Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I picked Lula up at eight o’clock. She’d traded in the pink Afro for a lot of copper-colored curls. She was wearing seven-inch spike-heeled thigh-high boots and a denim spandex dress that skimmed the tops of the boots. I was wearing the same old, same old. To compensate for the clothes, I’d lined my eyes, added an extra sweep of mascara, and gone with cherry-red lipstick instead of a natural gloss.
“I like the boots,” I said to her.
“Being that it’s Saturday I thought I’d dress down and do denim. I got the garlic in my bag and a bottle of water. They were able to melt the Wicked Witch of the West with some water in The Wizard of Oz so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to pack some.”
“And it’ll come in handy if we get thirsty.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Lula said. “What are we doing today?”
“I want to go through Zoran’s house.”
“Lordy, Lordy,” Lula said. “I was afraid it was gonna be something like this.”
“I’m sure Zoran isn’t there.”
“Yeah, but it’s gonna have vampire cooties.”
“You can do lookout, and I’ll go in.”
“I guess that would be okay. What about the doughnuts? Connie gets extra Boston cream on Saturdays. And coffee? Did you bring coffee and doughnuts?”
I was embarrassed to tell her that I’d made myself a scrambled egg for breakfast and that I’d had a glass of orange juice. It was so healthy. It felt totally wrong.
“We can stop at the office and pick up a couple doughnuts,” I said. “And I could use coffee.”
The coffee part was true. I’d made coffee, but it sucked. Connie made better coffee. And truth is, my scrambled egg wasn’t all that good either, but honestly, is a scrambled egg ever fantastic? I mean, it’s not like pancakes and bacon.
I drove to the office and waited at the curb while Lula ran in and got the doughnuts and coffee.
“I’m good to go,” she said, getting into the car and putting two containers of coffee in the drink holders. She buckled herself in and opened the box of doughnuts. “Connie kept a couple for herself and gave us the rest. She had a new FTA for you too. Came in late yesterday. I have it in my tote bag.”
“Is it worth anything?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. I didn’t read it.”
I took a doughnut and drove to Exeter Street. I didn’t see any cop cars in front of Zoran’s house. No one doing surveillance. I parked at the curb, and Lula and I got out and walked around to the back.
“Do your thing,” I said to Lula.
Lula took a small hammer and screwdriver out of her bag and bang! The door was open.
“Go out front and watch for vampires,” I said. “I’m going inside.”
The police go through a house and collect evidence. Knives, guns, cell phones, laptops, scribbled notes, items with DNA on them. I had the right to enter with cause, but I didn’t have permission to remove anything from the premises. Of course, I could snoop through a computer or phone or files as long as it wasn’t obvious that I’d snooped. Unlike the police, I wasn’t necessarily looking for evidence. I was looking for something that would support my theory that he was holed up somewhere on Stark Street. The Exeter Street neighbors didn’t seem to see him around a lot. His car sat in the driveway and was rarely driven. My gut told me he had a hidey-hole somewhere close to the laundromat. I envisioned him leaving the laundromat, buying drugs, getting high in a bar, and crashing somewhere a few steps away. The fact that he’d attacked a woman in the laundromat was worrisome. It suggested that he was no longer in control of his obsession. That also would suggest that he needed his drugs. And that would keep him on Stark Street.
I entered the house and did the required shout-out announcing myself. I started in the kitchen. It was relatively clean. A spoon and a coffee cup in the sink. A small amount of coffee left in the carafe that went with the coffee maker. Almost nothing in the fridge. A canister of powdered Coffee-Mate, a single bottle of beer, American cheese slices, half a loaf of bread with blue mold. There was a box of cereal in the cupboard. A bag of ground coffee. This guy made me look like Ina Garten. The dining room off the kitchen had a table and six chairs. They screamed secondhand store. Not that this was terrible. Before the fire, most of my furniture had come from dead relatives. Nothing to see in the dining room. The living room was unremarkable. A couch and a club chair. A coffee table, an end table, a floor lamp. A television. Nothing on any of the tables. No family pictures, no coasters, no crumpled Cheetos bags.
I heard the back door open and Lula call out, “Anybody home?”
“I’m in the living room,” I said.
Lula came into the living room and looked around. “This looks even worse than your apartment.”
