“That’s a double negative,” Lucy said, elbows leaning on the counter. “So you’ve had break-ins in the past, right?”
“Huh? No. I just said—”
“Don’t mind her,” I told him. “She’s an English Nazi, thinks she’s gonna be a lawyer. Prosecutor. I’ll buy two locks.”
“Two?”
“Got a backyard fence that could use one.”
“Hell of a lock for a backyard. So, which unit you want?”
“We’re leaning toward a medium. Have to get back to you on that, though. For now, I’ll just take the two locks.”
He shrugged. I paid fifteen dollars each for the locks, then Lucy and I went back to the Caddy.
She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “English Nazi. I like it.” She got behind the wheel again. “Where to now?”
“Home Depot. I saw one a few miles back, where we passed a Target, Walmart, Best Buy.”
“Home Depot. That’s like my all-time favorite store.”
“Ever been in one?”
“Nope.”
“Well, you’re in for a treat. Table saws, plumbing supplies, tile flooring, pressure-treated lumber, cordless drills.”
“Perfect. My idea of heaven.”
We went in and I took her to the tool department. I went straight to the biggest bolt cutters they had, ones with three-foot handles. I picked up a Klein, hundred forty bucks, and tried to cut one of the locks I’d bought at Stan’s. They made a fair dent in the locking bar, then stalled. Lucy followed me to the pipe department. I found two three-foot lengths of iron pipe, slid them over the handles of the cutter to give me four-foot handles, gave it a try, grunted like a guy trying to lift the front end of a ’47 Chevy to impress his girl, turned my face red, and that fuckin’ lock finally gave up.
“Wow,” Lucy said. “I could use a lock like that on my chastity belt.”
I gave her a look. “Little late for that, Sugar Plum.”
She hooked an arm through mine. “Now what?”
“Now we run around town, buy more stuff.”
I bought the bolt cutters and the iron pipe, paid cash to keep it off my credit card since the cutters could be misconstrued to be a burglary tool.
Behind the wheel of the Caddy, Lucy said, “Okay, more stuff to buy. Where to?”
I pointed across a busy four-lane street. “Walmart, then back to air-conditioning, a shower, Jacuzzi, maybe catch a little nap.”
“Now you’re talking.”
“And . . . I might pick up a Danielle Steel novel in Walmart before we hit a checkout lane.”
“And I’ll pick up a Bic lighter to set it on fire.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
NINE FORTY-EIGHT P.M. Ninety-five degrees. The last bit of sunset was a deep burgundy glow above the mountains to the west. We parked the Cadillac in the side yard of a raucous country bar called Little Joe’s—raucous because it was Friday evening—as far from the entrance as possible, then hiked a quarter mile through sand and sage with the glow of untold millions of watts of distant neon faintly illuminating the ground. Lucy was dressed all in black. I had on black jeans and a dark green shirt. We wore ball caps with good-sized bills pulled down low. Before heading out, we put dark blue body paint on our faces. I carried the bolt cutters and pipes, a thirty-pound load, so the trek to T&T’s yard was a high point of the evening. Lucy took along two small flashlights, a pair of gloves, and the lock I hadn’t destroyed at Home Depot.
We arrived at T&T’s east perimeter fence, nearest approach to unit seventy-two. The Klein cutter went through the chain-link like a Samurai sword through a chicken neck. I cut vertically up four feet, over three, peeled the section back, and in we went.
This was not the sort of thing to savor slowly, like dinner at Tavern On The Green. We went straight to number seventy-two, and I hit the lock with the bolt cutters. Well, hit the lock makes it sound easy. What I did was, I grunted and gasped, damn near did a barrel roll hanging onto those pipes, and finally with Lucy helping and the pipe pulled out another six inches for increased leverage, the lock gave up with a snap and a clang.
“Whew,” said my assistant. “We should cut off a few more while we’re here.”
“Go ahead while I check out the shed here.” I put the pieces of Arlene’s lock in a pocket then rolled the door up using a glove to keep from leaving prints. Going in was a squeeze because the generator was a big one, and parked next to it was an ATV with fat tires and dried mud on the frame.
“Jo-X’s generator, you think?” Lucy asked.
“That’d be my guess.” It was a Triton 80kW, painted yellow, with a slightly dinged outer shell. Six feet tall, three-and-a-half wide, nearly fourteen feet long, about three tons worth. I figured it wasn’t going to be here long. Even dinged and used it’d go for ten thousand dollars. Not sure how Buddie got it all the way over here and in the shed, but that wasn’t my problem.
“Arlene and Buddie killed Jonnie-X,” Lucy said flatly.
“Could have.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“I think things are still weird. This generator probably came from Jo-X’s place. A serial number would tell the police that, if they can get a warrant to have a look at it. I’m pretty sure those two are thieves. They took this generator and probably the safe that girl, Melanie, told me about. Most likely more stuff out of Xenon’s place, like this ATV. But they might be more than just thieves. That video Arlene took of Shanna? How’s that fit? Why’d she take it? And Jo-X strung up in the garage with a video of Shanna in his pocket? It has to be connected to that note asking for a million dollars. Jo-X gets himself superglued, later that day he arrives at the diner in his helicopter, drives off in the SUV Shanna arrived in, probably sees a doctor, comes back later
