“I don’t see where I’m doing anything helpful. I’m not good at the spy thing. I hardly get to talk to anyone.”
“Keep your eyes open. You’re getting jobs that don’t require a lot of concentration. Look around. Look for things that don’t make sense. An employee with too much money. Someone who’s out of place. Someone who has all the right access to the trucks, the freezer, the storeroom.”
“That would be everyone. Bogart runs a very loosey-goosey operation. Everyone has access to everything.”
“I have the list of new hires,” Ranger said. “There are only three in the appropriate time period.”
I looked at the list. Gina Slater was hired and placed on the line six months ago. Maureen Gooley joined the housekeeping crew at about the same time. William (“Butchy”) Boone was placed on the loading dock a little over a year ago.
“I’d like to see more on Boone,” I said to Ranger.
“I’ll have a full report sent to you. Tomorrow Bogart’s plant production line is closed. CSI will be crawling all over it. The only one working will be the Jolly Bogart clown. You can ride along with him.”
I slid a glance at the door to the plant. “It’s sort of a mess in there. One of the machines malfunctioned.”
“That would explain the ice cream all over your orangeness.”
I looked down at myself. “There was no big red button.”
“Babe.”
• • •
I ditched the orange suit and explained to Vicky that I’d been reassigned. She gave me a pint of ice cream and said everyone would miss me and they were sorry I couldn’t stay longer. She made an admirable effort, but underneath it all I knew she was relieved to see me go. I mean, really, who wouldn’t be?
I took my ice cream to my car, chugged out of the Mo Morris Ice Cream parking lot, and drove to the office.
“I thought you were at Mo Morris today,” Lula said when I walked through the door.
“It didn’t work out, but I got some ice cream.”
“That’s my kind of job,” Lula said. “Work a couple hours and get some ice cream. What flavor?”
“Vanilla.”
“I like vanilla,” Lula said.
I got spoons for Lula, Connie, and me, and we finished off the ice cream.
“How’d it go last night?” I asked Lula.
“It went pretty good. There were a couple things that didn’t go exactly right…like when we were supposed to find shelter for the night and we picked a abandoned building and Randy got bit by a rat.”
“Omigod!”
“At least we think it was a rat. It was dark, and we couldn’t get a good look at it. It was one of them bite-and-run things. It didn’t sound big enough to be a crackhead.”
“Is Randy okay?”
“Yeah, he was all hysterical for a while, but he calmed down after we took him to the clinic and got him a shot.”
“Anything else go wrong?”
“While we were making our way to our final destination and going around the block someone stole Howie’s van. We should have seen that one coming. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been on account of it turns out Howie stole it in the first place. It’s just that it had all our clothes in it.”
“How’d you get home?”
“We called a Uber car but it wouldn’t let us in naked, so me and the makeup ’ho walked over to Stark Street, and the makeup ’ho traded some services for a ride.”
“Good thing you had a makeup ’ho on the team,” Connie said.
“Truly,” Lula said. “Otherwise I might have had to come out of retirement.”
“But you got your demo film, right?” I asked.
“Yeah. Howie is editing it for us and then we’ll send it in. We got some real good stuff on it. Those Naked and Afraid people would be nuts not to sign Randy and me up for their show, but just in case they don’t like this reel I got a backup idea. Naked bungee jumping. I figure we could go off the bridge over the Delaware. The one that says ‘Trenton Makes, and the World Takes.’ ”
Connie and I were mouths open, eyes glazed. I actually felt my mind go numb for a beat.
“I bet nobody’s sent them a demo for naked bungee jumping,” Lula said.
My cellphone buzzed with a text message. It was from Sharelle. Just saw Winkle having lunch in Fat Dave’s.
“Saddle up,” I said to Lula. “Eugene Winkle is in Fat Dave’s.”
“And?” Lula said.
“And we’re going to bring him in.”
“How are you gonna do that? You got an elephant gun? You got Ranger in the trunk of your car?”
“I have you. I’m going to send you into Fat Dave’s and you’re going to charm Winkle.”