“I thought you didn’t want to come inside.”
“I got lonely out there, and I was wondering what kind of décor a vampire would have.”
I spread my arms wide. “This is it.”
“Did you search the kitchen? Did he have blood stored in the refrigerator or freezer?”
“No blood. Just some moldy bread.”
“Have you been to the bedroom yet?”
“That’s next.”
“I’m gonna poop my pants if he sleeps in a casket,” Lula said. “Especially if it’s a nice one. The kind with the silk lining. If I was a vampire, I’d have one of those.”
We walked down the short hallway to the bedrooms. Two were empty. No furniture. Very small. The third had a bed that had been slept in. Completely rumpled. Obviously, a restless night. No telling when the bed had last been used.
“This is disappointing,” Lula said. “He’s just got a sad-ass bed.”
There was a bedside table with a lamp. There was a phone charger on the table and a used tissue. Socks on the floor.
Lula looked down at the socks. “Here’s something,” she said. “Vampire socks. I’ve never seen vampire socks before. That’s something you don’t ordinarily think about. You don’t ordinarily think about what kind of socks vampires wear.”
Lula took her cell phone out and took a picture of the socks. There was a sweatshirt hanging in the closet. A beat-up pair of sneakers. The usual guy clothes were housed in a couple drawers of a dresser. Sweats, jeans, T-shirts, underwear. Nothing was folded. Hard to tell what was clean and what was laundry.
I moved to the bathroom. There was a grungy bath towel hanging on a hook. Deodorant, a can of shaving cream, and a razor by the sink.
Lula let out a shriek and my heart jumped to my throat.
“Omigod,” she said. “Omigod, omigod.”
“What?” I asked, whipping my head around, looking for a body, a vampire, a guy with a machete.
Lula pointed to the sink. “It’s his toothbrush ! It’s in that filthy glass by his razor. He uses that toothbrush on his fangs. He scrubs the blood and flesh slime away with that toothbrush.”
I was relieved that there was no guy with a machete, but I was grossed out by the toothbrush. My gag reflex kicked in and my breakfast was threatening to leave my body one way or the other.
“I gotta see what kind of toothpaste he uses,” Lula said. “I bet he goes for the extra-whitening kind.” She opened his medicine chest, and a dead cockroach fell out. “Whoa,” she said. “That’s a giant cockroach. That’s a record breaker.” She took a picture of the cockroach and the toothbrush.
I needed air. I could have walked away from the toothbrush, but the roach finished me off.
“I’m done here,” I said to Lula.
“Did we learn anything?”
“Zoran sleeps here at least some of the time, but he doesn’t live here. He lives at the laundromat and at the bars on Stark and someplace else. We have to find the someplace else.”
We left through the back door and walked to the car. I looked up the street and saw the Werly house.
“Call Connie,” I said to Lula. “Ask her to check on Zoran’s financials. Has he used his credit card? Has he withdrawn money from a bank account? I’m going to talk to Mrs. Werly.”
There was a mix of houses on Exeter Street. Zoran was renting a small bungalow. The house next to him was a Cape Cod. The Werly house was a two-story colonial. All of the lots were the same size. Zoran had a driveway but no garage. Most of the other houses on the street had garages. In spite of its proximity to Stark Street, it was considered a safe neighborhood. The Werly house was on the corner. I rang the bell and a woman about my mom’s age answered. She was slim with brown hair going gray.
I showed her the badge I bought on Amazon and told her I was doing a follow-up inquiry on Zoran.
“I don’t know very much,” she said.
“Have you recently seen him in his yard or going for a walk? Lights on in his house at night?”
“I can’t remember the last time I saw him, but sometimes there are lights on at night. I haven’t really paid attention to his house.”
“What about his truck? Have you seen him driving the truck?”
“Not lately. Sometimes there would be a van parked in the driveway. It would be behind the truck. And it was never there very long. It was tan. It looked old. It had a dent in the back, by the wheel.”
“I know about your daughter,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I still expect her to walk through the door,” Mrs. Werly said. “It’s just hard to believe she’s gone.”
“Was she friends with Zoran?”
