Free 12 Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich Page B

spike-heeled shoes, and Sally was wearing his guitar, dangly red sparkly earrings, four-inch red sequined heels with two-inch platform soles, and a red-sequined thong. He'd foregone his usual platinum Marilyn Monroe wig and was au naturel in his shoulder-length, kinky curled black hair. His big, gangly, hairy body ambled up to the mic, and he gave a loud strum on the guitar that brought the house down.
    'I usually wear a dress,' Sally said. 'But people told me it might not go over here, so I wore this thong instead. What do you think?'
    Everyone whistled and hooted. Morelli had his arm around me and a grin on his face. I was smiling too, but I was afraid the good mood of the audience wasn't going to last. It looked to me like this was a crowd with a short attention span.
    Sally Sweet has been punk, funk, rock, country western, and everything in between. This band looked to me like a seventies cover band since the first song was 'Love Machine.'
    Lula had a handheld mic and was doing a routine somewhere between Tina Turner and a Baptist revival meeting. It wasn't bad, but every time she raised her arms the skimpy gold dress would hike up, and she'd have to tug it back down over her ass. Halfway through the song Lula lost her place and gave up on the lyrics and started singing, 'Love machine, la la la la love machine.' Not that it mattered. The entire audience was mesmerized by the fleeting glimpses of Lula's size XXX large leopard thong.
    When the song ended someone yelled out that he wanted to hear 'Love Shack.'
    'No way,' came back from the other side of the room. '“Disco Inferno.”'
    '“Disco Inferno” is gay,' the first guy yelled. 'Only pussies like “Disco Inferno.”'
    'Pussy this,' the Disco Inferno guy said. And he threw a beer bottle at the Love Shack guy.
    'You better stop that,' Lula said to the Disco guy. 'That's rude behavior.'
    An onion ring came sailing out of the audience, hit Lula in the head and dropped onto her chest.
    'Now I'm getting mad,' Lula said. 'Who did that? I got a big grease spot on my dress now. You're getting my dry cleaning bill.'
    'Hey,' someone yelled to Lula, 'show us the rest of those big tits. I want to see your tits.'
    'How about you want to see my foot up your ass,' Lula said.
    A show-us-your-tits chant went up and a bunch of the women flashed headlights.
    The drunk next to me grabbed my shirt and attempted to pull it over my head. 'Show me your tits,' he said.
    And that was the last thing he said because Morelli shoved his fist into the guy's face.
    It pretty much went downhill after that. Beer bottles were flying, and the room looked like a WWE cage match with a frenzied mob smashing furniture, scratching and clawing and punching each other out.
    Sally went off the stage with a war whoop, wading into the mess, whacking guys with his guitar, and Lula crawled under a table. Morelli wrapped an arm around my middle, lifted me two inches off the floor, and fought his way toward the hall leading to the restrooms and rear door, laying waste to anyone in his way. He got me outside, and he went back in for Lula. He shoved Lula out the rear door just as the police arrived, front and rear.
    Eddie Gazarra was in one of the squad cars angled behind Morelli's SUV. He was a good friend, and he was married to my cousin, Shirley the Whiner. He was with three other cops, and they all had big smiles when they saw Morelli and Lula and me.
    'What's going on?' Gazarra wanted to know, working hard not to totally crack up.
    'I got hit with an onion ring,' Lula said.
    'Anything else?' he asked Morelli.
    'Nope, that's about it,' Morelli said, hands loose at his side, knuckles scraped and bleeding, bruise flowering on his right cheekbone. 'Be nice if you'd move your car, so we could get out of here. And when you go inside you might look for a guy in a red thong. He's with us.'
    Morelli was slouched on the couch, holding an ice pack to his bruised cheek, taking in the last minutes of a West Coast ball