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“Not bad enough to stand in line for it. Where’d all these people come from? Why aren’t they working?”
I cut across town and took Klockner to Majestic Mews. I parked a short distance from the Krakowski apartment and settled in.
“How long are we going to sit here?” Lula asked.
“Until lunch.”
“In that case, I’m putting my seat back and taking a nap. As you know, I didn’t have an ideal night.”
A little after eleven o’clock, Marie Krakowski exited her apartment and walked to a silver Nissan Sentra. She was carrying a bulging cloth grocery bag and a small cooler chest. Bingo. Dollars to donuts she was taking lunch to her son.
“We’re on the move,” I said to Lula. “Raise your seat.”
Marie pulled out of the lot, and I followed at a distance. She left Hamilton Township and took Olden Avenue to Morley Street.
“Oh crap,” Lula said. “She’s going to the cemetery. She’s taking lunch to the zombies. You said she has a cooler. Maybe she’s got a head in it.”
“Marie Krakowski doesn’t impress me as being a zombie chaser. She’s a mom, and I’m pretty sure she’s feeding her son.”
“Yeah, but he could be a zombie by now if he’s in the zombie cemetery.”
The cemetery on Morley Street was small as far as cemeteries go. It was attached to a nondenominational church that was also small. Both were very old, dating back to the Revolution.
Marie parked in the church parking lot and took her cooler and grocery bag through the wrought iron gate that led to the cemetery.
“Now what?” Lula said.
“We wait. I don’t want to create a scene when the mother is there.”
“That’s real nice of you.”
It had nothing to do with being nice. Marie Krakowski was an additional complication. One more person to worry about. She could be carrying a gun in the cooler. Never underestimate a protective mother.
She was in the cemetery for twenty minutes. When she returned to her car she was empty-handed. I waited for her to leave the parking lot and then I entered the cemetery.
“Stay here at the gate,” I told Lula. “If he takes off on me, he’ll run this way and you can stop him.”
“No problem,” Lula said, “but we should have a code word if that happens, so I’m ready.”
“How about if I yell out ‘Stop him!’”
“Yeah, that’ll work. And I’m getting my gun ready, so if any zombies show up I can shoot them in the head.”
I followed the path from the gate toward the heart of the cemetery. Most of the headstones here were old and weather beaten, names and dates no longer readable. The newer graves were located at the far end, but they were few and far between. The plots had been used for generations, and space was scarce.
I found Zero Slick sitting with his back to a tombstone, dousing a ham sandwich with Tabasco sauce. He looked up when I approached, but he didn’t seem alarmed.
“So?” I asked.
“So, what?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Eating lunch. Go away.”
“I feel like there’s a story here,” I said to Slick.
“It’s none of your business.”
