Sizzling Sixteen

  “What?” Stella yelled. “What did you say?”

  Lula and I screamed good-bye to Stella, we got back into the car, and I drove to Ernie’s house. I didn’t think Dirk was living with Ernie, but I thought Ernie might be talking to him.

  “What time is it?” Lula asked. “I might need a doughnut. Is it doughnut time?”

  “I’m thinking about eating healthier,” I said. “More vegetables and fewer doughnuts.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “I don’t know. It just came over me.”

  “It’s a bad idea. What do I look like, Mr. Green Jeans? How would it sound if I said it’s vegetable time? People would think I was a nut. Nobody gets a craving for a vegetable. And I’m on the one diet. What am I gonna do with one carrot or one asparagus? They’re not mood enhancers, if you see what I’m saying.”

  “I see what you’re saying, but there aren’t any doughnuts between here and Ernie’s house.”

  “I guess I could wait. And maybe you’re right about the healthy eating. I’m gonna get a carrot cake doughnut.”

  I drove a block, pulled over, and called Ernie. I had a feeling he’d be more helpful if I got him away from his wife. My guess was his wife wouldn’t be happy to learn he was still palling around with Dirk the bigamist.

  Ernie answered and I introduced myself.

  “Is your wife home?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Would she be upset if she knew you were still friends with Dirk McCurdle?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I can knock on your door and talk to you in front of your wife, or we can meet somewhere for just a couple minutes. I need to find Dirk.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just go out in your car or go for a walk, and I’ll follow you.”

  “Okay.”

  And he hung up.

  Five minutes later, a car pulled out of the Wilkeses’ driveway and headed for Olden. The car pulled to the curb after three blocks and Ernie Wilkes got out.

  “I don’t know anything about Dirk McCurdle,” Ernie said to Lula and me. “We used to be friends, but I don’t see him anymore.”

  “When was the last time you talked to him?” I asked.

  Ernie hesitated a beat. “A long time ago.”

  “Try again,” I told him.

  Ernie blew out a sigh. “A couple days ago. He’s got a new wife. At least, he says she’s a wife.”

  “Do you know her name? Do you know where she lives?”

  “Her name’s Dolly. I don’t know her last name. He said they met at the Senior Center on Greenwood. And he said she has a house close by there.”

  “Does Dirk have his own place?”

  Ernie shook his head. “Not that I know about. He’s always lived in his wives’ houses. I tell you, he’s a real character.”

  I thanked Ernie, gave him my card, and Lula and I took Olden to Greenwood.

  “Hold up here,” Lula said. “There’s a bakery on the right, and I bet they’ve got healthy doughnuts. Like maybe they got a whole wheat and green bean cruller.”

  SIX

  I PULLED INTO the small lot and waited while Lula ran in. I had my window down, and I was in a zone, staring into the bakery, not thinking. My skin prickled at the nape of my neck and a rush of heat fluttered through my stomach. I caught a hint of Bulgari Green shower gel and knew the reason for the heat. Ranger.

  He bent to talk to me through the open window. “There’s a problem in the Atlanta office,” he said. “I’m on my way to the airport. I should be back sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, call Tank if you need help. I’ve asked Chet to report Gritch’s travels directly to you.”

  Tank was Ranger’s next in command. He was the guy who watched Ranger’s back. His name said it all.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Be careful.”

  Ranger smiled at that. Hard to tell if he was smiling because someone cared enough to say be careful, or if he thought the idea was funny.

  Minutes after Ranger left, Lula hauled herself up into the Jeep. “The best I could do was blueberry,” Lula said. “They didn’t have no vegetable doughnuts. And I got a strawberry jelly-filled, and a pumpkin spice, and a banana scone. Wait a minute. Is pumpkin a vegetable? Does that count?”

  “You must have eight hundred calories in that bag.”

  “Yeah, but the diet says I can have one of anything.”

  “One doughnut! Not one of each kind.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” Lula said.

  “Have you lost any weight on this diet?”

  “No. I gained a couple, but I think it’s water retention.”

