Smokin' Seventeen (Stephanie Plum 17)

“Yow!” Merlin said, doubling over. “Fuck!”

Lula cracked him on the head with her bottle of wine, and Merlin went down like a sack of sand.

“This is my day,” Lula said. “Not only did I find this fine bottle of wine, but I just foiled a robbery.”

Merlin was out cold. Probably a kindness considering the way his foot must be feeling. I kicked his gun away and cuffed him. Lula paid for her wine, and the clerk helped us drag Merlin out to my car. We got a guy on the street to give us a hand, and we managed to shove Merlin into my backseat.

“I told you it was gonna be like this,” Lula said. “When it rains it pours.”

By the time we got to the station Merlin’s eyes were open, and he was moaning.

“How’d he get this big lump on his head?” the docket lieutenant wanted to know.

“He hit himself on the head with a bottle of wine,” I said. “It was one of those freak accidents.”

TWENTY-FIVE

LULA AND I went back to Connie at my place. We pushed Connie’s computer and stacks of files to the side and took the food and bottle of wine to the dining room table.

Lula poured wine for everyone and raised her glass. “Here’s a toast. When it rains it pours.”

We drank to that, and we dug in.

“This is delicious,” Connie said. “He’s a really good cook.”

Lula spooned out more casserole and looked over at me. “You should marry him. You could have perfectly good sex all by yourself, but you’ll never be able to cook this good.”

Connie agreed. “She has a point. If you don’t want to marry him, maybe I’ll marry him.”

“If I married Ranger I could have good sex and good food,” I said. “Ranger has Ella.”

Connie paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Does Ranger want to marry you?”

“No.”

“So that would be a problem,” Connie said.

I made a conscious effort not to sigh. I’d been doing a lot of sighing lately. “Sometimes Joe wants to marry me.”

Connie and Lula looked at me. Hopeful.

“Can he cook?” Connie asked.

“No,” I said. “Mostly he dials food. But he dials really good pizza and meatball subs.”

“I might go with Dave,” Lula said. “Someday you’ll be old, and you won’t want sex anymore, but you’ll always want food.”

“This is true,” Connie said. “I vote for Dave.”

“I love these little corn muffins,” Lula said. “These are outstanding muffins.”

By the time we were done we’d eaten the entire batch of muffins, and there wasn’t a lot of Tex-Mex Fiesta left either.

“What about dessert?” Lula wanted to know.

“That last muffin was my dessert,” Connie said. “I’m packing up and going home.”

Lula carted her plate to the kitchen. “I’m thinking I need ice cream.”