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

too much to ask to have a happily married daughter?”
    “I
was
married,” I said. “I didn’t like it.”
    Grandma slathered butter on her piece of coffee cake. “He was a horse’s patoot.”
    “You’ve been seeing Joseph Morelli for years now,” my mother said. “It’s the talk of the neighborhood. Why aren’t you at least
engaged
?”
    That was an excellent question, and I didn’t have an answer. At least not an answer I wanted to say out loud. Truth is Morelli wasn’t the only man in my life. I was in love with
two
men. How screwed up is that?
    “Yeah,” Lula said to me, “you need to make a decision about Morelli or someone else is gonna snatch him up. He’s a real hottie. And he’s got his own house and a dog and everything.”
    I liked Morelli. I really did. And Lula was right. He was hot. And I thought he’d make a good husband … probably. And there were days when I suspected he might actually consider marrying me. Problem was just when I thought marrying Morelli held some appeal, Ranger would ooze into my mind like smoke under a closed door.
    Ranger was
not
husband material. He was a heart-stopping handsome Latino, dark-skinned and dark-eyed. He was strong inside and out, an enigma who kept his life scars pretty much hidden.
    “I need to bring Ziggy Glitch in for a reschedule,” I said to Grandma. “I thought maybe you could call him and get him to go with me.”
    “I could do that, but you have to wait until it gets dark. He don’t go out during the day.” Grandma paused. “He’s got a condition.”
    I nibbled on a piece of coffee cake. “What kind of condition? A medical condition?”
    “Yeah, I guess it could be considered medical. He’s a vampire. If he goes out in the sun it could kill him. He couldburn right up. Remember when Dorothy threw water on the wicked witch in
The Wizard of Oz
, and the witch shriveled up? It’s sort of like that.”
    Lula almost spit out her coffee. “Get outta here! Are you shitting me?”
    “That’s why he never married,” Grandma said. “Soon as a woman saw his fangs she wouldn’t have anymore to do with him.”
    “So when the cops said he was a biter they meant he was a
biter
,” Lula said.
    Grandma topped off her coffee. “Yep. He’ll suck the blood right out of you. Every last drop.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” my mother said. “He’s not a vampire. He’s a man with a dental problem and a personality disorder.”
    “I guess that’s one of them politically correct points of view,” Lula said. “I don’t mind presenting things that way so long as I don’t get holes in my neck while I’m tryin’ not to offend some mother-suckin’ vampire. ’Scuse my French. And this is real good coffee cake. Is this Entenmann’s?”
    “I didn’t see any fangs when he answered the door,” I told Grandma.
    “Well, it’s daytime so maybe he was fixing to go to sleep, and he had his dentures in a cup,” Grandma said. “I don’t wear my dentures when I sleep.”
    Lula leaned back in her chair. “Hold the phone. This guy has fake fangs?”
    “They used to be real,” Grandma said, “but a couple yearsago Joe’s granny, Bella, gave Ziggy the eye, and all his teeth fell out. So Ziggy went to Horace Worly—a dentist on Hamilton Avenue just down from the hospital. Anyways, Horace made Ziggy some new choppers that looked just like his old ones.”
    I looked over at my mother. “Is that true?”
    My mother sighed and continued to iron.
    “I heard they found Lou Dugan,” Grandma said. “Who would have thought he’d be planted right there on Hamilton Avenue.”
    “We saw him,” Lula said. “It was like he was trying to climb out of his grave with his hand sticking up outta the dirt.”
    Grandma sucked in air. “You
saw
him? What did he look like?”
    “He was all wormy and raggety.”
    “They’re gonna have to work like the devil to make him look like anything for the viewing,” Grandma said.
    “Yeah.” Lula added cream to her coffee. “We might never even have known it was him except for his ring.”
    Grandma leaned forward. “He was wearing his ring? That ring was worth money. What numbskull would bury Lou Dugan with his ring still on?”
    Lula cut a second piece of coffee cake. “That’s what I said. It would have to be someone in a panic. Some amateur.”
    Or someone sending a message, I thought. It looked to me like the grave had been fairly shallow. Maybe Lou Dugan was supposed to be discovered.
    “It