Motor Mouth - Janet Evanovich [23]
“If I get arrested and sent to prison, I’m never talking to you again,” I said to Hooker. “Not ever!”
We drove the short distance to Felicia’s house, and Beans got excited the instant we opened Felicia’s front door. His eyes got bright, his nose lifted and twitched, and drool pooled in his mouth and oozed over loose lips.
Hooker leaned into me. “This house reeks of pork barbecue and fried bread. Beans probably thinks he’s arrived at the all-you-can-eat buffet in dog heaven.”
Felicia rushed over to us. “Just in time,” she said. “Everyone’s waiting to meet you. Let me introduce you. This is my cousin Maria. And this is my other cousin Maria. And these are Maria’s two girls. And this is my good neighbor Eddie. And his boy. And my sister Loretta. And this is Joe and Joe’s wife, Lucille. And over there is Marjorie and her husband. They’re big fans. And you already know my daughter and Sister Marie Elena and Lily.”
Beans was jumping around like a rabbit, going nuts over the food smells and the mix of people. I had the leash shortened and wrapped around my wrist, and he was yanking me forward, gaining inches in his quest to get to the pork.
Hooker was chatting and signing autographs. No help there. I dug my heels in and leaned back, but Beans had me outweighed, dragging me toward the dining room in unrelenting determination. I reached out, snagged Hooker by the waistband on his jeans, and held tight.
“Darlin’,” Hooker said, wrapping an arm around me. “You’re gonna have to wait your turn.”
“It’s your darn dog!”
Beans made a lunge at a round little lady carrying a bowl of beans and sausage, planting his two front feet squarely on her back. They went down to the ground with a woof from Beans and an oouf from the woman, food flying everywhere. Beans flopped on top of the woman and snarfed up the sausage that had landed in her hair.
Hooker muscled Beans off the woman, grabbed her under the armpits, and dragged her to her feet. “Sorry,” he said to the woman. “He gets playful.”
“He should be in a zoo,” she said, brushing at the sauce on her shirt. “What is he? He looks like a Yak dog. Like a Chewbacca.” She felt on top of her head. “What’s this goo in my hair?”
It was a glob of dog drool.
“Must be from the casserole,” I told her, luring Beans away with a roll.
“Everybody come eat before the food gets cold,” Felicia said.
Felicia had her table extended to maximum capacity, and we fit around it cheek by jowl, with a couple kids sitting on parents’ laps. Every inch of table was covered with bowls of food…rice, beans, fried bread, pork barbecue, sweet potatoes, fruit casseroles, chicken, and who-knows-what.
Maria passed a platter of fried sweet-potato cakes. “How about that Mexican race-car man who got killed? It’s all that’s on the news.” She turned to Hooker. “Did you know him?”
“Only in passing.”
“I heard he was ripped apart by a man-eating swamp monster.”
Hooker and I glanced under the table at Beans. He was making sloppy wet snorking sounds, licking his privates.
“Lucky bastard,” Hooker whispered. “Every time I try to do that, I throw my back out.”
“I don’t know how that swamp monster got to South Beach,” Loretta said. “I get goose bumps thinking about it.”
“Yeah, and how’d the swamp monster get all that plastic wrap? What’d he do, go rob a Winn-Dixie? Personally, I don’t think it was a swamp monster,” Maria said.
“So what do you think?” Loretta asked.
“Werewolf.”
“How’s the werewolf gonna get the plastic wrap?”
“Simple,” Maria said. “He eats the guy, only the guy’s too big to finish up in one meal. There’s a lot left over, right? So when the sun comes up, the werewolf turns into a human, and the human goes to the store and buys the plastic wrap and wraps the guy so he stays fresh.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” Loretta said.
Felicia made the sign of the cross and passed the fried bread.
“If he wrapped him up to keep him fresh, then why did he leave