I drove back to Trenton, stopped at my mom’s house, and borrowed a mop, a bucket, and a cleaning caddy filled with a bunch of cleaning products.
“This here’s sexist,” Lula said. “Why do we have to be cleaning ladies?”
“Because we look like cleaning ladies. Do you have a better idea?”
“I was just sayin’. No need to get huffy. Usually, we’re ’hos when we go undercover. I’m good at being a ’ho.”
“I didn’t think ’ho would work here.”
“I guess you got a point.”
I found Brenda’s little green house, and I parked in the driveway. We went to the front door and rang the bell. No answer. I felt around the doorjamb for a key. Nothing. I scanned the ground for fake dog poop or a fake rock. Nada.
We carted our buckets and mops to the back and tried the back door. Locked. I lifted the doormat and looked under. There was the key. We opened the back door and walked into the kitchen. A couple bowls and coffee mugs in the sink. A box of cereal on the counter.
“What are we looking for?” Lula asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“That makes it easy,” Lula said.
It was a small, traditional ranch. Two bedrooms and one bath. Crammed with furniture. Probably whatever Brenda had loaded on a truck before the foreclosure police padlocked her out of her former house. There was a picture on an end table in the living room of Brenda and a young man. Her son, maybe. He was slim, with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing jeans and ratty sneakers and a brown T-shirt. They looked happy.
Brenda’s bedroom was as expected. Her closet stuffed with clothes. Shoes lined up everywhere. A bureau crammed with undies, dressy T-shirts, sweaters. The top of the bureau loaded with hair products, nail polish, a professional makeup chest, a spice-scented candle. A jewelry chest containing costume jewelry. So far no pictures of her and Crick. No engagement ring in the jewelry box.
I moved to the bathroom. Medicine chest stuffed with over-the-counter decongestants, pain pills, laxatives, antacids, sleep aids, diet aids. Some makeup scattered on one side of the sink. Hairbrush, hairspray. Electric toothbrush. A second toothbrush, small tube of toothpaste, razor, and travel-size shave gel on the other side of the sink. Man stuff. Toilet seat up. Damp towel on the floor in front of the tub and shower. Definitely a guy here.
The second bedroom was being used. Bed unmade. Laptop on the bed. Men’s flip-flops on the floor, along with tropical-themed boxer shorts. Backpack in the corner, partially stuffed with clothes. Nothing hanging in the closet. Nothing in the small chest of drawers.
“Somebody living with Brenda,” Lula said.
“She has a twenty-one-year-old son. Jason. I’m guessing he’s visiting. Doesn’t look like he’s planning an extended stay.”
“That’s nice he’s visiting his mama, though. It’s gotta be hard when your kid grows up and leaves.”
I looked over at Lula. She never talked about kids.
“Would you like to have kids someday?” I asked her.
“I don’t think I can have kids,” Lula said. “Remember, I was hurt when I was a ’ho. I would have died if you hadn’t found me and saved me.”
“You could adopt.”
“I don’t know if anybody’d let me.”
“You’d be a wonderful mom.”
“I’d love the shit out of a kid,” Lula said. “I’d try real hard. I never knew much about my own mom. She was a crackhead ’ho, and she overdosed on heroin when I was young. I was a better ’ho than her, on account of I never did the drugs like that.”
I walked out of the bedroom, past a closet that held a washer and dryer. A few more steps down the hall, and I came to another door. I opened the door and peeked in. Garage. It looked like there was a car under a tarp. I switched the lights on, lifted the tarp, and gave a low whistle.
“That’s a Ferrari,” Lula said. “It’s no ordinary Ferrari, either. It’s one of them special-edition ones. This is a majorly expensive car. I bet Brenda has a orgasm drivin’ this car.”
“She doesn’t drive this car,” I said. “It hasn’t got plates.”
“Then I bet she has a orgasm sitting in it in the garage.”
We grabbed our buckets and mops, I locked Brenda’s house, and we got into my truck.