Turbo Twenty-Three (Stephanie Plum #23)(7)

“Any suspects?”

“I haven’t got any information on that. I’m on my way to the plant now. I’ll know more after I talk to Bogart.”

I disconnected with Ranger, and Lula hustled over with a breakfast sandwich, a bucket of chicken, a side of biscuits with gravy, and a giant soda. I watched her buckle up and dig in to the chicken.

“Aren’t you worried about the calories in all that food?”

“It’s not as much as you might think on account of I got a diet soda. And I was careful to balance out my meal with something from different major food groups. I got fried protein, tasty carbohydrates, and gravy.”

“Gravy isn’t a food group.”

“Say what?”

A half hour later I was on a gravel road that wound through a couple hundred acres of Trenton that had as yet been unmapped by GPS. People who lived here were for the most part off the grid because there was no way they could or would pay an electric bill. Small, ramshackle houses were interspersed with rusted-out mobile homes set on cinder blocks. Broken-down cars and refrigerators littered front yards. Feral cats roamed in packs.

Simon Diggery lived toward the end of the road. He was one of the more affluent inhabitants, having taken possession of a lopsided double-wide. Friends and relatives came and went in the double-wide. Simon and his pet boa constrictor were constant.

I pulled off the road a short distance from Diggery’s Place and parked on the hard-packed dirt shoulder. Lula and I got out of the SUV, and I put my stun gun in my back pocket and tucked my handcuffs into the waistband of my jeans. I didn’t expect to use either. Sometimes I had to run Diggery down, and sometimes he hid, but in the end he never resisted arrest.

“I’m waiting here,” Lula said. “He’s got a nest of snakes under that rust bucket mobile home, and he got the big boa inside with him. No way am I going near that moldy old thing.”

I didn’t especially want to go near it either. I walked a little closer and yelled for Diggery. “Simon! Are you in there?”

Nothing. I took a couple more steps and saw that the snakes had come out to sun themselves. They were draped over the steps and sprawled on the patchy grass and dirt that constituted Diggery’s front yard. I stamped my feet and threw some stones at them and they slithered back under the double-wide.

“It’s okay now,” I said to Lula.

“No way,” Lula said. “You just pissed them off. They’re lurkin’. They’re waiting to jump out at you and fang you.”

“Hey!” I yelled at the trailer. “Anybody home?”

“Guess he’s not home,” Lula said. “Might as well leave.”

“He’s always home during the day,” I said. “He only goes out at night to rob graves and steal food.”

“I’m not leaving until you open the door,” I shouted at Diggery. “I know you’re in there.”

The door to the double-wide opened, and Diggery looked out. “What do you want? You’re disturbing the peace.”

Diggery was a rangy guy with shaggy gray hair and weathered skin. He was wearing a stained wifebeater T-shirt and baggy work pants, and he had a cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.

“You need to come with me to reschedule your court date,” I said.

“This here isn’t a good time,” Diggery said. “I’m in the middle of something.”

“You can finish it when I bring you back. This won’t take long. Court’s in session.”

“That’s a big whopper fib,” Diggery said. “They’re gonna lock me up and take their sweet-ass time to let me out.”

“Yeah, but if you stay over lunchtime they give you a burger from McDonald’s,” Lula said. “Fries and everything.”

“Last time they forgot the fries,” Diggery said. “I think they might be getting cheap and left them off on purpose.”

Diggery was standing in his open door. I caught movement at his feet and realized his boa was making its way out of the double-wide and down the makeshift steps. The snake was about ten feet long and probably weighed in at about fifty pounds.

“Holy crap, holy cow, holy get me out of here,” Lula said. “That snake is coming to get us.”

I figured the snake’s top speed was one mile an hour. I didn’t think we were at risk of being run down by it. Still, I didn’t want to get too close.

Diggery looked down and saw the snake clear the steps. “Ethel!” Diggery said. “What the Harry Hill are you doing? You know you’re not allowed out of the house.”

Ethel wasn’t paying attention to Diggery. Ethel was heading for the patch of woods behind the double-wide.

“You gotta help me get Ethel,” Diggery said, hustling after the boa. “Once she gets into the woods it’s impossible to get her back. She’ll go up a tree and sit there until she gets hungry, and it’s not good to let Ethel get too hungry. She’s a sweet girl ordinarily, but she mostly don’t care what or who she eats if you let her get too hungry.”

“Is she hungry now?” I asked him.

“Naw. She ate a big old groundhog yesterday.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Well, it wasn’t as good as a Virginia baked ham, but Ethel seemed to like it. I found it on the side of the road all swelled up.”