His eyes locked on to my messenger bag. “Is that what you use for a purse?”
Uh-oh.
“No,” I told him. “I use this for documents. Boring stuff. Let me show you.”
He grabbed the strap and ripped the bag off my shoulder before I could locate my pepper spray.
“Hey,” I said. “Give it back!”
He looked down at me. “Go away or I’ll hit you.”
“I can’t go away. The keys to my car are in the bag.”
His eyes lit up. “I could use a car. I’m hungry, and there’s no food in the house.”
I lunged for my bag, and he batted me away.
“I’ll drive you to Cluck-in-a-Bucket,” I said.
He closed his front door and stepped off the porch. “Don’t need you. I got a car now.”
I ran after him and latched on to the back of his T-shirt. “Help!” I yelled. “Police!”
He shoved me away, crammed himself behind the wheel, and the car groaned under the weight. He rolled the engine over and took off.
“That’s grand theft auto, mister!” I shouted after him. “You’re in big trouble!”
I watched Buggy disappear around a corner. I procrastinated a minute, then gave in and called Ranger.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“I’m at Rangeman.”
Rangeman was the security company he partially owned. It was housed in a nondescript building in the center of Trenton, and it was filled with high-tech equipment and large, heavily muscled men in black Rangeman uniforms. Ranger kept a private apartment on the seventh floor.
“Some big dopey guy just stole my car,” I said to Ranger. “And he has my bag. And he’s FTA.”
“No problem. We have your car on the screen.”
Ranger has this habit of installing tracking devices on my cars when I’m not looking. In the beginning, I found the invasion of privacy to be intolerable, but I’ve gotten used to it over the years, and there are times when it’s come in handy… like now.
“I’ll send someone out to get your car,” Ranger said. “What do you want us to do with the big dopey guy?”
“How about if you cuff him, cram him into the backseat, and drive him to the bonds bus. I’ll take it from there.”
“And you?”
“I’m good. Lula’s on her way to pick me up.”
“Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.
Okay, so I fibbed to Ranger about Lula. Truth is, I wasn’t ready to face him. Especially since he sounded a tiny bit exasperated. I looked down at my naked ring finger, grimaced, and called Lula.
FOUR
“YOU GOT SOFT IN HAWAII,” Lula said. “You lost your edge. That’s what happens when you go on vacation and do whatever the heck it is that you did. Which, by the way, I don’t even care about no more.”
Lula had picked me up at Buggy’s house, and we were on our way to the bonds office.
“I didn’t go soft in Hawaii,” I said. “I
“That could be true about the edge, but you’ve been out after two felons now, and they both whupped your butt. So I thought maybe it was on account of being distracted by whatever it is you’re distracted by. Not that I care what it is. And notice what a good friend I am, even though you don’t care to confide in me and I disturbed my nap to rescue you.”
“I’m not distracted. You can attribute both whuppings to pure incompetence.”
“Well, aren’t you little Miss Down-on-Yourself. I could fix that. You need a doughnut.”
“I need more than a doughnut.”
“What, like chicken? Fries? Maybe one of them giant two-pounder bacon burgers?”
“I wasn’t talking about food,” I said to Lula. “You can’t solve all your problems with food.”
“Since when?”
“I’m thinking about taking a self-defense class. Maybe learn kickboxing.”
“I don’t need no self-defense class,” Lula said. “I rely on my animal instincts to beat the bejeezus out of an offending moron.”
That didn’t always work for me. I wasn’t all that great at beating the bejeezus out of people. My fight-or-flight instinct ran more toward flight.
“Now that I’m up from my nap, I’m in a mood to go after the big one,” Lula said. “I want to bag Joyce. Where’s she living? Is she still in that hotel-size colonial by Vinnie?”
“No. The bond agreement lists her address as Stiller Street in Hamilton Township.”
So far as I know, Joyce is currently single. Although that might be yesterday’s news. It’s hard to keep up with Joyce. She’s a serial divorcee, working her way up the matrimonial ladder, kicking used-up husbands to the curb while negotiating lucrative settlements. She left her last marriage with a net gain of an E-class Mercedes and half of a $1.5 million house. Rumor has it he got the guinea pig.
Might as well have a look at Joyce’s house, I thought. Make a fast run out to Hamilton Township, and by the time I got back, hopefully, my car would be parked behind the bonds bus.
Twenty minutes later, we were rolling down Stiller.
“This clump of houses is brand new,” Lula said. “I didn’t even know this was here. This was a cornfield last week.”
The clump of attached town houses was called Mercado Mews, and it looked not only brand new but expensive. Joyce lived in an end unit with a two-car garage. Everything looked fresh and spiffy. No activity anywhere. No cars parked on the street. No traffic. No one tending the azalea bushes. No one walking a dog or pushing a stroller.
“Looks to me like lots of these houses aren’t sold yet,” Lula said. “They look empty. ’Course, Joyce’s house looks empty, too.”
According to the file notes, Connie had been calling every day, twice a day, since Joyce went missing. She’d called the cell number and the home phone, and no one ever picked up.
Lula pulled to the curb and we went to the door and rang the bell. No answer. She waded into the flowerbed and looked into the front window.
“There’s furniture in here, but no Joyce that I can see,” Lula said. “Everything looks nice and neat. No dead bodies on the floor.”
“Let’s snoop around back.”
We skirted the house and discovered the backyard was sealed off with a seven-foot-high wooden privacy fence. I tried the fence door. Locked.
“You’re gonna have to kick it in,” Lula said. “I’d do it, but I’m wearin’ my Via Spigas.”
We’ve done this drill many, many times. Lula was always wearing the wrong shoes, and I was inept.
“Go ahead,” Lula said. “Kick it.”
I gave a halfhearted kick.
“That’s a sissy kick,” Lula said. “Put something behind it.”
I kicked it harder.
“Hunh,” Lula said. “You don’t know much about kickin’ in doors.”
No kidding. We went through this routine at least once a week, and it was getting old. Maybe I didn’t need kickboxing lessons. Maybe I needed a new job.
“One of us is gonna have to alley-oop over the fence,” Lula said.
I looked up at the fence. Seven feet. Neither of us was exactly Spider-Man.
“Who’s going to alley, and who’s going to oop?” I asked her.
“I’d do the lifting, but I just got a manicure. And I notice you don’t have a manicure at all. Only thing noticeable about your hands is the missing tan on your ring finger that I don’t care about.”
