Chapter 10
Amanda stood on the sidewalk staring blankly at the charred remains of Lee’s car while a million anxious thoughts tumbled through her head; the first and foremost being that her husband was going to go nuts when he saw what had happened to his precious baby. She was thankful that she hadn’t been in the car at the time, or Stephanie or Francine or Lula, for that matter, but no matter how many times she thanked God that everyone was okay, her thoughts kept rushing back to what her husband was going to do. She knew someone had come to stand beside her, but couldn’t force herself to look away from the remains of the silver sports car to find out who.
Stephanie saw the distant look on Amanda’s face, and knew exactly how the other woman felt. Although she’d lost more than her fair share of cars in a catastrophic blast, she still remembered how she’d felt the first time it had happened. Granted the first car had been Joe’s, but that just meant that she had an even deeper understanding of what the brunette next to her was going through. “After you lose more than one car to a fiery demise, you learn not to get sentimentally attached to your vehicles anymore.”
“Yes, but this wasn’t just any car, this was Lee’s, he’s had it for almost five years. It’s survived bullets, garbage cans and car chases,” Amanda watched as another flame shot out from where the hood used to be, “but one afternoon with me, in a strange town, and poof, it’s gone.” Her eyes suddenly grew wide and she tore her gaze away from the debris. “Joe’s Grandma Bella was right. She warned us that something was going to happen to Lee’s car, but everyone said she was crazy, so I dismissed it as some ramblings of an old woman, and I’m sure after listening to Joe, Lee did too. If only…”
Stephanie reached out and placed a hand on Amanda’s shoulder. “I’ll admit that sometimes Grandma Bella has a scary knack for being accurate ninety percent of the time, but that’s usually only with people she knows. She’d never met you before, so it was highly unlikely she’d be right.” She smiled apologetically. “Guess we shouldn’t be so quick to poo-poo her ‘visions’ in the future.” Starting to feel a little warm, she gave Amanda’s arm a slight tug. “Come on, it’s probably not a good idea to stand so close to the fire, besides I can hear the emergency vehicles getting closer and they’ll just tell us to get back anyway once they arrive.”
Feeling a bit uncomfortable herself, Amanda nodded a bit reluctantly and began moving to where Francine and Lula were standing with a very subdued Tommy the Sleaze. “I can’t understand how this happened though.” She glanced once more towards the burning rubble.
Stephanie shrugged. “Who knows, could have been faulty wiring, after all you did say he’d had the car for five years, maybe it was just its time to go.” She didn’t want to tell Amanda that she had a very strong feeling that it wasn’t a faulty anything, that someone had most likely planted a bomb on the car, but the question was who. The only case other than Tommy that she was working on was this one with the agents, and it wasn’t even her car that went up in flames. So chances were that if it was a bomb, it was probably directed at one of the agents. A fact that, if Amanda and Francine were really good intelligence operatives, they probably would have figured out anyway. She turned towards the brunette. “You know what I could go for right now, I could go for some cake.”
Amanda stopped midstride and stared at the bounty hunter in astonishment. “Cake?” She let out a slightly hysterical laugh. “We could have been blown to pieces and you suddenly have a craving for cake?”
Stephanie smiled. “Cake always makes me feel better, especially right after my car’s blown up. I know this great bakery that sells day old birthday cake that no one’s come to claim, real cheap.” She gently nudged Amanda. “It’d be my treat.”
Amanda laughed again, a little more jovially this time. “Tempting, but I think I’ll pass.” The idea of eating day old cake, though probably still slightly fresh, just didn’t really appeal to her, especially not right now. Sighing sadly, she glanced briefly at the wreckage then back towards Stephanie. “So, how many cars of yours have actually ended up like Lee’s?”
Stephanie twisted her face in thought as she ran down the list in her head. “At last count, I think I’ve been in possession of about six cars that have either been blown up or smashed into a pancake.” The image of the Rangeman Porsche blowing up and then being flattened by the garbage truck was a memory she’d never forget. “Oh wait, I forgot about the garbage truck, although I never drove it or anything, it did blow up because it fell on the Porsche Ranger had loaned me, which had exploded because of a bomb. So, I guess the count should probably be seven. But,” her expression turned serious, “none of them were really my fault. They just had the misfortune of being around my bad karma, which I fully blame on my job. If I knew that the life of a bounty hunter was going to be so dangerous, I never would have set foot in my cousin's office and begged him for a job.”
