"I have to go," I said. "I just wanted you to know I was okay."

"Why don't you and Joe come over for dinner tonight? I'm making meat loaf."

"We're not a couple! And I have things to do."

"What things?"

"Things."

My next phone call was to the office. "My apartment got firebombed," I told Connie. "I'm staying with Morelli for a while."

"Good move," Connie said. "You on the pill?"

I straightened the kitchen, pocketed the key and took off for the mall. Two hours later I had a week's worth of clothes and a maxed-out charge card.

It was noon when I got to the office. Connie and Lula were at Connie's desk eating Chinese.

"Help yourself," Lula said, nudging a cardboard carton. "We got lots. We got fried rice, shrimp clumps and Kung Fu something."

I picked at a shrimp clump. "Heard from Vinnie yet?"

"Not a word," Connie said.

"How about Joyce? Heard from her?"

"Nope. And she hasn't brought Maxine in, either."

"I been thinking about Maxine," Lula said. "I think she's in Point Pleasant. And I wouldn't be surprised if her mama was there, too. That Atlantic City thing was a big phony wild-goose chase to keep us away from Point Pleasant. Her getaway don't feel right. That car was sitting there waiting for her to come out and take off. I think her mama set us up."

I tried some of the Kung Fu stuff. "I've been thinking the same thing."

LULA AND I stood in the middle of the boardwalk, across from the Parrot Bar, and clipped our pagers onto our shorts. I was wearing Day-Glo orange running shorts that had been on sale at Foot Locker, and Lula was wearing yellow-and-black tiger-striped spandex. She'd had her yellow ringlets beaded so that all over her head were four-inch strands of fluorescent pink, poison-green and bright yellow beads. It was ninety-six in the shade, the ocean was millpond calm, the sky was a cloudless azure, and you could fry an egg on the sand. We were here to find Maxine, but already I could see Lula getting distracted by the frozen custard stand.

"This is the plan," I said to Lula. "You're going to hang out here and keep your eye on the Parrot Bar, and I'm going to canvass the beach and the boardwalk. Page me if you see Maxine or anyone associated with her."

"Don't worry, nobody'll get by me. I'd just like to see that bony-ass mother. I'll grab her by what little hair she's got left, and I'll—"

"No! No grabbing, no shooting, no gassing, no stun-gunning If you spot someone just stick with them until I get to you."

"Suppose it's self-defense?"

"There will be no self-defense. Don't let anyone see you. Try to blend in."