Hardcore Twenty-Four (Stephanie Plum 24)

SIXTEEN

LULA WAS WAITING in the cemetery parking lot.

“What’s going on in there?” she asked.

“Not much. They’re doing their cop thing.”

“Any sign of Slick?”

“No, but the police are just starting to look.”

“What about us?”

“We’re going to look for Johnny Chucci.”

“I think his brother was telling us a fib, and Johnny’s with him. Johnny was driving his car. And I’d talk to the ex-wife. I bet he’s creeping around her house, looking in her windows. We should go there at night. That’s when obsessed lunatics go creeping. Only thing is I don’t know if I want to go out at night, what with the zombies roaming everywhere. Have you noticed they’re all over Trenton? I’d think they’d stay close to their cemetery. I mean, how did they get to the hardware store? Do they drive? Do they have zombie cars? Do they cart their decapitated heads around in cabs or Uber cars?”

I hadn’t thought about it. It was a good question.

Ranger called on my cellphone. “Babe, your car is at the police station, but your messenger bag is at the cemetery on Morley Street.”

“I kind of punted a zombie off the right front quarter panel yesterday. The police are looking at the car for DNA and stuff.”

There was silence on Ranger’s end, and I thought I caught a single burst of muffled laughter.

“Are you laughing?” I asked him.

“Yes. What happened to the zombie?”

“He disappeared.”

“Hard to take down a zombie,” Ranger said. “Was the car totaled?”

“No. I’m still working on that.”

“Counting down the days,” Ranger said.

• • •

I drove past Little Pinkie’s gym on my way to the Burg.

“I don’t see a silver Honda in the lot,” Lula said. “Are we going to stop in again?”

“No. Johnny isn’t going to be at the gym, and Little Pinkie isn’t going to help me find him. I’m going to take another look at Little Pinkie’s house, and then I’m going to talk to the ex-wife.”

“I like that plan. I’m interested in the ex-wife. What would possess a woman to take up painting gnomes? It’s sick, but in a good way, you see what I’m saying? I think she must be a unique individual.”

It was almost eleven o’clock by the time I cruised past Little Pinkie’s house. A driveway led to a detached single-car garage that sat at the back of the property. There were no cars in front of the house and no cars in the driveway. I circled the block and parked one house down from Little Pinkie on the same side of the road.

Lula and I went to the door and rang the bell. No one answered, but the dog repeated his barking, snarling routine. Lula walked around and looked in the first-floor windows. I walked back to the garage and looked in the single grimy side-door window. We met back at the front of the house.

“Well?” Lula asked.

“The garage is empty. No car.”

“And I didn’t see any people. I guess someone could be upstairs, but there was nothing that said a freeloading guest was hanging out.”

I cut across the Burg to the ex-wife’s, and we picked our way through the gnomes to the front door.