Chapter Twenty-Three
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I woke up to a nice quiet apartment. No vampire stalking me. No dog to walk. Just me and Rex. The sun was shining and everything was right in my world. I went to the bathroom and found out I wasn’t pregnant. There was a pang of disappointment, but honestly, it was okay. I’d have plenty of chances to get pregnant after I was married. Or not. That would be okay, too. What mattered right now was that I was alive, and Julie was alive, and it was a brand-new day.
I took my time with a shower. Used the big round brush drying my hair. Made myself toast and eggs and coffee. And I didn’t even eat standing at the sink. I took everything into the dining room and sat like a real person.
It was close to ten o’clock when I finally strolled into the office.
“You’re looking like you got a big glow,” Lula said. “Is it because you’re preggers?”
“No,” I said. “It’s because I’m alive.”
“Yeah,” Lula said. “I can relate to that.”
“I did some research on the building where Julie Werly was being held captive,” Connie said. “Zoran was property manager of sorts, using the name Bill Smith. He wasn’t getting paid. He was just allowed to live in the building for doing maintenance, which was probably zero. The van belonged to the original owner of the building. Dobey Szajack. Died a year ago and left everything to his nephew in Romania. Not sure if the nephew even knows of his inheritance.”
I checked out the doughnut box on Connie’s desk. It was all Boston cream. My favorite.
“It’s in honor of your being alive,” Lula said. “Connie cleaned them out of Boston creams.”
I took one, got coffee, and came back to Connie’s desk. “I don’t have any FTAs, so I thought I would take some time off.”
“Sorry to bust that bubble,” Connie said. “We have to go downtown to write a bond for someone.”
Lula was practically vibrating. “Wait until you hear this!” she said. “This is crazy.”
“What?” I said.
“You don’t listen to the news, do you?” Connie said.
“Not usually. Did I miss something?”
“And you don’t go online to see what’s happening in Trenton, or in this case, the whole world.”
“No.”
“Tell her! Tell her!” Lula said to Connie.
Connie typed something into her computer. “Here,” she said. “Come around and look at this.”
I walked behind Connie and looked at her monitor screen. The headline read Robin Hoodie Caught in the Act .
“They caught Eugene in the act?” I asked Connie.
“Look at the photo,” Lula said.
“It looks like Eugene in his hoodie, being cuffed next to a truck selling fried dough.”
“Look closer,” Lula said. “Does that look like Eugene?”
Connie enlarged the picture and zeroed in on the face.
“Omigod,” I said. “It’s definitely not Eugene.”
Lula and Connie burst out laughing.
“Who is it?” Connie asked me.
I could barely say the name. “Herbert?”
“Yes! We have to go downtown to bond him out.”
I was flat-out gobsmacked. “Herbert is Robin Hoodie? I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Connie said. “He’s national news. He’s already been interviewed by the CBS affiliate. I thought Grandma would have called you by now.”
“My phone was turned off. I wanted to sleep in and have a sane morning,” I said.
“So much for sane,” Connie said. “Lula’s right. This is crazy.”
“And it was real sneaky the way they caught him,” Lula said. “Someone suggested to the police that they get a food truck set up with surveillance and everything and they lure Robin Hoodie into hijacking it. And it worked on the first day. Brilliant, right? Trenton PD is looking real smart on this one.”
“Jeez,” I said. “Go figure.”
“I waited until you got here to bond him out,” Connie said. “I thought you’d want to go with me. He’s probably in a bad way. It’s not like he’s a career criminal. They got him at ten o’clock last night and he spent the night in a cell. That’s always terrifying for first-timers.”
Connie closed the office, and we all piled into her car. I was in the back seat, and I was feeling guilty that I was the one who suggested the food truck and got Herbert arrested. Herbert, the entrepreneur, who had an unexplained source of income. I guess there were signs, but I missed them. I did not see this coming. Herbert was an even worse candidate for Robin Hoodie than Eugene.
“Wasn’t Herbert the one who gave you the carpet and television?” Lula asked me. “I bet they were hijacked, along with the paint for your apartment. Everything he gave you is probably hot. Here you are an officer of the law, sort of, and you’re living with an apartment filled with stolen stuff.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you,” I said to Lula.
“Yeah,” Lula said. “I’m never gonna say it again, but it’s kind of funny, right? Ironic.”
She was right. It was kind of funny. It was ironic. It got me back to smiling again. I hoped Herbert was okay. This was his first offense. He’d compensated people for their losses and, according to Morelli, everyone, including the police wives, loved Robin Hoodie to the point where no one was any longer pressing charges. With luck, he’d get a slap on the wrist.
Herbert was a little disheveled when they brought him out to us. His hair wasn’t neatly parted on the side. He was rakishly bedheaded, probably from sleeping in his hoodie. He had a five o’clock shadow that took me by surprise. I had never thought of Herbert as being someone who needed to shave. He was dressed in Robin Hoodie black, and he looked very different without his glasses and 1950s clothes. He didn’t look like a geek. He looked like a guy.
