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“No.”
“You got a Boston Cream and a jelly doughnut.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “How do you know that?”
“It’s what you always get.”
The door to the bakery was shoved open, and Lula barreled out. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready to go rescue Vinnie.” She realized Morelli was standing next to me, and she did a fast stop. “Oops.”
“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.”
TWO
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.
