “I mostly know about hamsters.”

“Well, don’t look at me,” Lula said. “I don’t know nothing about kids. I never even was one. I was born in a crack house. Being a kid wasn’t an option in my neighborhood.”

“He’s hungry,” Amanda said. “He’s going to cry like that until you feed him.”

I found a box of cookies in the cupboard and held one out to Oliver.

“No,” he yelled, and he knocked the cookie out of my hand.

A scruffy-looking dog rushed in from the bedroom area and ate the cookie before it hit the floor.

“Oliver doesn’t want to eat a cookie,” Amanda said.

Lula had her hands over her ears. “I’m gonna go deaf if he don’t stop this howling. I’m getting a headache.”

I got a bottle of juice out of the refrigerator. “Do you want this?” I asked.

“No!”

I tried ice cream.

“No!”

“How about a leg of lamb?” Lula asked. “I wouldn’t mind having some leg of lamb.”

He was on the floor now, on his back, kicking his heels against the tile. “No, no, no!”

“This here’s a full-blown tantrum,” Lula said. “This kid needs a timeout.”

“I’m telling my mother you made Oliver cry,” Amanda said.

“Hey, give me a break,” I said. “I’m trying. You’re his sister. Help me out here.”

“He wants a grilled cheese sandwich,” Amanda said. “It’s his favorite food.”

“Good thing he didn’t want the leg of lamb,” Lula said. “We wouldn’t know how to cook that.”

I found a pan and some butter and cheese, and I started the bread frying in the pan. Oliver was still bellowing at the top of his lungs, and now the dog was yapping, running in circles around him.

The doorbell rang, and I figured with the sort of luck I was having it was probably Jeanne Ellen. I left Lula in charge of the grilled cheese sandwich, and I went to answer the door. I was wrong about it being Jeanne Ellen, but I was right about my luck. It was Steven Soder.

“What the hell?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting.”

“Where’s Dotty? I need to talk to her.”

“Hey,” Lula called from the kitchen, “I need an opinion on this grilled cheese.”

“Who’s that?” Soder wanted to know. “That doesn’t sound like Dotty. That sounds like the fatso who hit me with her purse.”

“We’re in the middle of something right now,” I said to Soder. “Maybe you could come back later.”

He muscled his way past me and stalked into the kitchen. “You!” he shouted at Lula.

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Not in front of the k-i-d,” Lula said. “You don’t want to use that kind of violent talk. It stirs up all kinds of latent shit when they get to be teenagers.”

“I’m not stupid,” Amanda said. “I can spell. And I’m telling my mother you said shit.”

“Everybody says shit,” Lula said. She looked to me. “Doesn’t everybody say shit? What’s wrong with shit? ”

The grilled cheese looked perfect in the fry pan, so I lifted it out with a spatula, slid it onto a plate, and gave it to Oliver. The dog stopped running in circles, snatched the sandwich off the plate, and ate it. And Oliver went back to howling.

“Oliver has to eat at the table,” Amanda said.

“There’s a lot of stuff to remember in this house,” Lula said.

“I want to talk to Dotty,” Soder said.

“Dotty isn’t here,” I yelled over Oliver’s screaming. “Talk to me.”

“In your dreams,” Soder said. “And for crissake, somebody get this kid to shut up.”

“The dog ate his sandwich,” Lula said. “And it’s all your fault on account of you distracted us.”

“So do your Aunt Jemima thing and make him another sandwich,” Soder said. Lula’s eyes bugged out of her head. “Aunt Jemima? Excuse me? Did you say Aunt Jemima?” She leaned forward so her nose was inches from Soder’s, hands on hips, one hand still holding tight to the fry pan. “Listen to me, you punk-ass loser, you don’t want to call me no Aunt Jemima or I’m gonna give you Aunt Jemima in the face with this fry pan. Only thing stopping me is I don’t want to k-i-l-l you in front of the b-r-a-t-s.”

I saw Lula’s point, but being working-class white I had a totally different perspective on Aunt Jemima. Aunt Jemima conjured nothing but good memories of steaming pancakes dripping with syrup. I loved Aunt Jemima.

“Knock, knock,” Jeanne Ellen said at the open door. “Can anyone come to this party?”

Jeanne Ellen was back to being dressed in the black leather outfit.

“Wow,” Amanda said, “are you Catwoman?”

“Michelle Pfeiffer was Catwoman,” Jeanne Ellen said. She looked down at Oliver. He was on his back again, kicking and screaming. “Stop,” Jeanne Ellen said to Oliver. Oliver blinked twice and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

Jeanne Ellen smiled at me. “Baby-sitting?”

“Yep.”

“Nice.”

“Your client is being intrusive,” I said.

“My apologies,” Jeanne Ellen said. “We’re leaving now.”

Amanda, Oliver, Lula, and I all stood like statues until the front door closed behind Jeanne Ellen and Soder. Then Oliver went back to his screaming.

Lula tried the stop thing but Oliver only screamed louder. So we made him another grilled cheese.

