Truth is, the whole thing hadn’t been as satisfying as I’d hoped, and I couldn’t imagine being in the back room of a bakery making cakes all day. I clearly was no Julia Child. And for sure I was no Martha Stewart.
I helped my mother clear the table and I paused in the kitchen to check my email. Two emails from Valerie with pictures of her kids. An email from Connie saying a new FTA had come in. And an email from Gobbles saying he wanted to talk to me. I emailed back asking when and where, and he answered that he wanted to meet me behind the Zeta house at ten o’clock. Good deal!
I pulled Lula aside and told her about the email.
“I’m in,” Lula said. “We’re gonna bust him.”
“Don’t you find it strange that he wants to talk?”
“He’s probably just tired of being on the run.”
“He could go to the police station and turn himself in. He doesn’t need me.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know that.”
“He’s not stupid. And he has his girlfriend helping him. And she’s not stupid.”
“So what are you saying?”
“It feels complicated.”
“Say what?”
I handed Lula a towel and we started drying the dishes my mom was washing.
“I just don’t want to go all animal on him,” I said. “I want to give him a chance to talk.”
“I get that,” Lula said. “I’m all about that.”
“No shooting.”
“Sure. Unless it’s necessary.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”
“Yeah, but if it is.”
“It won’t be.”
“Boy, you know how to take the fun out of stuff. What are we gonna do until ten o’clock? I wouldn’t mind going to the mall. Macy’s is having a shoe sale.”
“I can’t go to the mall like this. I’ve got chocolate cake batter all over my shirt.”
“It balances out the bruise and the pimple,” Lula said. “You don’t know what to look at first. It’s one of them things that confuses the senses. It could be a signature look for you.”
“How about if you go to the mall without me, and pick me up at nine o’clock.”
SEVENTEEN
LULA AND I parked in the student center lot at nine-thirty and walked across campus to the Zeta house. It was a dark moonless night. It was midweek and you might think Kiltman students would all be studying. Wrong. Half of Kiltman was at the Zeta house. Lights were blazing and a band was playing. We walked onto the porch and looked in at the band. Keyboard, two guitars, and a drummer.
“They aren’t bad,” Lula said, “but that drummer isn’t no Brian Dunne.”
“Do you see anyone in there who looks like Christopher Robin?”
“No. It’s too packed to see anything.”
We left the porch and walked around the side of the house. Gobbles said he’d meet me in the back. It was pitch-black at the back of the house. No exterior lighting and not a lot of light spilling out windows. They had a bunch of bushes that hadn’t been maintained.