Explosive Eighteen - Janet Evanovich [75]
“I don’t know.”
“That makes it easy,” Lula said.
It was a small, traditional ranch. Two bedrooms and one bath. Crammed with furniture. Probably whatever Brenda had loaded on a truck before the foreclosure police padlocked her out of her former house. There was a picture on an end table in the living room of Brenda and a young man. Her son, maybe. He was slim, with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing jeans and ratty sneakers and a brown T-shirt. They looked happy.
Brenda’s bedroom was as expected. Her closet stuffed with clothes. Shoes lined up everywhere. A bureau crammed with undies, dressy T-shirts, sweaters. The top of the bureau loaded with hair products, nail polish, a professional makeup chest, a spice-scented candle. A jewelry chest containing costume jewelry. So far no pictures of her and Crick. No engagement ring in the jewelry box.
I moved to the bathroom. Medicine chest stuffed with over-the-counter decongestants, pain pills, laxatives, antacids, sleep aids, diet aids. Some makeup scattered on one side of the sink. Hairbrush, hairspray. Electric toothbrush. A second toothbrush, small tube of toothpaste, razor, and travel-size shave gel on the other side of the sink. Man stuff. Toilet seat up. Damp towel on the floor in front of the tub and shower. Definitely a guy here.
The second bedroom was being used. Bed unmade. Laptop on the bed. Men’s flip-flops on the floor, along with tropical-themed boxer shorts. Backpack in the corner, partially stuffed with clothes. Nothing hanging in the closet. Nothing in the small chest of drawers.
“Somebody living with Brenda,” Lula said.
“She has a twenty-one-year-old son. Jason. I’m guessing he’s visiting. Doesn’t look like he’s planning an extended stay.”
“That’s nice he’s visiting his mama, though. It’s gotta be hard when your kid grows up and leaves.”
I looked over at Lula. She never talked about kids.
“Would you like to have kids someday?” I asked her.
“I don’t think I can have kids,” Lula said. “Remember, I was hurt when I was a ’ho. I would have died if you hadn’t found me and saved me.”
“You could adopt.”
“I don’t know if anybody’d let me.”
“You’d be a wonderful mom.”
“I’d love the shit out of a kid,” Lula said. “I’d try real hard. I never knew much about my own mom. She was a crackhead ’ho, and she overdosed on heroin when I was young. I was a better ’ho than her, on account of I never did the drugs like that.”
I walked out of the bedroom, past a closet that held a washer and dryer. A few more steps down the hall, and I came to another door. I opened the door and peeked in. Garage. It looked like there was a car under a tarp. I switched the lights on, lifted the tarp, and gave a low whistle.
“That’s a Ferrari,” Lula said. “It’s no ordinary Ferrari, either. It’s one of them special-edition ones. This is a majorly expensive car. I bet Brenda has a orgasm drivin’ this car.”
“She doesn’t drive this car,” I said. “It hasn’t got plates.”
“Then I bet she has a orgasm sitting in it in the garage.”
We grabbed our buckets and mops, I locked Brenda’s house, and we got into my truck.
“I’m tired of fooling around with this,” I said to Lula. “This is bullshit. I’m going to Brenda, and I want answers.”
“Wham,” Lula said. “Kick ass.”
I motored out of Brenda’s neighborhood, took Route 1, and turned into The Hair Barn’s parking lot.
“I’m coming with you,” Lula said. “I don’t want to miss anything.”
“There won’t be much to miss. I just want to talk to her.”
“Yeah, but if she won’t talk, we’ll rough her up.”
“We will not rough her up.”
“Jeez Louise,” Lula said. “It’s no wonder you go around in the dark all the time. You got a lot of rules.”
Brenda was sitting in her styling chair when I walked into the salon.
“You came back,” she said. “You decided to get something done with your hair, right?”
“Wrong,” I said. “We need to talk.”
“I don’t need to talk anymore. I don’t care about the photograph. You can keep it.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Well if you did have it, you could keep it,” Brenda said. “It’s not important to me.”
“What about Ritchy?”