“How did you quit?”
“I traded in my cigarettes for a vibrator. I got a dandy little battery job that I carry in my purse, and when I feel the urge to light up I just stick this thing against my lady parts and buzz myself into relaxation and happiness. Personally I don’t get the whole e-cigarette thing. I mean, if you’re going mechanical wouldn’t you rather put those batteries to work on your pleasure bean?”
I was speechless. I was raised Catholic, and this was way outside my comfort zone. Okay, so I know about the pleasure bean, but the last thing I wanted to think about was Lula’s pleasure bean. It was probably the size of a duck egg. I tried to shake the image out of my head, but it was stuck there. I was going to have to go home and pour bleach into my brain.
“So anyways,” Lula said. “Do you think Jennifer Aniston should get a unicorn tattoo?”
I didn’t have strong feelings about it one way or the other. I personally had never been a big unicorn person, but who am I to impose my views on Jennifer Aniston?
I settled into one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in front of Connie’s desk and looked over Larry Virgil’s file. Nothing new jumped out at me, and the questions that arose weren’t about Larry Virgil. They were about the truck and the frozen man. Surely by now the truck driver had been questioned. Was he a suspect? Had he known there was a dead guy in his truck? How the heck could this have happened?
“You look like you got a lot of thinking going on,” Lula said. “You must care a lot about Jennifer Aniston.”
“I was thinking about the frozen man. It really bothers me that he was dressed up like a Bogart Bar. I know this is weird, but it feels like a personal insult. Like someone disrespected the Bogart Bar.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Lula said. “Maybe it was a homage to a Bogart Bar. Maybe the killer liked this man and wanted to make him look like his childhood favorite memory.”
“The killer killed him! That’s not something you do to someone you like.”
“I see what you’re saying, but maybe being turned into a Bogart Bar is one of the hazards of working in a ice cream factory. Not that I’d let it stop me on account of ice cream factory employment’s on my bucket list.”
“I didn’t know you liked ice cream that much. I always thought of you as fried chicken and donuts.”
“I’m a complex person,” Lula said. “I got a lot of stuff going on. You haven’t even seen the tip of my iceberg yet. One of my goals is to be a TV star.”
“I thought you wanted to be a supermodel.”
“Yeah, but that’s all yesterday. It’s about being a reality TV star now. It’s only a matter of time before I have my own show. I got two ideas, and we’re about to start shooting some demo reels. That’s how you get on these shows. You gotta shoot a demo reel.”
“What show do you want to be on?”
“Well, one is my own original idea and the other one is Naked and Afraid. I’m hookin’ up with Randy Briggs.”
Randy Briggs is thirty-six inches tall and has the personality of a junkyard dog.
“You hate Randy Briggs,” I told Lula.
“Exactly. That’s what makes it so good. There’s instant drama, you see what I’m sayin’? We got the idea from Saturday Night Live. The sexy little guy from Game of Thrones did this Naked and Afraid skit with Leslie Jones, and it was dope.”
“So you’re going to rip off Saturday Night Live?”
“You got it. Brilliant, right?”
“Probably some people have already submitted reels for that.”
“It don’t matter, ’cause ours is so awesome. And we got a twist on it. Ours is Naked and Afraid in Trenton. It’s gonna be the city version.”
“I don’t think you can go around naked in Trenton.”
“Yeah, but we’re only shooting at night. By the time we get reported to the police we’ll be long gone, swallowed up in the shadows. Randy might have problems with that on account of he got pasty white skin and washed-out sandy hair, but I disappear real good in a shadow.”
“What’s your original idea?”
“I can’t tell you, but it’s huge. It’s gonna way top Naked and Afraid. We don’t want it to leak out, so I can only tell you it involves bathrooms. When we get ready to start shooting I might bring you along as a extra cameraperson. We don’t want to miss a instant of reality. We could use a backup camera.”
I’d rather be abducted by aliens than film a reality show involving bathrooms and Lula.
“Gee, look at the time,” I said. “This doesn’t seem to be a big day for desperados, so I should get moving on. I need to stop in and say hello to my mom. And then there’s Larry Virgil still out there. And I might make a run to the supermarket.”
“If I was you I’d be taking a nap this afternoon so I could keep up with Ranger on your midnight rendezvous.”
“It’s not a rendezvous. It’s a workplace orientation.”
FIVE
I LEFT THE bail bonds office in Chambersburg and drove the short distance to my parents’ house. They live in a small two-story duplex that shares a wall with its mirror image. The mirror image is occupied by an elderly woman who bakes coffee cakes all day and feeds them to the birds that leave droppings all over her back stoop. My parents’ house has a postage stamp front yard, a narrow front porch spanning the width of their house, and a bare-bones unused backyard.
There are three small bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Downstairs has a shotgun living room, dining room, and kitchen. The rooms are crammed with comfortable, unfashionable furniture. End tables are filled with photographs, candy dishes, and assorted treasures brought back from vacations at Seaside Heights, Atlantic City, and the Poconos. The kitchen has a little wooden table with four straight-back chairs, a ten-year-old Kenmore stove that turns out perfect pineapple upside-down cake, and enough room along one wall to set up the ironing board.
My Grandma Mazur lives with my parents. She moved in when Grandpa moved into Hotel Heaven, and she never moved out. Sometimes at the dinner table my father’s knuckles turn white as he grips his fork and sneaks a look at Grandma, and we all keep a close watch on him that he doesn’t launch himself across the table at her. I like Grandma a lot. Of course, I don’t have to live with her.
I parked in front of the house, and Grandma Mazur appeared at the front door before I even got out of my car.
“I had this feeling,” she said when she let me in. “I said to myself I bet Stephanie’s going to stop by. And here you are.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“It’s not amazing,” my mother called from the kitchen. “She’s been standing staring out the door for hours.”
“Well, you never know,” Grandma said.
Grandma Mazur is a slightly shrunken, slack-skinned, gray-haired version of my mother. She keeps her hair short and curled. She wears bright lipstick and white tennis shoes, and she’s one of only two women in America still wearing pastel-colored polyester pantsuits. She carries a purse that is big enough to hold her .45 long-barrel S&W.
“Did you already have lunch?” Grandma asked. “We got fresh olive loaf from Giovichinni’s if you want a sandwich. And we got some cookies from the Italian bakery.”
“Cookies,” I said, hanging my messenger bag off the back of a kitchen chair. “I had lunch with Lula.”
“The phone’s been ringing all day,” Grandma said, bringing the box of cookies to the table. “And we had a photographer from the paper take a picture of the front of the house. You’re famous. I wouldn’t be surprised if you got a call from Geraldo.”
My mother was furiously ironing a shirt.
“How long has she been ironing that shirt?” I asked Grandma.
“At least an hour,” Grandma said. “She started just after the photographer showed up.”
When my mother’s blood pressure goes into the red zone she irons. Thursday morning is her usual ironing day. If you see her ironing any other time it’s not a good sign.