pick the clue up off the ground." I pulled the plastic bag from my purse. "Ta dah!" I sang.
"Hot dang!" Lula said. "You are so good."
"We're like the A-team," Sally said.
"Yeah, only the A-team didn't have no drag queen," Lula said.
"Mr. T. liked jewelry," Sally said. "I could be Mr. T."
"Nuh uh. I want to be Mr. T. on account of he was big and black like me."
Sally had taken the note out of the bag and was reading it. "This is interesting. She keeps changing the code. This is much more sophisticated than the others."
"Can you read it?"
"Hey, I'm the fucking code master. Just give me some time."
I PARKED in the lot to my apartment building and took the stairs to the second floor. Mrs. Delgado, Mr. Weinstein, Mrs. Karwatt and Leanne Kokoska were standing, staring at my door.
"Now what?" I asked.
"Someone left you a message," Mrs. Karwatt said. "I was going out with the garbage when I noticed it."
"It's a pip, too," Mrs. Delgado said. "Must be from one of them hoodlums you're out to get."
I stepped up and looked at the door. The message was scribbled in black marker: "I hate you! And I'll get even!"
"Who do you suppose did this?" Leanne asked. "Are you on a real dangerous case? You after a murderer or something?"
Truth is, I had no idea anymore who I was after.
"Permanent marker," Mr. Weinstein said. "Gonna be the devil to get off. Probably gonna have to paint over it."
"I'll call Dillon," I told them, shoving the key in the lock. "Dillon will fix it for me."
Dillon Ruddick was the super, and Dillon would fix anything for a smile and a beer.
I let myself into my apartment, and my neighbors went off looking for a new adventure. I slipped the safety chain into place, bolted my door and headed for the kitchen. The light was blinking on my answering machine. One message.
I punched Replay. "This is Helen Badijian, the manager at the Seven-Eleven." There was a pause and some fumbling. "You left your card here and said I should call if I had information about Miss Nowicki."
I dialed the 7-Eleven and Helen answered.
"I'm very busy now," she said. "If you could drop by later, maybe around ten, I think I might have something for you."
This was turning into a halfway decent day. Sally was working on the clue, and the 7-Eleven woman had a potential lead.
"We need to celebrate," I told Rex, trying to overlook the fact that I was actually very creeped out by the message on my door. "Pop-Tarts for everyone."
I looked in my cupboard, but there were no Pop-Tarts. No cookies, no cereal, no cans of spaghetti, no soup, no extra jars of peanut butter. A piece of paper was taped to the cupboard door. It was a shopping list. It said, "buy everything."
I took the note down and shoved it into my bag so I wouldn't forget what I needed and slung the bag over my shoulder. I had my hand on the doorknob when the phone rang.
It was Kuntz. "So, about that drink?"
"No. No drink."
"Your loss," he said. "I saw you fingering the pie on the ground. You find another note?"
"Yes."
"And?"
"And I'm working on it."
"Looks to me like we're not making much progress with the note crappola. All we ever get are more notes."
"There might be more. The manager at the Seven-Eleven called and said she had something for me. I'm going to stop around later tonight."
"Why later? Why don't you go now? Cripes, can't you move faster on this? I need those letters."
"Maybe you should tell me what this is really about. I'm having a hard time believing you're in this much of a sweat about a couple of love letters."
"I told you they could be embarrassing."
"Yeah, right."
I LOOKED in my shopping cart and wondered if I had everything. Ritz crackers and peanut butter for when I felt fancy and wanted to make hors d'oeuvres, Entenmann's coffee cake for PMS mornings, Pop-Tarts for Rex, salsa so I could tell my mother I was eating vegetables, frosted flakes in case I had to go on a stakeout, corn chips for the salsa.
I was in the middle of my inventory when a cart crashed nose to nose into mine. I looked up and found Grandma Mazur driving and my mother one step behind.
My mother closed her eyes. "Why me?" she said.
"Dang," Grandma Mazur said.
I was still in the wig and the little skirt. "I can explain."