Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel(55)

Considering how congested Trudy Poletti’s schedule had to be with the Pilates classes and the boinking every man she could get her hands on, it was hard to believe she had time to murder poker players.

I turned at the corner of Geneva and parked. I left Lula with the Buick, grabbed the dog food, and walked it to Forest’s box. It was a nice sunny morning, and Forest was sitting outside, leaning against his dumpster. The Chihuahua pack was snoozing at his feet. All heads came up when I approached.

“I brought food for the minions,” I said to Forest.

“Do you hear that, my teensy minions? The nice lady brought us food.”

Some of the minions started to vibrate.

“Why are they shaking?” I asked Forest.

“Minions do that. They’re very excitable.”

I put the bag on the ground and kept my distance. I didn’t want the minions to feel threatened by a big advancing human.

“Now that the little critters have lots of food,” I said to Forest, “I thought you might be willing to let me bring you in.”

“I can’t leave my minions unprotected. Starman will barbecue them.”

Crap. I had two alternatives. The first was to stun-gun Forest and drag him to the car. I went with the second.

“I’ll take care of the minions,” I said. “I’ll get you booked in at the police station, and I’ll babysit the minions until you can secure a bond.”

Forest turned to the minions. “What do you think? Would you like to go with the nice lady for just a little while so Forest can get arrested?”

“Lula is waiting at the cross street,” I said. “Do you have something we can put the minions in?”

“The minions run free.”

Great. Free-running minions.

I walked Forest to the Firebird with the minions goose-stepping around us.

“What the heck’s this?” Lula asked.

“We’re taking Forest to the police station, and then I’m taking the minions home with me. I’ll stash them in my apartment until someone springs Forest. They haven’t put the carpet down yet, and Briggs is there to babysit.”

Forest loaded the Chihuahuas into the Buick. “Be good minions. No dookey or peepee in the nice lady’s box.”

I cuffed Forest, buckled him into the backseat with the Chihuahuas, and drove to the police station. I left Lula with the dogs and walked Forest into the building. I collected my body receipt and returned to Lula.

“Remember I got a big date with Stanley Kulicky tonight,” Lula said to me. “We’re going to see that movie about the end of the world coming and then just in time the world’s saved by one of them Transformers.”

“What time will it be over?”

“We’re going to the eight o’clock movie, so it’ll be over around ten. I’ll call you when we’re walking out.”

I dropped Lula off at her apartment, and as soon as I got behind the wheel of the Buick, the dogs started yapping. As I drove through town, they yapped louder. They scrambled over the seat and jumped at the dashboard. They were on my lap, on the back of my seat, gnawing on my ponytail. They snarled at one another, snapped at passing cars, and looked at me bug-eyed.

I whipped into the drive-thru at Cluck-in-a-Bucket, got a bagful of bacon cheeseburgers, and stuffed the bag into the glove compartment. I gritted my teeth, hunched over the steering wheel, and headed for my apartment.

I lured the dogs out of the car and into the building with the bag of burgers. We took the stairs, hurried the short distance down the hall, and I shoved my key in the lock with one hand and held the burger bag over my head with the other. For small dogs they could jump impressively high when they smelled burgers.

I held the door open with my foot, threw a burger into the kitchen, and the dogs rushed in and pounced on the burger.

Briggs ran in from the bedroom. “What the heck’s going on?”

“Roommates,” I said. “I need to leave them with you.”

“They look vicious.”

I handed him the bag of burgers. “Just give them a burger once in a while and you’ll be fine.”

“They’re dogs, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want dogs in my apartment.”

“It’s not your apartment,” I told him. “It’s my apartment.”

“It’s sort of mine.”

“Wrong, wrong, wrong. There’s no part of this apartment that’s yours.”

“Yeah, but I got rights. I’m living here.”

“You have no rights. And if you want to keep living here, you’ll take very good care of the dogs. And anyway, it’s only for a short time.”

Easy to understand why everyone wanted to kill him.

I drove to Walmart and went straight to the pet department. I got ten lightweight leashes, ten Chihuahua-size harnesses, a box of plastic poop bags, ten little chew toys, and a giant bag of dog food.

I hauled everything back to my apartment and let myself in. All ten dogs rushed at me, yapping and snarling. I opened the bag of dog food, threw some nuggets at them, and they snapped them up.

“Jeez,” Briggs said, “I thought you’d never show up. These dogs are creeping me out. They keep shivering and looking at me with big bugged-out eyes.”