“Julie was friendly to everyone. She was a special person. Zoran was… odd. He had those teeth that looked like fangs. I imagine he must have been teased in school. And he had an odd way about him. He wouldn’t look you in the eye. I think he was shy. I think he might have had a crush on Julie, and Julie was always nice to him, but she never saw him socially. She made a point of keeping some distance.”
“The police report said there was blood but no body.”
Mrs. Werly nodded, blinked back tears. “From the couch to the back door and out into the yard and then it just stopped.”
I thanked her for her time, left the house, and walked around the corner. The backyard wasn’t fenced but there was a patchy collection of shrubs that gave them some privacy. Zoran or whoever could have zipped the body into a bag, stepped between the shrubs, and dumped the body into the trunk of a car or into the back of his truck.
None of this was helpful in finding Zoran but it might turn out to be helpful in capturing him. I went back to Lula, we got into the car, and I ate another doughnut. I rationalized that it was to settle my stomach, but really, I just wanted a doughnut.
“Was Connie able to find anything on Zoran’s financials?” I asked Lula.
“Last night at eleven thirty Zoran got money out of an ATM on Olcott Street, one block away from Stark. He hasn’t used his credit card.”
“Perfect.”
“She also said you needed to look at the new FTA because it could be easy money for you, and it would make Vinnie happy if you brought him in.” Lula pulled the file out of her tote. “I’ll read the file, and you can drive. It says here that his name is Zachary Zell. People call him Zach. Gives his address as 401 Dorsey Street. That’s not far from here. He’s seventy-eight years old and lives with his daughter. She also put up his bond.”
“What did he do?”
“Armed robbery.”
“Any priors?”
“Nope. Not even a traffic ticket.”
“Call Connie back and ask her if there are any other cars in Zoran’s history. Ask her about a tan van.”
I drove the short distance to Dorsey Street and parked in front of Zach’s house. It was a two-story colonial in okay shape. Two Big Wheels were sitting in the small front yard, which also contained a doll without a head, a kid’s sneaker, and a big plastic dump truck.
I grabbed the sneaker, stepped onto the front porch, and rang the bell. No one came to the door, but yelling and screaming could be heard from inside. I rang the bell again. Still, no answer. The door was unlocked, so Lula and I walked in. Three dogs rushed at us. Two were small, one was medium size, and all were mixtures of every breed possible. All were overly friendly, jumping on Lula and me, eyes bright, tongues hanging out looking for something to lick. Beyond the dogs was bedlam. Three kids running around, waving their arms and screaming. No one was bleeding. Seemed to be some sort of game. A man who I assumed was Zach was standing in the middle of the room, holding a toddler on his hip and a phone to his ear.
“Yeah,” he yelled into the phone. “One of the dogs pooped on the carpet in the family room, and I think Jonathan ate it. His teeth are brown, and he has real bad breath.”
I moved into his line of sight and waved at him.
“Gotta go,” he said into the phone. “There’s some ladies here.”
“Are you Zachary Zell?” I asked him.
“Yep,” he said. “People call me Zach.”
I held the sneaker up. “I found this on the front lawn.”
“That’s Jonathan’s. He don’t like wearing shoes. There’s another sneaker around here somewhere.”
I introduced myself and told him he needed to reschedule his court date.
“I didn’t know I missed it,” he said.
“It was yesterday,” I said.
“It’s a little crazy here,” he said. “My granddaughter is an ER nurse and works weekends. Her husband is a paramedic and alternates weekends. Needless to say, this is his weekend to work. My daughter is usually with the kids on weekends, but her husband’s brother had a heart attack, so my daughter and husband are in Virginia. That leaves me doing day care, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
The kids had stopped running and came over to size up Lula and me.
“The gap-toothed one is Ian,” Zach said. “He’s seven. His sister, Emmy, is five, and the one with oatmeal in his hair and no shoes is Jonathan. He’s four. I got baby Sue on my hip.”
“I’m hungry,” Emmy said.
“I’ll get you a snack right away,” Zach said, “but I’ve gotta brush Jonathan’s teeth first. Your mama said it’s not good to leave dog poop on his teeth.”
“I don’t want my teeth brushed,” Jonathan said.
Zach handed me baby Sue. “I’ll be right back. See if you can find something in the kitchen that Emmy wants to eat.”
I looked at Lula. “Help,” I said.
