'It don't matter what anyone thinks,' Lauralene said. I'm not giving up Anton, and there's nothing you can do about it. He's gonna marry me. And he's gonna take me out of this hole. We got plans.'

I gave Francine my card and asked her to call if she had information on Ward. I wished Lauralene luck with the baby, and she told me to kiss her ass. I try not to be judgmental, but it was a little frightening that Lauralene Taylor and Anton Ward were reproducing.

I returned to the Lincoln and sat there awhile, watching the Taylor house. I'd had a bowl of rabbit food for breakfast and nothing for lunch. I was starving and there was no food in the Lincoln. No Krispy Kremes, no Big Mac, no supersize fries.

I had two new skips, but I wasn't motivated to find them. And Harold Pancek was out there, but truth is, I didn't care much about him either. I cared about Anton Ward. I wanted to see Ward locked up. I would have preferred not to be the one doing the capture, but at the moment I felt relatively safe. So I decided to sit tight.

I was still watching the Taylor house at four o'clock. I was bored out of my mind and hungry enough to eat the upholstery. I called Lula, told her I was on Hancock, and asked her to bring me something nonfattening to eat.

Five minutes later, the Firebird pulled to the curb behind me, and Lula got out. 'What's happening?' she asked, handing over a brown paper lunch bag. 'Did I miss anything?'

'I'm hanging out to see if Lauralene has a date tonight.'

I looked in the bag. It contained a bottle of water and a hard-boiled egg.

'You gotta stay away from the carbs,' Lula said. That's how I lost all my weight. I went on that protein diet. Then I sort of fell off the wagon and gained all the weight back, but it was still my favorite diet, except for the time I ate two pounds of bacon and threw up.'

I ate the egg and drank the water. I thought about eating the bag, but I was worried it was carbohydrate.

'I guess I should stay with you in case something dangerous happens, and you need someone to squish somebody,' Lula said.

I looked over at her. 'Nothing better to do?'

'Not a damn thing. I'm between men right now. And there's nothing on television worth watching.' She pulled a deck of cards out of her purse. 'I figured we could play rummy.'

At six o'clock Lula said she had to have a bathroom break. She took off in the Firebird, and she returned a half hour later with powdered sugar on her shirt.

'That's really rotten,' I said. 'You've got a lot of nerve sneaking out to get food and not bringing any back for me.'

'You're on a diet.'

'It's not the starvation diet!'

'Well, I was going to stop home to use the bathroom, and then I thought why not use the bathroom at Dunkin' Donuts? And then I couldn't very well use their bathroom without buying some doughnuts. That'd be rude, right?'

I gave her an Italian hand signal that didn't mean left turn.

'Boy, you get cranky when you don't get a doughnut,' Lula said.

A little over an hour later, streetlights were on, and Hancock Street was settled in for the night. Lula and I couldn't play cards in the dark, so we were passing the time with twenty questions.

'I'm thinking of something that's animal,' Lula said. 'And my ass is asleep. What makes you so sure Lauralene's gonna have a date tonight?'

'She's got news for Anton, and I'm betting she's going to use it to make him come see her.'

Just then, the Taylors' front door opened and Lauralene stepped out.

'You're pretty smart,' Lula said. 'You're always thinking. You know all about manipulative female shit.'

Lauralene looked right and left, and Lula and I froze. We were just a couple houses down. Easily in sight. Fortunately, we weren't under a streetlight, and Lauralene didn't appear to have picked us out. She was wearing the same pink sweat suit. She wasn't carrying a purse. She set off down the street, walking away from us.

'She's going to meet him,' Lula said. 'And she don't want her mama to know.'

Lauralene turned the corner, and I started the car engine. I left my headlights off, and I carefully followed after Lauralene. She walked two blocks and got into the back seat of a parked car. The car was in shadow, hard to tell the make, impossible to see the occupants at this distance. It looked to be a compact, possibly dark green.

I stopped several houses back and idled at the curb. There were no cars parked between Lauralene and me.

'We're sort of exposed, sitting here like this,' Lula said. 'She could turn around and see us.'

I agreed, but I didn't want to drive past Lauralene and risk having her recognize me. Better to take our chances being parked in the dark.

After a short time, the car in front of us started to rock.

'Look at this,' Lula said. 'She's seven months pregnant, and they're doing the nasty in the back seat of a friggin' compact. They didn't even bother to go out of the neighborhood.'

'They must have been in a hurry,' I said.

'Well, excuse me, but I think that's tacky. He could at least of had the courtesy to steal something with a bigger back seat. This here's a pregnant woman he's slippin' it to. I mean how much effort does it take to find a Cadillac? All those old people over in Hamilton Township got Caddies. Those cars are just sitting around waiting to get stolen.'

'He's doing more than slippin',' I said. 'I've never seen a car rock like that.'

'He's gonna ruin the shocks if he keeps this up.'

Some loud groaning sounds carried back to us, and Lula and I rolled our windows down so we could hear better.

'Either he's real good or else she's going into labor,' Lula said.

She leaned forward and squinted. 'Am I looking at a moon? What the hell is he doing? How'd he get his ass plastered against the rear window like that?'

The sight was both horrifying and mesmerizing.

'Maybe we should go get him before he finishes up,' Lula said.

'It'll be easier to get the cuffs on him when he's got a boner and can't move real fast.'

Lula was probably right, but I couldn't see myself slapping cuffs on Anton Ward while his flag was flying. Last month Morelli and I rented a porno flick, and there was some boinking in it. And okay, so it was fun in a car-crash kind of way. But that was film, and this is Anton Ward in the flesh, rocking the car with pregnant Lauralene Taylor. Yikes. I was as close as I wanted to get.

'Uh oh,' Lula said. The car's stopped rocking.'

We stuck our heads out and listened. Quiet. He don't impress me as being the type to stick around,' Lula said.

We jumped out of the Lincoln and scurried up to Ward's car. I had cuffs shoved into the waistband of my jeans, and I was holding Ranger's Maglite in one hand and pepper spray in the other. Lula was fumbling in her purse, looking for her gun as she ran.

I took a deep breath, prayed to God that Anton and Lauralene had their clothes on, and flashed the Maglite into the car interior.

'What the fuck?' Anton Ward said, bare ass gleaming under the Maglite.

'Oops,' I said. 'Sorry, I thought you were done.'

'Guess they must have been changing positions,' Lula said, looking into the car.

'You fat cow,' Ward yelled at Lauralene. 'You set me up.' And he punched her in the face.

I dropped the Maglite and the spray, and reached into the car to secure Ward, but he was a man in motion, and I only succeeded in grabbing his pants. He wriggled out of the pants, hurled himself out of the opposite side of the car, and took off running.

I ran after him, down the street to the corner. He turned the corner and kept going. He was younger and probably in better shape than me, but he was running buck naked with the exception of socks. I figured eventually the socks were going to slow him down, not to mention the outdoor plumbing swinging in the breeze.