I was worried my cholesterol level had dropped during the day, so I opted for Popeye’s spicy fried chicken and biscuits for dinner. I got it to go, and I drove me and my food to Paterson Street and parked across from Julia Cenetta’s house. I figured it was as good a place as any to eat, and who knows, maybe I’d get lucky and Kenny would show up.

I finished my chicken and biscuits with a side of slaw, slurped down a Dr. Pepper, and told myself it didn’t get much better than this. No Spiro, no dishes, no aggravation.

Lights were on in Julia’s house but curtains were drawn, so I couldn’t snoop. There were two cars in the driveway. I knew one was Julia’s, and I assumed the other belonged to her mother.

A late-model car pulled up to the curb and parked. A hulking blond guy got out of the car and went to the door. Julia answered, wearing jeans and a jacket. She called something over her shoulder to someone in the house and left. The blond guy and Julia sat kissing in the car for a few minutes. The blond guy cranked the engine over and the two of them drove away. So much for Kenny.

I rumbled off to Vic’s Video and rented Ghostbusters, my all-time favorite inspirational movie. I picked up some microwave popcorn, a KitKat, a bag of bite-sized Reese’s peanut butter cups, and a box of instant hot chocolate with marshmallows. Do I know how to have a good time, or what?

The red light was blinking on my answering machine when I got home.

Spiro wondered if I’d made any progress finding his caskets, and did I want to go to dinner with him tomorrow after the Kingsmith viewing? The answer to both questions was an emphatic NO! I procrastinated relaying this to him, as even the sound of his voice on my machine gave me bowel problems.

The other message was from Ranger. “Call me.”

I tried his home phone. No answer. I tried his car phone.

“Yo,” Ranger said.

“It’s Stephanie. What’s happening?”

“Gonna be a party. Think you should get dressed for it.”

“You mean like heels and stockings?”

“I mean like a thirty-eight S and W.”

“I suppose you want me to meet you somewhere.”

“I’m in an alley at the corner of West Lincoln and Jackson.”

Jackson ran for about two miles, skirting junkyards, the old abandoned Jackson Pipe factory, and a ragged assortment of bars and rooming houses. It was an area of town so intensely depressed, it was deemed unworthy even of gang graffiti. Few cars traveled the second mile, beyond the pipe factory. Streetlights had been shot out and never replaced, fires were a common occurrence, leaving more and more buildings blackened and boarded, and discarded drug paraphernalia clogged garbage-filled gutters.

I gingerly took my gun out of the brown bear cookie jar and checked to make sure it was loaded. I slid it into my pocketbook, along with the KitKat, tucked my hair under my Rangers hat so I’d look androgynous, and crammed myself back into my jacket.