Explosive Eighteen

“Okay, great. I’ll do the lifting, but you’re going to have to ditch the Via Spigas. I don’t want to get gored by a stiletto.”

Lula took her shoes off and threw them over the top of the fence into Joyce’s yard. “Okay, I’m ready. Give me a boost.”

I tried boosting, but I couldn’t get her off the ground.

“You’re going to have to climb onto my shoulders,” I said.

Lula put her right foot on my thigh, hoisted herself up, and wrangled her left leg over my shoulder. Her spandex skirt was up to her waist, and her tiger-striped thong was lost in the deep, dark recesses of her voluptuousness.

“Uh-oh,” she said.

“What uh-oh? I don’t like to hear uh-oh.”

“I’m stuck. You gotta get a hand under my ass and shove.”

“Not gonna happen.”

She wrapped her arms around my head to keep from slipping, and we went over backward. WUMP.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Hard to tell with you laying on me. I might need a moment.”

We both got up and reassessed the situation.

“My Via Spigas are on the wrong side of the fence,” Lula said, tugging at her skirt. “No way am I losing them Via Spigas.” She hauled her Glock out of her purse and drilled five rounds into the gate lock.

“Holy cow!” I said. “You can’t do that. That’s loud. Everybody’s probably calling the police.”

“There’s no everybody,” Lula said. “This here’s a ghost town.” She tried the gate, but it was still locked. “Hunh,” she said. “Maybe we could dig under the fence.”

“Do you have a shovel?”

“No.”

“Then you’re going to have to decide between your manicure and your shoes,” I told her.

“Over you go,” Lula said.

She got me to the top of the fence, where I hung for a moment, swung one leg and then the other, and managed to fall without fracturing anything. I opened the gate, let Lula in, and we looked in the back windows. Same deal. No Joyce in sight. Back door was locked.

“I could get us in,” Lula said. “I could have a accident with one of these back windows.”

“No! No broken windows. And no more shooting at doors. I can get Ranger to sneak me in.”

“I bet,” Lula said. “Not that it’s any of my business or that I care about what’s going on with you and Mr. Mysterious. ’Course, if you were dying to tell me, I suppose I’d have to listen.”

“The only thing I’m dying to do is get out of here.”

We unlocked the gate from the inside, returned to Lula’s Firebird, and she drove me back to the bonds office.

“Looks to me like Ranger got your car washed,” Lula said, eyeing the RAV4 parked behind the bus. “I can’t ever remember seeing it that clean. Ranger’s like a full-service dude. He rescues your car from being stolen, and he returns it detailed. I’m guessing you must have made him real happy in Hawaii. Not that I care. I’m just taking a winger here.”

It was more like I made him happy, and then I didn’t make him happy, and then I made him happy. And then the shit hit the fan.

“He’s just a clean kind of guy,” I said to Lula.

“Yeah, I could see that.”

Lula took off, and I went to my car. The driver’s side door had been left unlocked. The key was tucked under the mat. There was no Big Buggy in the backseat.

I punched Ranger’s number into my cell phone. “Thanks,” I said. “Did you get my car detailed?”

“There was a problem with blood on your right front quarter panel, so Hal ran it through the car wash.”

“Omigod.”

“Nothing serious. Bugkowski slipped resisting arrest and smashed his face into your car.”

“Where is he now?”

“Bugkowski was screaming like a little girl and drawing a crowd, and Hal didn’t have the paperwork to justify a capture, so he had to let him go.”

“Did Hal get my messenger bag?”

“Yes. He brought it back here to Rangeman. He didn’t want to leave it in an unlocked car.”

“Maybe you could mail it to me?” I asked.

I was really, really not ready to see him.

“You can run, but you can’t hide,” Ranger said.

So true. I hung up and headed for home. I stopped at the supermarket and had my cart half filled with groceries when I realized I had no money, no credit cards, no ID. It was all in my messenger bag… with Ranger. Damn. I returned the groceries and called Morelli from my car.

“About tonight,” I said. “Is it going to involve dinner?”

“Not unless you want to eat at midnight.”

“Are you avoiding me?”

“I’m not that smart,” Morelli said.

I sat for a long moment after Morelli hung up, reviewing my current choices. I could drive to Rangeman and retrieve my bag from Ranger. I could go home and share a cracker with Rex. I could mooch dinner from my mom.

Twenty minutes later, I was at my parents’ house and Grandma was hustling to set a plate at the table for me. My mom had been making minestrone this morning, and that meant there’d also be antipasto, bread from the bakery, and rice pudding with Italian cookies.

“The table is set for four,” I said to Grandma. “Who’s coming to dinner?”

“This real interesting lady I met last week. I joined one of them bowling leagues, and she’s on my team. You might want to talk to her. She’s some kind of relationship counselor.”

“I didn’t know you could bowl.”

“Turns out it’s easy. You just gotta throw the ball down the alley. They gave me this shirt and everything. We’re the LWB. That stands for Ladies with Balls.”

My father was watching television in the living room. He rattled his newspaper and muttered something about women ruining bowling. He was watching national news and a bulletin came on showing a picture of a man found dead at LAX. He’d been hit with a blunt instrument, had his throat slashed, and he’d been stuffed into a trash can.

Ugh. As if this wasn’t horrific enough, I was pretty sure it was the guy sitting next to me for the first leg of the Hawaii flight home. I’d spoken to him briefly in the beginning but slept for the rest of the trip. I’d been surprised to find his seat empty when we reboarded. My impression had been that he’d planned to fly into Newark. I guess this explained his absence.

The doorbell rang. Grandma rushed to get it and ushered a brown-haired, pleasantly plump, smiling, forty- something woman wearing an LWB bowling shirt into the living room.

“This is Annie Hart,” she said. “She’s the best bowler we got. She’s our ringer.”

I knew Annie Hart. I’d been involved in a Valentine’s Day fiasco with her a while back and hadn’t seen her since. She was a perfectly nice woman who lived in LaLa Land, firmly believing she was the reincarnation of Cupid. Hey, I mean, who am I to say, but it seemed far-fetched.

“How wonderful to see you again, dear,” Annie said to me. “I think of you from time to time, wondering if you’ve resolved your romantic dilemma.”

“Yep,” I said. “It’s all resolved.”

“She got married in Hawaii,” Grandma told Annie.

My father shot straight out of his chair. “What?”

“She had a ring and everything,” Grandma said.