I checked Lula out. She was wearing pink wedge sneakers loaded up with rhinestones, a super-short stretch denim skirt, and a way-too-small pink T-shirt decorated with silver glitter that was flaking off on everything. It was casual Tuesday. I was in my usual outfit of jeans, sneakers, and a slightly stretchy V-neck T-shirt. No glitter. No red sauce stains.
“Here’s the plan,” I said, starting out on the dirt road. “If we hear a car coming, we jump off the road and hide in the woods.”
“Sure, I can do that,” Lula said. “Only I hope we don’t have to, ’cause I have vegetation issues. I don’t do the nature thing. Remember when we were down in the Pine Barrens? I hated that shit. I’m a city girl. I like cement. As far as I’m concerned, you could cement this whole country over.”
“Maybe you want to stay in the Jeep,” I said.
“That might be a good idea. I could stay and make sure it don’t get stolen.”
The road was hard-packed dirt and either side was forested. The sun filtered through the leaf canopy and the air smelled like the beginning of summer. I would have enjoyed the walk if only I hadn’t been terrified Bobby Sunflower would return and run me down.
I moved from the road to the woods just before I got within sight of the house. I’m not as bad as Lula when it comes to nature, but I’m not a tree nymph, either. I’ve seen Ranger move through brush and never make a sound. As hard as I try to be quiet, I’m more of a thrasher. I crept along the edge of the property, looking for movement inside the house. The SUV was still parked just past the door. Shades hadn’t been drawn. There was no way of knowing who belonged to the SUV. No way of knowing if Vinnie was here. I returned to the Jeep and pulled myself up behind the wheel.
“Well?” Lula wanted to know.
“I have no clue. I couldn’t see anything in the house. And no one came out.”
“Are you carrying the bottle?”
“Yes.”
“Hunh, you’d think the bottle would do something for you.”
I turned the key and put the Jeep into gear. “I didn’t get caught.”
“That’s true,” Lula said. “So it could be working.”
IT WAS AFTER four o’clock when we got back to the bonds office. Connie was painting her nails and looking not happy.
“So?” I said.
“I got a call from Bobby Sunflower at two o’clock. He said he was getting impatient. And then he put Vinnie on, and Vinnie begged me to get the money, and then someone started shrieking. I guess that was Vinnie. And the line went dead.”
“Bobby Sunflower was at the Pennsylvania house at two o’clock,” Lula said to me. “Now we know where they got Vinnie.”
“His car was at the house,” I said. “We never actually saw Bobby Sunflower.”
“That man isn’t gonna let nobody drive his Ferrari,” Lula said. “That’s a personal Ferrari.”
Probably true.
“They got Vinnie at this house in Pennsylvania,” Lula said to Connie. “We know exactly where it is. We just gotta rescue him now. My Visa bill is due any day. I can’t take no chances.”
Here was the deal. While I was looking for Vinnie, this sounded like a noble idea. Now that we might have found him and had to go in guns blazing, I was thinking… not so good. Morelli could pull this off, but I couldn’t ask him without agreeing to police involvement. Ranger would have Vinnie out in a heartbeat, but Ranger was in Atlanta. And even if Ranger were here, it wouldn’t feel right to make him do my dirty work.
“Maybe instead of rescuing Vinnie, we should try to raise the money,” I said.
“Okay,” Connie said. “How?”
We all thought about it.
“We could have a bake sale,” Lula said.
“You can’t bake, Stephanie can’t bake, and I don’t want to bake,” Connie said. “And we need $786,000. That’s a lot of cake. Plus, the interest grows on that every day.”
“Now that I think about it,” Lula said, “if I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t need this job.”
“The bonds office is now owned by a venture capital group called The Wellington Company. Last I looked, they weren’t happy with the office performance. I don’t think we want to rock that boat by asking them for a loan.”
“Let’s just rescue him and get it over with,” Lula said. “How hard could it be? There was one SUV sitting in the driveway. So I’m thinking there’s Vinnie tied to a chair in the kitchen and some goon in the living room watching TV.”
“And?” I asked.
“And we go in, shoot the goon, rescue Vinnie, and we go home.”
“I’m not comfortable with shooting the goon,” I told her. “And we aren’t a hundred percent sure Vinnie is in the house.”
“I know,” Connie said. “Stink bomb. We lob a stink bomb in there, everyone runs out, and in the confusion we rescue Vinnie.”
“I like it,” Lula said to Connie. “Boy, you’re good. I could see you’ve done this before.”
“High school,” Connie said. “I was the stink bomb queen. One time, I stink-bombed the principal’s house and he blamed it on Jimmy Rubinowski.”
“What happened to Jimmy Rubinowski?” Lula wanted to know.
“Nothing. He was a football player. He was golden.”
“Is this stink bomb going to damage the house?” I asked.
“No,” Connie said. “It takes a couple days for the smell to go away, but then everything’s good. Except for the window you broke getting the bomb into the house.”
“I hate to be a wet blanket, but I don’t like doing this without making sure Vinnie’s in the house,” I said.
Lula and I broke a few minor laws from time to time in the pursuit of felons, but for the most part, we had paperwork giving us wide authority for search and capture. We all knew Bobby Sunflower was pond scum, but that didn’t give me the right to lob a stink bomb through his window.
“This isn’t a whim,” Lula said. “There’s circumstantial evidence. And anyway, this here’s Bobby Sunflower we’re talking about. He probably gets stink-bombed all the time.”
“How about this,” Connie said. “I go home and whip up a stink bomb. And then we go back to the house at night so we can creep around better and look in windows. And then if it looks like Vinnie’s in the house, we bazooka the bomb in.”
“I guess that’s okay,” I said. “Unless Sunflower has family in the house.”
“Sunflower hasn’t got family,” Lula said. “Only thing he’d have in the house is armed entourage and maybe a ’ho or two.”
“The sun goes down around eight-thirty,” Connie said. “So let’s meet here at the office at eight-fifteen. And everyone wear black.”
“Black’s not my best color,” Lula said.
NINE
I LEFT THE bonds office, drove to Quakerbridge Mall, and went straight to the food court. I had a photo of Chopper, and I’d become pretty good at spotting drug dealers. Not to mention I had the lucky bottle. So maybe with all those things going for me, I could snag Chopper. I got a cheeseburger and a vanilla shake, and I sat at a table that would allow me to see almost the entire food court area.
According to the photo and file description, Chopper was a Hispanic male, 5?9? tall, medium build, no piercings or tattoos. A smashed right hand. Forty-five years old. One eyebrow.
I finished my burger and shake, and I sat for a while, trying to look like I was waiting for someone. I got up and walked around a little. I bought a chocolate chip cookie. I sat at a different table. I did another tour of the food court. I walked beyond the food court and looked around. No Chopper. I bought an ice cream cone, and I sat and