Amanda groaned. “Somehow I don’t think that telling Lee that his car is now a pile of molten metal because it happened to be around your supposed bad karma is going to make him feel any better about the loss of his baby.” She turned around and stared at what was now nothing more than a smoldering skeleton of her husband’s precious sports car. “He loved this car. Granted it’s been in the garage for repairs more than it’s been out, but when it wasn’t being fixed, he really cherished it.”
Lula sauntered over to where Stephanie and Amanda were and sighed audibly. “I should learn to start bringing some marshmallows and those metal stick things to put them on whenever I go out with you, girlfriend.” She turned towards Stephanie. “We’d never go hungry, since your cars always turn into barbeques.” She looked up at the sun, which was no longer directly overhead, but starting its slow descent towards the horizon, and shook her head in disappointment. “Guess we ain’t goin’ to the beach. I was really looking forward to working on my tan, too. It’s a good thing we didn’t contact that Mrs. Benton ahead of time, ’cause now we don’t feel obligated to call and tell her we ain’t gonna make it after all.”
Amanda turned towards Francine. “You know, you and Stephanie could head over there if you wanted to. It’s not like any of you can do anything around her anyway. I’m the one who needs to wait for Lee.”
Lula nodded her head enthusiastically. “We could pile into my car, since Amanda won’t be going with us, there’s enough room to put Tommy in the back and haul him back to jail, then we can just high tail it to the beach. There’s definitely enough daylight that if we go now, I could still get a pretty decent tan.”
“I think Seaside Heights is going to have to wait till tomorrow.” Stephanie glanced over at Lula and then back towards Amanda. “I know you’ll probably say we don’t need to stay, but the truth is that I know almost all the cops and emergency personnel, so it’ll make things a lot easier on you when they start questioning you about what happened.” Not to mention the fact that she wanted to be present to personally tell each and every one of them that she had nothing to do with this car exploding.
Francine, who was still firmly holding the cuffed Tommy at her side, turned towards her friend. “I agree with Stephanie, Mrs. Benton can wait until tomorrow.” She moved a little closer to Amanda and lowered her voice. “Besides, if it means that I don't have to spend another second with miss-absolutely-no-fashion-sense, I can stand waiting one more day to get any more leads on Adam.” She noticed the perplexed look on the brunette’s face and frowned. “If I have to spend one more minute alone with that Lula person, Amanda, I swear on what’s left of Lee’s car that I will jump off the next bridge I see.”
“She’s not really that bad, Francine, she’s just overly eager.” Amanda had to admit that although her language was a bit colorful, she found Lula to be a bit of comic relief, and right now, she needed something to keep her mind off of their current situation.
“Trust me, she is that bad.” Francine was about to explain to Amanda just exactly how horrible Lula was, when the first fire engine rounded the corner.
Stephanie watched as one of Trenton’s finest turned onto the street right behind the big red truck, and came to a stop in the middle of the road, effectively blocking any more traffic from rolling past the scene. The passenger side door opened, and forgetting momentarily that her boyfriend was undercover at Pete’s, she half expected to see Joe emerging from it, since he usually arrived moments after the emergency vehicles. However, she wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Carl Costanza’s head pop up over the roof of the car instead. She and Carl had known each other since school and had even dated once or twice. Although nothing serious had ever developed between the two of them romantically, they had managed to remain friends. “This wasn’t my fault, I swear to that, Costanza.” She pointed towards the wreckage as a grinning Carl approached.
“It never is, Steph and yet you’re almost always present at the disaster.” Carl looked over at the cuffed Tommy the Sleaze and then at the bounty hunter’s disheveled appearance. Stephanie’s hair was mussed and traces of leaves and twigs were stuck in between various curls. There was dirt on her face and a nice big rip in her jeans and Tommy didn’t look much better. “FTA related explosion?” He asked, not even bothering to hide the amusement from his tone. “I told Big Dog,” he pointed towards his partner who was now directing traffic away from the scene, “that I should have put more of a wager on the fact that we’d find you here.”