Stephanie Plum - Finger Lickin' Fifteen Part 25

"Bob is fine. His intestines are squeaky clean."

"How are you?"

"I'm clean, too."

And then I couldn't help myself. The b.i.t.c.h part of me sneaked out. "How's Joyce?"

"Joyce is Joyce," Morelli said.

Lula hauled herself to her feet. "I'm in a bad mood," she said. "I'm in a mood to get me some Marco the Maniac. I've had it with this s.h.i.t. It's one thing to kill me, but blowin' up my Firebird is goin' too far." She looked at her watch. "We gotta get to the park. We gotta sign in."

"We haven't got a car. The Buick is parked at Rangeman."

"I'll call Connie. She can take us."

SIXTEEN

CONNIE DROVE A silver Camry with rosary beads hanging from her rear view mirror and a Smith & Wesson stuck under the driver's seat. No matter what went down, Connie was covered.

I was in the backseat with Grandma, and Lula was next to Connie. We were in the parking lot adjacent to the field where the cook-off was to be held, and we were watching compet.i.tors pull in, dragging everything from mobile professional kitchens to U-hauls carrying grills and worktables.

"I didn't expect this," Grandma said. "I figured we come with a jar of sauce, and they'd have some chicken for us."

"We got a grill," Lula said, getting out of the Camry. "We just didn't bring it yet."

"Did you get a set of rules when you registered?" Connie asked Lula.

"No. I did the express register, bein' that the organizer was under some duress. And on top of that, I didn't have to pay no registration fee, so he might have been trying to save on paper."

A registration table had been set up at the edge of the lot. Compet.i.tors were signing in, taking a set of instructions, and leaving with a tray.

"What's with the tray?" Lula asked the guy in line in front of us.

"It's the official compet.i.tion tray. You put the food that's going to be judged on the tray."

"Imagine that," Grandma said. "Isn't that something?"

We got our tray and our rules, and we stepped aside to read through the instructions.

"It says here that we can't use a gas grill," Connie said. "We need to cook on wood or charcoal. And we have to pick a category. Ribs, chicken, or brisket."

"I'm thinking ribs," Lula said. "Seems to me it's harder to poison someone with ribs. I guess there's always that trichinosis thing, but you don't know about that for years. And I'm gonna have to get a different grill."

"All these people got tents and tables and signs with their name on it," Grandma said. "We need some of that stuff. We need a name."

"How about Vincent Plum Bail Bondettes," Connie said.

"I'm not being nothin' a.s.sociating me with Vincent Plum," Lula said. "Bad enough I gotta work for the little pervert."

"I want a s.e.xy name," Grandma said. "Like Hot v.a.g.i.n.a."

"Flamin' a.s.sholes would be better," Lula said. "That's what happens when you eat our sauce. Can you say Flamin' a.s.sholes on television?"

"This is big," I said, looking out over the field. "There are ; ags with numbers on them all over the place. Every team is a.s.signed a number."

"We're number twenty-seven," Lula said. "That don't sound like a good number to me."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's not memorable," Lula said. "I want to be number nine."

My eye was starting to twitch, and I had a dull throb at the base of my skull. "Probably, they gave us Chipotle's number," I said.

"Do you think?"

"Absolutely. He got decapitated, and you registered late, so you got his number."

I hoped she bought this baloney, because I didn't want to hang out while Lula pulled a gun on the registration lady.

"That makes sense," Lula said. "I guess it's okay then. Let's find our spot."

We walked down rows of flags and finally found twenty-seven. It was a little patch of gra.s.s between the red-and-white-striped canopy of Bert's BBQ and the brown canopy of The Bull Stops Here. Our neighbors had set up shop and taken off. From what I could see, that was the routine. Stake out your territory, get your canopy and table ready to go. Hang your sign. Leave for the day.

"The instructions say we can get back in here at eight o'clock tomorrow morning," Connie said. "We can start cooking anytime we want after that. The judging is at six in the evening."

"We got a lot of stuff to get together," Lula said. "To start, we gotta find one of them canopies and a grill."

"Not everybody has a canopy," Grandma said.

"Yeah, but the canopy is cla.s.sy, and it keeps the sun off the top of your head, so you don't get a sunburn," Lula said.

We all looked at the top of Lula's head. Not much chance of sunburn there. Not a lot of sunlight reached Lula's scalp.

"I've got a couple hours free this afternoon," I said to Lula. "We can go around and try to collect some of the essentials. We just have to stop by Rangeman, so I can get the Buick."

"I'll go with you," Grandma said.

"THE FIRST THING we gotta do is get us a truck," Lula said. "This Buick isn't gonna hold a grill and all. I bet we could borrow a truck from Pookey Brown. He owns that junkyard and used-car lot at the end of Stark Street. He used to be a steady customer of mine when I was a 'ho."

"Boy," Grandma said. "You had lots of customers. You know people everywhere."

"I had a real good corner. And I never had a business manager, so I was able to keep my prices down."

