“I've only been looking for a couple days ...” I said.
“This is the fourth day. Do you know what I think? I think you don't know what you're doing. I want someone new on the case. I demand someone new.”
We all looked at the door to Vinnie's inner office. It was closed and locked. There was silence behind the door.
Connie got up and rapped on the door. No response. “Hey,” Connie yelled. “Mrs. Apusenja wants to talk to you. Open the door!”
The door still didn't open.
Connie returned to her desk, got a key from the middle drawer, and went back and opened Vinnie's door. “Guess you didn't hear me,” Connie said, standing hand on hip, looking in at Vinnie. “Mrs. Apusenja wants to talk to you.”
Vinnie came to the door and smiled an oily smile out at Mrs. Apusenja. “Nice to see you again,” he said. “Do you have some new information for us?”
“I have this for you. The new information is that I will go to the papers if you do not find Samuel Singh. I will ruin you. How does it look for my Nonnie? People will talk. And he owes me two weeks' rent. Who will pay that?”
“Of course we'll find him,” Vinnie said. “I've got my best man looking for Singh. And Stephanie's helping him.”
“You are a boil on the backside of your profession,” Mrs. Apusenja said. And she left.
“How many years have I been in this business? A lot of years, right?” Vinnie asked. “And I'm good at it. I'm good at writing bond. I do a service for the community. Does the honest law-?abiding taxpayer have to pay my salary? No. Does the city of Trenton have to hire cops to go find their scofflaws? No. All because of me. I go get the scumbags at no cost to the general population. I risk my neck!”
Connie and Lula and I raised our eyebrows.
“Well, okay, I risk Stephanie's neck,” Vinnie said. “But it's all in the family, right?”
“Yeesh,” Lula said.
“I should have let Sebring write the damn visa bond,” Vinnie said. “What was I thinking?”
Les Sebring was Vinnie s competitor. There were several bail bonds offices in the Trenton area, but Sebring's agency was the largest.
“So what are you doing standing here?” Vinnie asked, flapping his arms. “Go find him, for crissake.” Vinnie looked around and sniffed the air. “What's that smell? It smells like roast leg of lamb.”
“It was my afternoon snack,” Lula said. “I got it delivered from the Greek deli. I'm on the all-?you-?can-?eat meat diet. I didn't eat the whole leg, though. I don't want to go overboard.”
“Yeah,” Connie said. “She only ate half a leg.”
Vinnie stepped back into his office and closed and locked the door.
“Sounds like we should go find this guy,” Lula said.
I'd like nothing better than to find Samuel Singh, but I didn't know how. And worse, I was having a hard time focusing on the hunt. I couldn't get Lillian Paressi out of my head. I kept seeing her marching into the Blue Bird, angrily clutching the flowers. Red rose, white carnation. The note was innocuous. Nothing to get angry over. So the flowers had to be part of a continuing harassment. And surely she talked to someone about it. I was hoping Carl Rosen was that someone.
“Earth to Stephanie,” Lula said. “You got any ideas?”
“No.”
“Me, either,” Lula said. “I think this diet's clogging things up inside me. This isn't a creative thinker's diet. You need Cheez Doodles to do that shit. And birthday cake. The kind with the lard icing and the big pink and yellow icing roses.”
Connie and I looked at Lula.
“Not that I'm gonna eat anything like that ever again,”
Lula said. “I was just saying that's why I haven't got any good ideas.”
Since we were all out of how-?to-?find-?Singh ideas, I asked Lula if she'd give me a ride so I could move my car to Joe's house.
“Hell yeah,” Lula said. “I could use some air. It's too nice to be inside on a day like today. And besides, it smells like leg of lamb in here. This office needs some ventilation.”