My stomach was filled with eggs and potatoes, Zook was at school, and I wasn't scheduled to meet with Ranger until eleven. I had a stack of skips to find, but nothing recent and nothing that interested me. For lack of something better to do, I stopped at the office.
Lula was on the couch, wading through a stack of bride magazines, marking pages with little red sticky tabs.
I looked over at Connie, and Connie did an eye roll.
“I saw that,” Lula said. “Don't you do an eye roll about me. I gotta consider my options. I gotta keep an open mind. Tank could be real disappointed if he don't see me in a long white dress. And what about his mama? She could be expecting a wrist corsage. I gotta consider flowers. I don't want to get started on the wrong foot with his mama.”
It was hard to imagine Tank having a mama. Much less one who would wear a wrist corsage.
“You said you didn't want a big wedding,” I said to Lula.
“Yeah, but looking at the cake got the ball rolling.”
“Have you talked to Tank about any of this?”
“No. I didn't see him last night. He called up and said he had one of them stomach viruses.”
“Sometimes men don't like elaborate weddings,” I said to Lula. Especially when they don't want to get married.
“That better not be Tank,” Lula said, “on account of I'm starting to get into this wedding shit. And anyways, after all the things I do for him, the least he could do is marry me in a church and all.”
“You do lots of things for Tank?”
“Well, I might in the future,” Lula said.
My mother's ring tone went off on my cell phone.
“There's a strange man here, and he's looking for you,” my mother said. “I told him you weren't here, but he won't go away.”
“Does he have white hair and big black glasses?”
“Yes.”
“I'll be right there.”
“Me, too,” Lula said. “Where we going? Who has white hair and glasses?”
Stephanie Plum 14 - Fearless Forteen
CHAPTER SEVEN
There were three cars lined up at the curb in front of my parents' house. The white Taurus was one of them.
“I never seen a real stalker before,” Lula said. “I'm looking forward to this.”
I parked in the driveway and slid from behind the wheel. “Let me do the talking. I don't want to make a big deal over this. And I especially don't want to freak my mother out.”
“Sure,” Lula said. “I understand that. My lips are sealed.”
“And don't shoot him or gas him or fry his hair with your stun gun.”
“You got a lot of rules,” Lula said.
“He's harmless.”
“That's what those stalkers want you to believe, and then wham-they get naked pictures of you and put them on the Internet.”
“You have personal experience?”