“Are you coming in?” I asked Cam when he didn’t shut off the car.
Cam slung an arm over Zoey’s seat back. “I’m gonna driveZoey back to her place first. Can I catch up with you in a couple of hours?” There was a sweetness to his giddy blush, and I hadn’t missed the adoring way they’d been looking at each other during the drive.
Cam was eighteen years old, a grown adult. He didn’t need to ask my permission, and I wasn’t sure he was, but it sounded like he might be and something about that was endearing. “Sure. I’m heading back to Virginia this afternoon. You can follow me if you want. I’ll spring for burgers on the way. No onions this time.”
He smiled. “Sounds great. Thanks, Mrs. D.”
I followed Vero up the driveway as she rummaged in her pocket for her house key. She paused. Her eyes did a quick pass over the mailbox, the garage door, and all the windows.
“Do you smell something?” Her nose wrinkled.
I sniffed, catching the faint hint of something foul. The smell grew stronger as we followed it toward the front door. A paper grocery bag sat in the mulch bed beside the stoop, and a disposable lighter lay abandoned beside it. It didn’t take much guesswork to figure out what was in the bag. “That shit-slinging son of a bitch! He must have heard Cam’s car coming and took off before we spotted him.”
“Then he can’t be far. You check the woods, I’ll check the street!” I ran to the corner and looked both ways down the sidewalk while Vero peeled off and circled around to the backyard.
There was no sign of anyone. No cars burning rubber out of the neighborhood. Nobody running.
“Anything?” Vero asked, breathing hard when we met back at the stoop.
“Nothing,” I said.
Vero nearly gagged, turning her face away from the stench as she picked up the bag of dog poop and carried it gingerly to the trash bin beside the garage. She paused in front of it, frowningdown at the empty space in the driveway where her mother usually parked her station wagon. “Where’s my mom’s car?”
“Maybe she and Gloria left early for work?”
“She and Gloria don’t need to be at the hospital for another two hours. And there’s no way she would have left for work before reaming me out for leaving this house and staying out all night. Something’s wrong.”
She hurried back to the stoop and opened the front door. Javi blinked at us with wide, frantic eyes from the recliner. A strip of duct tape covered his mouth. Most of the rest of the roll had been wound around his body, anchoring his arms tightly to his sides. His crutches leaned against a far wall, beyond his reach. He shouted something unintelligible through the duct tape. A game show played loudly on the television, and the room looked like a tornado had blown through it.
Lenore glanced up at us from behind a handful of cards. “You’re back! We were getting worried.”
Wendell sat beside her, sneaking peeks at her cards with his one good eye. There were four open pizza boxes on the coffee table in front of them, dotted with crumbs. A knife coated in dried cheese and tomato sauce sat beside several empty liters of soda, crumpled receipts, a wallet, a key ring, and a bowl of greasy popcorn seeds. In the middle of the mess were two piles of playing cards.
Joan was asleep on the love seat, her cards spilling from the hand on her belly and her cannula vibrating with her open-mouthed snores. Eugene was wedged in the seat beside her, studying his own cards.
“Took you long enough,” he groused. “If I’d known this was going to be an overnight job, I would have negotiated a higher fee.”
Vero’s eyes darted frantically around the room. A stack of old DVDs was sitting open on the TV, and there were mountains ofdirty dishes and cups and empty chip bags on the side tables. It looked like a frat party in a retirement home. Pillows and blankets were strewn all over the floor. One of them was moving.
I hoped we wouldn’t find a stripper sleeping underneath it as Vero yanked up the corner of the blanket.
A terrified young man stared back at us. His wrists and ankles were duct-taped together, and his mouth was taped shut. He began thrashing against the blanket and shouting into his duct tape.
“Who’s this?” Vero asked the Fantastic Four.
Lenore looked surprised. “Oh, I almost forgot! We caught this hooligan leaving a bag of dog doo in front of your mother’s door last night.”
Wendell looked offended. “What do you meanwe?”
Lenore slapped down her cards. “It was a team effort. We all worked together to catch him. It was getting late,” she explained to us, “and I’d gone into your mother’s bedroom to get some blankets because Eugene’s hip acts up when he gets cold and Wendell wanted to take a nap. That’s when I spotted something moving outside the window. It looked like someone was sneaking around the side of the house. I ran downstairs and told the others. We peeked out through the front window and saw this young man getting ready to light that nasty bag on fire.”
“I opened the door and started shouting at him,” Wendell said. “I scared him so bad, he dropped his lighter. He turned to run, so I tripped him with my cane! Then Eugene trapped him against the ground with his walker and sat on it while Joan went to find the duct tape.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” Wendell said. “We asked him what he’s doing here, but he wouldn’t say, so we emptied his pockets and checked his ID. He ain’t from this neighborhood. All we found were hiskeys and some old receipts,” he said, gesturing to the mess on the table.
“And plenty of cash,” Eugene said. “We used that to order more pizza.”
