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“And?”
“And it’s possible that he has Connie.”
“And you’ve figured this out, how?”
“When we let ourselves in through the back door, I noticed that the storeroom looked messy. Like someone had been looking for something. And then Connie never showed up for work. She stopped at the bakery and got the usual box of doughnuts, but she hasn’t been at her desk.”
“No doughnuts left on the desk?” Vinnie asked.
“No doughnuts left on the desk,” I said.
“Maybe it’s that time of the month, she ate all the doughnuts before she got to the office, and she’s sleeping it off in some parking lot.”
“When are you getting back?”
“Tonight.Latetonight.”
“And you’ll be in the office in the morning?”
“Yeah. What are you, my wife?”
“I’m not even happy that I’m your cousin.”
Grandma looked at me when I hung up. “How’d that go?”
“As expected,” I said.
“Are we going after another FTA slimeball?”
“Yup. Brad Winter. Wanted for blackmail.”
“Classy.”
“Afraid not. He slept with a bunch of married women, videoed their encounters with a hidden camera, and blackmailed them.”
“That’s a real clever crime,” Grandma said. “If you press charges against him, you know people are going to be looking at the videos. And your husband isn’t going to be happy.”
I thumbed through Winter’s file. “He lives on Oak Street.”
“That’s a nice part of town,” Grandma said. “Mostly new townhouses from where they tore down the toilet factory. It wascalled the porcelain factory, but everyone knew they made toilets. Not that there’s any shame in making toilets.”
I plugged the address into my GPS system and ten minutes later we were parked across the street from Winter’s red brick and white vinyl clapboard townhouse. Postage-stamp front yard that was neat grass with a perfectly shaped row of small shrubs bordering the house. Two steps led to a large stoop and mahogany-colored front door.
“This is real classy,” Grandma said. “You could tell he’s got money. I bet his bushes were shaped by a gardener. What’s he look like?”
“Forty-two years old. Five foot ten. Brown eyes. Brown hair cut short. Average build. Nice looking.”
I rang the bell and Winter answered. Naked.
“Here’s something I don’t get to see every day,” Grandma said, staring at his privates.
“Catch you at a bad time?” I asked.
“Nope. I was just hanging out,” he said. “What can I do you for?”
I introduced myself, showed him the badge I got on Amazon, and explained that he’d missed his court date and needed to reschedule.
He looked surprised. “Really? I didn’t know I had a court date. No one told me.”
