Lean Mean Thirteen (Stephanie Plum 13)

I handed the DVDs over to her and pulled the car out of Morelli s driveway. "It took a

while to find them."

In a half hour, we were in front of Coglin's house. I paged through his file, found his phone

number, and called him.

“I'm in front of your house,” I said. "I want to talk to you, and I don't want to end up with

squirrel guts in my hair. Can we call a truce for ten minutes?"

“Yeah, I guess that would be okay,” Coglin said. "If you promise you won't try to take me

in now."

“Promise.”

Lula followed me to the door. "He better not go back on his word. I don't want to smell like

rodent when Tank comes over tonight."

I opened the door and took a step back. “Is it okay to come in?” I yelled into the house. Coglin appeared in the hall. “I disconnected the booby trap. Its safe to come in.” “Someday you're gonna hurt someone with those beaver bombs,” Lula said. “I only use stuffing that's soft,” Coglin said.

"Yeah, but what about them button eyes? Suppose you got hit with one of them eyes? That

would leave a bruise."

Coglin had an apron on. “I'm kind of busy,” he said. “What did you want?” “Are you stuffing up some roadkill?” Lula asked.

“No. I'm making a meatloaf for supper.”

“I wanted to talk to you about your court appearance,” I said to Coglin. "When you didn't

show up, you became a felon. And the original charge didn't look that bad. Destruction of

property. The details aren't on the bond application. What sort of property did you destroy?“ ”I went nuts and exploded an opossum in a cable company truck."

“Uh oh,” Lula said. “The cable police will get you for that one.”

Coglin turned white. “Omigod, there are cable police?”

“She's kidding,” I told him. “You're kidding, right?” I said to Lula.

“Probably,” Lula said.

“It all started when the city put in new water pipes,” Coglin said. "They cut through my

cable line when they dug a trench through my front yard to lay the new pipe. So I called the cable company and left my name, but they never called me back.“ ”Those fuckers,“ Lula said. ”They never call anyone back."

"I called them and left my name every day for three weeks, and no one ever called me back.

Then after three weeks someone actually answered a phone at the cable company. A real

person."

“Get out,” Lula said. “They don't have real people working there. Everyone knows that.” "No. I swear, its true. Someone answered the phone. So after they had me on hold for an

hour, I explained the problem and they said they would send someone out in two weeks, and