22 Tricky Twenty-Two by Janet Evanovich Page B

“Do you want toast? Cereal?”
    He shook his head no. “I’ve already eaten breakfast.”
    I had been sleeping in an oversized T-shirt and bikini panties. Morelli’s eyes were focused on the hem of the T-shirt that hung two inches below my butt.
    “Cute,” Morelli said.
    “Are you sure you came to talk about Doug Linken?”
    He finished his coffee and rinsed his cup out in the sink. “Yeah. I’m really screwed up, right?”
    “Looks like it to me, but what do I know.”
    He pulled me to him and kissed me. His hand slid under the T-shirt and moved to my breast, and his thumb teased across the nipple.
    His phone buzzed with a message, and we both froze.
    “Shit,” Morelli said.
    The message buzzed again. He removed his hand from my breast and checked the message.
    “This is why I have acid reflux,” he said. “Whenever I’m in the middle of
anything
someone gets murdered.”
    He gave me a quick kiss. He apologized and left.
    This was the second time in less than forty-eight hours that a man stopped fondling me because his phone rang. And both times it was because someone had been killed. If I wasn’t a well-adjusted, emotionally healthy person I might be bothered by this.
    I spread peanut butter on my toast, sliced some banana onto it, and ate it while I drank my coffee and checked my email.
    I deleted several offers for penis enlargement, and two offers from Russian women who wanted to meet me. I answered an email from my friend Mary Lou, and I checked a couple news sites. I was depressed after the news sites so I played Pharrell Williams’s video “Happy.” I danced along with Pharrell into the kitchen, fed Rex and gave him fresh water, and I was ready to get on with my day.
    An hour later I rolled into the office. Lula was on the couch with a copy of
Star
and Connie was at her desk. Vinnie’s door was shut, but his car was parked in the small lot attached to the building.
    “You’ve got a box,” Connie said to me. “It was just delivered.”
    “It looks like the size of a shoe box,” Lula said. “I bet it’s shoes.”
    There was no return address and the postmark was out of state.
    “I didn’t order shoes,” I said. “I didn’t order anything.”
    I ripped the packing tape off, opened the box, and read the enclosed card.
    “What’s it say?” Lula asked.
    “It says,
I found you! I’m smart like that. Here’s something you can use until we meet in person.
And it’s signed
Scooter Stud Muffin.
”
    I pulled out a wad of tissue paper, and we all stared into the box.
    “It’s a dildo,” Lula said. “It’s a good size, too.”
    Vinnie came out of his lair and looked at the dildo. “Cripes,” he said. “That thing’s big enough to pork a cow.”
    Lula took it out of the box and held it up for a good look. “It says here on the tag that it’s called
The Whopper
and it got studs for her lady’s pleasure.”
    Lula pushed a button on the scrotum and the dildo lit up and vibrated.
    “This here’s a quality dildo,” Lula said. “It got a good hum to it.”
    “Who’s Stud Muffin?” Vinnie asked.
    “Stephanie got some secret admirers,” Lula said. “They send her stuff but there’s no return address or name. Unless you count
Stud Muffin
as a name.”
    “That’s real interesting,” Vinnie said. “It would be even more interesting if you put the rubber wanger away and did some work. I’m not running a charity here. Why isn’t Billy Bacon back behind bars?”
    “We can’t find him,” Lula said. “He’s slippery.”
    “So set a trap. Do
something.
”
    Vinnie went back into his office and slammed and locked his door.
    “Setting a trap isn’t a bad idea,” I said. “We should give him a pizza party.”
    “I like it,” Lula said. “A big man like him doesn’t pass up food. Especially if it’s free. We’ll send them to his mama’s house. I’m sure she knows how to get in touch with him.”
    “I have a cousin working at Domino’s,” Connie said. “I’ll