Smokin Seventeen - Janet Evanovich [25]
Merlin saw us coming and froze. He had a bag of chicken in each hand and a look of total disbelief on his face. Lula went low, hitting him at the knees. I ran at him flat out and put my shoulder into his chest. And Merlin didn’t move. It was like hitting a brick wall.
Merlin shook us off and opened the door to his car. “Crazy ass bitches,” he said. And he drove away.
Lula picked herself up off the ground. “That was humiliating.”
“What was all that arm waving and yelling?”
“I was trying to scare him. They do that in the movies when the angry horde of marauders is storming the castle.”
We went inside, bought our chicken and biscuits, and returned to the Firebird. I ate a biscuit, and Lula ate a couple pieces of chicken, and we drove back to Mooner’s bus.
“You go on in and deliver the chicken,” I said to Lula. “I’ll wait here in the car.”
“Don’t you want to say hello to Bruce?”
“No.”
“As far as bears go, he’s a pretty nice bear.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Lula took the chicken buckets and bags of biscuits into the bus. There was a loud growwwwwl and a shriek, and Lula jumped out of the bus and hustled back behind the wheel of the Firebird.
“Is everyone okay in there?” I asked her.
“Bruce was hungry and forgot his manners.”
FIFTEEN
LULA AND CONNIE cleared out of the coffee shop a little before five, and I motored off to my parents’ house. I parked, let myself in, and stood for a moment in the small foyer enjoying the smell of chocolate cake fresh out of the oven.
I should learn how to make chocolate cake, I thought. I should go out and buy cake pans and a box mix. How hard could it be? And then my apartment would smell wonderful. And it would be fun to make a cake. And maybe I can’t commit to Morelli because I can’t cook. Okay, that was a stretch, but I hadn’t been able to come up with anything better.
My father was asleep in front of the television. I could hear my grandmother and my mother in the kitchen. And I heard a male voice mixed into their conversation.
“I like buttercream frosting,” he said.
I’d been suckered in again. It was Dave Brewer.
Grandma stuck her head out the kitchen door. “I thought I heard you come in. Look who we got here. It’s Dave, and he’s cooking with us. He’s real good at it, too.”
“Surprise,” Dave said.
He was wearing a white three-button collared knit shirt and jeans, and he had a red chef’s apron wrapped around him.
“Just in time,” Grandma said. “We’re icing the cake.”
This isn’t a surprise, I thought. This is an ambush. I took a moment to calm myself and make an attitude adjustment. A couple minutes ago I was thinking I wanted to bake a cake. So here was my opportunity. The cake was cooling on a wire rack, and Dave was in the middle of making frosting.
I looked into the frosting bowl. “Chocolate.”
“Not just chocolate,” Dave said. “This is my special fudge mocha icing. It goes on like icing but then it sets up like fudge.”
“He brought sausage from Frankie the butcher, and he made his own red sauce for the lasagna,” Grandma said. “And he got good Italian cheese to grate up. Too bad you didn’t get here sooner. We just put the lasagna in the oven.”
“Gee, sorry I missed all that,” I said, trying to sound cheery, not feeling cheery at all. Not only wasn’t I happy to have Dave foisted on me, I didn’t like him taking over my mom’s kitchen. I didn’t like him making his own red sauce, grating his good Italian cheese. That was stuff my mom was supposed to do. It was her freaking kitchen. Although truth is, she looked content to have someone make a meal for her.
Dave dribbled coffee into his icing, liked the consistency, and spread it on the layers. He made it look easy, but I’d tried it in the past, and it hadn’t turned out glorious for me.
He swiped a glob of icing up with his finger and held it out to me. “Want a taste?”
Okay, I know he was captain of the football team and he could bake a cake—that didn’t mean I was ready to suck his finger. I was picky about what I put in my mouth.