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Brenda stuck her hand into her hobo bag and pulled out a little silver gun. “I want the photograph. We all know you have it. So get smart and hand it over.”
I looked down at the gun. “Is that real?”
“You bet it’s real. It’s pretty, right? And it’s light. I bet you carry some piece of shit like a Glock or a Smith and Wesson. Those guns ruin your whole look. You get a neck spasm, right?”
“Yeah, I have a Smith and Wesson.”
“They’re dinosaurs.”
“Who are you?”
“Boy, you don’t listen. I already told you. I’m Brenda Schwartz. And I want the photograph.”
“Shooting me isn’t going to get it.”
“I could shoot you in the knee for starters. Just so you know I’m serious. It hurts a lot to get shot in the knee.”
Lula swung through the coffee shop door and came over to us. “Is that a gun?”
“Oh, for Crissake, who’s this?” Brenda said.
“I’m Lula. Who the heck are you?”
“This is a private conversation,” Brenda said.
“Yeah, but I want to take a look at your little peashooter. It’s kinda cute.”
“It’s a gun,” Brenda said.
Lula pulled her Glock out of her bag and aimed it at Brenda. “Bitch, this is a gun. It could put a hole in you big enough to drive a truck through.”
“Honestly,” Brenda said, “this is just so boring.” And she huffed off to her car and drove away.
“She was kinda snippy, being I just wanted to see her gun,” Lula said.
Snippy was the least of it. She was a perfect addition to my growing collection of homicidal misfits.
“She’s in mourning,” I told Lula. “Thanks for stepping in.”
“She didn’t look like she was in mourning,” Lula said. “And she didn’t look like no doctor’s fiancée.”
Lula and I returned to Connie, and I called Bill Berger.
“I’ve got a third party interested in the photograph,” I told him. “Do you care?”
“Who’ve you got?” Berger asked.
“Brenda Schwartz. Says she was Crick’s fiancée. Blond, five foot five, in her forties. Carries a little bitty gun.”
“As far as we know, Crick didn’t have a fiancée.”
I ended the call with Berger and turned to Connie. “Can you find her?”
“Brenda Schwartz is a fairly common name,” Connie said. “Do you have an address? Did you get her license plate number?”
“The first part was ‘POP,’ and I didn’t get the rest. She was driving one of those cars that looks like a toaster.”
“It was a Scion,” Lula said.
