Sizzling Sixteen

  Two pieces of cake and two cups of coffee later, I pushed back and stood.

  “I need Lula to help me decorate this big black boot,” Grandma said. “I think it needs some of that glitter, or some rhinestones. Lula has a real flare for fashion.”

  TEN MINUTES LATER, I was looking for a parking place in front of the bonds office. Cars were lined up on the curb. Some were double-parked. Some were angled in nose first. Soccer mom vans, junkers, tricked-out Escalades, Civics, and F150s. Mooner’s RV was parked in front of the bookstore. A crowd of people was milling around on the sidewalk. Hard to tell what was going on from the road. And then I saw the sign as I drove past. SIDEWALK SALE.

  I parked half a block away and walked back to where Lula was directing pedestrian traffic.

  “You want genuine first-class handcuffs, you just go to table number three,” she called out. “You could have a lot of fun with these handcuffs. They fit just right around a bedpost. Handguns are table six. We got a nice selection. Kitchen appliances and jewelry’s inside.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked her.

  “Sale,” Lula said. “Sunflower wouldn’t negotiate, so we’re sellin’ everything. You want a lawnmower? It’s gonna go cheap.”

  “I haven’t got a lawn.”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot.”

  “Where’s Connie?”

  “Inside. She’s doing credit card sales. I’m strictly cash out here.”

  Lula was dressed in four-inch black micro-fiber heels decorated with multicolored glitter, a short purple Spandex skirt, a gold metallic tank top, and she was wearing a Tavor Assault Rifle as an accessory.

  “What’s with the gun?” I asked her.

  “It’s in case some of these people get unruly.”

  A big bald guy in a wifebeater shirt and cami cargo pants came up to Lula.

  “Hey, Lula,” he said.

  “My man,” Lula said to him.

  “I need a gun,” he said to Lula. “Are these legal?”

  “Do you want them to be?” Lula asked.

  “No. Shit, what would I want with a legal gun?”

  “Don’t know,” Lula said, “but these suckers are whatever the hell you want them to be. Cash only.”

  I snaked my way through the crowd to Connie. “What’s going on?” I asked her.

  Connie stepped back, away from a woman checking out a waffle iron. “Sunflower won’t deal. He wants all the money, so Lula and I came up with the idea for the sidewalk sale. This stuff was all taken in exchange for bond and never reclaimed. It was just taking up space in the back room, so we figured we’d sell it.”

  “Lula’s selling weapons out there!”

  “That’s great,” Connie said. “They’re a high-ticket item.”

  “I think it’s illegal to sell guns like this.”

  Connie craned her neck and looked through the front window at Lula. “It’s okay,” Connie said. “That guy’s a cop.”

  “How much are these dishes with the roses on them?” a woman wanted to know.

  “Twenty dollars,” Connie said.

  A second woman elbowed in. “Wait a minute. Those are my dishes. I gave them to you so my nephew could get out of jail.”

  Connie looked at the sticker on the bottom of a plate. “We’ve had these dishes for a year and a half.”

  “It don’t matter. They’re mine.”

  “Where’s your nephew?” Connie asked.

  “Tennessee.”

  The first woman handed Connie a twenty and started stacking up her dishes.

  “Police!” the second woman yelled. “There’s a robbery going on here.”

  Lula ran in with her gun. “Did someone say robbery?”

  “It was a misunderstanding,” I told Lula. “Don’t shoot anyone.”

  “It was no misunderstanding,” the second woman said. “Those are my dishes. This old lady here was gonna walk out with them.”

  “Old? Excuse me,” the first woman said. “You’re not exactly a spring chicken. And these are my dishes. I saw them first.”

  They both had hold of a plate, and they were nose to nose, eyes narrowed.

  Mooner strolled over with a plate of brownies. “Ladies, have a bite of a Moon Man brownie. We’re selling them out front, but these are free samples. I made these brownies in my very own test kitchen in the Love Bus.”

  We all took a time-out so the ladies and Lula could have a brownie.

  “These are real good brownies,” Lula said. “These are doughnut-quality brownies.”

  “I changed my mind,” woman number one said. “I don’t want the dishes. I’m buying brownies.”

  “I don’t want the dishes, either,” woman number two said. “I never liked them anyway.”

  Lula took a second brownie and went back to patrol the sidewalk.

  “If she keeps eating brownies, we’re going to have to take her keys away,” Connie said. “I don’t know exactly what’s in Mooner’s brownies, but my guess is they’re at least sixty percent controlled substance.”

  “I’m surprised Sunflower wouldn’t take what you offered for Vinnie.”

  “He was in a vicious mood. He said we were lucky he was holding at a million three. And we have until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “Did you discuss how the trade-off was going to work?”

  “No. He didn’t want to talk. He was really cranky. He gave me his demand and hung up on me.”

  “Guess things aren’t going good in Sunflower Land.”

  Lula pushed her way back to us.

