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“There’s no coffee brewing,” she said. “I’m not supposed to start my day like this. I got a routine. My morning has expectations, if you see what I’m saying.”
I was more concerned about the storeroom than the coffee machine. Some of the cabinet drawers weren’t completely closed and the items stashed on the shelves had been shoved around.
“Were you looking for something in the storeroom over the weekend?” I asked Lula.
“Nuh-uh, not me,” Lula said. “I only was here for a couple hours on Saturday.”
I told myself that Connie was probably in a rush to find something, but I only halfway believed it. It wasn’t normal behavior for Connie to leave the storeroom like this.
“I know the gas station Connie uses,” I said to Lula. “You stay here and man the desk, and I’ll see if I can track her down.”
“Get doughnuts on your way back,” Lula said. “Make sure you get a Boston cream for me.”
Connie lives on the outskirts of the Burg and gets gas on State Street. I took Hamilton to State and turned left. I pulled into thegas station, bypassed the pumps, and parked in front of the gas station minimart. I didn’t see Connie’s car, so I went inside and asked the cashier if she’d seen Connie.
“A couple inches shorter than me,” I said to the cashier. “Lots of dark brown hair, lots of eyebrows, lots of mascara, about my age. She was going to get lottery tickets this morning.”
“Yeah, she was here,” the cashier said. “She’s chesty, right?”
“Right. I was supposed to meet her, but she didn’t show up,” I said. “Did she say anything about where she was going?”
“No. She got her lottery tickets and left.”
I drove to the bakery, got a box of doughnuts, and returned to the office.
“Did you find her?” Lula asked.
“No.” I set the doughnut box on Connie’s desk. “She got lottery tickets at the gas station. And I found out that she got doughnuts at the bakery.”
“What? She got doughnuts? I don’t see no Connie’s doughnuts. I don’t even see no fresh powdered sugar or chocolate icing smudges anywhere on her desk. Where’d she go with my doughnut after she left the bakery? There’s something wrong here.” Lula looked in the box I had just put in front of her. “There’s no Boston cream.”
“They were sold out.”
“Damn.”
We hung out in the office eating doughnuts and drinking coffee. An hour went by and there was still no Connie.
“Maybe you should check her email,” I said to Lula.
“Why me?” Lula asked.
“You’re sitting in her chair.”
“Okay, I guess that makes sense, but how am I going to do that? She’s got a password.”
“She keeps all her passwords in a notebook in the bottom drawer with her office gun.”
Lula opened the drawer and pulled the book out. “She’s got a lot of passwords,” Lula said, paging through. “I could see where her life is unnecessarily complicated. I only have one password. I use it for everything, so I don’t need a book like this.”
“That’s frowned on in the world of cybersecurity.”
Lula blew out a raspberry. “That’s what I think of cybersecurity.” She found the password, typed it in, and the computer came alive. She opened email and scrolled through a bunch of messages. “Here’s a court report,” she said. “It looks like three idiots failed to appear for their hearings on Friday. I’ll print them out for you.”
The deal is that when someone is arrested and doesn’t want to sit around in a cell until his court date, he’s required to post a cash bond. If he doesn’t have the money, he gets it from a bail bondsman like Vinnie. If he fails to appear when his hearing is scheduled, Vinnie is out big bucks unless I can find the FTA and bring him back into the system.
I took the printouts from Lula and paged through them. Brad Winter was a no-show on a blackmail charge. It carried a high bond. Carpenter Beedle tried to rob an armored truck and accidentally shot himself in the foot. Also a high bond. Bellissima Morelli was charged with arson, resisting arrest, and assaulting a police officer.
“Holy cow,” I said. “This last one is Joe’s grandmother.”
