I got a call from Diggery.
“I’ve got someone for you to look at,” Diggery said. “I happened to know about a shallow grave and thought I’d go investigate. I got him dug up, but I couldn’t see the spider tattoo on account of the worms got to his hands, but I figure he’s about the right size.”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a look,” I said.
“It’s the road before mine. It doesn’t look like much of a road but there’s a couple homes on it. I’m standing at the end of the road. I’m the one with the shovel. Snacker is here with me too.”
“Does the road have a name?”
“Not that I know, but there’s a couple mailboxes and a refrigerator at the start of the road. The refrigerator doesn’t look all that bad to me, but no one seems to want it. I’d take it but I don’t have room for another refrigerator.”
“I’m about a half hour away,” I said.
“Snacker and me will be waiting on you.”
* * *
Lula was in the front seat next to me, scanning the road for refrigerators.
“It’s dark as a witch’s you-know-what here,” Lula said. “I can’t hardly see anything.”
“We’re coming up to Diggery’s street,” I said. “It’s about a quarter mile away.”
“There it is,” Lula said. “There’s the mailboxes and the refrigerator. It looks like a pretty good refrigerator. Now that your lights are shining on it, I can see it’s got some rust. And there’s a couple raccoons eyeing it up.”
I turned down the street and crept along. The road was dirt and there were no lights. We passed a couple small bungalows that had trucks in the front yard. Diggery and Snacker were standing at the end of the road, leaning on their shovels. I pulled to the side and parked.
We all got out and said hello to Diggery and Snacker.
“This guy looks good,” Diggery said. “He’s about six feet and there’s some gray hair left on his head.”
“I don’t like this,” Lula said. “You know how I feel about dead people. Especially ones that had their hands eaten by worms.”
“I like dead people,” Snacker said. “They aren’t judging. And they aren’t always talking.”
“I never looked at it that way,” Lula said.
There was a mound of freshly dug dirt about twenty feet in front of us. I had Bob on a short leash and a Maglite in my other hand. We approached the mound of dirt and peered into the hole. I flashed the light on what was left of the body and gagged. Lula looked into the grave and gave up her meatball hoagie.
“It’s not Stump,” Nutsy said. “Stump had more hair. And Stump wore sneakers. This guy’s wearing motorcycle boots.”
“You didn’t tell me about the sneakers,” Diggery said.
“I told you when we first dug him up that I thought it was Papa Billy Wiget,” Snacker said. “I’m just surprised they buried him with the boots on. The Wigets don’t have any money. I guess the boots didn’t fit any of them.”
“It was worth a try,” Diggery said.
Everyone backed away from the grave.
“The man I’m looking for was wearing a large engraved cross and he was carrying a knife and fork and spoon. And he had a Swiss Army knife,” I said to Diggery.
“Okay, that could be helpful,” Diggery said. “I don’t suppose you want this person for any of your purposes.”
“No, sorry,” I said. “But keep looking.”
We hurried back to the SUV and drove away.
“That was awful,” Lula said. “Bad enough there’s dead people filling up cemeteries, but now we got them at the end of a dirt road. I’m gonna have nightmares. All night long I’m going to be seeing Papa Billy Wiget with the boots and no hands. It was horrible. Whoever buried him could at least have combed his hair. What’s this world coming to? I tell you I’m glad I don’t have to sleep alone tonight.”
“Who are you sleeping with?” I asked her.
“You, of course. It’s a time like this when a person is glad to have friends. It’s like we’re family, right? Truth is, I never had much family. I had my mama and some aunties, but they were always working nights and half the time they were incarcerated. When you come from a whole family of pleasure facilitators you spend a lot of time alone. Not that it was all bad, I mean my mama did the best she could for me. And as you can see, I turned out to be a superior human being.”
I had to agree. Lula was a superior human being. But that didn’t mean I wanted to share my apartment with her, much less my bed. On the other hand, sharing Ranger’s bed raised issues that I wasn’t ready to face.
I made a fast stop at Mega Mart for ice cream, and fifteen minutes later we were all back in the apartment. Lula poured herself a glass of wine. Nutsy dug into the ice cream and I called Ranger.
“How’s your nose?” I asked him.
“It’s back to normal. You’ve been doing a lot of driving.”
“Lula, Nutsy, and Bob and I went out looking for Marcus. We found him in a crack house, and I encouraged him to talk to us.”
“Find out anything useful?”
“He backed up Nutsy’s story, and he was able to give me information that will be helpful to Diggery.”
“Simon Diggery? The grave robber?”
“He’s more or less retired, but it occurred to me that he was the local expert on deceased body location. So, I hired him to find Stump.”
“Nice. I assume that’s what you were doing on the road to White Horse.”
“Yeah. Diggery and his cousin Snacker dug someone up, but it wasn’t Stump.”
“My life seems so boring compared to yours,” Ranger said.
“It’s going to get even more boring, because I’m staying here tonight. Lula is in the kitchen working her way through a bottle of wine, and I need to make sure she doesn’t go for a second. Earlier this evening she was chased by Grendel and then she threw up on her shoes because Diggery’s body didn’t have any hands.”
“Why didn’t it have hands?”
“The worms ate them.”
“Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
At 2:00 a.m. Lula was snoring so loud the windows were rattling. I got out of bed and went into the bathroom to sleep with Bob, but it was only minimally quieter in there.
Bob and I left the bathroom and tiptoed through the living room, where Nutsy was sleeping and snoring. We stopped in the kitchen and listened. Not much better.
“I can’t take the snoring anymore,” I said to Bob. “I’m exhausted. I need sleep.”
I took my hooded sweatshirt off the hook by my door, and Bob and I went out and slept in the hall. I was dragged out of sleep by someone yelling. I squinted at my watch. Seven fifteen. The day had started. I opened the door and Bob and I stared into my apartment. Lula was in her pink pajamas that had pictures of bunnies, her hair looked like it had been electrified, and she was waving her arms and shouting at Nutsy.
“Grendel got her,” Lula said. “I heard him come in the room last night and now he’s got Stephanie.”