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“You’re working?”
“Gotta feed the Love Bus. Doesn’t run on air, dude.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m walking dogs. I pick ’em up, and take ’em to the park, they crap their brains out, and I take ’em home.”
He gave me his card. GOLDEN AURA DOG SERVICE. Happy Is As Happy Does.
“Nice,” I said.
“I’m hella entrepreneurial,” Mooner said. “It’s a gift.”
I pocketed the card and went into the bonds office. “Gritch is at a house in Bucks County,” I said to Lula. “I’m going to take a look. Want to come with me?”
“Sure,” Lula said. “Haven’t got anything better to do.”
“How about filing,” Connie said.
“Filing isn’t better,” Lula said. “Filing gives me a cramp in my head. Personally, I think you should just throw all those files away. We never look at them. What good are they? When was the last time you looked at one of them files?”
“I’d look at them if I could find them,” Connie said. She turned to me. “Speaking of files, I got a new one for you. Lenny Pickeral. It should be an easy capture.”
“Wait until you hear this,” Lula said. “This is a beauty. This guy stole toilet paper outta all the rest stops on the Turnpike. He said he was protesting the inferior quality of rest stop toilet paper.”
It didn’t seem like such a horrible crime. “They arrested him for that?”
“Actually, they arrested him for making an illegal U-turn across the grass median,” Connie said. “When they checked out his trunk, they found it was full of toilet paper. And then they went to his house, and it was full of toilet paper. The guy has been stealing toilet paper from the Turnpike for almost a year.”
“And now he’s FTA?” I asked.
“Probably stealing more toilet paper even as we speak,” Lula said. “Sounds to me like a addiction.”
I rammed the file into my bag. “Addios. I’m off to find Vinnie.”
“Me, too,” Lula said. “I’m gonna find the heck out of him.”
I crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania and went north on Lower Buck’s Road, watching my nav screen. Lower Buck’s Road is a two-lane, fairly well-traveled road that runs along the river. It’s a mix o
f expensive homes, moderate homes, and woods. Not a lot of commercial property.
Ten minutes down Lower Buck’s Road, I was told to turn left, onto a dirt road. It was a wooded area, and the dirt road was single-lane. I knew the house was a half mile in. I crept along, not wanting to raise dust, and after a half mile, I came to the house. It was a brown-shingle, two-story, cottage-type house. Big. Maybe seven thousand square feet. A Bucks County manor house. Professional landscaping. Circular drive court. Not shabby. Probably, Vinnie didn’t want to be rescued. He probably had a Jacuzzi and a four-poster bed. On the other hand, they were going to kill him on Friday.
I continued on down the road, past two more houses, before the road abruptly ended. I turned and slowly cruised past the brown-shingle house for a second time. Gritch’s Mercedes was parked in the drive court, plus two other cars. One was an SUV and the other a Ferrari.
“Hard to believe you’d want to stash a perv like Vinnie in a nice house like this,” Lula said. “Maybe this here’s Bobby Sunflower’s house. In which case, we be sitting in Bobby’s driveway, and that might not be healthy.”
“Good point.”
I drove back to the road, pulled to the side, and parked. A half hour later, Mickey Gritch turned out of the dirt road and headed south, toward Trenton. The Ferrari followed.
I called Chet, gave him the Ferrari’s plate number, and asked him to find owners for the car and the house. He called me back in five minutes.
“The car belongs to Bobby Sunflower,” Chet said. “The house is owned by a holding company. And Sunflower owns the holding company.”
“Can you find out if the holding company owns other properties?”
“Sure. I’ll get back to you.”
