It was Margie. I scooted past the desk, behind Margie's back, out to the boardwalk and paged Lula. She was just a short distance away. She looked up when the pager went off. I caught her eye and gave her a "come here" wave.
Margie was still at the desk when Lula trotted up.
"What's going on?" Lula asked.
"You remember I told you about Maxine's friend, Margie?"
"The one had her finger chopped off."
"Yes. That's her at the redemption desk."
"Point Pleasant sure is a popular place."
Margie took a large box from an arcade employee and moved to the side door that opened to the street. She passed through the door and turned right, away from the boardwalk. Lula and I watched her walk to the end of the block and cross the street. We followed after her, Lula a little less than a block away and me behind Lula. Margie crossed another street, continued on and went into a house in the middle of the next block.
We held our positions and watched for a while, but Margie didn't come out. The house was a single-story bungalow with a small front porch. Surrounding houses were similar. Lots were small. Cars were parked on both sides of the street.
We weren't in a good position to conduct any kind of surveillance. We'd driven to Point Pleasant in a car that drew attention. My only consolation was that even if we had a more generic car, there were no parking places open.
"So I take it you think this Margie is with Maxine. And maybe Maxine's mama is there, too," Lula said.
"Yeah. Problem is, I don't know if Maxine's in the house right now."
"I could be the Avon lady," Lula said. "Ding dong, Avon calling."
"If Maxine's mother is in there she'll recognize you."
"Think maybe we be recognized standing on the street like this, too," Lula said.
Very true. "Okay, this is what we'll do. We'll go see if Maxine's in the house. If she isn't at home, we'll sit down with Margie and watch some TV until Maxine shows up."
"Sounds like a plan to me. You want the back door or the front door?"
"Front door."
"And you probably don't want me to shoot anybody."
"Shooting isn't my favorite thing."
Lula walked along the side of the house to the back, and I went to the front door. I knocked twice and Margie answered.
Her eyes opened wide in surprise. "Oh!"
"Hi," I said. "I'm looking for Maxine."
"Maxine isn't here."
"You wouldn't mind if I came in and looked for myself?"
Maxine's mother swayed into view. "Who is it?" She took a long drag on her cigarette and let the smoke curl from her nose, dragon style. "Christ, it's you. You know, you're getting to be a real pain in the ass."
Lula came in from the kitchen. "Hope nobody minds my coming in. The back door wasn't locked."
"Oh God," Mrs. Nowicki said. "Tweedledum."
There was an empty box in the middle of the floor with a lamp sitting beside it.
"You win this lamp at the arcade?" Lula asked Margie.
"It's for my bedroom," Margie said. "Twenty-seven thousand points. Yesterday, Maxine won a deep fat fryer."
"Hell, we won just about everything in this house," Mrs. Nowicki said.
"Where's Maxine now?" I asked.
"She had some errands to run."
Lula sat down on the couch and picked up the channel changer for the TV. "Guess we'll be waiting then. You don't mind if I watch TV, do you?"
"You can't do this," Mrs. Nowicki said. "You can't just waltz in here and make yourself at home."
" 'Course we can," Lula said. "We're bounty hunters. We can do anything we want. We're protected by a dumb-ass law made back in 1869 when people didn't know any better."
"Is that true?" Mrs. Nowicki wanted to know.
"Well, actually the law doesn't cover control of the channel changer," I said. "But it does give us a lot of rights when it comes to the pursuit and capture of a felon."
There was the sound of gravel crunching in the driveway between houses, and Margie and Mrs. Nowicki exchanged glances.
"That's Maxine, isn't it?" I asked.
"You're going to ruin everything for us," Mrs. Nowicki said. "We had this all planned out, and now you're screwing it up."
"I'm screwing it up? Look at you two. You've been scalped and had your finger chopped off. Back in Trenton there's a dead store clerk. And you're still playing this stupid treasure hunt game."
"It isn't that simple," Margie said. "We can't leave yet. They have to pay the price."