  THE SENIOR CENTER is in a big old house that was remodeled to accommodate bingo. It runs night and day and it smells like crackers. I’ve learned from past experience that it’s best to park on the far perimeter of the lot. At least half the seniors who come for pinochle or bingo are legally blind from macular degeneration, and they park by feeling their way along with their bumpers.

  I left Lula in the Jeep with the doughnuts, and I crossed the lot and went straight to the admin office just inside the Center’s front door. An older woman in a turquoise smock was at the desk. She looked up at me and smiled.

  “Yes, dear,” she said. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for my grandmother’s friend, Dolly.”

  “You must mean Dolly Molinski. She isn’t here right now. In fact, I haven’t seen her for some time.”

  “Do you know where she lives? Do you have a phone number?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. We don’t keep any of that information. I know she lives close, because she would walk to bingo when the weather was nice.”

  I returned to the Jeep and called Connie. “Dolly Molinski,” I said. “Can you get me an address?”

  A couple minutes later, Connie came back on the line. “She’s on Stanley Street. Number 401 Stanley.”

  “I don’t know Stanley,” I said to her. “I’m at the Senior Center. Can you give me directions?”

  “She’s two blocks away. Take Applegate to Stanley.”

  I drove two blocks down Applegate, turned at Stanley, and parked in front of 401. It was a tidy little white house with a postage-stamp front lawn presided over by a three-foot-tall ceramic gnome. Lula and I marched up to the front door, and I knocked. The door opened and a lady not much taller than the gnome looked out at me. She had short snow-white hair, a pleasant round face, and she was wearing shocking-pink yoga pants and a matching short-sleeved T-shirt.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for Dirk McCurdle,” I told her. “Is he here?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but he’s sleeping. Honestly, I don’t know how that man can sleep like he does. I’ve already gone to my tai chi class, put a stew in the slow cooker, and fed the cats.”

  “It’s important that I talk to him. Could you wake him?”

  “I can try, but he’s a very sound sleeper.”

  She sped off, and Lula and I stepped into the living room. It was filled with overstuffed furniture and cats. There was an orange cat on the couch, a striped cat next to the orange cat, a black cat draped over a chair back, and a second tabby cat sprawled on the floor.

  “There’s cats everywhere in here,” Lula said. “And I’m allergic to cats. I’m gonna have a cat attack.”

  Dolly hustled back into the room. “He’s still sleeping,” she said. “Maybe you can come back some other day.”

  “Dirk!” I yelled. “Bond enforcement. I need to talk to you.”

  Nothing.

  “Are you sure he’s here?” I asked Dolly.

  “Of course he’s here. It’s Tuesday. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m real busy. I’m behind schedule. I’ve got kitty litters to clean, I gotta get the car in for service, and I’m meeting the girls for lunch.”

  “Do you mind if I take a look for myself?” I asked her.

  “No. Go right ahead. I’d get him up for you, bu
t I haven’t got the time. He’s a wonderful man. He can play bingo with the best of them, but he’s slow as molasses in the morning. Bedroom’s in the back.”

  I moved past Dolly to the back of the house and the master bedroom, pushing cats out of my way as I walked. I could see Lula from the corner of my eye, shooing cats away, holding her nose.

  Lula and I inched into the room and looked at Dirk.

  “Uh-oh,” Lula said.

  I bit into my lower lip. “How long has Dirk been sleeping like this?” I yelled to Dolly.

  “Since last night. He went to bed early. Said he had indigestion.”

  I hauled my cell phone out of my bag and called 911. “We need an officer at 401 Stanley Street,” I said. “And an EMT truck, hold the siren.”

  “Is there something wrong?” Dolly asked.

  “I’m really sorry, but I’m pretty sure Dirk’s dead,” I told her.

  Dolly took a close look at him and poked him. “Yep, he’s dead all right. Damn. This is the third husband that’s died on me in the past year. I’ve got to start marrying younger men. Good thing I didn’t take his name. The red tape is awful.” She smoothed a wisp of hair down on McCurdle’s head. “He was fun,” she said. “I’ll miss him on Mondays and Tuesdays.”

