Apple of My Eye (Tiger's Eye Mystery #7) - Alyssa Day Page 0,43

Bubba's lawn again, and I was in the lead, moving quite a bit faster than them, being the only one not eligible for Social Security, and so I was halfway across his lawn when I heard a shriek.

I whirled around and saw Lorraine down on the ground, rolling around in the unlit yard, and Eleanor jumping up and down, shrieking.

"Quiet! Do you want to get caught?" I raced over to them to find out what in the world was going on.

"He's got me, Tess, he's got me," Lorraine cried out hoarsely. "He's going to squeeze me to death and eat me! Who will run the diner?"

It was too dark for me to get a good idea of what was going on, and Eleanor was still jumping around like she was walking barefoot on hot coals.

"Who's got you? What is happening? Stay still, so I can see!"

Instead, she rolled away from me, thrashing her arms around wildly. "The snake! Bubba's boa constrictor has me!"

Oh, crap.

I had no idea how to get a boa constrictor to let go of a human being.

"Hold on, I'll Google."

"What? I'm dying here, and you're going to go online?"

She kept thrashing her arms around, and Eleanor kept hopping back and forth, saying "I hate snakes, I hate snakes, I hate snakes" over and over and over, and then I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit the button for the flashlight, just to get an idea of how much trouble we were in, and I saw everything and started laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

"Now you're laughing at me while I’m dying?"

"Lorraine," I gasped out. "Lorraine, stop moving and look down."

"I don't want to see myself die," she whisper-shouted at me.

Eleanor stopped hopping and started laughing. "Oh, no. Lorraine. Look."

I moved the beam from the phone's flashlight down so it spotlighted Lorraine's legs… which were caught inside an old tire inner tube.

Not a boa constrictor.

Not even a garden snake.

She must have stepped into it, tripped, and then imagined the worst.

Lorraine made a huffing sound. "Well, fine. Are you two idiots going to just stand there laughing like hyenas or come over here and help me out of this thing?"

I shoved my phone in my pocket and helped her up and out of the scary inner tube, and then the light in Bubba's kitchen went on, and we heard him yelling through the open screen door.

"If you kids are in my yard again, I'm going to call the cops!"

We ran all the way back to the station wagon.

When we finally got there, we sat there, panting and laughing for a few minutes, and then Eleanor put the key in the ignition.

"Right. You mentioned something about margaritas?"

"Frozen, strawberry, or on the rocks," I said.

"We'll get plastered and figure out how to get even," Lorraine said. "Tess, you should have let me stab all four of the hussy's tires. And I swear I'm going to put salt in Bubba McKee's lemonade the next time he comes into the diner. Setting his snake on me like that."

"Even if it was just an inner tube disguised as a snake," Eleanor said.

That set us off again, and we laughed like loons all the way to my place, where I found out that tiny little Lorraine could drink the rest of us under the table.

When Jack showed up a little after ten, he took one look at the three of us and grinned. "Margaritas?"

"Yep." I gave him a huge smile. "You should have come with us, Jack."

"To goat yoga," Eleanor, who was the only one even slightly sober, said warningly.

"Yep. Goat yoga. It was great! And then there was a snake, but it wasn't a snake." I hiccupped. "Lucky for Lorraine."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Did the snake eat the goats?"

For some reason, that set us off again, and we all three fell back on the couch laughing.

"Did the snake eat the goats," I repeated. "No, the snake did yoga!"

Lorraine was laughing so hard she had tears streaming down her face. "If a snake did yoga, how could you even tell? What would—would downward dog look like?"

"Downward snake," I said triumphantly. "Who wants more margaritas?"

Jack took the glass out of my hand when I stood. "I think you've all had enough, my yoga princess. It's a school night. How about I drive these two lovely ladies home?"

Eleanor struggled up off the couch. Okay, so she wasn't all that sober, either.

"I can drive, young man," she said, but then she blinked. "Okay, maybe