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“There’s something else that I always thought was problematic,” I said. “If we’re assuming someone took Vinnie, how did they know he was in Mooner’s RV? Mooner picked Vinnie up at my parents’ house. And Mooner said Vinnie never left the RV.”
“I see what you’re saying,” Lula said. “This had to be one of them opportunistic crimes. Like someone decided to rob Mooner’s RV when Mooner went into the bakery, and they come across Vinnie and decided on the spur of the moment to take him, and then they killed him and put him in the meat grinder.”
“What’s with the meat grinder thing?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. I guess I’m feeling like a burger for dinner, and I just keep thinking of meat grinders,” Lula said.
I drove down Hamilton and was happy to see the Love Bus was still in front of the bookstore. I maneuvered the Mercedes into a space at the curb and cut the engine.
“I want to talk to Mooner,” I said to Connie and Lula. “The pieces aren’t fitting into the puzzle.”
Mooner was at the door to the RV before I knocked. “I was hoping you’d come back,” he said. “I was wondering if I could plug into your electric. I’m, like, down on my battery, and the Cosmic Alliance doesn’t understand no juice.”
“Sure,” Connie said. “We’re all going down the drain anyway. You have to unplug when I leave for the night.”
“Understood. And no worries, I got my own extension cord.”
“Talk to me about Vinnie disappearing,” I said to Mooner. “Walk me through it again.”
“Well, like I said, we were groovin’. We were listening to some Dead and gettin’ mellow. I was, like, just drivin’ around spreading the word. And next thing, I spotted the bakery, so I wheeled the old bus into the lot.”
“Stop,” I said. “Picture the lot. Was it empty?”
“No. There were, like, two cars. The big car and the little car.”
“An SUV and a sportscar.”
“Correcto mundo.”
“Were the cars occupied?”
“Don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. I wasn’t paying attention. And suppose someone was, like, lying down on the seat taking a nap? I mean, I wouldn’t see them, right? So would that count?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then, like, dude.”
“What was Vinnie doing when you left for the bakery?”
“He was riding shotgun. And I guess he was looking out the window. Except there wasn’t anything to see but the parking lot.”
“So Vinnie is in the RV in the shotgun seat and you’re walking into the bakery. Was anyone in the lot? Maybe going to their car?”
“No. The lot was empty except for me.”
“How about the bakery? Were there any customers in the bakery besides you?”
“No. But you know how the bakery has those two glass doors? So, like, suppose there were two people going in and out of those doors at exactly the same time? Would they be in or would they be out? And, like, would that count?”
“Yes, it would count,” I told him.
“Then there was someone else, and she was either in or out. Now that I’m thinking about it, she might have been a teensy bit more out. It was her gazongas that were over the line. She had, like, massive gazongas. They’d definitely crossed the midway line before the rest of her.”
“She was coming out when you were going in?”
“Yeah,” Mooner said.
“Did you watch her cross the lot?”
