Page 22 of Now or Never

“No. And you probably don’t want to read it until you’ve had a glass of wine.”

Oh boy.

I hiked my bag higher on my shoulder and wrapped my arms around the fruit basket. “I’m heading over to my parents’ house for lunch.”

“You’re going to unload the fruit basket on them,” Lula said.

“I’m going to try.”

“I’d go along but I need to go home and put some eyelashes on. I didn’t get to complete my beauty routine this morning. I planned on being Cher today, but I ended up being a half-assed Marilyn.”

I drove the short distance to my parents’ house and carted the fruit basket into the kitchen.

“What’s the occasion?” Grandma asked. “Is someone sick? Did someone die?”

“I offered to take Jug to get rescheduled and he declined, but he gave me this fruit basket.”

“It’s a beauty of a fruit basket,” Grandma said. “Except it looks like it’s got a lot of pears.”

“What’s wrong with pears?”

“They aren’t an everyday fruit. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but you never hear a rhyme like that about pears. And I don’t have a recipe for a pear pie.”

My mom came over and examined the fruit basket. “You have all kinds of good things in here,” she said. “Kiwi fruit, apricots, little oranges, dates, there’s an avocado and a block of cheese.”

“Do you want the basket?” I asked her. “I can’t eat all this stuff.”

“I guess I could take a couple of the little oranges and the cheese,” she said.

“We were just getting lunch together,” Grandma said. “We have leftover meatloaf if you want a sandwich. Or there’s liverwurst and Swiss cheese.”

“A meatloaf sandwich sounds perfect.”

Grandma put an extra place setting on the kitchen table and sat down. “Help yourself. We got lots of meatloaf. I’m feeling like liverwurst today.”

My mom came to the table and decided to have meatloaf. “I saw on the news that Eugene Fleck was at work feeding the homeless again.”

“They don’t know for sure that it was Eugene Fleck,” Grandmasaid. “He got arrested on suspicion of burglary for that delivery truck heist, but I heard from Angie Krisenski, who heard from her daughter who does police dispatch, that it’s not an open-and-shut case.Robin Hoodiefed the homeless today.” Grandma assembled her sandwich. “I checked just before lunch and there’s no video up yet. It’s going to be hard to top the UPS truck, but this should still be good.”

I tucked into my sandwich. “Are you talking about local news?”

Grandma looked at me like I had sprouted two heads. “I’m talking about YouTube. Haven’t you been following Robin Hoodie? Half the world is following him. Even your father is following him. Last week he broke into the Nike store at the mall and then he live-streamed delivery of about forty boxes of Nikes to a bunch of homeless drug addicts camped out on a sidewalk somewhere. I almost started bawling watching those addicts trying shoes on. I was happy they got shoes, but it was a horrible sight to see. One of them still had a needle stuck in his leg. I had to turn it off and watch BTS videos to get a grip on myself.”

I had a chunk of meatloaf sitting halfway down my throat, not going anywhere, thanks to the mental visual of an addict with a needle stuck in his leg.

“It was an unusual video,” Grandma said. “Usually, Robin Hoodie’s videos are more fun, with people opening packages and being happy, like they’re at a party.”

My next mental flash was of Kevin’s loft apartment with the GoPro cameras and stash of cardboard boxes.

“Do you get to see Robin Hoodie in these videos?” I asked Grandma.

“Once in a while you get to see a glimpse of him, but you can’t really see him because he’s wearing a hoodie, and he always has a mask on under the hoodie.”

So when Eugene was arrested and had his picture printed in the paper and flashed across the television screen on evening news shows, he became the face for Robin Hoodie, I thought.

I finished my sandwich and skipped dessert for obvious reasons. After a morning of full-on doughnuts and Walmart cake, I was afraid I’d go into a diabetic coma if I had more sugar. I gave my mom the little oranges and the block of cheese and carried the fruit basket back to my car. I’d planned to stake out the Fleck house after lunch, but I went to my apartment instead.

A glass vase holding a massive amount of cut flowers was in front of my door. A small pink envelope was tucked into the flowers. I opened the envelope and read the message.

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