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“How’d it go?” I asked.
“It went okay. I didn’t get arrested or anything. I think I might get charged with careless truck driving or something, but the cop who was taking down the information kept getting confused, so I don’t know what’s gonna come of it all. After a while he stopped writing things down, and his eyes got that far-off look.”
“Imagine that,” Connie said.
“I was being excellent about explaining it all to him, but he wasn’t getting the picture,” Lula said. “And he kept asking me dumb questions, like when was the last time I drove a tractor trailer and did I have a license.” Lula took a chocolate glazed out of the box and wolfed it down. “I’m starved,” she said. “I could use a bucket of chicken. Is it lunchtime yet?”
I checked my watch. “It’s nine-thirty.”
“Hunh,” Lula said. “Seems later than that.”
“I need to escort Simon Diggery to the courthouse,” I said. “Are you on board?”
“Say what? No way. Last time I was almost killed by his snake. You remember we were in his piece-of-doodie double-wide, and his snake jumped out of the closet at me.”
“That was a mop. It fell out when you opened the door, and you freaked.”
“Well, it could have been his snake.”
“I’ll buy you a breakfast sandwich.”
“Done and done,” Lula said. “Let’s go get Diggery. Only we gotta go in your car because I’m not putting him and his smelliness in my Firebird.”
I hiked my messenger bag onto my shoulder, Lula helped herself to a second donut, and we left the bonds office. I stopped at Cluck-in-a-Bucket and took a call from Ranger while Lula ran in and ordered her food.
“Bogart’s plant is shut down for a system-wide cleanup,” Ranger said. “It’s scheduled to go back on line tomorrow morning. Show up at the plant at eight o’clock tomorrow and they’ll find a job for you.”
“Any information on the dead man?”
“Arnold Zigler. He was in charge of human resources at Bogart Ice Cream. Lived alone. Last seen late Friday afternoon.”
“Do you think he could have accidentally fallen into the chocolate mixer?”
“It would have to be after he was shot in the head and frozen solid.”
“Any suspects?”
“I haven’t got any information on that. I’m on my way to the plant now. I’ll know more after I talk to Bogart.”
I disconnected with Ranger, and Lula hustled over with a breakfast sandwich, a bucket of chicken, a side of biscuits with gravy, and a giant soda. I watched her buckle up and dig in to the chicken.
“Aren’t you worried about the calories in all that food?”
“It’s not as much as you might think on account of I got a diet soda. And I was careful to balance out my meal with something from different major food groups. I got fried protein, tasty carbohydrates, and gravy.”
“Gravy isn’t a food group.”
“Say what?”
• • •
A half hour later I was on a gravel road that wound through a couple hundred acres of Trenton that had as yet been unmapped by GPS. People who lived here were for the most part off the grid because there was no way they could or would pay an electric bill. Small, ramshackle houses were interspersed with rusted-out mobile homes set on cinder blocks. Broken-down cars and refrigerators littered front yards. Feral cats roamed in packs.
Simon Diggery lived toward the end of the road. He was one of the more affluent inhabitants, having taken possession of a lopsided double-wide. Friends and relatives came and went in the double-wide. Simon and his pet boa constrictor were constant.
I pulled off the road a short distance from Diggery’s Place and parked on the hard-packed dirt shoulder. Lula and I got out of the SUV, and I put my stun gun in my back pocket and tucked my handcuffs into the waistband of my jeans. I didn’t ex
pect to use either. Sometimes I had to run Diggery down, and sometimes he hid, but in the end he never resisted arrest.