Oliver was finishing his sandwich when Dotty returned.

“How’d it go?” Dotty asked.

Amanda looked at her mother. Then she took a long look at Lula and me. “Fine,”

Amanda said. “I’m going to watch television now.”

“Steven Soder stopped by,” I said.

Dotty’s face went ashen. “He was here? Soder came here?”

“He said he wanted to talk to you.”

Color flamed on her cheekbones. She put a hand to Oliver. A mother’s protective gesture. She smoothed the baby-fine hair back from Oliver’s forehead. “I hope Oliver wasn’t too much trouble.”

“Oliver was terrific,” I said. “It took us a while to figure out he wanted a grilled cheese sandwich, but after that he was terrific.”

“Sometimes being a single mom gets a little overwhelming,” Dotty said. “The responsibility of it. And the alone part. It’s okay when everything’s going normal, but sometimes you wish there was another adult in the house.”

“You’re afraid of Soder,” I said.

“He’s a terrible person.”

“You should tell me what’s going on. I could help.” At least I hoped I could help.

“I need to think,” Dotty said. “I appreciate your offer, but I need to think.”

“I’ll stop around tomorrow morning to make sure you’re okay,” I said. “Maybe we can straighten this out tomorrow.”

**********************

LULA AND I were halfway to Trenton before either of us spoke.

“Life just gets weirder and weirder,” Lula finally said.

That pretty much summed it up as far as I was concerned. I suppose I’d made progress. I’d spoken to Evelyn. I knew she was safe for now. And I knew she wasn’t all that far away. Dotty had been gone less than an hour.

Soder was bothersome, but I could understand his actions. He was a jerk, but he was also a distraught dad. Most likely Dotty was negotiating some sort of truce between Soder and Evelyn.

What I couldn’t understand was Jeanne Ellen. The fact that Jeanne Ellen was still doing surveillance bothered me. The surveillance seemed pointless now that Dotty knew about Jeanne Ellen. So why was Jeanne Ellen sitting across from Dotty’s house when we left? It was possible that Jeanne Ellen was exerting pressure in the form of harassment. Make Dotty’s life unpleasant and try to get her to cave. There was another possibility that felt pretty far out but had to be considered. Protection. Jeanne Ellen was sitting out there like the Queen’s Guard. Maybe Jeanne Ellen was guarding the link to Evelyn and Annie. This led to a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer. Such as, who was Jeanne Ellen guarding Dotty from? Abruzzi?

“You gonna show up at nine?” Lula asked when I pulled to a stop in front of the bonds office.

“I guess so. How about you?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

I stopped at the store on the way home and picked up a few groceries. By the time I reached my apartment it was dinnertime and the building was filled with cooking smells. Minestrone soup simmering behind Mrs. Karwatt’s door. Burritos from the other end of the hall.

I approached my door with my key in my hand, and I froze. If Abruzzi could get into my locked car, he could get into my locked apartment. I needed to be careful. I put the key in the lock. I turned the key. I opened the door. I stood in the hall with the door open for a moment, taking in the feel of my apartment. Listening to the silence. Reassured by my heartbeat and the fact that a pack of wild dogs didn’t rush out to devour me. I crossed the threshold, left my front door wide open, and walked through the rooms, carefully opening drawers and closet doors. No surprises, thank God. Still, my stomach felt icky. I was having a hard time pushing Abruzzi’s threat out of my head.

“Knock, knock,” a voice called from the open doorway.

Kloughn.

“I was in the neighborhood,” he said, “so I thought I’d say hello. I have some Chinese food with me, too. I got it for myself, but I got too much. I thought you might want some. But you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to. But then if you want to eat it, that would be great. I didn’t know if you liked Chinese food. Or if you liked to eat alone. Or…”

I grabbed Kloughn and pulled him into my apartment.

**********************

“WHAT’S THIS?” VINNIE said when I showed up with Kloughn.

“Albert Kloughn,” I told him, “attorney at law.”

“And?”

“He brought me supper, so I invited him along.”

“He looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy. What’d he bring you to eat, dinner rolls?”

“Chinese,” Kloughn said. “It was one of those last-minute things that I just felt like eating Chinese.”

“I’m not crazy about taking a lawyer along on a bust,” Vinnie said.

“I won’t sue you, I swear to God,” Kloughn said. “And look, I have a flashlight and defense spray and everything. I’m thinking about getting a gun, but I can’t decide if I want a six shooter or a semiautomatic. I’m sort of leaning to the semiautomatic.”

“Go with the semiautomatic,” Lula said. “It holds more bullets. You can never have too many bullets.”

“I want a vest,” I said to Vinnie. “Last time I did a takedown with you, you shot everything to smithereens.”

“That was an unusual circumstance,” Vinnie said.

Yeah, right.

I got Kloughn and myself suited up in Kevlar, and we all packed off in Vinnie’s Cadillac. A half hour later we were parked around the corner from Bender. “Now you’re going to see how a professional operates,” Vinnie said. “I have a plan, and I expect everyone to do their part, so listen up.”

