“Maybe she went to a diner with one of her friends. Or maybe she walked up to the bakery.”
“It’s been hours, and she’s not back. And I called all her friends. No one’s seen her.”
Okay, so I had to admit it was a little worrisome. Especially since she’d had the mysterious duffel bag yesterday and had been attacked by the little man in the green pants. Seemed far-fetched that there would be a connection, but the possibility made my stomach feel squishy.
“This is your grandmother we’re talking about,” my mother said. “She could be on the side of the road hitchhiking a ride to Vegas. You find people, right? That’s what you do for a living. Find your grandmother.”
“I’m a bounty hunter. I’m not a magician. I can’t just conjure up Grandma.”
“You’re all I’ve got,” my mother said. “Come over and look for clues. I’ve got maple link sausages. I’ve got coffee cake and scrambled eggs.”
“Deal,” I said. “Give me ten minutes.”
I hung up, turned around, and bumped into a big guy. I shrieked and jumped back.
“Chill,” he said, reaching out for me, drawing me close for a friendly kiss on the top of the head. “You just about broke my eardrum. You need to learn to relax.”
“Diesel!”
“Yeah. Did you miss me?”
“No.”
“That’s a fib,” he said. “Do I smell coffee?”
Diesel drops into my life every now and then. Actually, this visit makes it only three times, but it seems like more. He’s solid muscle, gorgeous, and scruffy, and he smells like everything a woman wants . . . sex and fresh-baked cookies and a hint of Christmas. Okay, I know that’s an odd combination, but it works for Diesel. Maybe because he’s not entirely normal . . . but then, who is? He has unruly sandy blond hair and assessing brown eyes. He smiles a lot, and he’s pushy and rude and inexplicably charming. And he can do things ordinary men can’t do. At least, that’s the story he tells.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
“I’m looking for someone. You don’t mind if I hang out here for a couple days, do you?”
“Yes!”
He glanced at my coat. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I’m going to my mother’s for breakfast.”
“I’m in.”
I blew out a sigh, grabbed my purse and car keys, and we trooped out of my apartment and down the hall. Mrs. Finley from 3D was already in the elevator when we entered. She sucked in some air and pressed herself against the wall.
“It’s okay,” I said to her. “He’s harmless.”
“Hah,” Diesel said.
Diesel was wearing an outfit that looked like it belonged in the street-person edition of GQ. Jeans with a rip in the knee, dusty shit-kicker boots, a T-shirt advertising Corona beer, a ratty gray unzipped sweatshirt over the shirt. Two days of beard. Hair that looked like he’d styled it with an eggbeater. Not that I should judge. I wasn’t exactly looking like a suburban sex goddess. My hair was uncombed, I had my feet shoved into Ugg knockoffs, and I had a winter coat buttoned over a pair of Morelli’s sweatpants and a flannel pajama top imprinted with duckies.
We all scooted out of the elevator, and Diesel followed me to my car. I was driving a Chevy Monte Carlo clunker that I’d gotten on the cheap because it didn’t go in reverse.
“So, Mr. Magic,” I said to Diesel, “what can you do with cars?”
“I can drive ’em.”
“Can you fix them?”
“I can change a tire.”
I filed that away in case I needed a tire changed, wrenched the door open, and rammed myself behind the wheel.
______
My parents live in the Burg, short for the Chambersburg section of Trenton. Houses and aspirations are modest, but meals are large. My mother dumped a mess of scrambled eggs and over a pound of breakfast sausages onto Diesel’s plate. “I got up this morning, and she was gone,” my mother said. “Poof.”
Diesel didn’t look too concerned. I was guessing in his world, poof, and you’re gone wasn’t all that unusual.
“Where did you find the note?” I asked my mother.
“On the kitchen table.”
I ate my last piece of sausage. “Last time she disappeared, we found her camped out in line, waiting to buy tickets to the Stones concert.”
“I have your father driving around looking, but so far he hasn’t seen her.”
My father was retired from the Post Office and now drove a cab part-time. Mostly, he drove the cab to his lodge to play cards with his friends, but sometimes he picked up early-morning fares to the train station.
