Fearless Fourteen - Janet Evanovich [38]
Her furniture looked a lot like mine. Inexpensive and without personality. Neither of us was a nest-builder. I always had good intentions of buying throw pillows and arranging pictures in frames and maybe getting a houseplant, but somehow it never happened.
“Hey,” Lula yelled into the bedroom at Susan. “Did you really give your boyfriend a ride on the roof rack?”
Susan came in with her camera. “He’s not my boyfriend. He used to be my boyfriend, but he’s a total jerk. I’m just sorry all I got was his leg. If he hadn’t gotten up so fast, I would have run over him like he was a speed bump.” She focused the camera and took everyone’s picture. “Now one of me with Brenda,” she said, handing the camera to Lula. “This is so cool.”
“Why’d your boyfriend jump on the car?” Lula wanted to know. “Guess he didn’t want you to go?”
“Had nothing to do with me. It was that I took Carl. He just wanted his precious Carl.”
“Isn’t that tragic,” Brenda said. “You have a little boy. A split is always so hard on the children.”
“Actually, Carl’s a monkey,” Susan said.
Lula snapped her head around. “He isn’t here, is he? Nothing personal, but I hate monkeys.”
“I have him in the bathroom. He gets excited when strangers come into the apartment.”
“I have to see this,” Brenda said, crossing to the closed bathroom door. “What kind of monkey is it?”
“Don’t open the door!” Susan said.
Too late. Brenda yanked the door open, and the monkey launched himself out at her and draped himself over her head.
Everyone in the room went rigid and sucked air.
Brenda rolled her eyes, trying to see through her skull. “What the heck?”
“Hee, hee, hee,” Carl said. And he reached down and pinched Brenda’s nose . . . hard.
Brenda slapped his hand away, and Carl shrieked and hunkered down, digging into Brenda’s scalp with his monkey fingers and toes. All you could see was monkey tail and brown monkey fur sticking out of Brenda’s rat’s nest hair.
“Uh-oh,” Lula said. “I never seen a monkey hump before, but I could swear Carl’s in love.”
“Somebody do something, for crissake,” Brenda yelled. “Get him off me! Kill him. Get him a damn banana!”
It was the spider all over again, times fifty. The difference was that this time Brenda’s freak-out was justified. If I had a monkey humping my head, I’d be freaked, too.
“Don’t slap at him,” Susan said. “You’ll make him mad.”
Lula had her gun out. “Hold still, and I’ll nail the nasty little bugger.”
The sound guy reached for Carl, and Carl latched on to his arm and bit his hand.
“Yow! Shit!” the sound guy said. “Shoot him. Shoot him.” He whipped his arm out, and Carl flew off into space, hit the wall, and bounced off like a tennis ball. And he kept bouncing. Onto the table, to the chandelier, to the couch, to an end table, to the television.
Carl rocketed around the room, shrieking and chattering and baring his teeth. His eyes were black and glittery and bugged out of his head, and he was spraying monkey spit.
“It’s a demon monkey!” Lula yelled. “Get a priest.”
“I’m out of here,” the cameraman said. “Life’s too short.”
The sound guy was already in the hall, and Brenda was at the stairs.
“Wait for me,” Lula said, pounding after them.
If I didn’t catch up, they’d leave without me. They’d drive away and never look back.
“Turn yourself in,” I said to Susan. “Sorry about the monkey.”
I sprinted across the lot and got to the Firebird just as Lula put the key into the ignition. I hurled myself into the backseat, and we took off with the camera crew truck right on our ass.
“What the hell was that?” Brenda wanted to know.
Lula gave the Firebird gas. “She said don’t open the door, but would you listen? Heck, no. You had to go open the door. What were you thinking?”
“I wanted to see the monkey. Did she say the monkey was rabid? No. Did she say the monkey was on crack? No. I assumed it was a pet. Its name was Carl.”
“Right there, it tells you something,” Lula said. “Carls are always crazy. You never trust anyone named Carl or Steve.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Brenda said. “Do you have any other theories