Janet Evanovich: Sizzling Sixteen

“Rescue Vinnie?” Morelli asked.

“He’s sort of missing,” I told him.

Morelli took the Boston Cream out of the bag, ate half, and gave the rest to me. “Word on the street is that a bunch of people are very unhappy with Vinnie. Word is he owes a lot of money. Do you need help?”

“Would I have to file a police report?”

“No, but you’d have to give me the rest of the doughnut.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I have some leads. I’ll stumble along on my own this morning and see what turns up.”

Morelli gave me a quick kiss and jogged back to his car.

I looked at the two bags Lula was holding. “I thought you were getting just one doughnut.”

“And that’s exactly what I did. I got one of everything. I’m telling you, this is a beauty of a diet.”

We sat at the small table in front of the bakery and ate our doughnuts while I read through the files on Mickey Gritch and Bobby Sunflower.

“We have home addresses for Gritch and his sister, but I can’t see Gritch stashing Vinnie in either of those places,” I said to Lula. “That leaves Bobby Sunflower’s businesses. The pawnshop is on Market Street, the car wash is in Hamilton Township, and the rest are on Stark Street. Let’s do drive-bys and see if anything jumps out at us.”

“Might as well do the car wash first,” Lula said. “If I like the looks of it, I might let them wash my Firebird.”

BOBBY SUNFLOWER’S CAR wash was next to Figaroa Diner. It didn’t look like it had a lot of room for holding a bail bondsman hostage, but it advertised brushless washing and personal attention, so Lula got into line.

“I don’t know about this car wash,” I said to Lula. “I don’t like the looks of the attendants.”

“You mean on account of they’re waggin’ their tongues at us and making kissey sounds?”

“Yeah.” Plus the multiple piercings, tattoos, ridiculous homey pants, and I was pretty sure one of them had a boner.

“They’re just bein’ boys,” Lula said.

I looked in my bag to see if I had pepper spray or a stun gun.

The pack of idiots swaggered over to us, and one leaned in the window at Lula.

“Hey, momma,” he said. “We gonna wash your car like it never been washed before.”

“This isn’t no ordinary car,” Lula said. “This is my baby. I don’t want to see no scratches on it when you’re done.”

“You be nice to me and my boys, and we’ll wash your baby by hand.”

“How nice do I gotta be?” Lula asked.

“Real nice,” he said, smiling wide so we could see he had industrial-grade diamonds embedded in his decayed teeth.

“That’s disgusting,” Lula said. “You need to show some respect and act like professional car washers. And get your head out of my window.”

“I think me and my boys need to show you what we got and maybe we teach you some respect.”

Lula pulled her Glock out of her purse and stuck it in his face.

“You got ten seconds before I blow your nose off,” Lula said.

“Yow, momma!” the guy said.

They all turned and ran, and Lula squeezed off six rounds, managing to miss all of the car washers at pretty much point-blank range.

“Hunh,” Lula said, rolling her window up and driving out of the lot. “They don’t make these guns like they used to. I can’t believe I didn’t hit a single one of those fools.”

Next stop was the pawnshop. Lula parked on the street, and we got out and looked around. There was an apartment above the shop, but so far as we knew, it wasn’t owned by Sunflower. A consignment store was to one side of the pawnshop and a pizza place was to the other side.

“This doesn’t look promising,” I said to Lula, “but I’m going to go in and scope it out.”

“Who am I?” Lula wanted to know. “Am I good cop or bad cop?”

“You’re nothing. There’s no cop. We’re just browsing and leaving.”

“No problemo. I can do that. I’m a excellent browser.”

We went inside the pawnshop, Lula walked up to the counter, looked in the display case, and called the pawnshop guy over.

“It’s not like I need the money or anything, but I was wondering how much I could get for this ring I got on,” Lula said. “As you could see, it’s got a ruby in the middle with some diamond chips around the edge. And it’s in a genuine gold setting.”

“Is that a real stone?” he asked her.

“You bet your ass it’s real. A gentleman gave me this ring for certain favors. He bought it for his wife but decided I earned it.”

“I don’t suppose you have any documentation. Like an appraisal.”

“Say what?”

“I guess I could give you forty-five.”

“Forty-five hundred?” Lula asked.

“No, just forty-five. Cripes, lady, what do I look like, a sap?”

“No, you look kinda hot,” Lula said, leaning her boobs on the counter. “What have you got in that back room, sugar?”

“There’s no back room. Just a bathroom that even I won’t use.”

“Movin’ on,” Lula said. And she turned on her heel and sashayed out of the pawnshop.

Ten minutes later, we were idling in front of Sunflower’s garage on lower Stark. It was a one-story cinder-block structure with three bays, all doors open.

“I can’t see them keeping Vinnie here,” I said to Lula. “There are too many people around, and there’s no space to hide someone.”

Next stop was the topless bar. The neon sign was flashing, and electronic dance music dribbled out the open door. A wasted guy in a baggy white T-shirt leaned against the graffiti-covered building, smoking. He looked at us through slitted eyes, and Lula drove on.

“Nothing but trouble there,” she said.

We parked in front of the mortuary and stared at the building. Brown brick, two stories. Upper windows were blacked out. There was a magenta-and-black awning over the door, and MELON FUNERAL PARLOR was written on the awning.

“I don’t know what’s more depressing,” Lula said, “this dreary-ass funeral home or a titty bar in the morning.”

“Maybe the bar was serving breakfast.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Lula said. “I guess that would be okay.”

“This place has real hostage potential. I’d go in and pretend I’m a customer, but I don’t look like I belong in this neighborhood.”

“You mean on account of you’re the only white woman on this whole street, dead or alive?”

“Yeah.”

“I see your point, but I’m not going in there. I hate funeral parlors, and I hate dead people even more. I get the creepy crawlies just sitting here thinking about it.”

“Okay, we’ll do this later. Let’s take a look at the apartment building.”

The apartment building was half a block away and looked like the Tower of Terror. It was four stories tall, black with grime, and slightly lopsided.

“Holy bejeezus,” Lula said, eyes bugged out, looking at the building. “This is scaring the crap out of me. This is like where Dracula would live if he didn’t have any money and was a crack head. I bet it’s filled with rabid bats and killer snakes and hairy spiders as big as dinner plates.”

I thought it looked like it would be filled with despair and craziness and broken plumbing. Either way, it wasn’t anywhere I wanted to go. Unfortunately, it was also a good place to stash Vinnie.

“How bad do we want to find Vinnie?” I asked Lula, unable to take my eyes off the hellish building.

“The way I see it, either we find Vinnie, or I’m gonna be working the fry basket at Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Not that there’s anything wrong with the fry basket, but all that grease floatin’ in the air isn’t gonna be good for my hairdo. And what if they already got someone working the fry basket? What if I can’t get another job and they come repossess my Via Spigas?”