“Hey, don’t look at me,” Lula said. “I don’t know anything about babies.”
Emmy stood with her hands on her hips. “Well?” she said. “Are you going to feed me, or what?”
“Un-ah,” Lula said. “You don’t want to pull attitude with us. If you want something to eat, you better be nice.”
“I’m five,” she said. “I don’t have to be nice.”
“The heck you don’t,” Lula said. “Look how much bigger I am than you. If I sat on you, I’d squish you like a bug.”
“Eeeeeeee!” Emmy screamed, and she ran upstairs.
“Jeez Louise,” I said to Lula. “Couldn’t you just go get her a snack?”
“My mama would whup me upside the head if I talked like that. Course she wasn’t home a lot. Most of the time she was working her corner or in jail.”
I carried baby Sue into the kitchen and went through the cupboards. I found a bag of cookies and took it back to the living room. Emmy was sitting halfway down the stairs, looking through the balusters. Lula was in front of the television watching cartoons with Ian.
I rattled the bag at Emmy. “I brought you some cookies.”
“What kind?”
“It says they’re chocolate-on-chocolate sandwich cookies.”
Emmy took the bag to the couch and sat next to her brother.
“You aren’t supposed to eat those,” Ian said. “They’re only for Grandpa Zach.”
“I don’t care,” Emmy said. “I’m hungry and she gave them to me.”
Ian looked over at me. “She isn’t supposed to eat them.”
“Okay,” I said to Emmy. “Give me the cookies and I’ll get something else for you.”
“No,” she said. “I want these cookies. If you don’t let me keep them, I’ll scream.”
Lula cut her eyes to me. “You want me to sit on her?”
“No! I’ll get something else from the kitchen.” I handed baby Sue over to Lula. “Don’t sit on this one either.”
I ran into the kitchen and found a box of Ritz crackers. I returned to the living room and Emmy had shoved half a bag of cookies into her mouth. There was chocolate everywhere.
“I’ll swap you the cookies for these Ritz crackers,” I said.
Emmy crammed more cookies into her mouth and hugged the almost-empty bag to her chest. “No.”
I reached for the bag, and she started screaming.
“She’s turning red,” Lula said. “And she’s looking all swelled up.”
“That’s because she’s not supposed to eat those cookies,” Ian said. “She’s allergic to chocolate. She’s probably going to die now.”
“What?” Now I was at shriek level.
Jonathan hopped down the stairs, and Zach ambled after him.
“Okay, where were we? Something about my court date?” Zach asked me.
“Emmy ate your cookies,” Ian said. “And now she’s going to die.”
Zach took a close look at Emmy. “How many cookies did she eat?”
“She ate almost the whole bag,” Ian said. “You should call Mom.”
Zach hauled his phone out of his pocket and dialed. “Sorry to bother you again, honey, but Emmy ate a whole bag of those chocolate cookies. She’s red and blotchy and her face is swollen.” There was a pause. “Yep,” Zach said. “Yep. Got it.”
He hung up and slipped his phone back into his pocket. “We’re going to the ER. Everybody to the van.”
Lula and I helped buckle the kids into their car seats.
“I’m going to ride with Zach,” I said to Lula. “Find Jonathan’s sneakers, lock up here, and meet me at the medical center ER.”
“Then what? Do you have a plan?”
“The immediate plan is to help with the kids and make sure Emmy is going to be okay.”
I was used to kids. My sister, Valerie, had a pack of them. One of them thought she was a horse, but to my knowledge none of them ate poop. I took that as a good sign that my gene pool might be more aligned to cake eaters.
It was a short drive to the medical center. Zach stopped at the ER entrance and went inside with Emmy. I got behind the wheel and parked the van in the adjacent lot. By the time I had all the kids unbuckled, Lula was parked next to the van. We got Jonathan into his shoes, and we trundled the kids into the ER reception room.
Zach was at the desk, filling out a form. “Emmy’s in the back with her mom,” Zach said. “She’ll be okay. One time she ate a giant Hershey bar, and her face looked like it had been inflated by an air pump. They emptied her stomach and filled her full of antihistamines, and she was good as ever. Then there was the time she ate half a chocolate birthday cake when no one was looking. She didn’t get as swollen from that one because she barfed it all up.”