“That might not be a bad idea,” Lula said. “I am charming. I could charm the ass off him.”
“Exactly. And then we convince him that once we get him rebonded he’s going to have a really good time.”
“He might even know my reputation,” Lula said. “I was known for doing quality work back in the day. Of course, we aren’t really going to show him a good time. Unless he got some hot qualities. Then I might think about it.”
FIFTEEN
FAT DAVE’S IS a hamburger joint on the second block of Stark. It’s dark and dingy and has grease running down the walls. It also makes the best burgers in Trenton.
I was on Stark, looking for a parking place, hoping I wasn’t too late to catch Winkle.
“You know the secret to Fat Dave’s burgers?” Lula said. “It’s duck fat. Not many people know that on account of it’s a secret. He slicks his griddle up with duck fat, and it imparts that excellent gamey taste. And then he uses extra salt. Salt brings out the flavor of shit.”
I found a parking place on the third block, and Lula and I walked back to Fat Dave’s. We looked in through the large plate glass window and saw that Winkle was still there. We could tell by his gargantuan body overflowing the counter stool.
“You go in first,” I said. “You do your thing, and then I’ll come in and close the deal.”
Lula sashayed in and sat next to Winkle. I gave her five minutes, and then I went in and joined them. I had plasti-cuffs stuffed into my jeans waistband, hidden by my sweatshirt, and a canister of pepper spray in my sweatshirt pocket.
“Well, look who’s here,” Lula said. “It’s my friend Stephanie.”
Winkle gave a sound that was like a bull snorting. He had an empty plate in front of him, and there was ketchup everywhere. He was working on a basket of French fries.
“This is my new friend Eugene Winkle,” Lula said to me.
Eugene gave another snort and shoved French fries into his mouth.
“Is Eugene ready to party?” I asked Lula.
“Eugene’s thinking about it,” Lula said. “He’s gotta finish his fries first.”
“Did you tell Eugene about the deal?”
Eugene looked at me. “What deal?”
“Lula likes handcuffs.”
“Yeah,” Lula said. “I’m thinking about going into dominatrixing. I like to give a little and then I like to get a little.”
“Oh yeah?” he said. “What do you like to get?”
“I’m pretty much into spanking,” Lula said. “Are you any good at that?”
“Do I have to get spanked first?”
“Yeah.”
“And then I get to spank you?”
“Yeah.”
He shoved a wad of French fries into his mouth. “Let’s go.”
“First we have to cuff you,” I said.
He threw a twenty down on the counter and held his hands out. “Do it. This is going to be good. I’m going to spank you hard when it’s my turn.”
“I like that,” Lula said. “Nothing I like better than a hard spanker.” She looked over at me. “Make sure you pull those plasti-cuffs real tight.”
I had them around Winkle’s wrist, and I went for a second. “I’m doing double.”
“What are you going
to use?” he wanted to know. “Are you going to use a switch or a paddle?”
I looked at Lula and read her mind. She was thinking she would use a couple thousand volts of electricity.
We walked Winkle to my car and secured him into the backseat. He had his hands double cuffed behind his back. Lula was in the front seat with her hand wrapped around the stun gun in her purse. I had one eye on the road and one eye on Winkle in my rearview mirror. If he somehow managed to get out of the cuffs I was going to stop the car, jump out, and run like hell.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“I got a place on Clinton Street,” Lula said.
“I don’t like Clinton Street,” Winkle said. “That’s where the police station is. Hey, wait a minute…”
“Drive faster,” Lula said to me. “A lot faster.”
“I think you tricked me,” Winkle said. “You don’t want to get spanked. I bet you’re cops. I don’t like this. I don’t like being tricked.”
Lula reached over the seat with her stun gun and Winkle head-butted her. Lula knocked against me, I jumped the curb, and crashed into a streetlight. By the time I fought my way free of the airbag, Winkle had disappeared.
Lula and I got out and looked at my car. The front was smushed in where it’d hit the pole.
“It’s not so bad,” Lula said. “The wheels look okay. And so far as I can see it’s not leaking anything. You probably could drive it.”
I got behind the wheel, backed off the sidewalk, and slowly drove away.
