Finger Lickin' Fifteen (Stephanie Plum 15)

“It tastes okay, but I got the trots as soon as I ate it. I’ve been in the bathroom ever since. I got hemorrhoids on hemorrhoids.”

“Get it out of the refrigerator before your father gets hold of it,” my mother said to me. “Bad enough I’ve got your grandmother running upstairs every ten minutes. I don’t want to have to listen to the two of them fighting over who gets in first.”

I took the casserole dish out of the refrigerator and lifted the lid. It looked good, and it smelled great.

“Do you want to try some?” I asked Lula.

“Ordinarily,” Lula said. “But I’m on a diet. Maybe you should taste it.”

“Not in a hundred years,” I told her.

“It could just be a fluke that your granny got the trots,” Lula said. “It could be one of them anemones.”

“I think you mean anomaly.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“We’re having ham tonight,” my mother said to me. “And pineapple upside-down cake. You should bring Joseph to dinner.”

“I’m not seeing him anymore.”

“Since when?”

“Since weeks ago.”

“Do you have a new boyfriend?”

“No. I’m done with men. I have a hamster. That’s all I need.”

“That’s a shame,” my mother said. “It’s a big ham.”

“I’ll come to dinner,” I said. “I love ham.”

“No Joseph?”

“No Joseph. I’ll take his share home and eat it for lunch tomorrow.”

“I know what we can do with this casserole,” Lula said. “We can take it to the office and feed it to Vinnie. He don’t care what he puts in his mouth.”

I thought that sounded like a decent idea, so I carted the pulled pork out to Ranger’s Porsche and carefully set it on the floor in the back. Lula and I buckled ourselves in, and I headed for Hamilton Avenue.

“Holy cats,” Lula said, half a block away from the office. “You see that car parked on the other side of the street? It’s the bushy-headed killer. It’s Marco the Maniac. He’s sitting there waiting to kill me.”

“Don’t panic,” I said. “Get his license plate. I’m dialing Morelli.”

“It’s them or me,” she said, launching herself over the consul onto the backseat, powering the side window down. “This is war.”

“Stay calm! Are you getting the license number?”

“Calm, my ass.” And she stuck her Glock out the window and squeezed off about fifteen shots at the two guys in the car. “Eat lead,” she yelled, “you sons of bitches!”

Bullets ricocheted off metal wheel covers and bit into fiberglass, but clearly none hit their intended mark because the car took off and was doing about eighty miles an hour before it even got to the corner. I hung a U-turn in front of the bonds office, sending oncoming cars scrambling onto curbs, screeching to a stop.

Lula had discarded the flak vest, rammed herself through the side window, and was half in and half out, still shooting at the car in front of us.

“Stop shooting,” I yelled at her. “You’re going to kill someone.”

The car turned left onto Olden, and I was prevented from following by heavy traffic.