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'It don't matter what anyone thinks,' Lauralene said. I'm not giving up Anton, and there's nothing you can do about it. He's gonna marry me. And he's gonna take me out of this hole. We got plans.'
I gave Francine my card and asked her to call if she had information on Ward. I wished Lauralene luck with the baby, and she told me to kiss her ass. I try not to be judgmental, but it was a little frightening that Lauralene Taylor and Anton Ward were reproducing.
I returned to the Lincoln and sat there awhile, watching the
Taylor house. I'd had a bowl of rabbit food for breakfast and nothing for lunch. I was starving and there was no food in the
Lincoln. No Krispy Kremes, no Big Mac, no supersize fries.
I had two new skips, but I wasn't motivated to find them. And
Harold Pancek was out there, but truth is, I didn't care much about him either. I cared about Anton Ward. I wanted to see Ward locked up. I would have preferred not to be the one doing the capture, but at the moment I felt relatively safe. So I decided to sit tight.
I was still watching the Taylor house at four o'clock. I was bored out of my mind and hungry enough to eat the upholstery. I called
Lula, told her I was on Hancock, and asked her to bring me something nonfattening to eat.
Five minutes later, the Firebird pulled to the curb behind me, and Lula got out. 'What's happening?' she asked, handing over a brown paper lunch bag. 'Did I miss anything?'
I'm hanging out to see if Lauralene has a date tonight.'
I looked in the bag. It contained a bottle of water and a hard-boiled egg.
'You gotta stay away from the carbs,' Lula said. That's how I lost all my weight. I went on that protein diet. Then I sort of fell off the wagon and gained all the weight back, but it was still my favorite diet, except for the time I ate two pounds of bacon and threw up.'
I ate the egg and drank the water. I thought about eating the bag, but I was worried it was carbohydrate.
`I guess I should stay with you in case something dangerous happens, and you need someone to squish somebody,' Lula said.
I looked over at her. 'Nothing better to do?'
'Not a damn thing. I'm between men right now. And there's nothing on television worth watching.' She pulled a deck of cards out of her purse. 'I figured we could play rummy.'
At six o'clock Lula said she had to have a bathroom break. She took off in the Firebird, and she returned a half hour later with powdered sugar on her shirt.
That's really rotten,' I said. 'You've got a lot of nerve sneaking out to get food and not bringing any back for me.'
'You're on a diet.'
'It's not the starvation diet!'
'Well, I was going to stop home to use the bathroom, and then I thought why not use the bathroom at Dunkin' Donuts? And then I couldn't very well use their bathroom without buying some doughnuts. That'd be rude, right?'
I gave her an Italian hand signal that didn't mean left turn.
'Boy, you get cranky when you don't get a doughnut,' Lula said.
A little over an hour later, streetlights were on, and Hancock
Street was settled in for the night. Lula and I couldn't play cards in the dark, so we were passing the time with twenty questions.
`I'm thinking of something that's animal,' Lula said. 'And my ass is asleep. What makes you so sure Lauralene's gonna have a date tonight?'
'She's got news for Anton, and I'm betting she's going to use it to make him come see her.'
Just then, the Taylors' front door opened and Lauralene stepped out.