I drained my coffee cup, pushed back from the table, and went upstairs and looked around Grandma’s room. From what I could tell, she’d taken her purse, her gray jacket, her teeth, and the clothes on her back. There was no sign of struggle. No bloodstains. No duffel bag. There was a brochure for Daffy’s Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City on her nightstand.
I traipsed back downstairs to the kitchen. “Where’s the big bag?”
“What big bag?” my mother wanted to know.
“Grandma had a big bag with her yesterday. It’s not in her room.”
“I don’t know anything about a bag,” my mother said.
“Did Grandma just get her social security check?”
“A couple days ago.”
So maybe she bought herself some new clothes, stuffed them into the duffel bag, and got herself on an early bus to Daffy’s.
Diesel finished his breakfast and stood. “Need help?”
“Are you any good at finding lost grandmothers?”
“Nope. Not my area of expertise.”
“What is your area of expertise?” I asked him.
Diesel grinned at me.
“Besides that,” I said.
“Maybe she just took off for a nooner with the butcher.”
My mother gasped. Horrified that Diesel would say such a thing, and doubly horrified because she knew it was a possibility.
“She wouldn’t leave in the middle of the night for a nooner.”
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t feel a disturbance in the force,” Diesel said. “She wasn’t in harm’s way when she left the house. Or maybe I’m just feeling mellow after all those sausages and eggs.”
Diesel and I have similar jobs. We look for people who have done bad things. Diesel tracks down people with special talents. He refers to them as Unmentionables. I track down people who pretty much have no talent at all. I call them Fugitives. Whatever name you use for the hunted, the hunter has a job that relies heavily on instinct, and after a while you become tuned in to the force. Okay, so that’s kind of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but sometimes you walk into a building and get the creeps and know something ugly is waiting around the corner. My creep-o-meter is good, but Diesel’s is better. I suspect Diesel’s sensory perception is in the zone ordinarily reserved for werewolves. Good thing he isn’t excessively hairy or I’d have to wonder.
“I’m going back to my apartment to shower and change. And then I’m going to the office,” I told Diesel. “Can I drop you somewhere?”
“Yeah. My sources tell me the guy I’m looking for was on Mulberry Street yesterday. I want to look around. Maybe talk to a couple people.”
“Is this guy dangerous?”
“Not especially, but the idiots following him are.”
“I found a brochure for Daffy’s in Grandma’s room,” I told my mother. “She probably took a seniors’ bus to Atlantic City and will be back tonight.”
“Omigod,” my mother said, making the sign of the cross. “Your grandmother alone in Atlantic City! Anything could happen. You have to go get her.”
Ordinarily, I’d think this was a dumb idea, but it was a nice day, and I hadn’t been to Atlantic City in ages. It sounded like a perfectly good excuse to take a day off. I had five open cases, but nothing that couldn’t wait. And I wouldn’t mind putting distance between Diesel and me. Diesel
was a complication I didn’t need in my life.
An hour later, I was dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved, V-neck sweater, and a sweatshirt. I drove to the bail bonds office, parked at the curb, and walked into the office.
“What’s up?” Lula wanted to know. “We gonna go out and catch bad guys today? I’m ready to kick ass. I got ass-kickin’ boots on today. I’m wearing a thong two sizes too small, and I’m feeling mean as hell.”
Connie Rosolli grimaced. Connie is the office manager, and she’s pure Burg Italian American. Her Uncle Lou was wheelman for Two Toes Garibaldi. And it’s rumored her Uncle Nunzo helped turn Jimmy Hoffa into a dump truck bumper. Connie’s a couple years older than me, a couple inches shorter, and a lot more voluptuous. If Connie’s last name was a fruit, it would be Cantaloupe.
“Too much information,” Connie said to Lula. “I don’t ever want to know about your thong.” Connie took a file off her desk and handed it to me. “Just came in. Kenny Brown. Wanted for grand theft auto. Twenty years old.”
