“I have some things to catch up on, too. We can get back to Oswald over dinner.”
“Not tonight. It’s Friday. I always eat dinner with my parents on Friday.”
“No problem. Tell them to set another plate.”
“Bad idea. Friday is a date night with Morelli. We have dinner with my parents and then Morelli sleeps over.”
“Could your life get any more tedious?”
“It’s not tedious. It’s comfortable and satisfying.”
Diesel grinned. “Like an old shoe?”
“Like a cashmere shawl,” I said. “All warm and wonderful when you wrap it around you.”
“I’m going to gag.”
“Not in my car. Get out and gag and we can reconnect tomorrow.”
* * *
Connie was alone in the office. No Lula and no Vinnie.
“Do you think my relationship with Morelli is tedious?” I asked her.
“I can’t imagine anything being tedious with Morelli,” Connie said. “He gives hot a whole new meaning.”
“We might be in too much of a routine. Like, every Friday we have dinner with my parents.”
“Lucky you,” Connie said. “You don’t have to cook and then you get to take a bag of leftovers and Morelli home with you. It sounds good to me.”
The front door banged open and Lula marched in.
“Look at this,” she said, pointing at her hair. “How am I supposed to live with this?”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“It’s brown,” Lula said. “Have you ever seen me with brown hair? No. I’m supposed to have fabulous and outrageous hair. This hair is normal. Even the cut is normal. And do you know why I’m looking like this? It’s because my regular girl, Shanesha, left the salon and when I went in just now, I had to get my hair done by the new girl, Amy. I just don’t think anyone named Amy could understand my hair needs.”
“Okay, but the good news is that you don’t have a bat in it,” I said.
“That’s true,” Lula said. “You always gotta look at the good news. Do we have any good news besides the bat? How’s it going with Oswald Wednesday? Did you find him?”
“No,” I said, “but we have some leads. And Diesel said Oswald likes pain. I thought you might know some specialists.”
“I can ask around,” Lula said. “The S&M trade isn’t as profitable as it used to be, being that the world is so depressing most people are self-inflicting these days.”
I pulled the two new files out of my messenger bag. “I thought we could look for one of these guys. We’ve got a duck roaster and an indecent exposure. Pick one.”
“I’m up for the indecent exposure,” Lula said. “We always have good luck with them.”
I paged through the file. “Camden Krick. Self-employed. Lives in an apartment in Hamilton Township. Thirty-six years old. He looks average in his photo.”
“What’s his story?” Lula asked Connie.
“I don’t know,” Connie said. “He has no history. Vinnie wrote the bond, and Vinnie is in Miami doing an out-of-state felon pickup.”
“Maybe I should go home first and change my clothes,” Lula said. “I’m not put together right. My hair is all wrong for my clothes. I need lawyer clothes.”
“You’re not a lawyer.”
“No,” Lula said, “but this hair makes me look like a lawyer. And I can feel my brain synapses firing away under this hair. It’s like they aren’t distracted by fun and fashion.”
I hiked my messenger bag up on my shoulder. “I’m going after Camden Krick. Are you coming?”
“I suppose I am,” Lula said, “but I feel all discombobulated.”
I drove to a garden apartment complex in Hamilton Township and parked in a slot reserved for Krick’s apartment. He had a ground floor unit in the middle of a row of apartments.
“This is a nice place,” Lula said, “but it doesn’t have any personality. All the buildings look the same and there’s no landscaping. They should at least let people paint their front doors representative colors. Like, some people would want their door to be sunshine yellow and you’d know right off that you were going to like that person. Or if someone painted their door black and purple, you might not want to knock on that door. Or if you did knock, you would know to bring the occupant some antidepressants. There could be rainbow doors and doors painted to look like hemp. You see what I’m saying? This lawyer hair is making me feel real entrepreneurial. I’ve got a bunch of insightful ideas.”