“Oh boy,” Lula said. “A plan.”

“Stephanie and I will take the front door,” Vinnie said. “Lula and the clown will take the back door. We all enter at the same time and subdue the rat bastard.”

“That’s some plan,” Lula said. “I would never have thought of that one.”

“K-l-o-u-g-h-n,” Albert said.

“All you have to do is listen for me to yell ‘bond enforcement,’ ” Vinnie said. “Then we crash down the doors and rush in with everyone yelling ‘freeze… bond enforcement.’”

“I’m not doing that,” I said. “I’ll feel like an idiot. They only do that on television.”

“I like it,” Lula said. “I always wanted to crash down a door and yell stuff.”

“I could be wrong,” Kloughn said, “but crashing down doors might be illegal.”

Vinnie buckled himself into a nylon webbed gun belt. “It’s only illegal if it’s the wrong house.”

Lula took a Glock out of her purse and shoved it into the waistband of her spandex miniskirt. “I’m ready,” she said. “Too bad we don’t have a TV crew with us. This yellow skirt would show up real good.”

“I’m ready, too,” Kloughn said. “I’ve got a flashlight in case the lights go off.”

I didn’t want to alarm him, but that’s not why bounty hunters carry two-pound Mag lights.

“Has anyone checked to make sure Bender is home?” I asked. “Anyone talk to his wife?”

“We’ll listen under the window,” Vinnie said. “It looks like someone’s watching television in there.”

We all tiptoed across the lawn and pressed ourselves against the building and listened under the window.

“Sounds like a movie,” Kloughn said. “Sounds like a dirty movie.”

“Then Bender’s gotta be here,” Vinnie said. “His wife isn’t going to be sitting around all by herself, watching a porno flick.”

Lula and Kloughn went around to the back door, and Vinnie and I went to the front door. Vinnie drew his gun and rapped on the door, which had been patched with a big piece of plywood.

“Open up,” Vinnie shouted. “Bond enforcement!” He took a step back and was ready to give the door a kick with his boot when we heard Lula break into the house from the rear, yelling at the top of her lungs.

Before we had a chance to react, the front door burst open and a naked guy rushed out at us, almost knocking me off the stoop. Inside the house there was pandemonium. Men were scrambling to leave, some of them naked, some of them dressed, all of them waving guns, shouting, “Outta my way, muthafucka!”

Lula was in the middle of it. “Hey,” she was yelling, “this here’s a bond enforcement operation! Everybody stop running!”

Vinnie and I had worked our way into the middle of the room, but we couldn’t find Bender. Too many men in too small a space, all trying to get out of the house. No one cared that Vinnie had his gun drawn. I’m not sure anyone noticed in the mayhem. Vinnie got off a round and a chunk of ceiling fell down. After that, it was quiet because no one was left in the room but Vinnie, Lula, Kloughn, and me.

“What happened?” Lula asked. “What just happened here?”

“I didn’t see Bender,” Vinnie said. “Is this the right house?”

“Vinnie?” A female voice called from the bedroom. “Vinnie, is that you?”

Vinnie’s eyes opened wide. “Candy?”

A naked woman somewhere in age between twenty and fifty bounced out of the bedroom. She had gigantic breasts and her pubic hair cut into the shape of a thunderbolt. She held her arms out to Vinnie. “Long time no see,” she said. “What’s up?”

A second woman straggled from the bedroom. “Is it really Vinnie?” she asked. “What’s he doing here?”

I eased into the bedroom behind the women and looked for Bender. The bedroom was set with lights and a discarded camera. They hadn’t been watching a porno… they’d been making one.

“Bender isn’t in the bedroom or bathroom,” I said to Vinnie. “And that’s the whole house.”

“You looking for Andy?” Candy asked. “He split earlier. He said he had work to do. That’s why we borrowed his place. Nice and private. At least until you showed up.”

“We thought we was getting busted,” the other woman said. “We thought you was the cops.”

Kloughn gave each of the women his card. “Albert Kloughn, attorney at law,” he said. “If you ever need a lawyer.”

AN HOUR LATER, I pulled into my lot with Kloughn yammering away alongside me. I had Godsmack plugged into my CD player, but I couldn’t get the volume loud enough to totally drown out Kloughn.

“Boy, that was something,” Kloughn said. “I’ve never seen a movie star up close before. And especially naked ones. I didn’t look too much, did I? I mean, you couldn’t help looking, right? Even you looked, right?”

Right. But I didn’t get down on my knees to examine the pubic hair thunderbolt. I parked and walked Kloughn to his car, making sure he got safely out of the lot. I turned to go into the building and let out a yelp when I bumped into Ranger. He was standing close, and he was smiling. “Big date?”

“It’s been a strange day.”

“How strange?”

I told him about Vinnie and the porno movie.

Ranger tipped his head back and laughed out loud. Not something I see very often.

“Is this a social visit?” I asked.