That meant unless he weighed three hundred pounds, he could run faster than me and was going to be a pain in the ass to catch.
I stuffed the Brown file into my shoulder bag. “Grandma Mazur’s hit the road. I think she might be at Daffy’s, and I told my mother I’d check on her. Anyone want to tag along?”
“I wouldn’t mind going to Atlantic City,” Lula said.
“Me, too,” Connie said. “I can forward the office calls to my cell phone.”
Lula had her bag on her shoulder and her keys in her hand. “I’m driving. I’m not riding to Atlantic City in a car with no reverse.”
“I almost never need reverse,” I told her.
Connie locked the office, and we all piled into Lula’s Firebird.
“What’s Granny doing in Atlantic City?” Lula asked.
I buckled myself in. “I’m not certain she is in Atlantic City. It’s just my best guess. But if she is there, I imagine she’s playing the slots.”
“I’m telling you, she had a leprechaun in that duffel bag yesterday,” Lula said. “And she took him to Atlantic City. It’s just the place to take a lucky leprechaun.”
“You don’t really believe in leprechauns, do you?” Connie asked Lula.
“Who, me? Hell, no,” Lula said. “I don’t know why I said that. It just come out of my mouth. Everybody knows leprechauns aren’t real, right?” Lula turned onto Broad. “Still, there’s a lot of talk about them, and that talk has to come from somewhere. Remember that Christmas when Trenton was overrun with elves? If there’s elves, there might be leprechauns.”
“They weren’t elves,” I told her. “They were vertically challenged people wearing pointy rubber ears, and they were trucked in from Newark as a marketing strategy for a toy factory.”
“I knew that,” Lula said. “But some people thought they were elves.”
It takes about an hour and a half to get from Trenton to Atlantic City. Forty minutes, if Lula’s behind the wheel. It’s flat-out highway driving until you get to Pleasantville. After that, it’s not all that pleasant since the Jersey poor back up to the Jersey Shore in Atlantic City. We drove past several blocks of hookers and pushers and empty-eyed street kids, and then suddenly the landscape brightened and we were at Daffy’s. Lula parked in the garage, and we fixed our makeup, sprayed our hair, and hoofed it through the maze that leads to the casino floor.
“It’s going to be hard to spot Grandma Mazur,” Connie said. “This place is filled with old people. They bring them in by bus, give them a carton of cigarettes, a ticket to the lunch buffet, and show them how to stick their credit cards in the slot machines.”
“Yeah, people in Jersey know how to enjoy old age,” Lula said.
It was true. All over the country, we were warehousing old people in nursing homes, feeding them Jell-O. And in Jersey, we were busing them into casinos. Dementia and heart disease didn’t slow you down in Jersey.
“You could probably order dialysis off the room service menu here,” Lula said. “I tell you, I’m glad I’m gonna spend my golden years in Jersey.”
“We’ll all go in a different direction and look for Grandma,” I said. “We’ll keep in touch by cell phone.”
I was halfway through a tour of the blackjack tables and my phone rang.
“I found her,” Connie said. “She’s at the slots, playing poker. Go to the big dog in the middle of the room and turn left.”
Daffy’s was one of the larger, newer casinos on the Boardwalk. In a misguided effort to out-theme Caesars, the conglomerate owners had chosen to design the casino after the chairman’s ten-year-old beagle . . . Daffy. There was a Daffy Doodle bar and a Daffy Delicious restaurant, and Daffy paw prints on the purple-and-gold carpet. The crowning glory was a twenty-foot, two-ton, bronze Daffy that shot laser beams out of its eyes. The dog barked on the hour and was located dead center in the main casino.
I turned left at the big bronze Daffy and found Grandma hunched on her stool in front of a Double Bonus Video Poker machine, concentrating on the combinations. Bells were dinging, lights were flashing, and Grandma kept hitting the PLAY button.