I didn't want to drive the length of Stark, so I cut across on Olden and only had to go two blocks down to the junk-yard. The name on the street sign read C.J. Sc.r.a.p METAL, but Pookey Brown ran it, and sc.r.a.p metal was too lofty a description for Pookey's business. Pookey was a junk collector. He ran a private dump. Pookey had almost two acres of broken, rusted, unwanted c.r.a.pola. Even Pookey himself looked like he was expired. He was thin as a reed, frizzy haired, gaunt featured, and his skin tone was gray. I had no clue to his age. He could be forty. He could be a hundred and ten. And I couldn't imagine what Pookey would do with a 'ho.

"There's my girl," Pookey said when he saw Lula. "I never get to see you anymore."

"I keep busy working at the bond office," Lula told him. "I need a favor. I need to borrow a truck until tomorrow night."

"Sure," Pookey said. "Just take yourself over to the truck section and pick one out."

If you had a junker car or truck, and somehow you could manage to get it to C.J. Sc.r.a.p, you could park it there and walk away. Some of them even had license plates attached. And every now and then, one got parked with a body in the trunk. There were thirteen cars and three pickup trucks in Pookey's "used car" lot today.

"Any of these trucks run?" Lula asked.

"The red one got a couple miles left," Pookey said. "I could put a plate on for you. You need anything else?"

"Yeah," Lula said. "I need a grill. Not one of them gas grills, either."

"I got a good selection of grills," Pookey said. "Do you need to cook in it?"

"I'm entered in the barbecue contest at the park tomorrow," Lula said.

"So then you need a barbecuing barbecuing grill. That narrows the field. How about eating? Are you gonna personally eat any of the barbecue?" grill. That narrows the field. How about eating? Are you gonna personally eat any of the barbecue?"

"I don't think so. I think the judges are eating the barbecue."

"That gives us more selection," Pookey said.

By the time Lula was done shopping at C.J. Sc.r.a.p, she had a grill and a card table loaded into her truck. The plate on the truck was expired, but you could hardly tell for the mud and rust. I followed her down Stark and parked behind her when she stopped at Maynard's Funeral Home.

"I gotta make a pickup here, too. You stay and guard the truck," Lula said, sticking her head in the Buick's window. "Bad as it is, if I leave it alone for ten minutes in this part of town, it'll be missing wheels when I get back." She looked at Grandma, sitting next to me. "Do you have your gun?"

"You betcha," Grandma said. "I got it right here in my purse. Just like always."

"Shoot whoever comes near," Lula said to Grandma. "I won't be long."

I looked over at Grandma. "If you shoot anyone, anyone, I'm telling my mother on you." I'm telling my mother on you."

"How about those three guys coming down the street? Can I shoot them?"

"No! They're just walking down the street."

"I don't like the looks of them," Grandma said. "They look shifty."

"Everyone looks like that on Stark Street."

The three guys were in their early to mid-twenties, doing the ghetto strut in their ridiculous oversize pants. They were wearing a lot of gold chains, and one of them had a bottle in a brown paper bag. Always a sign of a cla.s.sy dude.

I rolled my window up and locked my door, and Grandma did the same.

They got even with the Buick and looked in at me.

"Nice wheels," one of them said. "Maybe you should get out and let me drive."

"Ignore them," I said to Grandma. "They'll go away."

The guy with the bottle took a pull on it and tried the door handle. Locked.

"Are you sure you don't want me to shoot him?" Grandma asked.

"No. No shooting."

They tried to rock the car, but the Buick was a tank. It would take more than three scrawny homies to rock the Buick. One of them dropped his pants and pressed his bare a.s.s against the driver's side window.

"You're gonna have to Windex that window when we get home," Grandma said.

I was looking at the funeral home, sending mental telepathy to Lula to get herself out to her truck, so we could leave, and I heard the back door to the Buick get wrenched open. I hadn't thought to lock the back door.

One of the men climbed onto the backseat, and another reached around and unlocked the driver's door. I reached for the ignition key, but my door was already open, and I was getting pulled out of the car. I hooked my arm through the steering wheel and kicked one of the guys in the face. The guy in the back was grabbing at me, and the third guy had hold of my foot.

"We're gonna have fun with you and the old lady," the guy in the backseat said. "We're gonna do you like you've never been done before."

"Shoot!" I said to Grandma.

"But you said ..."

"Just f.u.c.king shoot shoot someone!" someone!"

Grandma carried a gun like Dirty Harry's. I caught sight of the ma.s.sive barrel in my peripheral vision and BANG BANG.

The guy holding my foot jumped back and grabbed the side of his head, blood spurting through his fingers. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" he yelled. "Son of a f.u.c.kin' b.i.t.c.h! She shot off my ear."

I knew what he was saying because it was easy to read his lips, but I wasn't hearing anything but a high-pitched ringing in my head.

The guy in the backseat scrambled out of the Buick and helped drag the guy with one ear down the street.

"Do you think he'll be all right?" Grandma asked.

"Don't know. Don't care."

The door to the funeral home opened, and Lula and a mountain of a guy came out carrying a bundle of what looked like aluminum poles partially wrapped in faded green canvas. They threw the bundle into the back of the truck, and the guy returned to the funeral home. Lula said something to Grandma and me, but I couldn't hear.

"What?" I said.