“I left them with your granny,” Junior said.

I was soaked to the skin and getting cold. “I need to get out of these wet clothes,” I said to Ranger.

“Go home and change. I’ll have one of my men drop Mr. Turley at the police station.”

“Thanks. I’ll start riding around, checking things out for you, as soon as I get dry clothes.”

I TOOK A shower, put on clean jeans and my last clean sweater, and carted my overflowing laundry basket out to my car. The plan was to ride around and do a fast look at the Rangeman accounts that were between my house and my parents’ house. This included Hamilton Avenue. Then I would mooch dinner from my mom and do my laundry at her house. There were machines in the basement laundry room of my apartment building, but I was pretty sure the place was inhabited by trolls, and I’d eat dirt before I’d go down there.

I drove by two houses and three businesses. The third business was the insurance company that had already been robbed. I didn’t see anything suspicious at any of the locations. No one skulking in the shadows, casing the joint. No one throwing Snickers wrappers on the ground. The two houses were large, set in the middle of large landscaped lots. Easy to burgle if you didn’t have to worry about the alarm system. The two remaining businesses were on Hamilton and would be more difficult to break into. They were both in high-visibility areas with poor back access. In both cases, the rear entrance opened to a chain-link-fenced lot that was gated at night.

I motored over to my parents’ house and was surprised not to find Lula’s car parked at the curb. I thought for sure this would be another barbecue night.

My mom and dad and Grandma Mazur were already seated when I walked in. I told them not to get up, but my mother and grandmother jumped to their feet and set a place for me. My father kept eating.

“Leave the laundry,” my mother said. “I’ll do the laundry later.”

I sat at the table and filled my plate with pot roast, potatoes, gravy, and green beans.

“Where’s Lula?” I asked Grandma Mazur. “I’m surprised you aren’t barbecuing again tonight.”

“She had a date with some hot fireman,” Grandma said. “She said she was gonna give him brown sugar, and I said that was okay so long as she had some left for the barbecue sauce.”

The phone rang and my mother and grandmother looked at each other and sat firm.

“Aren’t you going to answer the phone?” I asked.

“It’s been ringing off the hook,” Grandma said. “I don’t want to talk to any more grumpy women. Who’d think this would make such a stink? I help my granddaughter do her job, and next thing, we’re all in the doghouse.”

“It’s about Junior Turley,” my mother said to me. “Some of the women in the neighborhood are upset because you put him in jail.”

“He exposed himself,” I said. “Men aren’t supposed to go around exposing themselves at unsuspecting women.”

“Well, technically none of us was unsuspecting,” Grandma said. “We wait for him to show up. I guess it’s one of them generation things. You get to an age and you look forward to seeing a winkie at four in the afternoon when you’re peeling potatoes for supper. The thing about Junior and his winkie is, you don’t have to do anything about it. You just take a look and he moves on.”

I poured more gravy over my potatoes. “Mrs. Zajak filed a complaint against him.”

“She was in a snit because he skipped her that day,” Grandma said. “It was starting to rain and he cut his circuit short. Everybody’s mad at her, too.”

“He won’t be in jail forever,” I said. “I’m sure Vinnie will bail him out again in the morning.”

“Yeah, but I think his winkie-waggin’ days are over,” Grandma said.

IT WAS DARK when I left my parents’ house. Clouds had rolled in and a light drizzle was falling. I did a sweep past the accounts I’d checked out earlier, and I went on to Broad Street and the area around the arena. Traffic was relatively heavy, and I was only able to catch glimpses of Ranger’s buildings. The drizzle turned to rain, and I decided to quit for the night and start over in the morning.

An hour later, I was changed into my pajamas, watching television, and Lula showed up.

“I swear I don’t know what things are coming to,” Lula said, bustling through my front door and heading straight for the refrigerator. “What have you got in here? Did you eat at your mama’s house tonight? Do you got leftovers? I need something to calm my stomach. This keeps up, and I’m gonna get a ulcer or diarrhea or something.” She bypassed the pot roast and mashed potatoes and went straight for the pineapple upside-down cake. “You don’t mind if I eat this, do you?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Lula found a fork and dug into the cake. “First off, I got myself a date with that hot-lookin’ fireman. You remember the one. The big brute with muscles bulgin’ out everywhere. So he came over, and we did some talkin’. And then one thing led to another, and he said would I mind if he go into my bedroom. And I told him he was sittin’ on my bedroom on account of I had to turn the bedroom into a closet. I mean, where’s a girl supposed to put her shoes and her dress-up clothes? Anyways, I supposed he had things to do with himself, so I pulled out my sleep sofa, and I wasn’t paying much attention to him, and next thing he’s all dressed up in one of my cocktail dresses from the Dolly Parton collection.”

“Get out.”

“Swear to God. And he didn’t look good in it, either. It was all wrong for him. He sees me lookin’ at him and he says, I hope you don’t mind I’m wearing your dress. And I say, hell yeah, I mind. You don’t fit in that dress. You’re bustin’ out of it. You’re gonna ruin it, and it’s one of my favorites.”

“And then what?”

“Then he gets all huffy, saying he thought he looked pretty darn good in the dress, and I shouldn’t be talkin’ about bustin’ out of stuff. So I ask him exactly what that’s supposed to mean, and he says, figure it out, fatso.”

I sucked in some air on that one. Calling Lula fatso was like asking to die.

“It got ugly after that,” Lula said. “I don’t want to go into the depressin’ details, but he got his ass out of my apartment, and he wasn’t wearin’ my dress when he exited, either.” She looked down at the empty cake plate. “What happened to the cake?”

“You ate it.”

“Hunh,” Lula said. “I didn’t notice.”

“Easy come, easy go,” I said.

“That’s so true. It’s true about cake and men.”

“Doesn’t sound traumatic enough to give you an ulcer,” I said.

“That wasn’t the traumatic part. The traumatic part came after I booted him out. I was putting my gown away, and I heard someone knockin’ at my door. I figured it was the moron fireman coming back to get his clothes…”

“He left without his clothes?”

“He was in a hurry after I got my gun. The thing is, I already threw his clothes out my window. You know I live on the second floor of the house, so the clothes kind of floated down and landed in some bushes, and maybe he didn’t notice. So I’m thinkin’ it’s just this loser again, and I open the door, and it’s the Chipotle killers, and the one’s got the big-ass meat cleaver and the other’s got a gun.”

“Omigosh.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. I jumped back real quick and slammed the door shut, and bang, bang, bang, there was three bullets shot through my door. Can you imagine the nerve of them defacing my door? And it’s not even like I own the door. This here’s a rental property. And I don’t see where I should be held responsible to pay for that door.”

“What happened next?”

“I got my gun and I shot a whole bunch more holes in the door while they were trying to kick it in.”

“Did you hit anyone?”

“I don’t know. I emptied about half a clip in the door, and when I stopped shooting, there weren’t any sounds coming from the other side. So I waited a minute, and then I peeked out, and I didn’t see no decapitators. And there wasn’t any blood all splattered around, either, although hard to believe I missed them, on account of they had their foot to the door when I started shooting.”