  Lula sneezed. “Damn cats. I gotta get out of here. I’m allergic to just about everything in this house . . . cats and dead people, and pretty soon it’s gonna be filled with cops.”

  Dolly looked at her watch. “I should probably cancel my service appointment.”

  “You might want to do that,” Lula said. “But if we hurry things along, you could make lunch.”

  “We should go out and wait for the police,” Dolly said. “They can never find this house. I don’t know why. It’s the house with the gnome, for goodness sakes.”

  “Guess you’re getting good at this,” Lula said.

  “The husband before Dirk died five months ago, he should rest in peace. And before that was George.”

  We all meandered out of the house and stood blinking in the late morning sun.

  A cop car angled to a stop behind my Jeep and Carl Costanza and Big Dog got out. Carl and I did Communion together, and he was friends with Morelli.

  Carl looked at me and smiled. “I bet this is going to be good,” he said.

  “I have a dead FTA in there,” I told him.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No. Looks to me like natural causes, but what do I know. Dolly said he just never woke up.”

  Carl pulled on rubber gloves.

  “Gonna need more than that in there,” Lula said. “There’s cats.” And she sneezed and farted. “S’cuse me,” she said.

  An EMT truck turned the corner and Big Dog flagged it down.

  “I’ll stop at the station later today for my paperwork,” I said to Carl.

  “Don’t rush. I have to get mine done first.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to Dolly.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Lula and I got into the Jeep, and I found my way back to Greenwood.

  “That was a downer,” I said to Lula.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It was anti climactic after waiting all this time to see the bigamist.”

  “I can’t figure out if I’m more depressed that Dirk died or that Dolly didn’t know he was dead.”

  “I take a philosophical view on these things, since I’m a observer of human nature,” Lula said. “I figure you gotta have the right attitude about this stuff. Take Dolly, for instance. Dolly was gonna try to keep her lunch date, which is a good thing, because life gotta go on. And even though he was dead, Dirk sort of looked like he was smiling.”

  “He did look like he died smiling.”

  “See, it’s all part of the circle of life,” Lula said. “And pretty soon, we’ll be dead, too, only you’ll go first because you’re older than me.”

  “Do you have any doughnuts left? I need a doughnut.”

  “I ate them all, but we can stop at the bakery again. They had some red velvet cupcakes that I’m pretty sure were made with beet juice. Either that or red dye #13.”

  I hooked a left into the bakery lot and bought myself a doughnut with white icing and colorful sprinkles. “This is a happy doughnut,” I said to Lula.

  “Fuckin’ A,” Lula said. “But then I never saw a sad doughnut.”

  I ate my doughnut and felt much better, so I drove down Greenwood to Hamilton, past the office, and on to the government buildings on the river. It was lunchtime, and I was guessing Mickey Gritch would be hanging out, looking to run some numbers.

  “Oh boy,” Lula said when I pulled into the 7-Eleven lot on Marble Street. “You’re not gonna do what I think you’re gonna do, are you?”

  “I’m going to talk to Mickey Gritch.”

  I spotted his car, parked to the side of the lot. No other cars around it. It was early. Lunch hours hadn’t kicked in yet. I pulled up beside him, and his tinted window rolled down.

  Mickey Gritch had white-blond hair cut in a sixties Beatle mop style. He had little pig eyes that were always behind shades, a big pasty potato head, and a body gone soft. He was in his late forties, and he was living proof that anyone could be successful at crime in Trenton if he truly worked at it.

  “What?” Mickey Gritch asked me.

  “I want to talk to you about Vinnie.”

  “What about him?”

  “No one wants to fork up the money.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” Gritch said. “He’s a turd. Don’t get me wrong. I like Vinnie. We’ve done business for a lot of years. But he’s still a turd.”

  “Maybe we can make a deal?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you don’t kill him, and he can get some kind of a payment plan.”