“Gee,” he said when he saw us. “This is really great of you to come get me out of jail. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble. Like, I didn’t disrupt your day or anything, did I? I apologize if I did, but boy, I’m glad to see you. Jail wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I’ll be happy to go home. I hope my mom remembered to feed Miss Fluff, and she probably was lonely last night because she always sleeps with me. Miss Fluff, not my mom. It would be weird to sleep with my mom. My dad does it and that’s okay.”
We were all smiling. The package was different, but it was still Herbert.
“Have you talked to my mom?” Herbert asked. “Does she know I was in jail?”
“She posted your bail bond money,” Connie said.
I took Herbert by the arm. “A word in private?” I asked, leading him to a quiet corner away from Connie and Lula. “Call me crazy, but I think there are some missing parts to the Robin Hoodie story.”
“What sort of parts?” he asked.
“The Eugene parts. Eugene denied being Robin Hoodie but he never hired a lawyer to help prove his innocence. Instead, he did what he could to avoid going to court. It was as if he just wanted to prolong the process. And I wasn’t seeing any of the actual fear of a first-time offender. You don’t by any chance known Eugene, do you?”
“You aren’t going to tell anyone, right?”
“Right,” I said. “This is just between you and me.”
“I met Eugene a couple of years ago and our interests intersected. We were both Robin Hood freaks. And we got caught up in the concept of redistribution of consumer goods. Like Robin Hood. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Eugene thought it was an interesting concept but he wasn’t willing to actually take from the rich. So it sort of ended there. He went on to do his gaming blog. And I went on to do my entrepreneurial activities which included being Robin Hoodie. Honestly, I didn’t mean it to be this whole big deal. It just mushroomed, and all of a sudden I needed help. So I got Eugene to do my internet stuff. It was removed from the taking from the rich, you know? It was just electronics.”
“If he wasn’t involved in the taking from the rich, how did his fingerprints get on the UPS truck?”
“I drove the truck through a bunch of muck to get to the homeless camp and it got to be a mess,” Herbert said.
“I’m thinking that you had a crew by then. You had a videographer and someone flying a drone.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to get them involved,” Herbert said.
“Okay, so tell me about the fingerprints.”
“I didn’t want to give the truck back to UPS in bad condition, so Eugene met me at his friend’s father’s garage, and Eugene took the truck through the car wash. We never thought about his fingerprints. The rest of us were wearing gloves.”
“So you let him get accused of being Robin Hoodie.”
“It was his idea. If he told the police about the car wash, it would end the adventure. No more drawing attention to the homeless, and no more fun videos. So we kept it going for a while longer. Eugene knew I wouldn’t let him go to prison. In the meantime, he was sort of enjoying it. He really liked when he was rescued out of your car by all the homeless guys. Anyway, it finally became obvious that our time was running out, so I hijacked the food truck with the cops in it.”
“You knew they were cops?”
“It wasn’t much of a secret,” Herbert said.
I brought Herbert back to Connie and Lula. “We’re good,” I said. “We’re ready to leave.”
“I don’t know how any of this works,” Herbert said. “What do I do now?”
“Now we take you home, and you give up being Robin Hoodie,” I said.
“I imagine you’re going to be upset to have to stop being Robin Hoodie,” Lula said.
“It’s okay,” Herbert said. “It was a lot of work, and I was having a hard time finding new things to give away. And I have a lot of irons in the fire. That’s the way it is with us entrepreneurs. I have an exciting project going with Edna. We’ve already made some reels.”
“Who’s Edna?” Lula asked.
“Grandma,” I said.
“And I just got a phone call from a big publisher in New York, and they want me to write a book. And they said they’d give me two million dollars for an exclusive. I wouldn’t have time to be Robin Hoodie anyway if I’m going to write a book,” Herbert said.
We walked him down the hall to the front door of the municipal building, and when we stepped outside a cheer went up. There were easily two hundred women waiting to catch a glimpse of Robin Hoodie. The police had stretched crime scene tape to keep the women at a distance.
“Oh gosh,” Herbert said. “Are they expecting someone important?”
The women started chanting, “Robin, Robin, Robin.”
“They’re here to see you,” Lula said. “You’re famous. It’s like you’re a rock star.”
“A rock star?” Herbert said. “Really? Me? Do I look okay? Is my hair okay? I didn’t have a comb.”
“You look great,” I told him.
“Yeah,” Lula said. “You look like Robin Hoodie.”
The women were throwing bouquets of flowers and panties at Herbert. They kept chanting “ Robin, Robin ,” and they were taking pictures with their cell phones. A clump of professional photographers stood to one side and a satellite TV news truck was parked behind the women.
“What should I do?” Herbert asked. “Should I pick up the panties?”
“No, dude,” Lula said. “Just wave and smile and back up. We need to take you out the back door or we’ll get trampled.”
We dropped Herbert off at his parents’ house and returned to the office.
“Now that we have Robin Hoodie put to rest, I’m going to take my time off,” I said to Lula and Connie.
“What are you going to do?” Lula asked. “Shopping?”
“Shopping is part of it. I’m also getting married.”
“Get the hell out,” Lula said. “Shut the hell up.”
“It’s going to be a very small private ceremony,” I said. “Just you two and family. We’re going to have it at Valerie’s house on Saturday.”
“I need a doughnut,” Lula said. “Good thing there are doughnuts left. I gotta calm down. I might hyperventilate.”