Finger Lickin' Fifteen (Stephanie Plum 15)

“How big?”

“A million dollars. It’s from the barbecue sauce company he did all those advertisements for. Fire in the Hole Red Hot Barbecue Sauce. He was supposed to represent them in this cook-off coming up. And I’m gonna get that reward. I know what those guys look like. All I have to do is find them. So I thought I’d cut you and Connie in on it, and between us we could track them down and we’d each get a third of a million dollars.”

“I’m so there,” Connie said. “I could pay my mortgage off with that money.”

“What would you do with the money?” Lula asked me.

I didn’t know what I’d do. My mind was blank. The amount was incomprehensible to me. I could put a crystal chandelier in my crapper for that kind of money. I could buy a case of motor oil and feed it to my $700 car. I could download all the 3rd Rock from the Sun episodes from iTunes. I could get the works on my pizza. I could buy new sneakers. I really needed new sneakers. I could probably buy a house, for crying out loud. Except I didn’t actually want a house. I had a hard enough time keeping people out of my apartment. If I had a house, the weirdos would be coming in every door and window and down the chimney like Santa. Plus, I’d have to cut grass and paint the porch and caulk the tub.

“I think this is about barbecue sauce,” Lula said. “Everyone knows it’s dog-eat-dog out there in barbecue land. You wait and see, someone didn’t want Stanley Chipotle in that barbecue contest. I looked into it, and he always wins those contests. He was the one who come up with Fire in the Hole Red Hot Barbecue Sauce. He invented that recipe, and when he’s in a contest, he has a secret ingredient he puts in. I’m tellin’ you, Stanley Chipotle’s killer is a sauce freak. So I figure we just gotta bust into the barbecue circuit and we’ll find the killer.”

“Bust into the circuit?”

“All I gotta do is enter the contest as one of them chefs. I bet I could even win.”

“You can’t cook.”

“That’s true so far, but that could change. I’m real good at eatin’. I got a highly developed palate. Especially for barbecue. I just gotta take some of my eatin’ talent and make it into cookin’ talent. Anyways, I only gotta come up with sauce. How hard could it be? I mean, you start out with ketchup and keep adding pepper until you feel it burnin’ a hole in your stomach.”

“I don’t think it’s that easy,” Connie said. “I watch these contests on The Food Channel, and you have to use the sauce on ribs and chicken and stuff. Can you cook ribs or chicken?”

“Not yet,” Lula said. “But I know I could be real good at it. Look at me. Don’t I look like a woman who could cook the shit out of chicken? I’m like a combination of Paula Deen and Mario Whatshisname. I’m just around the corner from bein’ the Mrs. Butterworth of barbecue sauce.”

“The cook-off is in a week,” Connie said. “Is there still time for you to enter? Do you have to qualify or something?”

“I don’t have to do nothin’ but sign up,” Lula said. “I already looked into it, and the idiot who’s runnin’ the cook-off used to be a customer of mine back when I was a ’ho. He was what you call a drive-by. He’d pick me up on my corner, and two blocks later, we’d concluded our business.”

“That’s more information than I need,” Connie said.

“Well, I’m just sayin’ so you get the picture.”

“I have to run,” I told them. “I’m late for work.”

“After we win the contest and capture the killer, none of us is gonna have to work,” Lula said. “We’re all gonna be ladies of leisure.”

IT WAS NOON, and Ranger’s men were moving around, breaking for lunch, so I left my cubicle and went to the kitchen area to mingle. Ella kept the large glass-fronted refrigerator filled with sandwiches, fruit, raw veggies, yogurt, low-fat milk, snack-size cheeses, a variety of fruit juices, plus individual cups of chicken salad and vegetable soup. Early in the morning, Ella supplemented this with a caldron of oatmeal and a chafing dish of scrambled eggs. The dinner offering was always some sort of Crock-Pot stew, plus a breadbasket.

Ranger almost always ate breakfast and dinner in his apartment. And lunch was usually a sandwich and piece of fruit from the common kitchen, taken back to his office. There were three small round tables set to one side of the kitchen. Each table held four chairs. Two men I didn’t know were eating at one of the tables. Hal and Ramon were at another. The third table was empty. I selected a sandwich and joined Hal and Ramon. I’ve known Hal for a while now. Hal isn’t the sharpest tack on the corkboard, but he tries hard. His nickname is Halosaurus, because there’s a stegosaurus resemblance.

“You’re my new favorite person,” Ramon said. “You got me out of that cubicle. I was dying in that cubicle.”

“It’s not my favorite job, either,” I said, “but I needed the money.”

I unwrapped my sandwich and examined it. Multigrain bread, pretty ruffled green lettuce, thin-sliced chicken, a slice of tomato, slices of hard-cooked egg, and salad dressing that was for sure low fat. It looked good, but it would look even better with bacon.

“No bacon,” I said, more to myself than to Hal and Ramon.

Hal grinned. “Ranger thinks bacon is the work of the devil.”

“Sometimes I walk past Ella’s apartment, and I smell bacon frying,” Ramon said. “I think she makes it for Louis.” He looked over at me. “Have you ever seen Ranger eat bacon?”

“No,” I said. “Not that I can remember.”

“I think sometimes he cheats and goes to eat with Louis,” Ramon said.

“No way,” Hal said. “Ranger’s pure.”

Both men looked at me.