Free 14bis Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich Page B

at her. Personally, I think the rat didn’t know what the heck it was doing, but Lula freaked.
    “Eeeeeeee,” Lula shrieked, dancing around in her heels, arms in the air, completely apeshit.
    The rat scurried across Lula’s foot and kept going past boxes of potatoes and beans. It took a left and headed for Pennyslvania. Bollo did the same. By the time I got to my feet, and Lula stopped freaking, Bollo was long gone.
    A bunch of guys had gathered around us. They were throwing out comments in Spanish and laughing.
    “What are they saying?” Lula wanted to know.
    “I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t speak Spanish. The only thing I could pick out was loco.”
    “What are you looking at?” Lula said to the men. “Don’t you have anything better to do? This place should be shut down. I’m calling the health inspector. I’m gonna report this place to the fruit police.” Lula turned to me. “And what’s with you and the dud stun gun? Let me take a look at that thing.”
    I handed Lula the stun gun, and she tested it out on the guy next to her, who immediately collapsed into a heap on the floor and wet his pants.
    “Seems to be working now,” Lula said, handing the stun gun back to me.
    I dropped the stun gun into my bag, Lula pocketed her Glock, and we hotfooted it out of there. We chose to leave through the loading dock exit and walk around the building rather than drip egg and melon guts onto the office floor. We wiped off as best we could and climbed into my Jeep.
    “You see, this is what Miss Gloria’s talking about,” Lula said. “I got bad juju. How else could you explain it?”
    “It’s not our juju,” I told Lula. “It’s our skill level. We’re incompetent.”
    “I got a high skill level,” Lula said. “I just shot a rat off a rafter.”
    “You weren’t aiming for it.”
    “Yeah. My skill level is so high I do things I don’t even try to do.”

NINE
    I DROPPED LULA at the office, drove myself home, and dragged myself through my front door. The egg-and-fruit gunk had dried en route and was matted in my hair and plastered to my jeans and T-shirt.
    Diesel looked me up and down. “Another issue at the produce ware house?”
    “I don’t want to talk about it. It involved a rat.”
    “What’s in your hair?”
    I felt around. “I think it’s mostly egg.”
    “Do you need help? Do you want me to hose you off in the parking lot?”
    “Jeez Louise,” I said. “I had a really crumby morning and I’ve got egg in my hair. Could I get a little sensitivity here?”
    Diesel smiled. “I could take a shot at it.” He gathered me into his arms, held me close, and leaned his head against mine. “You smell nice,” he said. “Like fruit salad.”
    __________________
    A N HOUR LATER, we were all in the Escalade. Carl had pitched a fit about being left alone, so we’d brought him along. He was in the backseat, strapped in by a seat belt, his hands folded in his lap, looking as if at any moment he was going to ask if we were there yet.
    “Is it me, or is this whole monkey thing getting a little Twilight Zone?” Diesel asked, checking Carl out in the rearview mirror.
    “You think it’s just getting Twilight Zone? You don’t think it’s always been Twilight Zone?”
    “Have you heard anything from his mother?”
    “No. Not a word.”
    “It’s like we’ve adopted a hairy little kid,” Diesel said. “There’s something about him sitting in the backseat that’s friggin’ spooky.”
    I looked over my shoulder at Carl, and he sent me a finger wave.
    “So if I wasn’t along for the ride, would you just pop yourself over to Philadelphia?” I asked Diesel.
    “No. It’s not that easy to get popped someplace.”
    “Wulf didn’t seem to have a lot of trouble with it. Is he more powerful than you?”
    “No. He’s just different.”
    “How so?”
    “For starters, he kills people.”
    Diesel crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.
    “Do you know