Finger Lickin' Fifteen - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,2

ground, his eyes were lookin’ at me. And I think the head might have smiled at me, too, but I’m not sure of that.”

Morelli was back on his heels, thumbs hooked into his jeans pockets. “Is this for real?”

“Hell yeah,” Lula said. “Who makes up shit like that? Don’t I look traumatized? I’m practically turned white. I think my hand might even be shaking. Look at my hand. Is it shaking?”

Morelli’s eyes cut back to me. “Were you with her?”

“Nope.”

“Did anyone call 911?”

“Nope.”

Lula was hands on hips, starting to look pissed. “We called you,” she said to Morelli.

Morelli did a fast office scan. “You don’t have the head here, do you?”

“So far as I know, the head and everything else is still in front of the Sunshine Hotel,” Lula told him. “And I’m not sure I like your attitude. I’m not sure you’re takin’ this seriously.”

Morelli stared down at his shoe. Hard to tell if he was trying hard not to laugh or if he was getting a migraine. After a five-count, he took out his cell phone, called dispatch, and sent a uniform to the Sunshine Hotel.

“Okay, ladies,” Morelli said when he got off the phone. “Let’s take a field trip.”

I made a big show of looking at my watch. “Gee, I’ve got to run. Things to do.”

“No way,” Lula said. “I need someone with me in case I get faint or something.”

“You’ll have him,” I said.

“He’s a fine man, but he’s the cop representative here, and I need someone from my posse, you see what I’m saying. I need a BFF.”

“It’s not gonna be me,” Connie said. “Vinnie is picking up a skip in Atlanta, and I have to run the office.”

Morelli looked at me and gave his head a small shake, like he didn’t believe any of this. Like I was a huge, unfathomable pain in the ass, and in fact maybe that was how he felt about women in general right now.

I understood Morelli’s point of view because it was precisely my current feeling about men.

“Terrific,” I said on a sigh. “Let’s get on with it.”

Lula and I followed Morelli in my ten-year-old Ford Escort that used to be blue. We didn’t take the Escort because we liked riding in it. We took it because Lula thought she might be too overwrought to drive her Firebird, and she suspected she would need a bacon cheeseburger after visiting the scene of the crime and Morelli might not be inclined to find a drive-through for her.

______

THERE WERE ALREADY two cruisers angled into the curb in front of the Sunshine Hotel when Lula and I arrived. I parked, and Lula and I got out and stood next to Morelli and a couple uniforms. We all looked down at a red splotch that sprayed out over about a four-foot diameter. A couple smaller splotches trailed off the big splotch, and I assumed that was where the head had hit the pavement. I felt a wave of nausea slide through my stomach, and I started to sweat.

“This here’s the spot,” Lula said. “You can see it’s just like I told you. There was a big gusher of blood when they whacked the head off. It was like Old Faithful going off, only it was blood. And then the head rolled down the sidewalk. It was like the head was a bowlin’ ball with eyes. And the eyes were like big googly eyes kinda popping out of the head and lookin’ at me. And I think I might have heard the head laughin’, or maybe it was the guys who did the whackin’ who were laughin’.”

The uniforms all did a grimace, Morelli was impassive, and I threw up. Everyone jumped away from me, I gagged one last time and did some deep breathing.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No problem,” Morelli told me. “I feel like throwing up a lot on this job.”

One of the uniforms brought me some paper towels and a bottle of water, and Lula stood a good distance away.

“You got lots of room for lunch now that you’re empty,” she yelled to me. “I could get a early start with one of them extra-crispy bird burgers they’re servin’ at Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Have you heard about them? They got some new secret sauce.”

I wasn’t interested in secret sauce. I wanted to go home and go to bed and not get up until it was a new day. I was done with this one.

“We got a couple footprints heading south,” a uniform said. “One of