Janet Evanovich - Explosive Eighteen

“The police station isn’t so bad,” Buggy said. “They gave me a cheeseburger.”

He grabbed Lahonka and tucked her under his arm like she was a rag doll, while I scrambled to get her crutches.

“I’m just about gonna faint on account of my honey pie is so strong,” Lula said. “I’d never say anyone was fat due to that bein’ hurtful, but let’s face it, Lahonka’s a sandbag. I carry a certain amount of weight, but mine’s perfectly distributed. My big beautiful bubble butt balances out my oversized boobs. Lahonka here got all her weight sunk into one of them low-slung behinds. It gotta be hard to get someone like Lahonka off the ground.”

“You got a lot of nerve sayin’ those things about me!” Lahonka yelled at Lula. “You’re not nothin’ but a big ’ho.”

“Am not,” Lula said, hands on hips. “I gave up bein’ a ’ho.”

“I like ’hos,” Buggy said. “It’s like goin’ to Cluck-in-a-Bucket. You order something and that’s what you get.”

“Sugar, it’s like that with a girlfriend, too,” Lula said.

“Hunh,” Lahonka said. “Not with me. You get what I want to give you, and then you better say thank you .”

Not with me, either, I thought. My new policy was nobody gets anything !

Buggy carted Lahonka to the truck and dumped her into the back.

“We need to cuff her, Sweetums,” Lula said, handing Buggy cuffs.

Lahonka was spitting and clawing and swearing, and Buggy was having a hard time catching a wrist.

“You don’t hold still for me, and I’m going to kick you in your foot,” Buggy said.

Lahonka went still for a beat, digesting the threat, and Buggy sat on her and cuffed her.

“Good job,” Lula said to Buggy. “Don’t let her escape. She’s sneaky.”

Buggy looked at Lula. “Do you have any more of them Snickers?”

“No,” Lula said, “but we’ll get more as soon as we drop Lahonka off.”

“You aren’t gonna leave me back here with King Kong, are you?” Lahonka said. “He got his fat ass on me, and I can’t breathe. Isn’t it enough you shot up my foot? I’m just a poor workin’ woman. I got kids to support.”

I drove to the municipal building and parked in the lot. I didn’t need police assistance. I could get Buggy to cart Lahonka across the street if she refused to walk. Lula and I got out and went to the back of the truck.

No Lahonka.

“I could have sworn Lahonka was here when we took off,” Lula said.

Buggy was sitting with his back against the rear window. “She got out at the last light.”

“You were supposed to make sure she didn’t escape,” I said to him.

“Yeah, but she said she was a mama, and she was cryin’. So I let her go.”

“That’s so sweet,” Lula said to Buggy. “You’re a man with a good heart.”

“It’s not sweet!” I said. “Lahonka Goudge is a con artist and a felon. She steals people’s identities. And Mr. Potato Head here just let her go.”

“Do I get my Snickers now?” Buggy asked.

“You get nothing,” I said. “ NOTHING .”

Buggy squinched his face up. “You promised.”

“The deal was you’d get Snickers after we delivered Lahonka. Did we deliver Lahonka?” I asked him. “No, we did not. So you get nothing. There are consequences to all actions.”

“Nuh-ah. I do lots of things without them consequences.”

“Not in my truck,” I told him. “There are consequences in my truck.”

“That’s a good policy,” Lula said. “Just think where we’d be if we didn’t pay attention to consequences. Like, there’s consequences if you don’t got bullets in your gun. And there’s consequences if you eat bad potato salad. And there’s consequences if you’re not taking precautions with your sweetie pie.”

I had a flash of panic recalling a small inadvertent lapse in my birth-control program in Hawaii.

“Are you okay?” Lula asked me. “You got real pale just now, and you’re sort of sweating.”

“I was thinking about consequences.”

“Yeah, they freak me out, too,” Lula said.

I OFF-LOADED LULA AND BUGGY at the bonds office so Lula could get her car. Slasher and Lancer were still parked there, both of them sound asleep. Vinnie’s car and Connie’s car were gone, and the office was closed. Everyone left early on Saturday.

“I’m going to take you home in my Firebird,” Lula said to Buggy.

Buggy’s eyes got wide. “I want to drive.”

“Of course you do,” Lula said, “but this here’s a finely tuned machine.”

“Yuh.”

“Well, okay, since you’re so adorable,” Lula said. And she handed him her key.

“Get in fast, before he takes off without you,” I said to Lula.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Lula said. “He’s my big honey.”

The big honey rammed himself behind the wheel and took off.

“Hey!” Lula said. “Wait for me.”

“Get in the truck,” I told her. “I’ll catch him.”

Three blocks later, Buggy was stopped in traffic. Lula jumped out, ran to the Firebird, wrenched the passenger-side door open, and got in. Mission accomplished, as far as I was concerned.

I stopped at the supermarket and got a couple bags of groceries. Bread, milk, juice, peanut butter, olives, bag of chips, a frozen pizza, Vienna Fingers cookies, a bucket of assorted fried chicken parts, strawberry Pop-Tarts. I made one more stop and got a six-pack of beer and a bottle of red wine. I was going to have a feast tonight. I was going to have fried chicken, beer, and Vienna Fingers. Tomorrow, I’d have pizza and wine. No men. No Joyce. No Apple Dumpling. Just me and Rex and the TV.

I lugged the bags up to my apartment, set them on the kitchen counter, and a chill ran down my spine. The television was on. I grabbed the Glock and peeked into the living room. It was Joyce. “What the heck?”

“That was really shitty,” Joyce said. “You dumped me out in the hall. If I had any other place to go, I’d be there.”

“How did you get back into my apartment?”

“I had to climb up the stupid fire escape again. It’s getting old.” She came into the kitchen and looked at the food I was unpacking. “Where’s my chicken salad and wine?”

“I didn’t get chicken salad. I didn’t think you’d be here. But here’s the good news. The charges have been dropped against you.”

“Big deal. The charges were bogus. I was never worried about the charges.”

“What are you worried about?”

“There’s nothing green here,” Joyce said.

“Olives.”

“Olives are a fruit. Look at this mess. You haven’t got a single vegetable.”

“There’s tomato sauce on the pizza.”

“Another fruit.”

As if my life wasn’t enough in the toilet, Joyce Barnhardt was now smarter and obviously ate better than me.

“You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “What are you worried about?”

Joyce selected a mystery piece from the fried chicken bucket. “You ever hear of the Pink Panthers?”

“The movies?”

“No, the organization. Interpol has assigned the name Pink Panthers to an international jewel thief network. Interpol took the name from the movies.”

“The movies are great.”

“Focus,” Joyce said. “We’re talking about the network. Frank Korda was part of the network. I know it’s hard to believe that there’s this nebbish guy in Trenton associated with the Pink Panthers. I mean, the Pink Panthers are big . They’re HUGE ! They stole a $27 million diamond necklace one time from a store in Tokyo. Anyway, somehow Korda connected with these guys.”

“What’s the advantage?”

“According to Korda, the Panthers have the ability to fence the stolen jewelry. Korda said it’s not hard to steal jewelry, but it’s risky to try to sell it.”