Janet Evanovich - Finger Lickin’ Fifteen

“I swear I don’t know what things are coming to,” Lula said, bustling through my front door and heading straight for the refrigerator. “What have you got in here? Did you eat at your mama’s house tonight? Do you got leftovers? I need something to calm my stomach. This keeps up, and I’m gonna get a ulcer or diarrhea or something.” She bypassed the pot roast and mashed potatoes and went straight for the pineapple upside-down cake. “You don’t mind if I eat this, do you?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Lula found a fork and dug into the cake. “First off, I got myself a date with that hot-lookin’ fireman. You remember the one. The big brute with muscles bulgin’ out everywhere. So he came over, and we did some talkin’. And then one thing led to another, and he said would I mind if he go into my bedroom. And I told him he was sittin’ on my bedroom on account of I had to turn the bedroom into a closet. I mean, where’s a girl supposed to put her shoes and her dress-up clothes? Anyways, I supposed he had things to do with himself, so I pulled out my sleep sofa, and I wasn’t paying much attention to him, and next thing he’s all dressed up in one of my cocktail dresses from the Dolly Parton collection.”

“Get out.”

“Swear to God. And he didn’t look good in it, either. It was all wrong for him. He sees me lookin’ at him and he says, I hope you don’t mind I’m wearing your dress. And I say, hell yeah, I mind. You don’t fit in that dress. You’re bustin’ out of it. You’re gonna ruin it, and it’s one of my favorites.”

“And then what?”

“Then he gets all huffy, saying he thought he looked pretty darn good in the dress, and I shouldn’t be talkin’ about bustin’ out of stuff. So I ask him exactly what that’s supposed to mean, and he says, figure it out, fatso.”

I sucked in some air on that one. Calling Lula fatso was like asking to die.

“It got ugly after that,” Lula said. “I don’t want to go into the depressin’ details, but he got his ass out of my apartment, and he wasn’t wearin’ my dress when he exited, either.” She looked down at the empty cake plate. “What happened to the cake?”

“You ate it.”

“Hunh,” Lula said. “I didn’t notice.”

“Easy come, easy go,” I said.

“That’s so true. It’s true about cake and men.”

“Doesn’t sound traumatic enough to give you an ulcer,” I said.

“That wasn’t the traumatic part. The traumatic part came after I booted him out. I was putting my gown away, and I heard someone knockin’ at my door. I figured it was the moron fireman coming back to get his clothes…”

“He left without his clothes?”

“He was in a hurry after I got my gun. The thing is, I already threw his clothes out my window. You know I live on the second floor of the house, so the clothes kind of floated down and landed in some bushes, and maybe he didn’t notice. So I’m thinkin’ it’s just this loser again, and I open the door, and it’s the Chipotle killers, and the one’s got the big-ass meat cleaver and the other’s got a gun.”

“Omigosh.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. I jumped back real quick and slammed the door shut, and bang, bang, bang, there was three bullets shot through my door. Can you imagine the nerve of them defacing my door? And it’s not even like I own the door. This here’s a rental property. And I don’t see where I should be held responsible to pay for that door.”

“What happened next?”

“I got my gun and I shot a whole bunch more holes in the door while they were trying to kick it in.”

“Did you hit anyone?”

“I don’t know. I emptied about half a clip in the door, and when I stopped shooting, there weren’t any sounds coming from the other side. So I waited a minute, and then I peeked out, and I didn’t see no decapitators. And there wasn’t any blood all splattered around, either, although hard to believe I missed them, on account of they had their foot to the door when I started shooting.”

It was easy for me to believe. Lula was the worst shot ever. Lula couldn’t hit the side of a barn if she was three feet away from it.

“So that’s why I’m here,” Lula said, retrieving a big black garbage bag she’d left in the outside hall. “I brought some clothes and stuff with me because I figure I could stay with you while my door is getting fixed. It looks like Swiss cheese, and the lock’s broke from those assholes kickin’ at it.” Lula closed my door behind her and took a look at it. “You got a real good door here. It’s one of them metal fire doors. I only had a wimp-ass wood one.”

I was speechless. Lula’s a good friend, but having her as a roommate would be like getting locked in a closet with a rhinoceros in full attention deficit disorder mode.

“You don’t have Morelli coming over or nothin’, do you?” she asked. “I don’t want to interfere. And I’ll be gone as soon as they get my new door put up. Don’t seem to me there’s much to it. You get a new door and you put it up on those hinges, right?”

I nodded. “Yuh,” I said.

“Are you okay?” Lula asked. “You look all glassy-eyed. Good thing I’m here. You might be coming down with something.” She settled into my couch and focused on the TV screen. “This is one of my favorite shows. I watch this every Thursday.”

I joined her on the couch and tried to relax. It’ll be fine, I told myself. It’s just for tonight. Tomorrow she’ll get the door fixed, and I’ll have my apartment back. And Lula’s a good person. This is the least I could do.

Three minutes after sitting down, Lula’s head dropped forward, and she was asleep, softly snoring. The snoring got louder and louder, until finally it was drowning out the sound from the television and I was sitting on my hands to keep from choking her.

“Hey!” I yelled in her ear.

“What?”

“You’re snoring.”

“No way. I was watching television. Look at me. Do I look like I’m asleep?”

“I’m going to bed,” I said.

“You sure you don’t want to see the end of this? This is a real good show.”

“I’ll catch it on reruns.”

I closed the door to my bedroom, crawled into bed, and shut my light off. I took a couple deep breaths and willed myself to go to sleep. Relax, I told myself. Calm down. Life is good. Think of a gentle breeze. Think of the moon in a dark sky. Hear the ocean. My eyes snapped open. I wasn’t hearing the ocean. I was hearing Lula snoring. I put my pillow over my head and went back to talking myself into sleep. Hear the ocean. Hear the wind in the trees. Shit! It wasn’t working. All I could hear was Lula.

Okay, I had a choice. I could kick her out of my apartment. I could hit her in the head with a hammer until she was dead. Or I could leave.

I PARKED IN the Rangeman garage and fobbed myself into the elevator and up to the seventh floor. I knew all eyes were on me in the control room. I waved at the Minicam hidden in the far corner of the elevator and tried to look nonchalant. I was wearing sneakers, flannel pajamas, and a sweatshirt. I’d called Ranger on the way across town and told him I needed a room. He said he was out on surveillance, and the only room available was his bedroom… so that was where I was headed.

I walked through his apartment in the dark and debated sleeping on the couch, but in the end Ranger’s bed was too alluring. He was working a double shift, doing drive-bys on accounts he felt were at highest risk for break-in. That meant he wouldn’t be back until six A.M. All I had to do was set the alarm so I’d be out of his bed before he rolled in.

The next morning, I was still in my pajamas and was standing in Ranger’s kitchen when he got home. I wasn’t entirely with the program, needing at least another two hours of sleep and a lot of hot coffee. Ranger had been up for more than twenty-four hours and looked annoyingly alert.