“Too bad,” Lula said. “There’s a couple guys buying up everything. I sold them a case of cuffs Vinnie got at that fire sale. And they bought the box of dynamite that got wet when the roof leaked in January.”
“Local guys?”
“Nope. They were from Idaho. They said they were part of some militia, here on a recruiting drive.”
“Uh-oh,” Connie said, looking past me. “Morelli’s at the door, and he doesn’t look happy.”
“Probably, he wanted some of them guns,” Lula said. “That’s what happens when you don’t get here early. You miss out on all the best stuff.”
Morelli made his way back to us and clamped a hand around my wrist. “We need to talk.”
“Howdy,” Lula said. “You’re lookin’ fine today, Officer Morelli.”
Morelli made a half-hearted attempt not to smile. “You’re going to have to cut her off from the brownies,” he said to Connie.
“I’d chain her to the street light, but she sold all my handcuffs,” Connie said.
Morelli pulled me past the file cabinets to the back door.
“What the hell’s going on?” he said. “I was driving by on my way to the station, and I saw a couple neo-Nazis loading guns into the back of their van.”
“They were neo-Nazis?”
“And there’s a line halfway down the block to buy Mooner’s brownies. I don’t suppose you checked the ingredients?”
“Chocolate, eggs, flour…” I said.
“There’s not a person in that line who’ll be able to pass a drug test.”
He leaned close to me, nuzzling my neck, his lips brushing my ear. “You smell nice again.”
“You, too. You smell like… brownie!”
Morelli grinned down at me. “I don’t know where he’s getting it, but he’s got some really good shit in those brownies.”
“Are you going to shut him down?”
“No. By the time I get back to him, he’ll have sold out, and the problem will be solved.”
“How’d it go with the dead lawyers?”
“Complete cluster fuck. I didn’t get home until four in the morning. I’ve had four hours of sleep. The feds had to come in and do their thing. The crime-scene truck broke down and was two hours late. It took forever to get the bodies released to the ME. And now I’ve got extra paperwork.”
He looked to the front of the office. “This is a zoo. It’s like vultures fighting over a dead cow.”
I looked around. “Yeah, getting to be only bones left. It’s amazing what Connie’s sold in two hours.”
“The brownies helped.”
“Do you like being a cop?” I asked him.
“Sometimes. Why do you ask?”
“I’m not sure I like being a bounty hunter anymore.”
“What would you rather do?”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a passion for anything. I went into retail after college because I like to shop, but I didn’t especially like my job. And I’m not sure I was good at it. And then I became a bounty hunter because I couldn’t get anything else. And I know I’m not the world’s best bounty hunter.”
“You make a lot of captures,” Morelli said.
“Wow, are you being supportive of my job?”
“No. I hate your job, but you’re not horrible at it.”
“That’s the problem. I’m not horrible at it. I want to be wonderful at something.”
“I know a few things you’re wonderful at.”
“Good grief.”
Morelli hooked a finger under the shoulder strap on my tank top. “Would you like me to list them?”
“No!”
“Tonight?”
“Maybe tonight,” I said.
Morelli leaned into me and kissed me lightly on the lips. “You’re such a cupcake.”
I supposed that was good, but I wasn’t sure. I watched Morelli walk away, and I had a rush of tenderness, and then I got a rush of lust. Morelli was flat-out handsome, and I knew a few of his talents, too.
I went back to Connie. She was packing the service for eight in a box while a woman waited. She gave the woman the box and she left, elbowing her way through the crowd.
“I’m going to cut this off at noon,” Connie said. “We only have junk left. Nothing that’s going to bring any real money.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Yeah, you can get food. When I shut this down, we’ll count everything up. Lula’s either going to be passed out or have the munchies real bad by then.”
TWENTY
WHEN I RETURNED to the office a little after noon, the tables were gone from the sidewalk and the cars and trucks were also gone. Mooner’s RV was still parked in front of the bookstore, but Mooner wasn’t in sight. Most likely, he was inside the Love Bus planning out Hobbit Con. I carted the bags of food into the office and set it all out on Connie’s desk.
Connie was working with a calculator, adding in money she’d arranged in stacks on the floor. She had a Glock on the desk beside her phone. Lula was asleep on the couch. Lula woke up when she heard the food bags rustling.
“Is that food? God bless whoever brought food. I’m starved.”
“I have meatball subs and potato salad and macaroni from Pino’s,” I told her.
Connie took a sub and kept working, plugging numbers into the calculator.
“How are we doing?” I asked her.
“I think we’re going to make it. The guns and the motorcycle helped a lot.”
“That whole back room is just about empty,” Lula said. “Only thing left is dust bunnies.”
I sat back and ate my lunch and watched traffic move past the bonds office. The rhythm on the street was normal again. I imagined the militiamen were on their way back to Idaho with their dynamite, and some woman in the Burg was setting her new service for eight in her china closet.
“That’s it,” Connie said. “We have a million three for Sunflower and fifty-two dollars left over. I have the fifty- two dollars on my desk. Everything else can get packed. Count it as you go. We want to give Sunflower a million three. No more. No less.”
“What are we gonna put it in?” Lula asked.
Connie collected the lunch wrappers and stuffed them into the Pino’s bag. “We have a couple duffel bags in the back that were holding guns. We sold the guns, but I kept the bags.”
“Do you think Sunflower will recognize his money?” Lula asked.
“No. It’s all been rebundled,” Connie said to Lula. “So far as we know, we weren’t seen at Chopper’s, and you were the only one seen at the funeral parlor. I doubt they’d attribute the robberies to you.”
“Yeah,” Lula said. “Sunflower’s one of them chauvinistic underestimators.”
Lula and I set to work packing the duffel bags, being careful to count as we packed, and Connie called Sunflower.
“He sounded happier this time,” Connie said when she got off the phone. “I think he needs the money.”
“Where are we making the switch?” I asked her.
“He wants us to bring the money to the back door of the bar. I told him we wouldn’t go inside, so he’s going to have his man waiting for us.”
“We’ll take the Mercedes,” I said to Connie. “Ranger monitors all his cars. If anything bad goes down, we’ll have Ranger backing us up.”
