Fearless Fourteen - Janet Evanovich [25]
“Yeah, but looking at the cake got the ball rolling.”
“Have you talked to Tank about any of this?”
“No. I didn’t see him last night. He called up and said he had one of them stomach viruses.”
“Sometimes men don’t like elaborate weddings,” I said to Lula. Especially when they don’t want to get married.
“That better not be Tank,” Lula said, “on account of I’m starting to get into this wedding shit. And anyways, after all the things I do for him, the least he could do is marry me in a church and all.”
“You do lots of things for Tank?”
“Well, I might in the future,” Lula said.
My mother’s ring tone went off on my cell phone.
“There’s a strange man here, and he’s looking for you,” my mother said. “I told him you weren’t here, but he won’t go away.”
“Does he have white hair and big black glasses?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Me, too,” Lula said. “Where we going? Who has white hair and glasses?”
SEVEN
THERE WERE THREE cars lined up at the curb in front of my parents’ house. The white Taurus was one of them.
“I never seen a real stalker before,” Lula said. “I’m looking forward to this.”
I parked in the driveway and slid from behind the wheel. “Let me do the talking. I don’t want to make a big deal over this. And I especially don’t want to freak my mother out.”
“Sure,” Lula said. “I understand that. My lips are sealed.”
“And don’t shoot him or gas him or fry his hair with your stun gun.”
“You got a lot of rules,” Lula said.
“He’s harmless.”
“That’s what those stalkers want you to believe, and then wham—they get naked pictures of you and put them on the Internet.”
“You have personal experience?”
“No, but I heard. Well, okay, maybe a little experience. But not with a stalker.”
My mother was at the door waiting for me. “How do you attract these strange men?” my mother asked. “They’re never normal.”
“He’s a stalker,” Lula said. “He might even be dangerous.”
I turned and looked at Lula. “What about the sealed lips?”
“I forgot. I got carried away.”
“He’s confused,” I said to my mother. “I just need to talk to him. Where is he?”
“He’s in the kitchen. I have a full house today. Your grandmother is in the dining room with Betty Greenblat and Ruth Szuch. They’re all insane. They each have a computer, and they’re playing that game. They don’t even take bathroom breaks. I think they’re all wearing Depends. They said they’re ganging up on the griefer. They don’t like being disturbed, so you have to sneak past them.”
My mother, Lula, and I tiptoed past Grandma, Betty, and Ruth. They were all dressed like Zook, and they were all hunched over their computers.
“We got a bad snert here, girls,” Betty said. “Let’s kick ass.”
“This looks like the Queen of the Damned costume party at the Shady Rest Nursing Home,” Lula whispered to me. “Is this what the golden years looks like?”
“I heard that,” Ruth said. “The golden years are for pussies. We went straight to brass.”
The stalker was in the kitchen stirring a pot of chili. He did a big smile when he saw me. “Surprise,” he said.
“So you’re the stalker,” Lula said, looking him over. “I thought you’d be nastier. You’re kind of a disappointment.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I’m not any good at this. I can’t get anyone to pay attention to me.”
“You gotta look assertive if you want people to hear you,” Lula said. “You gotta talk with authority. You gotta walk the walk and use the language. You see what I’m saying?”
“I guess so. I guess I could try that.” He stiffened his spine and pointed his finger at me. “Listen, bitch . . .”
My mother gave him a whack on the head with her wooden spoon. “Behave yourself.”
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” I asked him. “Don’t you have a job?”
“I’m currently between positions. I had a job, but then I had the dream, and I had to give the job up so I could follow Brenda around.”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” Lula said. “This is about a dream?”
“I told all this to the police and the judge and the psychiatrist,” the stalker said.
“Then you should have the story down good,” Lula said. “Tell it to me.”
“Three