“Exactly,” Vinnie said. “So what's your point?”
“Fine!” I shouted. “Just keep her out of my way! I hate Joyce Barnhardt!”
And everybody knew why. At the tender age of twenty-?four, after less than a year of marriage, I'd caught Joyce bare-?assed on my dining room table, playing hide-?the-?salami with my husband. It was the only time she'd ever done me a favor. We'd gone through school together, where she'd spread rumors, told fibs, ruined friendships and peeked under the stall doors in the girls' bathroom to see people's underpants.
She'd been a fat kid with a terrible overbite. The overbite had been minimalized by braces, and by the time Joyce was fifteen she'd trimmed down to look like Barbie on steroids. She had chemically enhanced red hair done up in big teased curls. Her nails were long and painted, her lips were high gloss, her eyes were rimmed in navy liquid liner, her lashes gunked up with blue-?black mascara. She was an inch shorter than me, five pounds heavier and had me beat by two cup sizes. She had three ex-?husbands and no children. It was rumored she had sex with large dogs.
Joyce and Vinnie were a match made in heaven. Too bad Vinnie was already married to a perfectly nice woman whose father happened to be Harry the Hammer. Harry's job description read “expediter,” and Harry spent a lot of his time in the presence of men who wore fedoras and long black overcoats.
“Just do your job,” Vinnie said. “Be a professional.” He waved his hand at Connie. “Give her something. Give her that new skip we just got in.”
Connie took a manila folder from her desktop. “Maxine Nowicki. Charged with stealing her former boyfriend's car. Posted bond with us and failed to show for her court appearance.”
By securing a cash bond Nowicki had been free to leave the lockup behind and return to society at large while awaiting trial. Now she'd failed to appear. Or in bounty-?hunter speak, she was FTA. This lapse of judicial etiquette changed Nowicki's status to felon and had my cousin Vinnie worrying that the court might see fit to keep his bond money.
As a bond enforcement officer I was expected to find Nowicki and bring her back into the system. For performing this service in a timely manner I'd get ten percent of her bond amount. Pretty good money since this sounded like a domestic dispute, and I didn't think Maxine Nowicki would be interested in blowing the back of my head off with a .45 hollow tip.
I riffled through the paperwork, which consisted of Nowicki's bond agreement, a photo, and a copy of the police report.
“Know what I'd do?” Lula said. “I'd talk to the boyfriend. Anybody pissed off enough to get his girlfriend arrested for stealing his car is pissed off enough to snitch on her. Probably he's just waiting to tell someone where to go find her.”
It was my thought too. I read aloud from Nowicki's charge sheet. “Edward Kuntz. Single white male. Age twenty-?seven. Residing at Seventeen Muffet Street. Says here he's a cook.”
* * * * *
I PARKED in front of Kuntz's house and wondered about the man inside. The house was white clapboard with aqua trim around the windows and tangerine paint on the door. It was half of a well-?cared-?for duplex with a minuscule front yard. A three-?foot-?tall statue of the Virgin Mary dressed in pale blue and white had been planted on the perfectly clipped patch of lawn. A carved wood heart with red lettering and little white daisies had been hung on the neighboring door, proclaiming that the Glicks lived there. The Kuntz side was free of ornamentation.
I followed the sidewalk to the porch, which had been carpeted in green indoor-?outdoor carpet, and rang the Kuntz doorbell. The door opened and a sweaty, muscle-?bulging, half-?naked man looked out at me. “What?”
“Eddie Kuntz?”
“Yeah?”
I passed him my business card. “Stephanie Plum. I'm a bond enforcement officer, and I'm looking for Maxine Nowicki. I was hoping you could help me.”
“You bet I can help you. She took my car. Can you believe it?” He jerked his stubbled chin toward the curb. “That's it right there. Lucky for her she didn't scratch it up. The cops
picked her up driving through town in it, and they brought the car back to me.”
I glanced back at the car. A white Chevy Blazer. Freshly washed. I almost was tempted to steal it myself.
“You were living together?”
“Well, yeah, for a while. About four months. And then we had this disagreement, and next thing I know, she's gone with my car. It wasn't that I wanted her arrested . . . it was just that I wanted my car back. That was why I called the police. I wanted my car.”
“Do you have any idea where she might be now?”
“No. I tried to get in touch with her to sort of patch things up, but I couldn't find her. She quit her job at the diner and nobody's seen her. I stopped around her apartment a couple times, and there was never anybody home. I tried calling her mother. I called a couple of her girlfriends. No one seems to know anything. I guess they could have been lying to me, but I don't think so.” He winked at me. “Women don't lie to me, you know what I mean?”
“No,” I said. “I don't know what you mean.”
“Well, I don't like to brag, but I have a way with women.”
“Uh huh.” It must have been the pungent aroma they found so attractive. Or maybe the overdeveloped, steroid-?pumped muscles that made him look like he needed a bra. Or maybe it was the way he couldn't conduct a conversation without scratching his balls.
“So what can I do for you?” Kuntz asked.
Half an hour later I left with a list of Maxine's friends and relatives. I knew where Maxine banked, bought her booze, shopped for groceries, dry-?cleaned her clothes and had her hair done. Kuntz promised to call me if he heard from Maxine, and I'd promised to reciprocate in kind if I turned up anything interesting. Of course, I'd had my fingers crossed when I'd made the promise. I suspected Eddie Kuntz's way with women was to make them run screaming in the opposite direction.