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

all over again. And then when I was trying to get him off my head, I knocked into a stack of cages, and they fell over and broke apart, and the chickens all came rushing out. There was demon chickens all over the place, squawkin’ and clawin’ at each other. It was a chicken nightmare. I won’t be able to sleep tonight thinkin’ about them chickens. And now they’re runnin’ around loose, peckin’ the eyes out of people. ’Course it’s Stark Street so those chickens are gonna have to duke it out with the drugged-up nutcases and hungry people lookin’ for chicken parts.”
    We rode in silence after that, thinking our own thoughts about the Stark Street chickens. Lula drove through the center of the city, turned onto Hamilton, and parked behind my Shelby.
    “What are you going to do with this SUV?” I asked her.
    “I’m gonna give it to Ernie. Seems only fair he gets this car since someone stole his.”
    “But
this
is a stolen car. We stole it!”
    “And?”
    There comes a point in conversation with Lula where it’s best to drop back and punt.
    “Okay then,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Hope your tooth feels better.”
    “Yep. Happy trails,” Lula said.
    I drove home on autopilot, talking to myself, my mind alternating between numb mush and episodes of panic.
    “I hate when people want to kill me,” I said out loud to myself. “It makes my stomach feel weird. And I worry about Rex. Who would take care of him if I got murdered? I don’t even have a will. And do you know why I haven’t got a will? It’s because I don’t have anything to leave anyone. How pathetic is that?”
    I pulled into the lot to my apartment building and parked next to Mr. Molnar’s blue Accord. I was halfway to the building’s back door, worrying about a Dave Brewer appearance, when I heard someone behind me gun a car engine. Regina! I jumped to safety, and she roared past me, sideswiping a beater Dodge that belonged to Mrs. Gonzoles’s loser son. One more dent in the Dodge wasn’t going to get noticed. I sprinted to the building while Regina circled, and I made it inside before she reached me on the second pass.
    I took a deep breath and told myself things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Regina would get tired of trying to run me over, Nick Alpha would get arrested, Dave would eventuallymove on, and one of these days my reproductive system would get back to normal. I took the stairs and thought about Ranger naked, but I wasn’t in a swoon by the time I reached the second floor, so clearly I had a way to go on the path to sexual recovery. At least Dave wasn’t lurking in the hall when I peeked out from the stairwell.

THIRTY-SEVEN
     
    MY CELL PHONE woke me up from a restless sleep.
    “I’m at your door. I forgot my key,” Morelli said. “I’ve been knocking and ringing your doorbell. Where are you?”
    “I’m here. Hang on.” I dragged myself out of bed and let Morelli in. “What time is it?” I asked him.
    “It’s eight o’clock.” He set a bag and a container of coffee on my kitchen counter. “I brought you breakfast. I’m taking off for south Jersey. I want to see the crime scene before it gets dismantled. I’ll probably be gone for most of the day. I was hoping you could walk Bob around noon.”
    “Sure.”
    He gave me something halfway between a smile and a grimace. “You look like you had a rough night.”
    “I had a
horrible
night. I couldn’t sleep. And when I did fall asleep I had awful dreams.”
    “Let me take a guess. The dreams were about chickens.”
    “I don’t want to talk about it. Did Alpha get arrested?”
    Morelli opened my coffee for me. “No. By the time the police got to the warehouse the evidence was scattered over a ten-mile radius.”
    I looked in the bag and pulled out a container of orange juice and a bagel with cream cheese. “Thanks for bringing me breakfast. This was really nice of you.”
    “Yeah, I’m a nice guy.”
    He hooked his finger into the neckline of my cotton knit pajama top, looked inside at my breasts, and gave a small sigh.
    “So near and yet so far,” he said.
    He kissed me and left.
    I dropped a chunk of bagel into Rex’s cage, and I ate the rest. I drank the orange juice and took the coffee into my bedroom to drink while I dressed.
    A half hour later I was at the bonds bus.
    “Where’s Lula?” I asked Connie.
    “She said she’d be in late. Something about her hair.”
    “It looks like the cockfighting isn’t going to get