Janet Evanovich - Explosive Eighteen

“Hell no, I’m not getting stuck in the death trap bus. I’ll go catch bad guys with you.” She looked down at the files in my lap. “Who we gonna do first? Anything fun come in?”

“Joyce Barnhardt.”

“Say what?”

“She shoplifted a necklace and assaulted the store owner.”

“I hate Joyce Barnhardt,” Lula said. “She’s mean. She told me I was fat. Can you imagine?”

It wasn’t exactly that Lula was fat. It was more that she was too short for her weight. Or maybe it was that there was an excess of Lula and not ever enough fabric.

“I thought we’d save Joyce for last,” I told Lula. “I’m not looking forward to knocking on her door.”

Connie’s Hyundai cruised down the street, made a U-turn, and parked behind the bus. Connie and Vinnie got out and walked over to me.

“Is DeAngelo here?” Vinnie asked.

“Yes,” I told him. “He’s inside the building.”

Vinnie growled, doing his best imitation of a crazed badger backed into a corner, claws out.

“Cripes,” Lula said.

“It’s okay to go into the bus,” I said to Vinnie. “DeAngelo only blows things up at night.”

We all stood looking at the bus for a moment, not sure we believed that to be true.

“What the hell,” Vinnie finally said. “My life’s in the crapper anyway.”

And he disappeared inside the bus.

“What’s with Joyce?” I asked Connie. “Did she really steal a necklace?”

Connie shrugged. “Don’t know, but it’s gotten weird. Frank Korda, the store owner who pressed charges, is missing.”

“When did he go missing?” I asked.

“Later that same day. The nail salon across the street remembers the closed sign in the front door around four in the afternoon. His wife said he never came home.”

“And Joyce?”

“Vinnie bonded Joyce out right after she was arrested. She was scheduled for court three days later, and she never showed.”

“I bet Joyce snatched him,” Lula said. “She’d do something like that. I bet she got him in chains in her cellar.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time Joyce put a man in chains,” Connie said, “but I don’t think she’s got him in her cellar. She isn’t answering her phone. And I drove past her house last night. It was dark.”

“Holy cow,” Lula said, staring at my left hand. “You got a white ring on your finger where you didn’t get a tan. I didn’t notice that last night on the way home from the airport. What the heck did you do in Hawaii? And where’s the ring now?”

I made an effort not to grimace. “It’s complicated.”

“Yeah,” Lula said. “That’s what you said last night. You just kept saying it was complicated .”

Connie examined my left hand. “Did you get married while you were in Hawaii?”

“Not exactly.”

“How could you not exactly get married?” Lula wanted to know. “Either you get married or you don’t get married.”

I flapped my arms around and squinched my eyes shut. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? It’s complicated !”

“S’cuse me,” Lula said. “I was just sayin’. You don’t want to talk about it? Fine. Don’t talk about it. Just ’cause we’re best friends don’t mean nothin’. We’re like sisters, but hey, don’t bother me if you don’t want to tell me something.”

“Good,” I said, “because I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Hunh,” Lula said.

Vinnie yelled at Connie from inside the bus. “The phone’s ringing. Get the friggin’ phone!”

“ You get the phone,” Connie yelled back.

“I don’t do phones,” Vinnie said.

Connie made an Italian hand gesture at the bus. “Idiot.”

“I suppose we should do something,” Lula said after Connie left to get the phone. “What else have you got there?”

I shuffled through my stack of skips. “Two armed robberies.”

“Pass on them. They always shoot at us.”

“Domestic violence.”

“Too depressing,” Lula said. “What else you got?”

“A purse snatcher and credit card fraud.”

“I’m liking credit card fraud. They never have a lot of fight in them. They’re always just sneaky little weasels. They just sit in the house all day shopping on the Internet. What’s this moron’s name?”

“Lahonka Goudge.”

“Lahonka Goudge? What kind of name is that? That gotta be wrong. That’s a terrible name.”

“It’s what it says here. She lives in public housing.”

Forty minutes later, we were in Lula’s car, motoring through the projects and searching for Lahonka’s apartment. It was midmorning and the streets were quiet. Kids were in school and day care, hookers were sleeping, and the drug dealers were congregating in parks and playgrounds.

“There it is,” I said to Lula. “She’s in 3145A. It’s the ground-floor apartment with the kids’ toys in the yard.”

Lula parked, and we walked to the door, picking our way around bikes, dolls, soccer balls, and big plastic trucks. I raised my hand to knock, the door opened, and a woman looked out at us. She was my height, shaped like a pear, dressed in tan spandex pants and a poison-green tank top. Her hair was standing straight out from her head like it had been spray-starched and ironed, and she had huge hoop earrings hanging from her earlobes.

“What do you want?” the woman said. “And I don’t need any. Do I look like I need something? I don’t think so. And don’t touch none of my kids’ shit or I’ll turn the dog out on you.”

And she slammed the door shut.

“She got a personality like a Lahonka,” Lula said. “She even looks like a Lahonka.”

I banged on the door, and the door got yanked open.

“What?” the woman said. “I already told you I don’t want nothin’. I got a business goin’ here. I’m a workin’ woman, and I’m not buying any cookies, moisturizer, laundry soap, or jewelry. Maybe if you had some quality weed, but you don’t smell like weed pushers.”

She tried to slam the door shut again, but I had my foot in it. “Lahonka Goudge?” I asked.

“Yeah, so what?”

“Bond enforcement. You missed a court date and we need to reschedule you.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “You got the wrong Lahonka. And anyways, even if I was the right Lahonka, I wouldn’t be going with you, on account of I got stuff to do. I got a pack of kids who need new sneakers, and you’re cutting into my prime earning time. I got eBay auctions goin’ on, and I’m making timely purchases elsewhere.”

Lula put her weight against the door and pushed it open. “We don’t got all day,” she said. “We got a whole batch of idiots to bring in, and I got a lunch date with a Deluxe Mr. Clucky Burger.”

“Oh yeah?” Lahonka said. “Well, Clucky Burger this.”

And she gave Lula a two-handed shove that knocked her back two feet into me. I lost my balance, and we both went ass-first to the ground. The front door slammed shut, security bolts slid into place, and Lahonka pulled the shade down on her front window.

“Probably, she’s not gonna open her door to you again,” Lula said.

I agreed. It was unlikely.

Lula hauled herself up and adjusted her girls. “Is it too early for lunch?”

I looked at my watch. “It’s almost one o’clock in Greenland.”

“That Lahonka took me by surprise,” Lula said, finishing off her second Clucky Burger. “I wasn’t on my game.”

We were eating in Lula’s car because there was a critical time limit to hanging out in Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Minuscule globules of fry fat floated in the air like fairy dust, and exposure lasting longer than six minutes left you smelling like Clucky Extra Crispy all day. It wasn’t an entirely bad smell, but it tended to attract packs of hungry dogs and big beefy men, neither of which I was currently interested in.