Hard Eight (Stephanie Plum 8)

He took the card and winked at me.

“Hey,” Lula said. “I don't like that wink. You wink at her again, and I'll rip your eye outta your head.”

“What's with the fat chick?” Soder asked me. “The two of you going steady?”

“She's my bodyguard,” I told him.

“I'm not no fat chick,” Lula said. “I'm a big woman. Big enough to kick your nasty white ass around this room.”

Soder locked eyes with her. “Something to look forward to.”

I dragged Lula out of the bar, and we stood blinking on the sidewalk in the sunlight.

“I didn't like him,” Lula said.

“No kidding.”

“I didn't like the way he kept calling his little girl the kid. And it wasn't nice that he wanted an old lady kicked out of her house.”

I called Connie on my cell phone and asked her to get me Soder's home address and car information.

“You think he got Annie in his cellar?” Lula asked.

“No, but it wouldn't hurt to look.”

“What's next?”

“Next we visit Soder's divorce lawyer. There had to be some justification for setting the bond. I'd like to know the details.”

“You know Soder's divorce lawyer?”

I got in the car and looked over at Lula. “Dickie Orr.”

Lula grinned. “Your ex? Every time we visit him he throws you out of the office. You think he's going to talk to you about a client?”

I had had the shortest marriage in the history of the Burg. I'd barely finished unpacking my wedding presents when I caught the jerk on the dining room table with my arch-enemy, Joyce Barnhardt. Looking at it in retrospect I can't imagine why I married Orr in the first place. I suppose I was in love with the idea of being in love.

There are certain expectations of girls from the Burg. You grow up, you get married, you have children, you spread out some in the beam, and you learn how to set a buffet for forty. My dream was that I would get irradiated like Spiderman and be able to fly like Superman. My expectation had been that I'd marry. I did the best I could to live up to the expectation, but it didn't work out. Guess I was stupid. Swayed by Dickie's good looks and education. My head turned by the fact that he was a lawyer.

I didn't see the flaws. The low opinion Dickie has of women. The way he can lie without remorse. I guess I shouldn't fault him so much for that since I'm pretty good at lying myself. Still, I don't lie about personal things . . . like love and fidelity.

“Maybe Dickie's having a good day,” I said to Lula. “Maybe he'll be feeling chatty.”

“Yeah, and it might help if you don't leap across the desk and try to choke him like you did last time.”

Dickie's office was on the other side of town. He'd left a large firm and gone off on his own. From what I could tell he was having some success. He was now located in a two-room suite in the Carter Building. I'd been there, briefly, once before and had sort of lost control.

“I'll be better this time,” I said to Lula.

Lula rolled her eyes and got into the CR-V.

I took State Street to Warren and turned onto Sommerset. I found a parking space directly across from Dickie's building and took it as a sign.

“Unh-uh,” Lula said. “You just got good parking karma. It don't count for interpersonal relationships. You read your horoscope today?”

I looked over at her. “No. Was it bad?”

“It said your moons weren't in a good spot, and you need to be careful about making money decisions. And not only that, you're going to have man trouble.”