Page 18 of Now or Never

“I don’t want to mend a fence,” I said. “I want to do my job.”

“Okay, but it could confuse him into thinking we’re friendly and he’d drop his guard,” Lula said. “And then it would be easier to sneak up on him.”

“She has a point,” Connie said.

“I’ll even go get them,” Lula said. “I’m good at any kind of shopping, and I figure this could qualify for a petty cash expenditure. I could go get something now.”

“It’s early,” I said. “The shopping center isn’t open yet.”

“We don’t need a shopping center,” Lula said. “We got Walmart. Walmart’s got everything and it’s right up the street on Nottingham. Walmart’s always open when you need it.”

“If you’re going to Walmart, I need snack mix for the office and a curling iron,” Connie said.

“We can take my car since your car is in need of some repair,” Lula said.

Lula drives a classic red Firebird that she keeps in pristine condition. It has a faux-leopard cover on the steering wheel and a sound system that gives me heart arrythmia when it’s cranked up to full volume.

It was almost ten o’clock when we pushed our cart out of Walmart. We had a year’s worth of snack mix for the office plus at least six months of peanut-butter-filled pretzel rolls, Connie’s curling iron, a huge jug of sea-salted cashews, a frozen sheet cake with yellow roses, a family-size variety pack of meat sticks in case we needed emergency protein, fluffy pink slippers for Lula, a small lamp for my nightstand, a new dish drain for Lula, Jug’s jammies, and a gift bag for the jammies.

“We did good on the jammies,” Lula said, loading everything in her trunk. “They’re quality jammies and they were on sale. Jug’s gonna look good in these jammies, and the buttons looked real secure, like they wouldn’t pop off if someone snatched him from behind. You just have to write a nice little note to go with them.”

I should never have agreed to buy pajamas for Jug. His dog bit me, and his wife shot at me, and I’d just bought the man pajamas. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And wrong. Only good thing that came out of it was my new lamp. Tomorrow I would have a nightstand to put it on and my bedroom would be cozy. If I used a forty-watt bulb I wouldn’t be able to see that the room needed painting.

Lula turned off Nottingham, followed Hamilton to the office,and parked behind my Trailblazer. “What the heck,” she said, staring at the new rear window on the SUV. “Looks like the window fairy’s been here.”

I unclipped my seat belt and got out of the Firebird. “Maybe Connie got it fixed.”

My phone rang with an unknown number.

“Hi!” the caller said. “Are you okay? Connie said you were dead, but I knew she was joking. She’s a big joker, right? I can take a joke. It’s one of my good points. I have a lot of good points. Are you back at the office? Did you see your car? I saw the broken window, so I had it fixed. I called one of those mobile glass people and they came right out. I didn’t know what to do about the side mirror. I can take your car to an auto body shop if you want.”

“No! Thank you for the window. That wasn’t necessary, but it was thoughtful. Send me the bill and I’ll get a check out to you.”

“No way,” Herbert said. “Heck, when I’m in a relationship it’s all the way.”

“We aren’t in a relationship. I’m engaged. I’m not interested in another relationship.”

“I sent you flowers in case you really were constipated. It’s always nice to get flowers when you’re constipated, right? I have to go now because I’m at work, but I’ll call you later when I get a break.”

I yelled “No!” into the phone, but he had already disconnected.

Lula had the carton of pretzel rolls in one hand, and she was holding the sheet cake with the other hand. “This cake is starting to defrost,” she said. “We should eat it. Good thing we got those meat sticks and peanut butter pretzels so we can have a balanced diet.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Lula parked her Firebird in front of Jug Produce and cut the engine. I was sitting next to her with the gift bag on my lap and my seat belt still cinched.

“I feel sick,” I said to Lula. “I can’t do this.”

“Uh-oh, that’s a sign that you’re preggers. You got morning sickness.”

I thought it was a sign that I had to stop eating cake and washing it down with meat sticks and peanut butter pretzels.

“I shouldn’t have eaten that big yellow rose on the cake,” I said.

“You’ll feel better once you get moving,” Lula said. “You got a mission. You got cuffs in your pocket, right?”

“Yeah.”

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