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I could hear movement on the other side, and Lula put her face up to the security peephole.
“Hey, Darlene,” she said. “It’s Lula.”
The door cracked open with the chain attached, and Darlene looked out.
“I’m not up to visitors,” she said.
“Good lord,” Lula said, taking in Darlene’s swollen face. “What happened to you?”
“I can’t talk right now,” Darlene said.
“You need help,” Lula said. “Open the door. If you don’t open the door, I’ll break it down. I could do it too. I got a lot of skills since I went into law enforcement.”
Darlene slipped the chain, and we hurried in. Her eye was swollen shut. Her cheek was bruised and swollen. Her lip was split open.
“What happened?” Lula asked.
I looked around. A round end table was overturned, and a vase was smashed on the floor. The floor by the smashed vase had a blood smear.
“Are you alone?” I asked Darlene.
“Yes,” she said. “And I’m going to stay that way.”
She slowly walked toward the bedroom, holding her side. “I need to keep moving,” she said. “I need to be out of here before he returns.”
“Charlie?” Lula asked.
“Yeah. He let himself in around two o’clock. Drunk.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Sorry, I know I’m hard to understand. It’s painful to talk.”
“Honey, you need stitches,” Lula said.
“I need to get out of here first,” Darlene said.
“No problem,” Lula said. “We’re gonna help you. Do you have someplace to go?”
“I’m going to stay with my sister in Piscataway until I get a job and a place of my own.”
“Are you going back to hooking?”
“No. My sister said she might be able to get me something where she works. And I’ve been putting money aside. I have some savings.”
“We’re still looking for Charlie,” I said. “Do you have any idea where we might find him?”
“He’s staying with someone. I don’t know more than that. He goes to the Mole Hole. That’s where they all collect.” She took a stack of T-shirts from a dresser and put them into a half-filled suitcase that was on the bed. “You want to be careful,” she said. “He’s in a nasty mind. I’m lucky he didn’t kill me. He was drunk and angry. Ranting about Jimmy being an idiot. How the keys were a stupid idea, and he couldn’t leave Trenton until they were found. He said if he’d had his way, Edna would have talked by now. He blamed the delay on Julius Roman. Said he had no guts.”
“Do you think he killed Roman?” I asked.
“I’d like to pin it on him. And he’s capable of doing it. Unfortunately, he was with me when Roman was killed.”
Lula was emptying closets and stuffing clothes and shoes into large black plastic garbage bags.
“What else do you want?” Lula asked Darlene. “You got jewelry? Personal stuff, like photographs? Do you have a car parked outside?”
“Charlie owns the car and this apartment,” she said. “I don’t want to make more trouble by taking it.”
Fifteen minutes later we had the apartment cleaned out and the Porsche stuffed full of bags. Darlene didn’t want to get medical care in Trenton, so we drove her to her sister’s house.
* * *
