"Isn't that a coincidence? I woke up this morning thinking it would be a good day to go to the shore."
The temperature was in the eighties. The sky was the color of putty. And the humidity was so high I could feel the air lying on my face. It wasn't a good day to go anywhere . . . unless it was out of Jersey.
"You aren't going to play Buddy Holly all the way to Point Pleasant, are you?"
"What's wrong with Buddy Holly?"
I grimaced. He probably liked the Three Stooges, too.
IT STARTED RAINING when we hit Point Pleasant. A nice steady soaker that chased everyone off the beach. It was the sort of rain farmers liked. Except there weren't any farmers in Point Pleasant—only bummed-out vacationers.
I directed Morelli to the Nowicki house, and we sat outside for a while, watching. There were no cars in the driveway. No lights on inside. No sign of activity.
"Looks a lot like Eddie Kuntz's house," I said.
"Yeah," Morelli said. "Let's go take a look."
We ran for the shelter of the porch and rang the bell. Neither of us expected an answer. When we didn't get one, we snooped in the windows.
"We missed the party," Morelli said.
The front room was a mess. Lamps knocked over, tables on end, chair cushions askew. Not from Joyce, either. This was a different mess.
I tried the door, but it was locked. We ran around back and crowded onto the small stoop. No luck with that door, either.
"Damn," I said. "I bet there are clues inside. Maybe even bodies."
"One way to find out." Morelli smashed the door window with his gun butt.
I jumped back. "Shit! I don't believe you did that. Didn't you watch the O. J. trial? Cops can't just bust into places."
Morelli had his arm through the hole in the glass. "It was an accident. And I'm not a cop today. It's my day off."
"You should team up with Lula. You'd make a great pair."
MORELLI OPENED THE DOOR, and we carefully picked our way around the broken glass. He looked under the sink, found a pair of rubber gloves, put them on and wiped his prints off the doorknob. "You don't need to worry about prints," he said. "You were here legitimately two days ago."
We did a fast walk-through just to make sure there were no bodies, dead or alive. Then we methodically worked our way through the rooms. Closets, drawers, hidden places, garbage bags.
All of their clothes were gone, and as far as I could tell, so were the prizes they'd won. They'd been in a hurry. Beds were unmade. Food had been left in the fridge. There'd been a struggle in the living room, and no one had bothered to make repairs. We didn't find anything that might hint at a new address. No sign of drugs. No bullets embedded in woodwork. No bloodstains.
My only conclusion was that they weren't great housekeepers and were probably going to end up with diverticulitis. They ate a lot of bologna and white bread, smoked a lot of cigarettes, drank a lot of beer and didn't recycle.
"Gone," Morelli said, snapping the gloves off, returning them to the sink.
"Any ideas?"
"Yeah. Let's get out of here."
We ran to the truck, and Morelli drove to the boardwalk. "There's a pay phone at the top of the ramp," he said. "Call the police and tell them you're a neighbor, and you noticed a back window was broken in the house next door. I don't want to leave that house open for vandalism or robbery."
I took stock of myself and decided I couldn't get much wetter, so I sloshed through the rain to the phone, made the call and sloshed back.
"Everything go okay?" he asked.
"They didn't like that I wouldn't tell them my name."
"You're supposed to make something up. Cops expect it."
"Cops are weird," I said to Morelli.
"Yeah," he said, "cops scare the hell out of me."
I took my shoes off and buckled myself in. "You want to hazard a guess on what happened in the living room back there?"
"Someone came after Maxine, chased her around the living room and got hit from behind by a blunt instrument. When he woke up the three women were gone."
"Maybe that someone was Eddie Kuntz."
"Maybe. But that doesn't explain why he's still missing."
THE RAIN STOPPED halfway home, and Trenton showed no sign of relief from the heat. The