“Yes. He just left. I gave him an oatmeal raisin cookie, and he thanked me and went on with his walk. He’s such a nice, polite man.”
“Which way did he go?”
“He was walking toward Broome Street.”
I jogged through the next two yards, crossed the street, and saw Junior at the end of the block. He was eating his cookie with one hand and shaking his wanger at Mrs. Barbera with the other. He looked my way and shrieked and took off running.
I chased Junior for half a block and lost him when he cut through Andy Kowalski’s driveway. I stopped a moment to catch my breath and answer my phone.
“Babe,” Ranger said.
“I lost him at the corner of Green and Broome. I think he’s doubling back toward my parents’ house. You can’t miss him. He’s eating a cookie, and he’s got his barn door open.”
I looked between houses and saw Ranger’s black Porsche Turbo glide down the street. I stood perfectly still and listened for footsteps. A dog barked on the next block, and I ran in that direction. I crossed the street, hopped a fence, bushwhacked through a jungle of out-of-control forsythia, and spotted Junior Turley displaying his wares to old Mrs. Gritch.
I bolted out of the bushes and tackled Turley. We both went down to the ground, where we wrestled around, Turley trying to get away and me holding on.
“Stop that this instant,” Mrs. Gritch said. “You’re going to roll over my mums.” And she turned the hose on us.
A black boot came into my line of vision, the water stopped, and Ranger lifted Turley off me and held him out at arm’s length, Turley’s feet not touching the ground, his pride and joy hanging limp against his drenched pants like a giant slug.
“I’m guessing this is the flasher,” Ranger said.
I got to my feet and pushed my wet hair back from my face. “Yep. Junior Turley. And he owes me cuffs.”
“I left them with your granny,” Junior said.
I was soaked to the skin and getting cold. “I need to get out of these wet clothes,” I said to Ranger.
“Go home and change. I’ll have one of my men drop Mr. Turley at the police station.”
“Thanks. I’ll start riding around, checking things out for you, as soon as I get dry clothes.”
I TOOK A shower, put on clean jeans and my last clean sweater, and carted my overflowing laundry basket out to my car. The plan was to ride around and do a fast look at the Rangeman accounts that were between my house and my parents’ house. This included Hamilton Avenue. Then I would mooch dinner from my mom and do my laundry at her house. There were machines in the basement laundry room of my apartment building, but I was pretty sure the place was inhabited by trolls, and I’d eat dirt before I’d go down there.
I drove by two houses and three businesses. The third business was the insurance company that had already been robbed. I didn’t see anything suspicious at any of the locations. No one skulking in the shadows, casing the joint. No one throwing Snickers wrappers on the ground. The two houses were large, set in the middle of large landscaped lots. Easy to burgle if you didn’t have to worry about the alarm system. The two remaining businesses were on Hamilton and would be more difficult to break into. They were both in high-visibility areas with poor back access. In both cases, the rear entrance opened to a chain-link-fenced lot that was gated at night.
I motored over to my parents’ house and was surprised not to find Lula’s car parked at the curb. I thought for sure this would be another barbecue night.
My mom and dad and Grandma Mazur were already seated when I walked in. I told them not to get up, but my mother and grandmother jumped to their feet and set a place for me. My father kept eating.
“Leave the laundry,” my mother said. “I’ll do the laundry later.”
I sat at the table and filled my plate with pot roast, potatoes, gravy, and green beans.
“Where’s Lula?” I asked Grandma Mazur. “I’m surprised you aren’t barbecuing again tonight.”
“She had a date with some hot fireman,” Grandma said. “She said she was gonna give him brown sugar, and I said that was okay so long as she had some left for the barbecue sauce.”
The phone rang and my mother and grandmother looked at each other and sat firm.
“Aren’t you going to answer the phone?” I asked.
“It’s been ringing off the hook,” Grandma said. “I don’t want to talk to any more grumpy women. Who’d think this would make such a stink? I help my granddaughter do her job, and next thing, we’re all in the doghouse.”
“It’s about Junior Turley,” my mother said to me. “Some of the women in the neighborhood are upset because you put him in jail.”
“He exposed himself,” I said. “Men aren’t supposed to go around exposing themselves at unsuspecting women.”
“Well, technically none of us was unsuspecting,” Grandma said. “We wait for him to show up. I guess it’s one of them generation things. You get to an age and you look forward to seeing a winkie at four in the afternoon when you’re peeling potatoes for supper. The thing about Junior and his winkie is, you don’t have to do anything about it. You just take a look and he moves on.”
I poured more gravy over my potatoes. “Mrs. Zajak filed a complaint against him.”
“She was in a snit because he skipped her that day,” Grandma said. “It was starting to rain and he cut his circuit short. Everybody’s mad at her, too.”
“He won’t be in jail forever,” I said. “I’m sure Vinnie will bail him out again in the morning.”
“Yeah, but I think his winkie-waggin’ days are over,” Grandma said.
IT WAS DARK when I left my parents’ house. Clouds had rolled in and a light drizzle was falling. I did a sweep past the accounts I’d checked out earlier, and I went on to Broad Street and the area around the arena. Traffic was relatively heavy, and I was only able to catch glimpses of Ranger’s buildings. The drizzle turned to rain, and I decided to quit for the night and start over in the morning.
An hour later, I was changed into my pajamas, watching television, and Lula showed up.
“I swear I don’t know what things are coming to,” Lula said, bustling through my front door and heading straight for the refrigerator. “What have you got in here? Did you eat at your mama’s house tonight? Do you got leftovers? I need something to calm my stomach. This keeps up, and I’m gonna get a ulcer or diarrhea or something.” She bypassed the pot roast and mashed potatoes and went straight for the pineapple upside-down cake. “You don’t mind if I eat this, do you?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Lula found a fork and dug into the cake. “First off, I got myself a date with that hot-lookin’ fireman. You remember the one. The big brute with muscles bulgin’ out everywhere. So he came over, and we did some talkin’. And then one thing led to another, and he said would I mind if he go into my bedroom. And I told him he was sittin’ on my bedroom on account of I had to turn the bedroom into a closet. I mean, where’s a girl supposed to put her shoes and her dress-up clothes? Anyways, I supposed he had things to do with himself, so I pulled out my sleep sofa, and I wasn’t paying much attention to him, and next thing he’s all dressed up in one of my cocktail dresses from the Dolly Parton collection.”
“Get out.”
“Swear to God. And he didn’t look good in it, either. It was all wrong for him. He sees me lookin’ at him and he says, I hope you don’t mind I’m wearing your dress. And I say, hell yeah, I mind. You don’t fit in that dress. You’re bustin’ out of it. You’re gonna ruin it, and it’s one of my favorites.”
“And then what?”
“Then he gets all huffy, saying he thought he looked pretty darn good in the dress, and I shouldn’t be talkin’ about bustin’ out of stuff. So I ask him exactly what that’s supposed to mean, and he says, figure it out, fatso.”
I sucked in some air on that one. Calling Lula fatso was like asking to die.
“It got ugly after that,” Lula said. “I don’t want to go into the depressin’ details, but he got his ass out of my apartment, and he wasn’t wearin’ my dress when he exited, either.” She looked down at the empty cake plate. “What happened to the cake?”
“You ate it.”