“Just like new,” Lula said, “except for that big dent in the front and the mold smell coming from the backseat.”
“Winkle has a high bond. If I could bring him in I might be able to buy a car.”
“I could help you,” Lula said. “I’m good at picking out cars. And I got connections.”
“Winkle is out here somewhere,” I said. “Eventually he’ll go home. I’m going to ride around a little and then stake out his house.”
“I don’t think I can charm him again,” Lula said. “I got a headache. I bet I got a big bump on my forehead.”
“If we find him we won’t fool around. We’ll rush him, and stun him right away. After we get him trussed up like a Sunday goose I’ll call for help transporting him.”
“Remember how you told me it was illegal to stun gun someone?”
“Extenuating circumstances,” I said. “And we’re going to lie about doing it.”
“You bet your ass,” Lula said.
I was two blocks from the police station. A low-income residential neighborhood sat between Winkle’s Stark Street apartment and me. Streets followed no logical pattern, and it was easy to get lost in the maze of modest two-story houses that were smashed together on tiny lots.
“He had to cut through this mess of houses,” Lula said. “You need to turn here.”
After ten minutes I was completely confused.
“We’re going around in a circle,” Lula said. “I keep seeing the same houses.”
“I don’t know how to get out of here. It doesn’t matter if I turn left or right, I still get back to here.”
“You need to pull your map up.” Lula looked at my dashboard. “Hold on here. You haven’t got a map. You haven’t got no screen at all. How old is this car?”
I stopped at a cross street. “You should be able to get a map on your smartphone.”
“Okay, I have us on the map. We’re the little red dot. Looks to me that you turn right at the next street and go as far as you can until you come to a T intersection.”
I turned right at the corner, and half a block away it looked like King Kong was lumbering down the street.
“That’s Winkle!” Lula shouted. “Run him over.”
“I’m not going to run him over. I’m going to drive up behind him. We’ll jump out of the car and take him by surprise.”
“How about you?” Lula asked. “Do you have a stun gun with you?”
“It’s in my messenger bag.”
She got my stun gun out of my messenger bag and handed it over to me.
“Power up,” Lula said.
Winkle had freed himself from the plasti-cuffs and was ferociously huffing along, eyes focused forward. I jerked to a stop about twenty feet behind him. Lula and I jumped out and ran. I reached him first and tagged him with my stun gun. He turned and looked at me. Surprised.
“What the…” he said.
Lula pressed the prongs of her stun gun against Winkle’s arm. Zzzzzt zzzt!
“That stings,” Winkle said. “Stop it.”
He grabbed the stun gun from Lula and threw it across the road.
“Hey, you big moron,” Lula said. “That’s an expensive stun gun. It’s not like they grow on trees.”
Winkle backhanded her and knocked her off her feet. I shoved my stun gun into my sweatshirt pocket and pulled out the pepper spray.
“Hey!” I said to Winkle.
He turned to look at me, and I sprayed him in the face at close range. I jumped back away from the toxic cloud, catching a small amount of spray. Uncomfortable but not incapacitating.
“Yow!” Winkle yelled, hands to his face, rubbing his eyes, making it worse.
He staggered back off the curb, lost his balance, fell into the street, and started rolling around. Lula and I were standing back, not sure what to do with him. Unless she shot him or I ran over him, I couldn’t see any way to get the plasti-cuffs on him.
A black Rangeman SUV pulled up beside us, and Hal got out. Hal was a good guy who looked a little like a stegosaurus. He was one of Ranger’s most competent men unless he saw blood. Hal tended to faint at the sight of blood.
“What have we got here?” Hal asked.
“He’s FTA,” I said. “I gave him some pepper spray, but I can’t get him cuffed.”
“No prob,” Hal said.
Hal got cuffs and shackles from his SUV and brought them to Winkle, who had managed to get to his feet and was bellowing like an enraged bull gone nuts.
Hal kicked Winkle’s feet out from under him and had him hog-tied in fifteen seconds. Winkle’s eyes were red and watering, and he was covered in snot. Hal hoisted him to his feet and held him at arm’s length.
