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me.”
    Lula and I sashayed out of the office, down the hall, and into the elevator.
    “That wasn’t as much fun as last time,” Lula said. “You didn’t even threaten him. You didn’t chase him around the desk, or anything.”
    “I don’t think I hate him as much as I used to.”
    “Bummer.”
    We crossed the street and stared at my car. It had a parking ticket on the window.
    “See this,” Lula said. “It’s your moons. You made a bad money decision when you picked this busted meter.”
    I stuffed the ticket into my bag and wrenched the door open.
    “You better watch out,” Lula said. “The man trouble’s gonna come next.”
    I called Connie and asked for an address for Albert Kloughn. In minutes I had Kloughn’s business address and Soder’s home address. Both were in Hamilton Township.
    We drove past Soder’s home first. He lived in a complexof garden apartments. The buildings were two-story brick, decked out to be colonial style with white window shutters and white columns at the front doors. Soder’s apartment was on the ground floor.
    “Guess he hasn’t got the little girl in his cellar,” Lula said. “Since he hasn’t got a cellar.”
    We sat and watched the apartment for a few minutes, but nothing happened, so we moved on to Kloughn.
    Albert Kloughn had a two-room office, next to a Laundromat, in a strip mall. There was a desk for a secretary but no secretary was in residence. Instead, Kloughn was at the desk, typing at the computer. He was my height and looked like he was approaching puberty. He had sandy-colored hair, a face like a cherub, and the body of the Pillsbury Doughboy.
    He looked up and smiled tentatively when we entered. Probably thought we were scrounging quarters to do our laundry. I could feel my feet vibrating from the drums tumbling next door, and there was a distant rumble from the large commercial washers.
    “Albert Kloughn?” I asked.
    He was wearing a white shirt, red-and-green striped tie, and khakis. He stood and self-consciously smoothed out his tie. “I’m Albert Kloughn,” he said.
    “Well, this is a big disappointment,” Lula said. “Where’s the red nose that goes
beep beep?
And where’re your big clown feet?”
    “I’m not that kind of clown. Yeesh. Everybody says that. Ever since kindergarten I’ve been hearing that. It’s spelled ‘K-l-o-u-g-h-n.’ Kloughn!”
    “Could be worse,” Lula said. “You could be Albert Fuch.”
    I gave Kloughn my card. “I’m Stephanie Plum and this is my associate, Lula. I understand you represented Evelyn Soder in her divorce case.”
    “Wow,” he said, “are you really a bounty hunter?”
    “Bond enforcement,” I told him.
    “Yeah, that’s a bounty hunter, right?”
    “About Evelyn Soder . . . “
    “Sure. What do you want to know? Is she in trouble?”
    “Evelyn and Annie are missing. And it looks like Evelyn took Annie away so she wouldn’t have to visit her father. She left a couple notes.”
    “She must have had a good reason to leave,” Kloughn said. “She really didn’t want to jeopardize her grandmother’s house. She just didn’t have any choice. She had no place to turn for the bond money.”
    “Any ideas where Evelyn and Annie might have gone?”
    Kloughn shook his head. “No. Evelyn didn’t talk much. From what I could tell, her entire family lived in the Burg. I don’t want to be mean or anything, but she didn’t impress me as being real bright. I’m not even sure she could drive. She always had someone bring her to the office.”
    “Where’s your secretary?” Lula asked him.
    “I don’t have a secretary right now. I used to have someone who came in part-time, but she said the lint blowing around from the dryers bothered her sinuses. Probably I should put an ad in the paper, but I’m not real organized. I only opened this office a couple months ago. Evelyn was one of my first clients. That’s why I remember her.”
    Probably Evelyn was his
only
client.
    “Did she pay