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“Horror movie,” Lula said.
I took Oakley mirrored wraparounds out of my bag and put them on. “Better?”
“Freakin’ A,” Lula said.
“Do we have anything new on Duncan Dugan?” I asked Connie.
“Zero,” Connie said. “It’s like he dropped off the earth since he left the hospital. But I heard a disturbing piece of news at Giovichinni’s. I went to get lunch and ran into Shirley Greeley. She lives next door to the Manleys, and she said last night someone blew up the Manleys’ Corolla. Fortunately, the Manleys weren’t in it. It was an IED that detonated a little after midnight. Shirley said the Manleys are pretty shook up and their cats are completely freaked out.”
“I heard about the bombing from Ranger,” I said to Connie. “I saw him this morning.”
“Shirley didn’t know much, so I called my cousin Lorraine,” Connie said. “She’s working dispatch. She said as far as she knew there were no persons of interest.”
The Manleys weren’t the sort of people who got car bombed. They weren’t controversial. They weren’t activists. They didn’t object to anything, and they didn’t alienate anyone. They fostered cats. I guess if you really hated cats you might want to bomb the Manleys, but other than that, I couldn’t see it.
“I’m thinking this might be clown related,” Lula said. “There are people out there who have real strong feelings about clowns. Not everybody likes them. If you look close at a clown, they couldbe creepy. I think this could be an act of clown terrorism. There’s all kinds of terrorists running around out there these days. The terrorists I’m talking about would be anti-clown. Only thing is, they would be low on the terrorist top ten since they weren’t smart enough to know the Corolla belongs to Nutsy’s parents and not Nutsy.”
“You have to worry about your own sanity when Lula’s rantings start to make sense,” Connie said.
I didn’t think clown terrorists had blown up the Corolla. I thought the bombing was related to Nutsy and the robberies. A logical assumption would be that Duncan Dugan and Nutsy were friends. It was an unlikely alliance, but opposites are supposed to attract, right? And the next logical assumption would be that the two robberies were connected. That Duncan Dugan took the merchandise out of the cases and Nutsy went back and took the uncut stones. And somehow this resulted in someone getting pissed off enough to blow up Nutsy’s parents’ Corolla. It was a lot of assuming but it was all I had. Problem is, while my brain was telling me this reasoning was logical, my gut was telling me that it felt wrong.
I hiked my messenger bag up on my shoulder. “I’m going to visit Mrs. Manley.”
“Gee, I’d like to go with you,” Lula said, “but I’ve got something to do. I’ve got plans.”
“What kind of plans?” I asked.
“I’ve got plans to stay here where there are no cats,” Lula said.
“Good thinking,” I said. “I’ll leave Bob with you.”
I parked across the street from the Manleys’ house and checked out the crime scene. The Corolla had been taken away, but the driveway was smudged with black soot and the grass on either side of the driveway was scorched. The small front yard was dotted with chunks of tire. It brought back memories of some of my own traumatic events. My apartment’s been firebombed. I’ve had multiple cars destroyed. I’ve been kidnapped and stalked, and I’ve survived three days of having Lula as a roommate. All horrible at the time. Scary and confusing. Now just a part of my history. As it turns out, I’m resilient. Go figure.
My mom wishes I had a more boring history. She’s been given the role of Family Adult in Charge of Worrying. It’s not a job I’d want, but my mom is pretty good at it. When the job is overwhelming, she goes to Jim Beam for help.
I crossed the street and rang the bell. Mrs. Manley opened the door and immediately looked to see if I was alone.
“Bob is back at the office with Lula,” I said.
“It’s just that the cats are a little on edge after last night.”
“Understandable. How about you? Are you okay?”
“It doesn’t seem real,” Mrs. Manley said. “These things happen to other people and in the movies.”
“Have you heard from Andy?”
“He showed up right after the fire trucks. He said he heard about it on the police band. He was here for just a few minutes and then he left. I think he might have a girlfriend.”
“I imagine he was worried about you.”
“He was very upset. He wanted us to leave. To take a vacation until the bomber was found. I can’t do that of course, but it was sweet of him to be concerned.”
“He must be in the neighborhood if he got here right after the fire trucks.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask. I was having a hard time getting a grip with everything going on. I tried calling him this afternoon, but he didn’t pick up. He’s terrible about answering his phone.”
“I just thought I should stop in to see if there was anything I could do, but it looks like you have everything under control here,” I said.
