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I ate half a Boston Kreme. “I don’t know. It just came over me. I used to work at Tasty Pastry when I was in high school. I was a counter girl.”
Lula ate a maple glazed while she drove. “Did you ever work at baking?”
“No, but I watched Ratatouille about a dozen times.”
“That was a cartoon about rats.”
“It was inspiring.”
Lula turned off Hamilton and headed north toward K Street.
“We need a plan for catching Billy Bacon,” Lula said. “We’re not gonna be able to bribe him with lunch when he’s got all that pizza on his doorstep.”
“I thought we’d walk in when he’s eating, and you can distract him while I cuff him.”
“I guess that’s a okay plan. And if that don’t work you can stun gun him, but you don’t want to use pepper spray around the pizza.”
I ate a second Boston Kreme.
“You feeling better?” Lula asked.
I nodded. “I just had a moment back there.”
•••
We parked across the street from Billy Bacon’s apartment and waited for the pizza delivery. A little car with a Domino’s sign on it pulled to the curb in front of Billy’s building and a young guy got out with four pizza boxes. He looked over at us and gave us a thumbs-up.
He disappeared into the building and reappeared five minutes later.
Lula leaned out the driver’s side window toward him. “How many people in the apartment?”
“One,” he said. “An older woman in a nightgown.”
He got into his Domino’s car and drove off.
Twenty minutes later we still didn’t see any sign of Billy Bacon.
“He should have showed up by now,” I said to Lula. “I can’t imagine him going out of the neighborhood. This is the only entrance to the apartment building, right?”
“I never checked. I thought you checked.”
Crap.
Lula and I left Big Blue and crossed the street to the building. We climbed the three flights of stairs and listened at Billy’s apartment door.
“I can hear him,” Lula whispered. “He’s talking to his momma, and he’s eating my pizza.”
I knocked on the door and the talking stopped.
I knocked again and Eula told us to go away.
“You’re gonna have to kick the door in,” Lula said to me.
Kicking doors in is not a skill I’ve mastered. Ranger and Morelli are experts. Me, not at all.
“Not going to happen,” I said to Lula.
“I could shoot the lock off,” Lula said.
