“They aren’t answering their phones.”

Oh boy.

“You’ve got three minutes to get dressed,” I said to Vinnie. “I’m taking you to my parents’ house. When they get fed up with you, I’ll think of something else. At least you can get coffee there before my mother kicks you out.”

I debated calling ahead but decided against it. If I dumped him on my mother’s doorstep and drove away real fast, she’d have to take him in, at least for a while. If I called, she could say no.

Twenty minutes later, I idled in front of my parents’ house while Vinnie walked to the front door. On the rare possibility that no one was home, I didn’t want to just drive off. He didn’t have a cell phone to call me to come back. I saw the front door open and I laid rubber.

I drove by the office twice before I parked. I didn’t see the bashed-in SUV, and I didn’t see any angry-looking guys hanging out with guns drawn, so I figured things were quiet this morning. Connie was at her desk. Lula hadn’t arrived.

“You didn’t bring Vinnie with you, did you?” Connie asked. “I already had a visit from Bobby Sunflower this morning.”

I poured myself a cup of coffee. “He gets up early.”

“I guess he was motivated. He wants his money or he wants Vinnie. He said if he didn’t get either of those things by Friday he was going to eliminate the office.”

“Eliminate it?”

“Like from the face of the earth.”

“Could be worse,” I said. “According to Vinnie, this office is about a million in the red.”

Connie froze for a beat. “Vinnie said that?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you know?”

“I don’t do the books. Vinnie has an accountant for that.”

“Maybe we should talk to the accountant.”

“The accountant’s dead. He got run over by a truck last week. Twice.”

“That’s not good.”

“No,” Connie said. “It’s really not good.”

“Does Sunflower know we were the ones to spring Vinnie?”

“Yeah, but I think it’s too embarrassing to let go public. And I think he’d rather have the money than to see us shot full of holes.”

I drank some coffee and took a doughnut from the box on Connie’s desk. “So we need to raise money.”

“It’s up to a million two.”

“Chopper is a pretty high-bond. The toilet paper guy isn’t worth much, but he might be easy to capture.”

“Butch Goodey is worth something,” Connie said. “I thought he skipped to Mexico.”

“I heard he got back last week, and he’s working at the meatpacking plant.”

Butch Goodey is 6′6″ tall and weighs about three hundred pounds. He’s wanted for exposing himself to thirteen women over a period of two days. He said they were lucky to get to see Mr. Magic, and he blamed it on a sex-enhancement drug that gave him a thirty-two-hour erection. The judge who set Goodey’s bond asked for the name of the drug, wrote it on a piece of paper, and slipped the paper into his pocket.