I continued on down the road, past two more houses, before the road abruptly ended. I turned and slowly cruised past the brown-shingle house for a second time. Gritch’s Mercedes was parked in the drive court, plus two other cars. One was an SUV and the other a Ferrari.

“Hard to believe you’d want to stash a perv like Vinnie in a nice house like this,” Lula said. “Maybe this here’s Bobby Sunflower’s house. In which case, we be sitting in Bobby’s driveway, and that might not be healthy.”

“Good point.”

I drove back to the road, pulled to the side, and parked. A half hour later, Mickey Gritch turned out of the dirt road and headed south, toward Trenton. The Ferrari followed.

I called Chet, gave him the Ferrari’s plate number, and asked him to find owners for the car and the house. He called me back in five minutes.

“The car belongs to Bobby Sunflower,” Chet said. “The house is owned by a holding company. And Sunflower owns the holding company.”

“Can you find out if the holding company owns other properties?”

“Sure. I’ll get back to you.”

“This is like having your own private detective agency,” Lula said. “Does Ranger keep a tally of services? Do you gotta pay up one way or another at the end of the month? I tell you, I wouldn’t mind doing that. He is heartstoppin’ hot. I had my way, I’d spread sauce on him and work him like a rib.”

The thought of working Ranger like a rib gave me a hot flash that prickled from my scalp clear down to my doodah.

“You just turned red,” Lula said. “I never seen you turn red like that before.”

“It was the rib thing.”

“Yeah,” Lula said. “I get like that about ribs, too. I think we need to go to Tony’s when we get back to town. He makes kick-ass ribs.”

We sat there for ten minutes more, waiting for the SUV, but the SUV didn’t drive by.

“I’m going to leave the car here and walk back to the house,” I told Lula.

“I’ll come with you. Good thing I dressed down to sneakers today.”

I checked Lula out. She was wearing pink wedge sneakers loaded up with rhinestones, a super-short stretch denim skirt, and a way-too-small pink T-shirt decorated with silver glitter that was flaking off on everything. It was casual Tuesday. I was in my usual outfit of jeans, sneakers, and a slightly stretchy V-neck T-shirt. No glitter. No red sauce stains.

“Here’s the plan,” I said, starting out on the dirt road. “If we hear a car coming, we jump off the road and hide in the woods.”

“Sure, I can do that,” Lula said. “Only I hope we don’t have to, ’cause I have vegetation issues. I don’t do the nature thing. Remember when we were down in the Pine Barrens? I hated that shit. I’m a city girl. I like cement. As far as I’m concerned, you could cement this whole country over.”