“Do you remember where my parents live?” I asked Mooner.

“Yep. I could find it with my eyes closed.”

I wrote the address on the back of my card and gave it to Mooner. “Just in case,” I said. “Call me if there are problems. Don’t let Vinnie out of your sight, and stay away from Stark Street.”

Mooner ambled out of the office, and moments later, we heard a backfire and the Moon Bus chugged down the street.

“Do you think you can trust him to keep Vinnie under wraps?” Lula asked me.

“If Vinnie wants to stay alive, he’ll make sure he stays hidden.”

I called my parents’ house and asked for Vinnie.

“Mooner is coming to get you,” I told Vinnie. “He’s going to let you stay in his RV. Do not leave the RV!”

I glanced at my watch. “It’s coming up to lunchtime,” I said to Lula. “Let’s look for Chopper.”

“What about Butch?” Connie wanted to know.

“I need an address. I doubt he’ll go back to work. And if I’m going to get him, I need to do it fast. He doesn’t want to go to jail. He’s going to run again.”

FOURTEEN

LULA AND I left the bonds office, and Lula looked up and down the street. “I thought for sure there’d be a new black car delivered by now,” Lula said. “You don’t suppose Ranger ran out of cars, do you?”

“Maybe I’ve reached my monthly quota.”

A green SUV pulled in behind Lula’s Firebird, and Morelli got out.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” I told Lula, and I went to meet Morelli.

Morelli stepped close to me, hands at my waist, and he nuzzled my neck.

“Is this a social visit?” I asked him.

“Not entirely. I wanted to see if you smelled like cow.”

I stepped away and looked at him. “Well?”

“Nope.”

“Is it against the law to smell like cow?”

“It is if you let a herd of them loose in the city.”

“How did you know?”

“Several of the workers who were interviewed remembered seeing a black woman with red hair and big boobs and a pretty girl with a brown ponytail.”

“They thought I was pretty?”

“Everyone thinks you’re pretty,” Morelli said.

“How about you?”

“Especially me,” he said. “What the hell were you doing at the packing plant?”

“I was after Butch Goodey. And it was all an accident.”

“You accidentally started a stampede?”

“Not me, exactly. Butch was working the holding pen, and he panicked when he saw me. And he bolted. And the cows bolted with him.”

Morelli put his hand to his chest. “Heartburn,” he said. “You have any Rolaids?”

“Too much stress,” I said. “It’s your job.”

“It’s not my job. It’s you. You’re a magnet for disaster.”

“So find a new girlfriend. Some nice, boring woman who remembers to buy bread.”

“Maybe I will,” Morelli said.

“Fine!”

“Fine, yourself.”

“Hmmph,” I said, and I turned on my heel, marched back to Lula’s Firebird, and got in.