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“No. I'm working.”
“Well, where is she? I've been calling your apartment and there's no answer.”
“Grandma had a driving lesson this morning.”
“Holy Mary, Mother of God.”
“And then she's going out with Melvina.”
“You're supposed to be keeping an eye on her. What are you thinking? That woman can't drive! She'll kill hundreds of innocent people.”
“It's okay. She's with an instructor.”
“An instructor. What good is an instructor with your grandmother? And what about her gun? I looked in every nook and cranny, and I can't find that gun.”
Grandma has a .45 long-barrel that she keeps hidden from my mother. She got it from her friend Elsie, who picked it up at a yard sale. Probably it was in Grandma's purse. Grandma says it gives the bag some heft, in case she has to beat off a mugger. This might be true, but I think mostly Grandma likes pretending she is Clint Eastwood.
“I don't want her out on the road with a gun!” my mother said.
“Okay,” I said, “I'll talk to her. But you know how she is with that gun.”
“Why me?” my mother asked. “Why me?”
I didn't know the answer to that question, so I hung up. I parked the car, walked around to the end of the town houses, and picked up a macadam bike path. The
path ran through the greenbelt behind Ramos's town house, and gave me a nice view of the second-story windows. Unfortunately, there was nothing to see because the shades were drawn. The brick privacy fence obscured the first-floor windows. And I'd bet dollars to doughnuts the first-floor windows were wide open. No reason to draw the drapes there. No one could look in. Unless, of course, someone rudely climbed the brick wall and sat there like Humpty Dumpty waiting for disaster to strike.
I decided disaster would be slower in coming if Humpty climbed the wall at night when it was dark and no one could see her, so I continued on down the path to the far end of the town houses, cut back to the road, and returned to my car.
LULA WAS STANDING in the doorway when I parked in front of the bail bonds office. “Okay, I give up,” she said. “What is it?”
“A Rollswagen.”
“It's got a few dents in it.”
“Morris Munson was feeling cranky.”
“He did that? Did you bring him in?”
“I decided to delay that pleasure.”
Lula looked like she was giving herself a hernia trying to keep from laughing out loud. “Well, we gotta go get his ass. He got a lotta nerve denting up a Rollswagen. Hey, Connie,” she yelled, “you gotta come see this car Stephanie's driving. It's a genuine Rollswagen.”
“It's a loaner,” I said. “Until I get my insurance check.”
“What are those swirly designs on the side?”
“Wind.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lula said. “I should have known.”
A shiny black jeep Cherokee pulled to the curb behind the wind machine, and Joyce Barnhardt got out. She was dressed in black leather pants, a black leather bustier, which barely contained her C-cup breasts, a black leather jacket, and high-heeled black boots. Her hair was a brilliant red, teased high and curled. Her eyes were ringed by black liner, and her lashes were thick with mascara. She looked like Dominatrix Barbie.
“I hear they put rat hairs in that lash-lengthening mascara,” Lula said to Joyce. “Hope you read the ingredients when you bought it.”
Joyce looked at the wind machine. “The circus in town? This is one of those clown cars, right?”
“It's a one-of-a-kind Rollswagen,” Lula said. “You got a problem with that?”
