Finger Lickin' Fifteen (Stephanie Plum 15)

“Trust me, I’ll get in.”

WILLIAM DUFFY, DDS, had an office suite on the fifth floor of the Kreger Building. The waiting room was standard fare. Durable carpet, leatherette chairs, a couple end tables holding artfully arranged stacks of dog-eared magazines. A receptionist desk presided over one wall and guarded the door that led to Duffy.

“That’s her,” Myron said. “Miss Snippity.”

Miss Snippity was in her forties and looked pleasant enough. Short brown hair, minimal makeup, blue dental office smock with the name Tammy embroidered on it.

“Don’t come any closer,” Tammy said. “I’m calling Security.”

“That’s not necessary,” I told her. “We aren’t armed.” I glanced over at Myron. “We aren’t, right?”

“My daughter took my gun away,” Myron said.

“We’d like to talk to Dr. Duffy,” I said to Tammy.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Dr. Duffy only sees by appointment.”

“Yes,” I said, “but you just opened for the day and there’s no one in the waiting room.”

“I’m

sorry. You’ll have to make an appointment.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’d like an appointment for now. Do you have that available?”

“Dr. Duffy doesn’t see patients until 10 A.M.”

“Okay. Give me an appointment at 10 A.M.”

“That’s not available,” she said, thumbing through her appointment book. “The next available appointment would be three weeks from now.”

“Here’s the deal,” I said to her. “Poor Mr. Kaplan has no teeth. He’s getting indigestion, and he can’t eat bacon. Can you imagine a life without bacon, Tammy?”

“I thought Mr. Kaplan was Jewish.”

“There’s all kinds of Jewish,” Mr. Kaplan said. “You sound like my daughter. Maybe you want to tell me to get a colonoscopy, too.”

“Oh my goodness, you haven’t had a colonoscopy?”

“No one’s sticking a camera up my rump,” Mr. Kaplan said. “I never like the way I look in pictures.”

“About Mr. Kaplan’s teeth,” I said to Tammy.

“I have no appointments,” Tammy said. “If I break the rule for Mr. Kaplan, I have to break the rule for everyone.”

Tammy was starting to annoy me.

“Just this once,” I said. “No one will know. I know Dr. Duffy is in. I can hear him talking on the phone. We want five minutes of his time. We just want to talk to him. Five minutes.”

“No.”

“I told you,” Mr. Kaplan said to me. “She’s snippity.”

I put palms down on Tammy’s desk and I leaned in real close to her. Nose to nose. “If you don’t let me in, I’m going to picket this building and let everyone know about the shoddy work Dr. Duffy is doing. And then I’m going to run a personal computer check on you and get the names of all your high school classmates and tell them you have relations with ponies and large dogs.”