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“From Ranger,” he said. “Registration is in the glove compartment, and it’s equipped with the usual.”
That meant it had a GPS tracker stuck somewhere, and a loaded gun in a lockbox under the driver’s seat.
A black Ford Explorer drove up, the Rangeman guy got in, and the SUV left the parking lot.
• • •
Lula was already at the office when I arrived.
“Whoa,” she said. “You got a hideous eye.”
“The swelling is down and my nose doesn’t feel broken.”
“Yeah, your nose looks okay. Good thing too because you have an excellent nose. People pay big money to get a nose like that.”
“Anything new?” I asked Connie.
Connie looked up from her computer. “No new FTAs, but my cousin Miriam told me that the funeral home on Liberty Street lost two heads last night. Miriam works there as a cosmetologist. She came to work this morning to get Mrs. Werner and Mr. Shantz ready for their viewings and when they pulled them out of the drawer they didn’t have their heads.”
“I don’t like this,” Lula said. “This is creeping me out. Who goes around taking dead people’s heads? It’s just not right. Hold on, do you think it’s terrorists?”
“Unlikely,” Connie said. “These people were already dead.”
“Maybe they were practicing,” Lula said. “Like the way medical students do on cadavers.”
I took a donut from the box on Connie’s desk. “I have my own problems. I need to find Diggery’s snake.”
“I’d rather look for the missing heads,” Lula said. “I don’t like snakes. And I especially don’t like big snakes.”
“You can stay in the car,” I said.
“Whose car we talking about?”
“My car. The one that’s parked at the curb.”
Lula looked out the large plate glass window. “There’s a Mercedes out there.”
“It’s from Ranger.”
“That’s one of them little GLE SUVs. That car’s the bomb. And it’s all new and shiny. It’s almost as good as my Firebird.”
“Remember Johnny Chucci?” Connie asked me.
I nodded yes. “He robbed the jewelry store on State. The one by the porn store.”
“He’s the dude who wears underpants on his head,” Lula said. “He didn’t just rob the jewelry store. He robbed the porn store too. Except we’re not supposed to call it a ‘porn store’ nowadays. The politically correct name is ‘adult entertainment emporium.’ They even got that on a new sign. Anyways, they caught him with his pockets full of cock rings. Not that I know why any man would want more than one cock ring, but what the heck.”
“He skipped out and stuck us with his bail bond,” Connie said. “Left the area, and we had no luck tracing him. It’s been almost a year, but there are rumors that he’s back in town. We might be able to collect some of the bond if you could bring him in. It was armed robbery, so he’s worth money.”
“I’m sure I have his file at home,” I said.
Connie tapped “C-h-u-c-c-i” into her computer. “I’ll print out a new one for you.”
“He should be easy to spot if he’s still wearing his Fruit of the Looms like a ski mask,” Lula said.
“He only did that when he was robbing something,” I said. “It was his signature statement.”
“It was his nutcase statement,” Lula said. “He couldn’t see with them on. He got caught on account of he fell off the curb when he ran out of the adult emporium.”
