Free Motor Mouth by Janet Evanovich

passing.”
    “I heard he was ripped apart by a man-eating swamp monster.”
    Hooker and I glanced under the table at Beans. He was making sloppy wet
snorking
sounds, licking his privates.
    “Lucky bastard,” Hooker whispered. “Every time I try to do that, I throw my back out.”
    “I don’t know how that swamp monster got to South Beach,” Loretta said. “I get goose bumps thinking about it.”
    “Yeah, and how’d the swamp monster get all that plastic wrap? What’d he do, go rob a Winn-Dixie? Personally, I don’t think it was a swamp monster,” Maria said.
    “So what do you think?” Loretta asked.
    “Werewolf.”
    “How’s the werewolf gonna get the plastic wrap?”
    “Simple,” Maria said. “He eats the guy, only the guy’s too big to finish up in one meal. There’s a lot left over, right? So when the sun comes up, the werewolf turns into a human, and the human goes to the store and buys the plastic wrap and wraps the guy so he stays fresh.”
    “That makes a lot of sense,” Loretta said.
    Felicia made the sign of the cross and passed the fried bread.
    “If he wrapped him up to keep him fresh, then why did he leave him at the restaurant?” Lily asked.
    “Changed his mind,” Maria said. “Maybe the werewolf got indigestion. Like when I eat too many chiles and I get heartburn.”
    Felicia’s husband opened another bottle of wine. “It wasn’t a werewolf. There wasn’t a full moon. Werewolves need a full moon.”
    “Are you sure they need a full moon?” Maria asked. “I thought they only needed a piece of the moon. How much of the moon was showing when this guy was killed? Anybody know?”
    “I’ll show you a moon,” Luis said. “Anybody want to see a moon?”
    “
No
,” everyone said. No one wanted to see Luis’s moon.
    Two hours later we were still at the table, and Hooker and I were antsy to get back to the warehouse. Hard to relax when the hauler was sitting there beside a mound of scrap metal that used to be two race cars.
    “This has been great,” I said to Felicia, “but Hooker and I need to get back to work.”
    “What about dessert?” Felicia wanted to know. “I haven’t brought dessert out yet.”
    “We’ll be back later for dessert.” A lot later.
    “Should I come with you?” Gobbles asked.
    Gobbles had been tending bar and looked like he’d been drinking more than serving.
    “Going to leave you here, buddy,” Hooker said. “Some body needs to stick around and protect the homestead.”
    “That’s me,” Gobbles said. “I’m the homestead protectorer.”
     
    Turns out you work a lot slower when you’re full of pork and fried bread. It was close to ten o’clock and I was struggling with the last large piece of metal when Felicia opened the side door and peeked in at us.
    “It’s me,” she said. “I brought you dessert, but I’m afraid to come in and get jumped on by the doggie.”
    “It’s okay,” Hooker said. “He’s sleeping in the lounge in the hauler. It’s past his bedtime.”
    It was past my bedtime, too. Taking a car apart is hard physical labor, and I was exhausted.
    Hooker closed the door to the lounge and went to help Felicia. She was carrying two grocery bags and had a newspaper tucked under her arm.
    “I brought the paper,” she said. “It has a big story about the dead guy. I didn’t know if you saw it.”
    “Does it say he was killed by a swamp monster?” Hooker asked.
    “No. It says the medical examiner believes the man was attacked by a large dog. And that he was already dead when the dog attacked him.”
    “Time to get out of Dodge,” Hooker said.
    I agreed, but we couldn’t leave before cleaning house.
    “What’s this?” Felicia said. “What’s this pile of stuff?”
    “Car parts,” Hooker told her.
    “Are you making a car?”
    “No,” he said. “We unmade a car. Now we have to get rid of the parts.”
    Felicia was pulling containers out of the bag and setting them on a toolbox. “That’s a lot of