  “Listen, if it was me, that would be okay. But it’s not me. I don’t have anything to do with it anymore. This is Bobby Sunflower’s deal, and it’s more complicated than you know.”

  “Complicated how?”

  “Just complicated. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. There’s bad people involved. Badder than Bobby Sunflower.” He leaned out a little. “Is that Lula? Hey, momma.”

  “Don’t you hey momma me,” Lula said. “I’ll be out of a job if they off Vinnie, and then what? I got bills to pay. I got a standard of living.”

  “I got a job for you,” Gritch said.

  “Hunh,” Lula said. “I don’t do that no more, you little runt-ass Polish sausage.”

  The tinted window rolled up on Gritch’s Mercedes. I put the Jeep in gear and drove out of the lot.

  SEVEN

  “THINGS ARE GOING good today,” Lula said. “We haven’t been shot at or nothin’. Have you got the bottle with you?”

  “No. I left it at home.”

  “Imagine if you had the bottle.”

  “I’ve got Chopper’s file in my bag,” I said to Lula. “Pull it out and read me his address. I think he’s off South Broad.”

  “I’m not sure I want to go after someone named Chopper,” Lula said. “Suppose he got his name chopping off fingers and toes. I don’t want to lose none of mine. I couldn’t wear peep-toe shoes. It would limit my fashion potential.”

  “Does it say anything in his file about fingers or toes?”

  Lula paged through the file. “No. His real name is Mortimer Gonzolez, but it says everyone calls him Chopper. And it says he got a pet named Mr. Jingles, and you want to be careful about Mr. Jingles. I hope it’s not a cat. It sounds like a cat name. Just thinking about it makes my eyes itch.”

  “Has he got priors?”

  “Yeah, lots of them. All like this. All for dealin’ drugs. Don’t see no assault with a deadly weapon in here. Looks to me like he’s a businessman. Middle management.”

  “Did Connie include a map?”

  “Yeah. You have to turn right off Broad onto Cotter Street.”

  I drove down Broad, and I thought about Mickey
Gritch. He said he was out of it. I hoped he wasn’t so out of it that he couldn’t lead me to Vinnie. And what the heck did he mean when he said it was complicated and there were bad people involved? I thought this was about a simple gambling debt.

  “Hey!” Lula said. “You just drove past the street.”

  I hooked a U-turn and doubled back to Cotter. “I was thinking about the conversation with Gritch. How bad would you have to be to be worse than Bobby Sunflower?”

  “I hear you,” Lula said. “I think Vinnie got himself into a real mess this time.”

  I drove one block down Cotter, and Lula counted off numbers.

  “Here,” she said. “He’s living over this plumbing supply warehouse. Must be a loft apartment.”

  Cotter Street was an odd mix of light industrial and residential. Low-income single-family houses were mixed between auto body shops, small warehouse facilities, and a variety of building supply businesses. I drove around the block to see if it was intersected by an alley. Turned out it was, so I drove down the alley and idled behind the plumbing supply warehouse, looking up at the second-floor loft.

  “How do you want to do this?” Lula asked. “Girl Scout cookies? Pizza delivery? Census survey?”

  There were stairs leading up to a small deck and a back door. So far as I could tell, this was the only entrance. “I’m in a mood to just go up and kick the door down,” I said to Lula.

  “Me, too. That was gonna be my next suggestion.” Lula looked over at me. “You learn how to kick a door down?”

  “No. I thought you’d do it.”

  “I’m wearing four-inch slut shoes. I can’t kick a door down in slut shoes. It isn’t done. You need boots to kick a door down. Everyone knows that.”

  “Then I guess we’ll ring the doorbell and identify ourselves.”

  “Whatever,” Lula said.

  I parked behind a rusted-out Econoline van, and Lula and I got out and walked up the stairs to the deck. There was no doorbell, so I knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again. Still no answer. I pulled my phone out and dialed Chopper’s number. We could hear the phone ringing inside, but no one was answering that, either.

  “Too bad we don’t know how to break the door down,” Lula said. “He might be hiding under the bed.”