To the Nines (Stephanie Plum 9)

“You're not eating this, remember?”

“Well, maybe I could have had a nugget.”

I took my bag of food. “You have my card. Call me if you think of anything,” I said to Howie. “I'll try to stop back at one.”

Howie nodded and smiled. “Yes. Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you for eating at McDonalds.”

“He was nice and polite,” Lula said when we got back to the car, “but he didn't give us a lot.” She looked at the bag of food. “Boy, that smells good. I can smell the fries. Wonder how many points it would cost me to eat a French fry?”

“No one can eat just one French fry.”

“I bet supermodels eat just one French fry.”

I didn't like the way Lula was looking at the bag. Her eyes were too wide and sort of bugged out of her head. “I'm going to throw this food away,” I said. “I got it so I could talk to Howie. We don't really need this food.”

“It's a sin to throw food away,” Lula said. “There's children starving in Africa. They'd be happy to get this food. God's gonna come get you if you throw that food away.”

“First off, we're not in Africa, so I can't give this food to any of those starving kids. Second, neither of us needs this food. So God's just going to have to understand.”

“I think you might be blaspheming God.”

“I'm not blaspheming God.” But just in case, I did a mental genuflect and asked for forgiveness. Guilt and fear remain long after blind belief.

“Give me that food bag,” Lula said. “I'm going to save your immortal soul.”

“No! Remember the supermodel. Have some carrots.”

“I hate those fucking carrots. Give me that bag!”

“Stop it,” I said. “You're getting scary.”

“I need that burger. I'm outta control.”

No shit. I was afraid if I didn't get rid of the bag Lula would squash me like a bug. I eyed the distance between me and the trash receptacle and I was pretty sure I could out-?sprint Lula, so I took off at a run.

“Hey!” she yelled. “You come back here.” And then she pounded after me.

I reached the trash and shoved the bag in. Lula knocked me out of the way, took the top off the trash receptacle, and retrieved the bag of food.

“This here's good as new,” she said, testing a couple French fries.“ She closed her eyes. ”Oh man, they just made these fresh. And they got a lot of salt. I love it when they got a lot of salt."

I took a couple fries from the box. She was right. They were great fries. We finished the fries, Lula broke the cheese burger in half, and we ate the cheeseburger. Then we each ate half of the apple pie.

“Would have been nice to have some nuggets,” Lula said.

“You're a nut.”

“It's not my fault. That was a bogus diet. I can't go around eating plain-?ass vegetables all day. I'll get weak and die.”

“Wouldn't want that to happen.”

“Hell no,” Lula said.

We went back to the car and I called Ranger. “Having any luck?” I asked him.

“I found someone who saw Singh with the dog the day after it disappeared. It looks like Singh ran as opposed to getting himself whacked. And you were right, he took the dog with him.”

“Any idea why he might want to disappear?”