Hardcore Twenty-Four (Stephanie Plum #24)(16)

“Unlikely,” Connie said. “These people were already dead.”

“Maybe they were practicing,” Lula said. “Like the way medical students do on cadavers.”

I took a donut from the box on Connie’s desk. “I have my own problems. I need to find Diggery’s snake.”

“I’d rather look for the missing heads,” Lula said. “I don’t like snakes. And I especially don’t like big snakes.”

“You can stay in the car,” I said.

“Whose car we talking about?”

“My car. The one that’s parked at the curb.”

Lula looked out the large plate glass window. “There’s a Mercedes out there.”

“It’s from Ranger.”

“That’s one of them little GLE SUVs. That car’s the bomb. And it’s all new and shiny. It’s almost as good as my Firebird.”

“Remember Johnny Chucci?” Connie asked me.

I nodded yes. “He robbed the jewelry store on State. The one by the porn store.”

“He’s the dude who wears underpants on his head,” Lula said. “He didn’t just rob the jewelry store. He robbed the porn store too. Except we’re not supposed to call it a ‘porn store’ nowadays. The politically correct name is ‘adult entertainment emporium.’ They even got that on a new sign. Anyways, they caught him with his pockets full of cock rings. Not that I know why any man would want more than one cock ring, but what the heck.”

“He skipped out and stuck us with his bail bond,” Connie said. “Left the area, and we had no luck tracing him. It’s been almost a year, but there are rumors that he’s back in town. We might be able to collect some of the bond if you could bring him in. It was armed robbery, so he’s worth money.”

“I’m sure I have his file at home,” I said.

Connie tapped “C-h-u-c-c-i” into her computer. “I’ll print out a new one for you.”

“He should be easy to spot if he’s still wearing his Fruit of the Looms like a ski mask,” Lula said.

“He only did that when he was robbing something,” I said. “It was his signature statement.”

“It was his nutcase statement,” Lula said. “He couldn’t see with them on. He got caught on account of he fell off the curb when he ran out of the adult emporium.”

I took the file from Connie, and Lula and I headed out in the Mercedes. First stop would be Diggeryville. Get the snake responsibility over first.

“That snake could be anywhere by now,” Lula said. “It could be in Delaware.”

“Usually a pet will stay close to home,” I said.

“It might be different if there’s zombies around. Ethel might be worried about her brain. Okay, so it’s about as big as a walnut, but it might still make a good zombie snack.”

I crept down the rutted dirt road, looking side to side. I parked in Diggery’s yard, got out, and looked around. No boa in a tree. No boa sunning herself in front of the double-wide stoop. I cautiously walked to the makeshift steps and peeked through the open door. No boa in sight.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Lula was blowing the horn and waving at me. Frantic. I could see her mouth working, and knew she was yelling something at me, but I couldn’t hear over the horn beeping.

I ran back to the SUV and got in.

“Get me out of here,” Lula said. “Go now! I saw them. They were coming to get me.”

“Who?”

“The zombies. I saw them. Two of them. All raggedy and dead looking. Their eyes were red and glowing and sunken in, and the one had a big hole in his forehead. That’s probably where some other zombie sucked out his brain.”

I looked around. “I don’t see any zombies.”

“They went back into the woods when I started blowing the horn. They were horrible! I could even smell them. They smelled like dirt and mold and rotting carnations.”

“Carnations?”

“Yeah. I’m thinking they were the funeral home head robbers, and they picked up the carnation stench while they were there.”

I put the SUV in gear and drove back to the main road, being careful not to run over any zombies.

“Maybe you nodded off and dreamed there were zombies,” I said to Lula.

“I wasn’t nodded off. I know what I saw, and I saw zombies. And I didn’t like the way they were looking at me. Like I was lunch or something. Like they wanted to suck out my brain. You know how when men get scared, their gonads shrink up inside their body? That’s how my brain was feeling. If my brain was a gonad it’d be all sneaked up behind my kidneys.”

“Good thing it’s not a gonad then.”

“You bet your ass,” Lula said.

I turned onto State Street. “Johnny Chucci and Zero Slick are in the wind. Pick your poison,” I said. “Who’s first on our list?”

“I got a real interest in Zero Slick. He looks like an unpleasant chubby little nerd, but he picked himself an excellent name. He’s like an enigma, right?”

I thought he was more loser than enigma but hell, who am I to judge.

“We haven’t got much to go on with him,” I said. “He doesn’t have an address, but he seems to have a neighborhood. I guess we could ride around the building he blew up and see if we get lucky.”