Takedown Twenty (Stephanie Plum 20)

The front door banged open, and Joe’s Grandma Bella marched in. “I thought I would find you here,” she said, glaring at me.

Her gray hair was pulled back into a bun. Her brows were thick and black. Her eyes were fierce, like the eyes of an eagle about to snatch up an unsuspecting rabbit and rip it to shreds.

“I put the eye on you!” Bella said, pointing her finger at me.

Connie ducked down behind her desk, and Lula jumped away and pressed herself against the wall.

“You’re not supposed to be giving people the eye,” I said to Bella. “I’m going to tell Joe’s mother on you.”

“Joe’s mother give you good too,” Bella said. “You no friend of this family. You hunt down Sunny.”

“It’s my job.”

“My job to give you the eye. Stop you in your tracks.” She scrunched up her face. “You ready?”

I blew out a sigh. “Yeah.”

Bella pulled her lower eyelid down with her finger and stared at me.

“Okay,” she said, releasing the lid. “I got you for sure. I give you a big one.” She shook her finger at me. “You get new job.”

She whirled around, marched out the door, and stalked down the street.

“I think I wet my pants,” Lula said.

Connie came out from behind her desk. “That is one crazy old lady.”

“So what did she do to you?” Lula asked me. “Do you feel any different?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t see your teeth falling out yet. And you haven’t grown a tail like a donkey,” Lula said. “That’s gotta be a good sign.”

I hiked my messenger bag up onto my shoulder. “There’s no such thing as the eye.”

“Sure,” Lula said. “We know that. But just in case, you might want to stop by the church and burn a candle or something.”

It was a little after five when I got home. I hung my bag on a hook in the foyer and went into the kitchen. I said hello to Rex, asked him about his day, and gave him another Ritz cracker. Being that Rex lives in an aquarium and not much goes on, he didn’t have a lot to say.

I looked around my kitchen and living room and had to admit there might be something to Lula’s assessment of my decorating. I really hadn’t done much to spruce things up after the last explosion when Ranger’s friend blew himself up in my foyer. I added Decorate apartment to make it a special place to my mental to-do list, then tabled the project for a better time.

I wasn’t sure if my Ranger date involved dinner, so I made myself a peanut butter and olive sandwich. I know this combination looks odd what with the lumps from the olives, but it contains major food groups, it doesn’t involve cooking, and the olives keep the peanut butter from sticking to the roof of your mouth.

I took a shower and brushed my hair out into a bunch of soft curls that skimmed my shoulders. I went with an extra swipe of mascara, some smudgy liner, and shiny lip gloss. I had a closet full of jeans and T-shirts, but my choices for dresses were limited. I had a very sexy red dress with a swirly skirt, a professional-looking suit, a blue dress I wore to family functions, and a black dress that was moderately to pretty damn sexy.

I settled on the black dress, tugged it over my hips, zipped it up, and checked in the mirror to make sure my boobs weren’t falling out too much. I shoved my feet into black spike-heel pumps and transferred essentials from my messenger bag to a small red evening clutch.

I was thinking if this was work-related I probably should take my gun, but the gun wouldn’t fit in the clutch, and truth is, I didn’t have any bullets anyway.

I felt a change in air pressure, got a hot flash, and Ranger knocked once and opened the door to my apartment. He was wearing a perfectly tailored black suit, and a black shirt open at the neck. He looked me up and down, and the corners of his mouth hinted at a smile. I assumed this meant he liked the dress.

We were silent in the hall and elevator, Ranger being only slightly more talkative than my hamster. We crossed the parking lot to his black Porsche 911 Turbo S, and he opened the door for me. It was a great car, but not the easiest to enter in a tight short skirt and heels. I grabbed my hem with both hands and managed to get in without my skirt riding up to my belly button. Not that it would matter entirely, since Ranger had already seen my belly button. Still, he hadn’t seen it lately, and I thought it was a good idea to keep it that way.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

He drove out of the lot and turned left. “We’re going to a viewing at the funeral home on Hamilton.”

“Is that the whole date?”