Smokin Seventeen - Janet Evanovich [30]
“It’s not gonna smell like Mooner,” Lula said. “It’s gonna smell like bear.”
Connie looked around the coffee shop. “It’s not so bad here. I could try switching to decaf.”
I gathered Connie’s files and stuffed them into her tote bag. “You could work from home.”
“I’ve got my mother with me,” Connie said. “She’s staying while she recovers from her hip operation. I love my mother, but I’ll slit my throat if I have to spend more than twenty minutes with her. She hums. Do you know what it’s like to live with someone who hums all day?”
“I guess it depends if she’s a good hummer,” Lula said.
A muscle worked in Connie’s jaw, and her right eye twitched. “There are no good hummers. It’s all hummm hum hummm hummm. That’s it. Fucking all fucking day fucking long. Hummmm.”
“ ’Scuse me,” Lula said. “I didn’t know there was a issue. Maybe you need a pill or something.”
I unplugged the laptop. “You can use my apartment. It’s quiet. And it has everything but food.”
• • •
I got Connie settled in at my dining room table, and Lula and I took off to find Merlin Brown. I pulled into the lot to his apartment building and we immediately spotted his car.
“I guess it’s a good thing we found him home,” Lula said, “so why does it feel like a bad thing?”
“Because we don’t have any idea how to capture him?”
“Yeah, that could be it.”
I’ve seen Ranger make captures. Eighty percent of all felons immediately surrender at seeing Ranger on their doorstep. He’s not a man you’d want to take lightly. The remaining twenty percent are instantly taken down and cuffed. He makes it look easy. Sad to say, I’m not nearly Ranger. My successes are the result of luck and dogged perseverance. And the dogged perseverance has more to do with desperation to make an overdue rent payment than an innate strength. Still, I usually get the job done, and I’m a better bounty hunter than I was last year.
I parked beside a broken-down van on the opposite side of the lot from Merlin’s black SUV. “He knows us now,” I said, “and he’s not going to let us into his apartment. Let’s sit and wait for a while and see if he goes out for lunch.”
“Then what?”
“Then we figure it out.”
“This is gonna be boring,” Lula said. “Good thing I got a movie on my phone. And I got music. And I could check the weather. I could even surf the Internet, and maybe I could find Bobby Flay makin’ a burger. I’m into cooking.”
“I didn’t think you had a kitchen.”
“Well yeah, but I’m into watching cooking.”
We sat for forty minutes, and at high noon the door to the building opened, and Merlin limped out.
“I got an idea,” Lula said. “We could run him over with the car.”
“No.”
“Boy, you’re a real party pooper. You got a better idea?”
“He’s going out for lunch. I say we follow him and wait for a good place to take him down.”
“We aren’t gonna run at him and tackle him again, are we?”
“That wouldn’t be my first choice.”
Merlin drove down Stark, turned toward the government buildings, and after a block pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot. He cut his engine, left his car, and carefully walked inside, keeping his weight off his bandaged foot. I parked one space away, got out, and arranged my equipment. Cuffs tucked into the back of my jeans. Pepper spray in my sweatshirt pocket. Right to apprehend papers in my jeans pocket. Stun gun in hand.
“Cover the door,” I told Lula. “And for heaven’s sake don’t shoot him again.”
It was lunchtime, and the store was filled with government workers loading up on nachos, hot dogs, candy, junky drinks, and cigarettes. Merlin was in line for nachos. I sidled up to him and the man standing behind Merlin elbowed me aside.
“Back of the line, lady,” he said.
Merlin looked over his shoulder at me, and recognition registered. I reached out to stun gun him, he batted my arm away, and the stun gun flew off into space. I had pepper spray, but I couldn’t use it in a store filled with bureaucrats. By the time I retrieved my stun gun Merlin had already knocked Lula on her ass and was in his car, spinning his tires, leaving the lot. I was holding a lot