“At least she knows what she’s doing when it comes to stealing cannoli,” Lula said. “And that bakery on Nottingham was a good choice. They make excellent cannoli. And they stuff them with all kinds of shit, too. Not just the usual stuff.”
I left Ranger’s two-seater Porsche at the office and took Lula and the Buick. Gloria lived in Hamilton Township. I knew the area. Classic suburbia. Three-bedroom, two-bath ranch houses built in the sixties. Enough yard for a swing set. A driveway but no garage.
Her house was painted a cheerful yellow and white. A Honda Civic was parked in the driveway. Lula and I went to the door and rang the bell.
“This here’s a house where happy people live,” Lula said. “I can tell these things. I got a good feeling about this house. This woman probably just accidentally left her purse at home and needed to celebrate something with a pastry. I know the feeling. I’ve been there a couple times myself. ’Course I never robbed a store for a pastry, but only because I never forgot my purse.”
I rang a second time, the door opened, and a fiend from hell looked out at us. She vaguely resembled the booking photo, but her hair was way beyond bed head, she had dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, she had a huge herpes sore at the corner of her mouth, and she was wearing a pink flannel nightgown with what looked like gravy stains splotching the front of it. Her nose was running, and she had a balled-up tissue in her hand.
“What?” she asked.
“Whoa,” Lula said, backing up.
I held my ground. “Gloria Grimley?”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.” And she burst into tears. “F-f-f-fine.”
“Where’s the happy people in this house?” Lula asked. “I was pretty sure this was a happy house.”
“The son of a bitch left me,” Gloria said, sniffing up some snot. “Just like that. One minute everything is roses, then he says he’s met someone else, and he’s sure she’s his soulmate. Can you believe that?”
“What about this here cheerful house?” Lula asked.
“Rented,” she said. “I’m stuck with a year’s lease.”
“Good news,” Lula said. “You’re up for armed robbery. By the time you get out of the pokey, your lease will be up.”
This got another giant sob.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any of those cannoli left,” Lula said.
“I ate them,” Gloria said. “All of them. I was depressed.”
“I saw the report, and that was a lot of cannoli,” Lula said.
Gloria looked down at her nightgown. “Tell me about it. This is the only thing that fits.”
“We need to take you downtown to get you rebooked and rebonded out,” I said to Gloria. “It would be good if you could find something else to wear.”
“Maybe you got some big-ass sweatpants or something,” Lula said.
Gloria shuffled off to her bedroom and came back minutes later in jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans were only zipped halfway.
“That’s got a advantage,” Lula said, “being that you won’t have to give them your belt.”
“I forgot something,” Gloria said.
She turned, went back into her bedroom, and Bang! Lula and I went dead still.
“Oh crap,” Lula said.
Bang, bang, bang!
We ran to the bedroom and found Gloria pumping half a clip into a picture of her ex-husband.
She dropped the gun onto the floor, turned, and mooned the picture and farted.
Lula and I took a step back.
“Sorry,” Gloria said. “I get gas when I eat too much sugar.”
We loaded Gloria into the Buick, and I called Connie on our way to the municipal building so she could rebond Gloria. An hour later we were all back at the office. Connie was at her computer. Lula was on the couch reading Star magazine. I was looking at used cars on Craigslist.
The door crashed open and Briggs staggered in, dragging his duffel bag. His hair was sticking out every which way, his eyes were bugged out, and he had black sooty smudges all over his face and clothes.
“Someone blew up my car,” he said. “Lucky I wasn’t in it. I have one of those remote starters so I can get the air-conditioning going if I want. I pushed the starter when I came out of my cousin’s house and kaboom. It knocked me on my ass.”
“Your ass is pretty close to the ground anyways,” Lula said.
“It was a big fireball,” Briggs said. “If I was any closer I’d be a cinder now.”
“So how come you got your duffel bag with you?” Lula asked.
“It’s my clothes. My cousin kicked me out of his house, being that someone still wants to kill me.”
“Oh no,” I said. “No, no, no, no.”
“You gotta help me out,” Briggs said. “It must not have been Poletti. I need a safe place to live.”
“How about Florida?” I said. “You could rent a condo somewhere on a bus line so you don’t need a car.”
“I don’t want to live in Florida. It’s too hot. And they have big bugs and alligators.”
“You want to see a big bug, you should go into the storeroom here,” Lula said. “There’s the roach that ate Tokyo back there.”
“I don’t get it,” Briggs said. “I was sure it was Poletti. He tried to run me over. I saw him.”
“Who else’s wife did you sleep with?” Lula asked.
“Recently?”
Lula turned to me. “And we’re supposed to be keeping him from getting a rocket up his butt why?”