I took a cheese Danish. “Any new gossip?” I asked Grandma.
“Nothing worth repeating,” Grandma said. “This neighborhood is getting boring. Most of the mob has either died or moved away, and the young people just sit home frying their brains with their eyes glued to their smartphone screens. If you ask me, they’d be better off going out and stealing cars. At least they’d be learning a trade.”
“Do you remember Andy Manley?”
“Nutsy? Sure, I remember him,” Grandma said. “Double Dare Nutsy. He was a whack-a-doodle in school, but he turned out to have talent. He graduated with honors from clown school. His mother went to Florida for the graduation. She was real proud of him. It’s a shame it didn’t work out long-term. He had his heart set on traveling with a circus, but there’s not a lot of circuses anymore. I talked to his mother at bingo a while back, and she said the rent-a-clown job wasn’t emotionally rewarding to him.”
“So, he’s home now, right? He’s living with his parents?”
“Last I heard,” Grandma said. “Are you looking for him? I didn’t hear anything about him being arrested. Not lately anyway.”
“He was working as a security guard for Plover’s Jewelry and he disappeared after the robbery. Plover would like to talk to him, but he can’t find him.”
“And Plover hired you to find Nutsy?” Grandma asked.
I nodded.
“Hah!” Grandma said. “There’s a story here.” She leaned over the table at me and lowered her voice. “Are you going to come clean with me?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, that’s a bummer,” Grandma said. “I’m dying a slow death of boredom here.”
“Tell me about his parents.”
“Not much to tell. His father works at the personal products factory. Office job. Accounting or something. Isn’t Nutsy’s biggest fan. Didn’t go to his graduation in Florida. His mother, Celia, is sweet. She never wins at bingo, but you can’t hold that against her. It’s on account of she only plays two cards. She says she can’t keep track of more than that, but I think her husband is a cheapskate and has her on a tight budget.”
“Does she talk about Nutsy?”
“Not so much lately. I didn’t know he was working for Plover.”
“Does Nutsy have brothers or sisters?”
Grandma shook her head. “He’s an only child. It’s just him and the cats.”
“Cats?”
“Celia takes in cats. She fosters them from the shelter until they get forever homes.”
I took a plate of sausage and eggs from my mother. “And you haven’t heard anything about Nutsy going missing?”
“I didn’t hear anything about that,” Grandma said. “There’s been no talk at the bakery, and Celia hasn’t said anything at bingo. I imagine it isn’t unusual for Nutsy to go missing.”
My mother set her plate of eggs and sausage on the table and went to get coffee. Bob swooped in, snatched up the sausage, and ate it.
I snapped a leash to Bob’s collar and tied the leash to my chair. “Sorry,” I said to my mom. “You can have my sausage.”
“Not necessary,” she said. “There’s more in the fry pan, but honestly, he could use some table manners.”
“What are you doing today?” Grandma asked me. “Do you have any big-ticket bond jumpers?”
“Just Duncan Dugan. He’s the guy who held up Plover’s and got caught. He slipped and fell off a ledge yesterday and almost killed himself.”
“I saw it on the news last night,” Grandma said. “He crashed through the restaurant awning.”
“I’m going to check on him after breakfast. Is it okay if I leave Bob here for a few minutes while I go to the hospital? I don’t want to leave him in my apartment. Last time I did that he ate my couch.”
“I’ll keep my eye on him,” Grandma said. “I won’t let him near our couch.”
* * *
I finished breakfast and explained to Bob, who was still on the lookout for unattended sausages, that he had to be on his best behavior. I drove the short distance to the medical center, parked, and went to the front desk to get a status report on Duncan Dugan.
“He’s stable and out of the ICU,” the woman at reception said, handing me a visitor’s pass. “Second floor. The elevators are down the hall to the right.”
I grew up in the shadow of the hospital but for most of my life I only knew it from the outside. Now that I’m working for my cousin Vinnie in the bail bonds office, I’ve learned my way around the hospital innards. Mostly the prison ward and the ER.
I found my way to Dugan’s floor, bypassed the nurses’ station, and tracked down the room number I got at the downstairs desk. The door was open, and the room was empty. The bed was rumpled. An untouched breakfast tray was on the overbed table.
I retraced my steps to the nurses’ station and discovered Mary Jane Sokolowski at one of the computers. I went to high school with Mary Jane. She was now married and had two kids.
“Hey,” she said to me. “What’s up? Haven’t seen you since my sister’s baby shower.”
“I’m checking on Duncan Dugan. He’s not in his room.”
“Yeah, we made the same discovery about a half hour ago. He’s MIA. He left a note saying he felt better and he was going home.”
I went stupefied for a beat. “Excuse me?”
“I know,” she said. “He had a laundry list of injuries plus a compound fracture of the tibia and two cracked ribs. And he was zonked out on painkillers.”
“When was the last time someone saw him?”
“Not sure, but he was here at seven o’clock this morning. That was his last chart entry.”
“Do you think someone snatched him?”
She shrugged. “Don’t know. I can’t imagine him just walking out of here. We turned it over to security for follow-up.”
“No one saw him leave?”
“None of the nurses at this station saw him leave, and we checked all the other rooms on the floor. Security would know more.”
I went downstairs to security.
“I’m looking for Duncan Dugan,” I said to the uniform at the desk.
“Let me know if you find him,” he said. “We aren’t having any luck.”
I went back to my car and called the number Dugan had listed on his bond application. No answer. I banged my forehead against the steering wheel several times. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” I should have handcuffed him to the bed. I should have had him transferred to the prison ward.
My phone buzzed with a text message from my grandmother.
Bob just ate your father’s going to church shoes. Are you almost done at the hospital?
Ten minutes later, I was in my car, on my way to the office, with Bob sitting in the seat next to me.
“You shouldn’t have eaten the shoes,” I said to him. “That was really bad behavior.”
Truth is my father would probably be happy to have the shoes destroyed. The shoes were only worn at my mother’s insistence. Funerals, weddings, and Mass. My mother and grandmother went to Mass regularly. My father preferred to find God in places with more comfortable seating. Hence, the shoes were seldom out and about.
I parked behind Lula’s red Firebird, and Bob and I went into the office.