I drained my coffee cup, pushed back from the table, and went upstairs and looked around Grandma's room. From what I could tell, she'd taken her purse, her gray jacket, her teeth, and the clothes on her back. There was no sign of struggle. No bloodstains. No duffel bag. There was a brochure for Daffy's Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City on her nightstand.

I traipsed back downstairs to the kitchen. "Where's the big bag?"

"What big bag?" my mother wanted to know.

"Grandma had a big bag with her yesterday. It's not in her room."

"I don't know anything about a bag," my mother said.

"Did Grandma just get her social security check?"

"A couple days ago."

So maybe she bought herself some new clothes, stuffed them into the duffel bag, and got herself on an early bus to Daffy's.

Diesel finished his breakfast and stood. "Need help?"

"Are you any good at finding lost grandmothers?"

"Nope. Not my area of expertise."

"What is your area of expertise?" I asked him.

Diesel grinned at me.

"Besides that," I said.

"Maybe she just took off for a nooner with the butcher."

My mother gasped. Horrified that Diesel would say such a thing, and doubly horrified because she knew it was a possibility.

"She wouldn't leave in the middle of the night for a nooner."

"If it's any consolation, I don't feel a disturbance in the force," Diesel said. "She wasn't in harm's way when she left the house. Or maybe I'm just feeling mellow after all those sausages and eggs."

Diesel and I have similar jobs. We look for people who have done bad things. Diesel tracks down people with special talents. He refers to them as Unmentionables. I track down people who pretty much have no talent at all. I call them Fugitives. Whatever name you use for the hunted, the hunter has a job that relies heavily on instinct, and after a while you become tuned in to the force. Okay, so that's kind of Obi-Wan Kenobi, but sometimes you walk into a building and get the creeps and know something ugly is waiting around the corner. My creep-o-meter is good, but Diesel's is better. I suspect Diesel's sensory perception is in the zone ordinarily reserved for werewolves. Good thing he isn't excessively hairy or I'd have to wonder.

"I'm going back to my apartment to shower and change. And then I'm going to the office," I told Diesel. "Can I drop you somewhere?"

"Yeah. My sources tell me the guy I'm looking for was on Mulberry Street yesterday. I want to look around. Maybe talk to a couple people."

"Is this guy dangerous?"

"Not especially, but the idiots following him are."

"I found a brochure for Daffy's in Grandma's room," I told my mother. "She probably took a seniors' bus to Atlantic City and will be back tonight."