Randy Briggs was standing behind Grandma. He was clutching the duffel bag to his chest, alternately looking around the room and watching Grandma play. Briggs is a forty-something computer geek with thinning sandy blond hair, cynical brown eyes, and all the charm of Attila the Hun. Holding the bag was awkward for Briggs because Briggs is only three feet tall and his arms barely wrapped around the bag. I’ve known him for a couple years now and wouldn’t go so far as to say we’re friends. I suppose we have a professional relationship, more or less.
“Hey,” I said to him. “What’s up?”
“The usual,” Briggs said. “What’s up with you?”
“Just hanging out.” I looked at the duffel bag. “What’s in the bag?”
“Money.” Briggs cut his eyes to Connie and Lula. “I’ve been hired to guard it, so don’t anybody get ideas.”
“I got ideas,” Lula said. “They have to do with sitting on you until you’re nothing but a grease spot on the carpet.”
Grandma stopped punching the PLAY button and looked around at us. “I’m on a hot streak. Don’t get too close or you’ll put the whammy on me.”
“How much have you won?” I asked her.
“Twelve dollars.”
“And how much have you poured into the machine?”
“Don’t know,” Grandma said. “I’m not keeping track.”
“I smell buffet,” Lula said. “There’s a buffet around here somewhere. What time is it? Is it time for the lunch buffet?”
All around us, seniors were checking out of their machines, getting on their Rascals, and powering up their motorized wheelchairs.
“Look at this,” Lula said. “These old people are all gonna beat us to the buffet, and we’re gonna have to take leftovers.”
“I hate buffets,” Briggs said. “I can never reach the good stuff.”
“I can reach everything,” Lula said. “Every man for himself. Watch out. Coming through. Excuse me.”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get something to eat,” Grandma said. “I’ve been playing this machine for four hours and my keister is asleep. We gotta get a move on, though, so we don’t get behind the feebs with walkers and them portable oxygen tanks. They take forever to get through the line.”
The buffet was held in the Bowser Room. We bought our tickets, loaded our plates, and sat down.
“No offense,” I said to Briggs, “but you seem like an odd choice to guard the money.”
Briggs dug into a pile of shrimp. “What’s that supposed to mean? You think I’m not honest? You think I can’t be trusted with the money?”
“I think you’re not tall.”
“Yeah, but I’m mean and ferocious. I’m like a wolverine.”
“I want to know more about the money,” I said to Grandma. “Where did you get the money?”
“I found it fair and squar
e.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“I don’t know exactly. I kept losing my place when I was counting, but I figure it’s close to a million.”
Everyone stopped eating and looked at Grandma.
“Did you report it to the police?” I asked her.
“I thought about it, but I decided it wasn’t police business. I came out of the bakery, and I saw a rainbow. And I was walking home, looking at the rainbow, and I fell over the bag with the money in it.”
“And?”
“And it was St. Patrick’s Day. Everybody knows if you find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow on St. Patrick’s Day, it’s yours.”
“That’s true,” Lula said. “She’s got a point.”
“I always wanted to see the country, so I took some of the money, and I bought myself an RV,” Grandma said. “And this here’s my first stop.”
“You can’t drive,” I said to Grandma. “Your license was revoked.”
“That’s why I hired Randy,” Grandma said. “I got a real good deal on the RV because it used to be owned by a little person. The driver’s seat is all set up. Soon as I saw it, I thought of Randy. I remembered when you two were on that case with the elves.”
“They weren’t elves,” I told Grandma. “They were little people trucked in from Newark. And you can’t keep this much money.”
“I’m not keeping it,” Grandma said. “I’m spending it.”
“There are rules. You have to report it, and then wait a certain amount of time before it becomes yours. And you probably have to pay taxes.”
I couldn’t believe I was saying all this. I sounded like my mother.
“That doesn’t apply here,” Grandma said. “This is lucky money.”
“Guess that’s why you won the twelve dollars,” Lula said.
“You should take some money,” Grandma said. “I got plenty.” She looked over at Briggs. “Give everyone one of them bundles.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said to Grandma. “Suppose someone puts in a claim and you have to give the money back?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Grandma said. “This here’s not ordinary money. It’s lucky money. You use it to win more money. So there’ll always be money if we need it.”
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