Dirty Thirty (Stephanie Plum, #30)(29)

The doors to the dining room opened and everyone surged forward.

“It’s been lovely chatting with you, but I have to go,” Gloria said. “If you aren’t at the front of the line there’s no more carrot cake left for dessert and Jack Hestler coughs on everything. You always want to be ahead of Jack.”

I stepped away from the lunch line and headed for the elevator.

“What are we going to do with Gloria?” Lula asked. “Are you going to come back after lunch and put her in cuffs?”

“No,” I said. “I’m going to leave and never come back. If Vinnie wants to apprehend her, that’s his problem.”

“Is that on account of RAM?”

“No. I’m walking away because she’s not going to cooperate, and I’ll look like I’m abusing the elderly and I’ll feel like a jerk if I put her in cuffs and drag her out of the building.”

“Yeah, it could be hard to get her out of here. Not to mention, these old folks stick together. They could turn into an angry mob. And what are we supposed to do if they try to run us over with their scooters? We’d probably get into trouble if we shoot at them.”

“No doubt.”





CHAPTER NINE




Bob was panting and drooling on the side window when we reached my Cherokee. I let him out, he lifted his leg, relieved himself on my left rear tire, and jumped back into the car.

“We should be thinking about lunch,” Lula said. “Bob looks hungry.”

“What do you think Bob would like for lunch?”

“He wants chicken salad from that bakery and deli on Nottingham. We passed it on our way in. They make excellent chicken salad, and they make fries with duck fat. Duck-fat fries are the next-best thing to an orgasm.”

My sex life had been skimpy lately with Morelli working overtime and flying off to Miami, so a runner-up to an orgasm had a lot of appeal.

Fifteen minutes later I parked in the lot next to the deli.

“I’ll wait out here with Bob,” I said to Lula. “Get chicken salad on a croissant for Bob and one for me, and make sure mine comes with extra fries.”

When Lula came back to the SUV she had chicken salad croissants for everyone plus a big bucket of fries, coleslaw, chips, drinks, and a white bakery box filled with pastries.

“I had a hard time making choices in there,” she said. “This is a five-star deli-bakery.”

We tailgated off the Cherokee, and Bob was done with his croissant before I finished unwrapping mine. I gave him a handful of fries on a napkin and told him he had to pace himself.

“He keeps eating like that and he’s going to get acid reflux,” Lula said. “He’s gotta learn to savor.”

Halfway through my croissant I looked down at Bob. The French fries were long gone and so was the napkin.

“Can’t blame him for eating the napkin,” Lula said. “It probably had soaked up duck fat. I might have eaten it too.”

I finished up with an apple tart and Lula grazed through the rest of the box on the way to the office.

“I’m going to leave you and Bob at the office,” I said. “I promised Mrs. Manley I’d take her cats to the vet for their checkup.”

“You’re a good person to offer to do that,” Lula said.

“I got suckered into it.”

“Still, you’re living up to your promise.” Lula stopped eating and leaned forward. “I could swear that’s Farcus Trundle’s truck two cars in front of us. It’s a big black truck with the back sort of dented in from where he shoved you out of his driveway.”

We all stopped for a light, and when the light turned the black truck peeled off Hamilton, onto Olden Avenue.

“That’s him. I can see his big bowling-ball head,” Lula said. “He’s going home.”

This wasn’t a good time to run into Trundle, but I didn’t want to throw away a shot at capturing him. It was my job to take him down, but more than that, I didn’t like him. He was a horrible human being. He did bad things to good people. He smashed his truck into my car. And his girlfriend punched me in the face. I wasn’t crazy about her either. I followed him onto Olden, keeping a respectable distance.

“Are you thinking about making an apprehension?” Lula asked. “Should I get my gun out?”

“No gun. Let’s see how it plays.”

“How about if you follow him home, and when he gets out of his truck you run him over?”

It was a pleasant thought but might not go well in court.

He turned onto a side street and when I turned, he put his foot to the floor and raced down the street.

“He spotted you,” Lula said.

Not hard to do with the front of my Cherokee crumpled.

“Keep your eyes on him,” I said. “I’m not doing ninety on this side street.”

“He’s way ahead of you and he turned right again,” Lula said.

I turned right when I reached the corner, but the black truck was nowhere in sight. I continued down the street, I stopped at the cross street, and I was suddenly hit from behind. BAM.

“It’s him!” Lula yelled. “It’s Farcus. He must have gone around the block and come up behind you.”

BAM. He hit me again, bouncing my Cherokee halfway into the intersection.