Plum Doughnuts By Quintessentially Vampiric
When Tasty Pastry has been in your life more then a man, you would understand that the cinnamon scrolls and the cannoli become more precious to you then your own mother, right? Especially if your hysterical mother calls you up at four in the morning screeching about a attempted murder on Mr. Micelle, the Tasty Pastry baker.
My name is Stephanie Plum, and I work law enforcement. That basically makes me a bounty hunter, and I work for my cousin Vinnie. It's been two months since my last Tasty Pastry, and I'm pleading for the opportunity to give Jeremiah a good slap on the head.
Jeremiah Hungerford, the cousin of my niece's godfather's brother, raided the bakery shrine to get some quick cash and got a face full of mace from Micelle's wife. Mr. Micelle was in his jammie- jams when a 6 foot Jeremiah blindly flailed a knife into his ribcage. A total of six minutes later my mother called me and told me Micelle was dead on the floor of the bakery, according to her neighbor, Mabel Markowitz, who heard from her sister, Mrs. De Luca, who lived opposite of the bakery. By the time the police and an ambulance had arrived at 54 Hamilton, the whole of the Burg had begun mourning the end of coffee cakes and Swiss rolls, and had ordered three wreaths and a burial plot. Of course it was only a minute after the arrival of 'authority' that the entirety of Burg had found that Micelle was not dead, and simultaneously went back to sleep.
So two months later I walked into Vinnie's office where Connie, the hairy lipped secretary, handed me a manila folder, while shaking powdered doughnut sugar off her expansive cleavage.
"Just one FTA today. Jeremiah Hungerford decided to skip court and I bet he's skipped Trenton altogether. The whole of the Burg wants spilt blood to compensate for coffee cake."
Connie looked up from her doughnut and caught me eyeing the holy ring.
"Where'd you get that doughnut?"
"7-11"
"Oh."
I decided to skip on lunch and go to check out Hungerford's apartment and see if he was hiding his sorry ass in a cardboard box in his room. His file said he lived just outside the Burg in the apartments on Hayes Street, which happened to also be his mother's home.
I was seriously surprised to find everything he owned still at home, meaning he hadn't skipped town. Or at least, he had skipped town, but without taking anything.
I banged on the door three times, without answer, which I took as an invitation to enter. I'm above the law, right? I'm a vigilante.
After sneaking into every room in Hungerford's dwelling, I at least came to the conclusion that Jeremiah was still in town, somewhere. Probably knocking off the bakers at Macy's.
When I left his apartment it was about seven o'clock and I felt in the need for food. I was driving down Hamilton Avenue when I spotted heaven- A Seven Eleven!
The best thing about Seven Eleven is that it never closes on you. It never leaves you searching desperately for a ham at Christmas and it always has chilli dogs warming in the oven.
After pulling on some pants, I felt in the need of Cracker Jacks over Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as Cracker Jacks come with a prize and so they're better value for money.
When I arrived at Seven Eleven, I found Jeremiah at the counter with an Uzi in his hand, a paper bag in the other and a stocking on his head which did absolutely nothing to distort his head.
"Jesus Christ!"
He whirled around wildly and saw me and raised his gun.
Still numb as hell, I fell to the floor and promised to God I'd stop fornicating if he would teleport Jeremiah's gun to somewhere else. Like Cuba. The gun stayed in his hand, however, and I gave a little 'eeep!' when he poked me with the nose of his Uzi.
"Get on the floor!"
"I am on the f-floor."
The sound of a siren wailed out on Hamilton Avenue and Jeremiah look royally pissed off. He jabbed me with his gun again and pulled the trigger which let off a weak click.
"Ow! You poked me!"
"Why aren't you dead?!"
"You poked me!"
Knowing know that his weapon was useless, I thought it would be a pretty good time to tackle him or claw at his eyes. Jeremiah thought it was a good time to run.
The wailing came closer and Jeremiah ran to flee the store without his loot, when the sirens sounded like they were pulling up in front of the store.
Jeremiah managed to run 2 meters outside of Seven Eleven with me at his heels, when out of nowhere, Connie, looking bad as hell, came driving down a CR-V with fake police sirens playing from her car.
Yelping, I sprang back and witnessed the most awesome experience of Connie's life. Jeremiah was thrown up about 5 feet and fell crumpled on the hood of her car.
Grimacing, I decided to push him off the hood so he wouldn't damage the look of the car while Connie came shakily out of the car. I turned to her.
"Omigod, what were you doing here?"
"I was hungry. I wanted more doughnuts."
"You have a fake siren. Ooooh, you're bad."
"They're Vinnie's. Omigod, do you think I killed him?"
We both studied him for a while before we heard more sirens wailing towards us.
"Uh-oh, you better hide your lights."
Connie was busying herself in Vinnie's car when a blue and white and an unmarked car pulled up from Hamilton. Joe 'Be-Still-My-Beating-Heart' Morelli angled out of the unmarked car, and we help eyes. Morelli and I have a bit of a past together, and he seems to come in and out of my life more then the Super Bowl. He was two grades above me in high school, the bad ass and the rebel. He graduated and disappeared a bit in the navy and came back into my life as a cop. When I was sixteen and closing up the shop at Tasty Pastry, he seduced me to play with him behind the cannoli showcase. I didn't see him for two years after that, when I ran him over with my father's Buick. Ironically.
He talked to the other blue and whites for a while and then came up to me.
"Women have a thing about breaking men's legs with cars, don't they?"
"I had an excuse! And Connie was protecting me!"
"Cupcake, you made me do you. You smelt like cinnamon buns and fruitcake."
I played with the hem of my shirt.
"So I haven't seen you for a while"
"That's because you drive me nuts. I don't want the mother of my children to be dodging bullets for a living."
I was about to protest that I only dodged bullets every other day, when Carl Costanza, my other cop friend from high school, came up to Connie and me with his little notebook.
"I need to ask you a few questions Steph."
I sighed. I knew these questions off by heart.
It was early morning when I got home clutching my body receipt from the Trenton police. I sank heavily into my bed fully intending to sleep until June when the phone rang.
"…ughh…"
"I hope you'll be able to get back to the station by ten. We've got some witnesses testifying and we need to cross reference their statements with you."
It was Morelli.
"Hmph, or I could sleep till June."
"Mmm, too bad. If you sleep to June you would miss out on dinner with me tonight."
This perked me up. I promised Morelli I'd be in by ten and went back to snuggling under the covers. After all, if tonight was dinner with Morelli, I wouldn't be sleeping much for a while.