“Do you want me to take him in for you?” Hal asked.
“Yes,” I said. “That would be great. Thank you. We’ll follow you and take care of the paperwork.”
“Lucky us that you came along,” Lula said.
Hal jerked Winkle over to the Rangeman SUV, trundled him into the back, and secured the ankle shackles to iron rings bolted onto the SUV’s floor.
“The control room saw that you kept going around in circles and asked me to check on you,” Hal said. “I was doing a patrol in the neighborhood anyway.”
• • •
We stopped at Cluck-in-a-Bucket on the way back to the office. I got a Hot and Crunchy Clucky Meal and Lula got a Supersized Bucket of Cluck with the Works. The Works included mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits, coleslaw, fried okra, and an apple turnover.
“I feel much better now that I have a good meal inside me,” Lula said. “That whole Winkle thing was a depressing experience.” She swiveled in the booth and looked back up at the menu that was over the counter. “I might need some ice cream as a palate cleanser.”
She got a giant cup of soft serve, and we headed out.
“I still got a headache, I chipped some of my nail varnish, and I think I got a bruise on my derriere,” Lula said. “I’m leaving early today.”
“Are you okay? Do you need a ride home?”
“I’m not going home. I’m going to get my nail varnish repaired.”
I parked in front of the bail bonds office, told Lula I’d see her on Monday, and took my body receipt in to Connie.
“I just got off the phone with Carolyn Freeda,” Connie said. “Her son Mickey is an EMT, and he was at the ice cream plant this morning. Did you know another guy got frozen?”
“Ranger told me. The man’s name
was Gus. He was the foreman on the loading dock. I worked for him yesterday.”
“The whole thing gives me goose bumps. I have an uncle who whacks people for a living, so I’m not exactly squeamish about murder, but there’s something really disturbing about these ice cream killings.”
“Did Carolyn have any information on how it happened?”
“Just that the door lock had been jammed somehow. One of the people on the line tried to get into the freezer this morning, and the code wouldn’t work. I guess eventually they forced the door open somehow, and that’s when they found this poor guy frozen solid. Mickey was one of the first responders. He said there was nothing anyone could do.”
I couldn’t help grimacing when I asked the question. “Did Mickey say if the man was covered in chocolate and nuts?”
“That was the first question I asked too,” Connie said. “No. No chocolate or nuts. Just frozen.”
Okay, I felt a little better about it all. It was sad that Gus got frozen, but at least he wasn’t turned into a Bogart Bar.
“If I was working at that ice cream factory, I’d quit,” Connie said. “There’s a homicidal lunatic running around loose. And I for sure wouldn’t go near the freezer.”
I was going to do exactly the opposite. I was showing up for work at the ice creamery tomorrow, and I’d probably be in and out of the freezer. And I was doing it because that’s the way it is….Ranger and I wade in and try to make things a little more safe. Morelli did that too. Not to mention that I was pissed off at the whole Bogart Bar issue.
“Lula went home with a headache and a chipped nail,” I said to Connie. “I’m taking off too. I have some homework to do.”
I got my check from Connie, and I drove my dented piece of junk back to my apartment building. I said hello to Rex, got a beer from the fridge, powered up my MacBook Air, and downloaded Ranger’s report on Butchy.
William Boone, better known as Butchy, was twenty-two years old. He was born and raised in Barre, Vermont. His mother was a cashier in a supermarket. His father was an unemployed auto mechanic. Butchy graduated from high school and disappeared for three years. Interviews with relatives suggested he was in Nashville, trying to break into the music industry. He resurfaced in Trenton and got a job at Bogart Ice Cream. He had no arrest record. His credit score was nonexistent. He bought his F-450 six months ago and he’d paid cash. It was estimated that with the custom additions the truck was worth in the vicinity of $60,000. He was making $20 an hour at the ice cream plant. Clearly Butchy had supplemental income. He was high on my list of suspected homicidal lunatics. He had all the right access. He had unexplained money. And it was hard to believe he was as stupid as he seemed…because he seemed unbelievably stupid.