at us. He was around 5′ 10″, with bloodshot eyes, bed-head hair, reeking of weed, and his arms were decorated with burn scars, which I supposed were from working the fry station. He was wearing pink boxers with red hearts on them.
“Oswald Poletti?” I asked.
“Yeah. You Girl Scouts selling cookies?”
“Nice shorts,” Lula said.
He stared down at them as if he was seeing them for the first time.
“Some girl gave them to me.”
“She must hate you,” Lula said.
I introduced myself and told him I was looking for his dad.
“Haven’t seen him,” he said. “We aren’t close. He’s an even bigger dick than me. I mean, dude, he named me Oswald.”
“Do you know where I might find him?” I asked.
“Mexico?”
I gave him my card and told him to call me if anything turned up.
“We’re batting zero,” Lula said when we got back into the car. “You’re not gonna get a call from him ’less he needs cookies.”
“So Jimmy Poletti’s kids don’t like him. And his wife doesn’t like him. Who do you suppose likes him?”
“His mama?”
I called Connie. “Do you have an address for Jimmy Poletti’s mother?”
Two minutes later, the address appeared in a text on my phone.
“She lives in the Burg,” I told Lula. “Elmer Street.”
“This is getting boring. No one wants to talk to us. No one knows nothing. This keeps up and I’m gonna need lunch.”
I turned off Hamilton at Spring Street and two blocks later turned onto Elmer. I drove one block and pulled to the curb behind a hearse. The hearse was parked in front of the Poletti house, and the front door to the house was open.
“That don’t look good,” Lula said. “That looks like someone else who isn’t gonna talk to us. Unless it’s Jimmy. Then hooray, case closed.”
I got out and walked to the house and stepped inside. A bunch of people were milling around inside. Two guys who looked like they were from the funeral home, an old man who was dabbing at his nose with a tissue, a man in his fifties who was more stoic, and two women. I knew one of the women, Mary Klotz.
“What’s happening?” I asked Mary.
“It sounds like it was her heart,” Mary said. “She’s been sick for a long time. I live across the street, and the paramedics were always here. I’d see the lights flashing once a week.”
“The two men …”
“Her husband and a relative. I think he’s a nephew or something.”
“No sign of her son?”
“He didn’t come around much. I imagine you’re looking for him.”
“He didn’t show for his court date.” I gave her my card. “I’d appreciate a call if you see him.”
Lula was waiting for me in the car. Lula didn’t like dead people.
“Well?” Lula said.
“Poletti’s mother. Sounds like a natural death. His father is still alive, but I didn’t get to talk to him. I didn’t want to intrude.”
“Did you see her?”
“No.”
Lula gave a whole-body shiver. “Gives me the creeps just being here. You know there’s spirits swirling all around the house. I could practically hear them howling.”
“Howling?”
“That’s what they do! They come to get the dead person’s soul. Don’t you ever go to the movies? You ever see any of them Harry Potter films? Anyways, I’m getting hungry. I could use a Clucky Burger with special sauce and bacon and some cheese fries.”
I took Lula to the drive-thru at Cluck-in-a-Bucket, then dropped her off at the office and headed for my parents’ house. They live a short distance away, in the heart of the Burg, in a duplex house that shares a common wall with a very nice widow who is older than dirt. She lives a frugal existence off her husband’s pension, has her television going every waking minute, and bakes coffee cakes all day long.
My Grandma Mazur was at the door when I parked in front of the house. Grandma came to live with my parents when my grandfather went to the big reality TV show in the sky. We hid my father’s shotgun a month after Grandma moved in. There are times at the dinner table when his face turns red, his knuckles turn white, and we know we did the right thing by removing temptation. My mother has found her own way to cope. She drinks. Personally, I think my grandmother is a hoot. Of course, I don’t have to live with her.
“Just in time for lunch,” Grandma said, opening the screen door. “We’re having leftover meatloaf sandwiches.”
I followed Grandma into the kitchen. My parents don’t