WE STARTED AT the copy store on Route 33. I enlarged Fred's photo and reproduced it onto a hand-?printed request for information about Fred's disappearance.
After the copy store, I cruised into the Grand Union lot and was disappointed not to see Bunchy waiting for us. I parked close to the store, and Lula and I took the posters inside.
“Hold on here,” Lula said. “They got Coke on sale. This is a real good price for Coke. And they got some good-?lookin' lunchmeat in the deli section. What time is it? Is it lunchtime? You mind if I do some food shopping?”
“Hey,” I said to Lula, “don't let me slow you down.” I tacked a poster onto the bulletin board in the front of the store. Then I took the original photo and started quizzing shoppers while Lula foraged in the bakery aisle.
“Have you seen this man?” I asked.
The reply would be no. Or sometimes, “Yeah, that's Fred Shutz. What a putz.”
No one could remember seeing him on the day of the disappearance. And no one had seen him since. And no one especially cared that he was missing.
“How's it going?” Lula asked, wheeling a shopping cart past me, en route to the car.
“Slow. No takers.”
“I'm gonna drop these bags off. And then I'm going to look in that little video store at the end.”
“Knock yourself out,” I said. I showed Fred's photo to a few more people and at noon I broke for lunch. I searched my pockets and the bottom of my bag and came up with enough money to buy a small bag of nutritious, already washed and ready-?to-?eat baby carrots. For the same amount of money I could also buy a giant Snickers bar. Boy, what a tough decision.
Lula returned from the video store just as I was licking the last of the chocolate off my fingers. “Look at this,” Lula said. “They had Boogie Nights on sale. I don't care much about the movie. I just like to look at the ending once in a while.”
“I'm going door-?to-?door with Fred's photo,” I told her. “Want to help?”
“Sure, you just give me one of them posters, and I'll door-?to-?door the hell out of you.”
We divided the neighborhood in half and decided to work until two o'clock. I was done early, scoring a big zero. One woman said she saw Fred go off with Harrison Ford, but I thought that was unlikely. And another woman said she'd seen a vision of Fred floating across her television screen. I didn't put a lot of stock in that, either.
Since I had some time to kill I went back to the Grand Union to buy pantyhose for the wedding. I stepped into the glass vestibule and noticed an elderly woman was staring at the Fred poster I'd tacked up on the community bulletin board. That's good, I thought. People read these things.
I bought the pantyhose, and as I was leaving I saw the woman was still standing in front of the poster. “Have you seen him?” I asked.
“Are you Stephanie Plum?”
“Yes.”
“I thought I recognized you. I remember your picture from when you blew up that funeral home.”
“Do you know Fred?”
“Sure, I know Fred. He's in my seniors club. Fred and Mabel. I didn't realize he was missing.”
“When did you see him last?”
“I was trying to remember that. I was sitting on the bench outside Grand Union here, waiting for my nephew to come pick me up, on account of I don't drive anymore. And I saw Fred come out of the cleaners.”
“That must have been Friday.”
“That's what I think, too. I think it was Friday.”
“What did Fred do when he came out of the cleaners?”
“He went to his car with the clothes. And it looked like he laid them out real careful on the backseat, although it was hard to tell from here.”
“What happened next?”
“A car pulled up alongside Fred and a man got out, and him and Fred talked for a while. And then Fred got in the car with the man and they drove away. I'm pretty sure that's the last time I saw Fred. Except I can't be certain of the day. My nephew would know.”