Finger Lickin' Fifteen (Stephanie Plum 15)

I’d rushed out of Rangeman without breakfast, and now I had some choices. I could return to Rangeman, I could go to Cluck-in-a-Bucket, or I could get my mom to make pancakes. My mom won by a mile.

I drove to Hamilton and cut into the Burg. I reached my parents’ house and had lots of parking choices. The Buick wasn’t there. Lula’s Firebird wasn’t there. And I was in the cab.

Lula was at my mother’s small kitchen table when I walked in. She was drinking coffee, and she looked like she was at death’s door.

“That was an upsetting experience last night,” she said. “Police identifications give me a headache.”

“Maybe you should take more pills,” Grandma said. “You gotta cook barbecue today.”

“I’ll be okay,” Lula said. “I’m feeling better now that I’ve got coffee.”

“Have you had breakfast?” my mom asked me.

“No.”

“What would you like?”

“Pancakes!”

My mom has a special pancake bowl. It has a handle on one side and a pour spout on the other. And it makes the world’s best pancakes. I helped myself to a mug of coffee and sat across from Lula while my mom whipped up the batter.

“We’ve got lots of things to do this morning,” Lula said. “Grandma and me are taking the truck to the park to get our mobile kitchen going. Connie said she’d get the ribs. And I thought you could go to the grocery store and get all the odds and ends.”

“Sure.”

“I even got a special surprise coming. I had this brainstorm yesterday on making sure we got on television. Larry’s delivering it to the park later this morning.”

My mother brought butter and pancake syrup to the table and set out knives and forks for everyone.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked my mother. “I thought he’d be waiting for me to bring his cab back.”

“He took my car to get serviced. He went early, since he didn’t have to pick Mr. Miklowski up.”

Terrific. That meant I was stuck with the cab until I got back to Rangeman and swapped it for the Buick. And truth is, I couldn’t say which of them I hated more.

MY FIRST STOP was the supermarket. Not bad this early in the morning because it takes the seniors time to get up and running. By ten, they’d start to roll in, clogging up the lot with their handicap-tagged cars. Being a senior citizen in Jersey is a lot like belonging to the Mob. A certain attitude is expected. If you don’t respect a Mob member in Jersey, you could get shot. If you don’t respect a senior, they’ll ram a shopping cart into your car, rear-end you at a light, and deliberately block you from going down the nonprescription meds aisle by idling in the middle of it in their motorized basketed bumper cars while they pretend to read the label on the Advil box.

I worked my way through the list Lula had given me. A giant-size ketchup, Tabasco sauce, molasses, cider vinegar, orange juice, a bunch of spices, some hot sauce, M&Ms, aluminum foil, a couple disposable baking pans, Pepto-Bismol, nonstick spray oil.

“Looks to me like you’re making barbecue,” the lady at the checkout said to me.

“Yep.”

“Did you hear about that barbecue cook? The one who got his head cut off? It’s on the news that they found his body. It’s all everyone’s talking about. I heard the Today show is sending Al Roker and a film crew to the cook-off in the park today.”

I loaded everything into the trunk and drove to Tasty Pastry to get doughnuts for Larry. I parked at the curb, ran inside, and got a dozen doughnuts. When I came out, there was a woman sitting in the backseat of the cab.

“I’m off duty,” I told her.

“I’m only going a couple blocks.”

“I’m late, and I still have to go to the hardware store. You have to get out.”

“What kind of a cab is this that doesn’t want to make money?”

“It’s an off-duty cab!”

The woman got out and slammed the door. “I’m going to report you to the cab authority,” she said. “And I know who you are, too. And I’m telling your mother.”