Hardcore Twenty-Four (Stephanie Plum 24)

“If you’re going back to Diggery’s woods, I’d appreciate it if you’d feed Ethel. She’ll eat almost anything. Pizza, burgers, rotisserie chicken, roadkill.”

Morelli grimaced, kissed me goodbye, and waited for me to go inside and lock the door. I watched him drive away, and I looked down at Bob.

“No way am I going back to bed,” I said. “I’m not taking a shower here, either. I’m moving out.”

I picked my clothes up off the bedroom floor and put them on. I made the bed. And I made a fast stop in the kitchen for a bag of dog food.

“Don’t worry,” I said to Bob, hooking him up to his leash. “I’m not leaving you here. Bob brain isn’t going to be on the zombie menu.”

We piled into Big Blue, and I drove to the office. It was a little after seven o’clock, and no one was there. The office didn’t open until eight o’clock.

“No problem,” I said to Bob. “We need breakfast anyway.”

I drove past the office to the Cluck-in-a-Bucket drive-thru. I ordered two Clucky Lucky Breakfast Meals and a large coffee. I picked up the food and parked in the lot. T

he breakfast meal included an egg and cheese sandwich on an English muffin, home fries that had been compressed into something resembling a deck of cards, and a mystery pastry.

Bob snarfed his food down in about fifteen seconds. I ate at a slightly more leisurely pace, but even at that, I still had some time to kill. I returned to the bonds office, parked the car, and walked Bob until Connie showed up and unlocked the front door. Lula was minutes behind her.

“What’s with Bob?” Lula asked. “You don’t usually hang with him.”

“It’s complicated,” I said. “The short version is that I don’t feel comfortable leaving him in Morelli’s house alone.”

“What about your house?” Connie asked. “What about your parents’ house?”

“Even worse.”

“Is this about the zombies?” Lula asked. “Are they eating dog brains now? I’ve been doing research, and zombies can’t see real good with their red eyes, but they got a class A nose . . . unless it’s been rotted away. I don’t know what zombies do when their nose rots away. Anyway, if they have a nose, they can track you down by your scent, so all you have to do is smell different. I’m thinking about going into business making anti-zombie stink spray. It would be a combination of smells to confuse a zombie. Like cucumber and cat pee. Or maybe cow sweat and licorice. Stuff like that, you see what I’m saying? I bet I could clean up on stink spray.”

“No one is going to want to smell like cucumber and cat pee,” I said.

“Well, I guess people gotta make up their mind if they want their brains sucked out by a zombie, or if they want to smell like one of my designer stink sprays,” Lula said. “I’m going into production as soon as I can find the right spray nozzle. I already got a source for cucumbers and cat pee.”

“If you come into the office smelling like cucumber and cat pee you’re out of a job,” Connie said.

“I don’t need to personally wear it right now anyway,” Lula said, “because I’m not being pursued by a zombie, but there’s others probably be happy to pay top dollar for it. Especially those individuals who are zombiephobics. Like if you have a business and you don’t want to sell your product to a zombie, all you have to do is douse your shop in my stink spray. Zombies will be going someplace else to shop, and no one’s going to protest your establishment, and the government isn’t going to come near you and force you to sell to zombies. It’s genius, right?”

Connie and I nodded. Lula was a lunatic. And yet, she could be on to something.

“I need to go to my apartment to get some things,” I said to Lula. “How about riding shotgun?”

“Sure, I could do that,” Lula said. “I imagine you want me to shoot any zombies who might pop up.”

“Only if they try to get my brain,” I said.

• • •

Lula and Bob trooped into my apartment building with me, and we all took the elevator to the second floor. The elevator no longer smelled like carnations. The hall was empty. My door was still vandalized.

“Look at here,” Lula said. “Some zombie has no sense of respecting personal property. These are deep scratches. Someone’s going to have to sand this down and repaint it. You should find the zombie that did this and make him pay for the repairs.”

“I’m working on it,” I said, unlocking my door.

Bob pushed past me and ran around, jumping on furniture and snuffling rugs. Lula stayed in the small foyer.

“Where’s Rex?” she asked. “I don’t see his cage in the kitchen.”

“He’s having a sleepover at Rangeman.”