  “Watch out. Comin’ through. Outta my way,” she was saying. “I just sold all our guns,” she said to Connie. “We got any more?”

  “No, that was it,” Connie said. “I saved the good stuff for our personal use. I have them locked down in the back room.”

  “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.”

  I drove the Mercedes to the parking area behind the bonds office, and Lula and Connie lugged the duffel bags out and put them on the backseat. Connie got in the front passenger seat and set her Uzi on the floor, between her feet. Lula squeezed herself onto the backseat next to the duffel bags filled with money. Lula had her Glock in her purse and a sawed-off shotgun wedged between her legs.

  I had my gun with two bullets.

  “Vinnie better appreciate this,” Lula said. “I’m expecting a raise. And I want a company car. Not just any car, either. I want a good one. And I want one of them tower of treats at Christmas. You know, where you get it in the mail, and it’s a stack of boxes with all kinds of shit in ’em.”

  “I don’t want a raise,” Connie said. “I want to rescue Vinnie, and then I want to kick his perverted ass all the way from the bonds office to the hospital.”

  I drove across town and turned up Stark Street. I had my eye on my rearview mirror. No Rangeman tail in view, but I knew Chet was following my blip on his screen. Connie and Lula were silent. We were all in alert mode. I rolled past the bar, took the next cross street for half a block, and turned into the alley.

  Three goons were waiting outside the bar’s back door. No Vinnie. I crept down the alley and stopped at the bar. Connie powered her window down, and the men stepped forward. Connie poked her Uzi out the window, and the men stopped in their tracks.

  “Do you have the money?” one of the men asked.

  “Yes,” Connie said. “Do you have Vinnie?”

  “No. Why would we have Vinnie?”

  “You recaptured him.”

  “Not that I know of,” the guy said. “I’m just supposed to get the money from you. You give us the money, and we don’t blow up the bail bonds office with all of you in it, including Vinnie.”

  “I need a moment,” Connie said to the men. And she powered her window up.

  “What the heck is this?” Lula said. “I’m confused.”

  Connie looked over at me. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think they have him,” I said.

  Connie gave a curt nod. “That’s what I think.”

  “So who’s got him?” Lula asked.

  “Don’t know,” Connie said, “but if we give them the money, they won’t blow us up.”

  Lula opened her door and dumped the money out on the pavement. “I want a receipt,” she said.

  “I don’t got a receipt,” the one guy said. “Mr. Sunflower didn’t give us no receipt. And anyway, we’d have to count it to give you a real receipt.”

  “Are you sayin’ I’m a cheater?” Lula said to him. “Because you better take it back if that’s what you meant to say. You be in for a world of hurt if you slander me.”

  “Cripes, woman,” the guy said. “I just don’t
got a receipt. Cut me some slack here.”

  “Hunh,” Lula said, and she slammed her door shut.

  “Guess we’re done here,” I said.

  And I drove off.

  “That was sort of a letdown,” Lula said. “I expected to get Vinnie back. Not that I even want him back, but we gave those guys a lot of money, and seems like we should get something. I need a doughnut. If you turn onto Broad, there’s a doughnut place.”

  “You can’t solve all your problems with doughnuts,” I said. “If you keep doing that, I’m going to get fat.”

  “There’s four ways to manage stress,” Lula said to me. “There’s drugs, there’s alcohol, there’s sex, and there’s doughnuts. I go with sex and doughnuts. I tried the other two and it wasn’t any good. You being in a dry spell, you might have to rely on doughnuts.”

  I turned onto Broad, and a block later, I pulled into a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through. Lula got a bag of doughnuts, and Connie got a bag of doughnuts.

  I took a doughnut from Connie’s bag. “So what do we think about Vinnie?”

  “I think he’s dead,” Lula said.

  “He hasn’t turned up,” Connie said.

  Lula finished off her first doughnut. “He could be in the morgue.”

  Connie shook her head. “All the cops know Vinnie. He’d get ID’d if he showed up dead.”

  “Then they must have shot Vinnie full of holes like Swiss cheese and weighted him down with cement boots and thrown him off the bridge into the Delaware. Or they could have taken him to a butcher shop and chopped him up into little pieces and put him into the meat grinder,” Lula said. “I’m gonna eat this jelly doughnut next. I love jelly doughnuts.”

  “So dead is one possibility,” I said. “What else?”

  “Somebody else could have snatched him,” Lula said. “Somebody other than Bobby Sunflower.”

  “Why?” Connie asked.

  “I guess to get money, like Sunflower. It could be a copy-cat snatching,” Lula said.

  “No one’s gotten in touch with us,” Connie said.

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “That’s problematic.”

  “There’s something else that I always thought was problematic,” I said. “If we’re assuming someone took Vinnie, how did they know he was in Mooner’s RV? Mooner picked Vinnie up at my parents’ house. And Mooner said Vinnie never left the RV.”