I took a seat, and put baby Sue on my lap and a kid on either side of me. I tapped into Disney+ on my phone and pulled up PJ Masks . This made everyone happy. When Zach was done at the admissions desk, I handed baby Sue, Ian, Jonathan, and my phone over to Lula.
“I need to talk to Zach,” I said to Lula. “Don’t let anyone wander away.”
“I’m on it,” Lula said.
“You need to reschedule your court date,” I said to Zach. “That means I need to take you to the municipal building.”
“I guess that would be okay. They’re going to keep Emmy here for a couple hours.” He looked at his watch. “I’m late getting lunch for everybody. And then after lunch I’m supposed to put baby Sue and Jonathan down for a nap. When they wake up from the nap, I can get Emmy and then we can go to the municipal building.”
That would have been great, except it was Saturday and Zach would be held over until Monday and there would be no one to watch the kids.
“You’re charged with armed robbery,” I said. “I’m curious. What was that about?”
“My daughter’s next-door neighbor is a jerk. That’s all I have to say.”
“You need to say more. What did you steal?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“A little embarrassing or a lot embarrassing?”
“Oh hell,” he said. “It was a picture. It was Ed and Marie’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and they had a big renewing-vows party at some fancy garden place in Pennsylvania.”
“Ed is the jerk next door?”
“Yeah. They had a photographer, and he took a picture of them cutting the cake. It was a real nice picture, but in the background you can see me taking a leak on a bush.”
I had to clap a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
“I had a couple beers, and I really had to go, and I didn’t think anybody could see,” Zach said. “They were all watching the cake-cutting ceremony. It wasn’t like I was doing it in public on the sidewalk or something.”
I tried to look sympathetic.
“Nobody noticed it when they were looking at pictures to buy. If you weren’t looking close, you would think I was standing there admiring the scenery. Anyway, they bought this picture and had it framed because it was their favorite. I go over and I see the picture on their end table in the living room, and it’s me taking a whiz. So, I offered to buy the picture. I figured it was the right thing to do. I should pay for the picture, right? I mean, I can’t have a picture of me peeing in their living room. They take a close look at the picture, and they’re horrified. Like no one ever peed on a bush before. Marie is hysterical because I ruined her anniversary. Ed is ready to punch me in the nose.”
“You were friends with them before this picture incident?”
“Yeah. Best buddies. Go figure.”
“What happened next?”
“Ed wouldn’t give me the picture. Ed said they were going to leave it there for everyone to see. They were going to have a big party and show everyone the picture.”
“So, you went home and got a gun and came back for the picture.”
“I was steamed. Who acts like that? I’d be the laughingstock of the neighborhood. Once you knew where to look you could see… you know.”
“Everything?”
“Not everything, but enough. I got a pretty good fire hose. Anyway, I slapped a twenty on the table, took the picture, and left. Next thing the police are at my door. It’s those damn Ring doorbells. They got a video of me with a gun in one hand and the picture in the other.”
“Would you have used the gun?”
“Damn right.” He slumped a little and gave up a sigh. “No. Who am I kidding? I’m a total pussy. We had a seven-foot snake in the laundry room, and I couldn’t shoot it. My daughter shot it.”
“Do you still have the picture?”
“Yeah. It’s under my bed. I told the police that I burned it and threw the frame away.”
“Why don’t you just have someone remove you from the picture?”
“I could do that?”
“Yes. I know someone who might do it for you. And maybe Ed will drop the charges if you apologize and fix the picture.”
He thought about it for a beat. “Okay, but he’s still an A-hole.”
“I’ll follow you back to your house, and you can give me the picture.”
“I’ll put it in an envelope, and you have to promise not to look at it.”
“Promise. And I’m sorry about the cookies.”
“It’s my bad,” he said. “I shouldn’t have them in the house.”
Lula and I helped Zach get the kids into the van. I followed him home and waited while he got everyone inside and returned with the photo.
“What are you going to do with that?” Lula asked me.
“I’m going to see if Eugene can fix it. It seemed like he has the ability to Photoshop.”
“In the beginning it looks like you’re being a good person and doing something to help Zach, but I’m thinking it’s more that you see an opportunity to check on Eugene,” Lula said.
“I’m thinking you’re right.”