Explosive Eighteen: A Stephanie Plum Novel (Stephanie Plum Novels)

bowling leagues, and she’s on my team. You might want to talk to her. She’s some kind of relationship counselor.”
    “I didn’t know you could bowl.”
    “Turns out it’s easy. You just gotta throw the ball down thealley. They gave me this shirt and everything. We’re the LWB. That stands for Ladies with Balls.”
    My father was watching television in the living room. He rattled his newspaper and muttered something about women ruining bowling. He was watching national news and a bulletin came on showing a picture of a man found dead at LAX. He’d been hit with a blunt instrument, had his throat slashed, and he’d been stuffed into a trash can.
    Ugh. As if this wasn’t horrific enough, I was pretty sure it was the guy sitting next to me for the first leg of the Hawaii flight home. I’d spoken to him briefly in the beginning but slept for the rest of the trip. I’d been surprised to find his seat empty when we reboarded. My impression had been that he’d planned to fly into Newark. I guess this explained his absence.
    The doorbell rang. Grandma rushed to get it and ushered a brown-haired, pleasantly plump, smiling, forty-something woman wearing an LWB bowling shirt into the living room.
    “This is Annie Hart,” she said. “She’s the best bowler we got. She’s our ringer.”
    I knew Annie Hart. I’d been involved in a Valentine’s Day fiasco with her a while back and hadn’t seen her since. She was a perfectly nice woman who lived in LaLa Land, firmly believing she was the reincarnation of Cupid. Hey, I mean, who am I to say, but it seemed far-fetched.
    “How wonderful to see you again, dear,” Annie said to me. “I think of you from time to time, wondering if you’ve resolved your romantic dilemma.”
    “Yep,” I said. “It’s all resolved.”
    “She got married in Hawaii,” Grandma told Annie.
    My father shot straight out of his chair. “
What
?”
    “She had a ring and everything,” Grandma said.
    My father was wild-eyed. “Is that true? Why didn’t someone tell me? No one ever tells me anything around here.”
    “Look,” I said, holding my hand in the air. “I’m not wearing a ring. I’d be wearing a ring if I was married, right?”
    “You got a ring
mark,
” Grandma said. “Of course, I guess there could be other explanations. You could have the vitiligo, like Michael Jackson. Remember when he turned white?”
    My mother put two platters on the dining room table. “I have antipasto,” she said. “And I have a bottle of red open.”
    My father went to the table shaking his head. “Vitiligo,” he said. “What next?”
    “Annie’s been helping Lorraine Farnsworth with her love life,” Grandma said, forking into a slice of hard cheese and prosciutto.
    My mother looked over at Annie. “Lorraine is ninety-one years old.”
    “Yes,” Annie said. “It’s time for her to make a decision. She’s been seeing Arnie Milhauser for fifty-three years. It might be time for her to move on.”
    My father had his head bent over his antipasto. “Only place she’s gonna move on to is the bone farm.”
    “She’s doing pretty good for her age,” Grandma said. “Sure, she rolls her share of gutter balls, but heck, who don’t.”
    “She’s doing better now that we got her the longer tubing to her oxygen tank,” Annie said.
    Grandma nodded. “Yeah, that helped. She was on a short leash before.”
    I had my phone clipped to the waistband on my jeans, and it beeped with a text message.
We need to talk to you. It’s urgent. Come outside
. It was signed
The FBI
.
    I texted back
no
.
    The next message was
Come outside or we’re coming in
.
    I pushed away from the table. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “I need to step outside for a moment.”
    “Probably got to let a breezer go,” Grandma said to Annie. “That’s always why I got to step outside.”
    My mother drained her wineglass and poured another.
    I went to the front door, and saw they were the fake FBI guys. They were standing at the curb in front of a black Lincoln. The bigger of the two, Lance Lancer, motioned me forward. I shook my head no. He pulled his badge out, held it up for me to see, and crooked his finger at me. I did another head shake.
    “What do you want?” I yelled.
    “We want to talk to you. Come here.”
    “Move away from the car. I’ll meet you halfway.”
    “We’re the FBI. You gotta come to us,” Lancer said.
    “You’re not the FBI. I checked. Besides, the FBI doesn’t ride