Smokin' Seventeen: A Stephanie Plum Novel (Stephanie Plum Novels)

didn’t say.”
    • • •
     
    Lula and I took our sandwiches back to my car, and I drove the short distance to the bonds office. Mooner’s bus was still parked at the end of the block, the medical examiner’s truckwas still on the scene, a bunch of men huddled on the sidewalk, and a state crime scene van was parked on the sidewalk just beyond the men. The yellow crime scene tape blocked off the entire construction site, and two men wearing CSI jackets were working at the excavation area.
    “Life sure is strange,” Lula said. “One day everything is going along normal as can be, and then next thing you know your place of business is firebombed and Mr. Titty gets buried there.” She thought about it for a couple beats. “I suppose for us that
is
normal.”
    A disturbing thought, and not far from the truth. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe it’s time to stop stun-gunning men who think they’re vampires, get married, and settle down.
    “I could learn to cook,” I said.
    “Sure you could,” Lula said. “You could cook the crap out of shit. What are you talkin’ about?”
    “It was just a thought that popped into my head.”
    “It should pop back out ’cause now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve seen you cook and it wasn’t pretty.”
    I parked behind Connie’s car, and Lula and I hauled our food into the RV. Connie was behind her computer at the dinette table, and Mooner was lounging on the couch, playing Donkey Kong on his Gameboy. It didn’t take a lot to entertain Mooner.
    “Where’s Vinnie?” I asked Connie. “I didn’t see his car.”
    “He went down to the station to re-bond Ziggy.”
    “Wow, that was fast.”
    “Yeah, Ziggy made his one phone call, and court’s in session, so Vinnie should be able to get Ziggy released right away.”
    The deal with a bail bond is that the court sets a dollar amount on freedom. For instance, if a guy is arrested and charged with a crime he then goes to court and the judge tells him either he can stay in jail or else he can pay a certain amount of money and go home until trial. He only gets the money back if he shows up for trial. We come in when the guy doesn’t have enough money to give to the court. We give the money to the court on his behalf, and charge the guy a percentage for the service. Good for us and bad for him. Even if he’s innocent he’s out our fee. If he skips out on his trial, I find him and drag him back into the system so we don’t lose our money to the court.
    “How’s Ziggy gonna get home?” Lula wanted to know. “He got that whole vampire thing going with the sunlight and all.”
    “I don’t know,” Connie said. “Not my problem.”
    I ate my ham and cheese sandwich and washed it down with a diet soda. Lula plowed through a Reuben, a tub of potato salad, and a tub of baked beans.
    “How do I look?” Lula asked. “Do I look like I’m getting to be a vampire? Because I don’t feel so good.”
    “You don’t feel good because you just ate a bucket of fried chicken, half a coffee cake, and a Reuben with over half a pound of meat on it. Anyone else would have to get their stomach pumped.”
    “I’m an emotional eater,” Lula said. “I had to settle mystomach on account of I had a upsetting morning.” Lula leaned forward and stared at me. “What’s on your forehead? Boy, that’s a mother of a pimple.”
    I felt my forehead. She was right. There was a big bump on it.
    “It wasn’t there when I got up this morning,” I said. “Are you sure it’s a pimple? It’s not a boil, is it?”
    Lula squinted. “Looks to me like a pimple, but what do I know.”
    Connie studied it. “I’d say it’s a pimple that has the potential to approach boil quality.”
    I pulled my compact out of my purse and looked at the pimple. Eek! I dabbed some powder on it.
    “You’re gonna need more than powder to cover that,” Lula said. “It’s like that volcano that exploded. Krakatoa.”
    I smeared concealer on Krakatoa, and I thought about Grandma Mazur and the dream about the road apples.
    “That’s better,” Lula said. “Now it just looks like a tumor.”
    Lovely.
    “As far as tumors go, it’s not a real big tumor,” Lula said. “It’s one of them starter tumors.”
    “Forget the tumor!” I told her.
    “It’s hard to forget when you gotta stare at it,” Lula said. “Now that I know it’s there I can’t see anything else. It’s like Rudolph with the red nose.”
    I looked at Connie. “How bad is