NINE LIVES
CHAPTER 8
NB: Sorry this one is so short, the next chapter will be longer, promise. Also thanks to everyone who has left feedback. It makes me giddy (and a little nauseous) at the thought that people are actually reading this thing.
The crime wave that was evidently sweeping Trenton had made Vinnie a very happy man (Connie claims to have seen him actually smile) and upped the Trenton PD's arrest rates.
Things were good in the Burg.
Well except the for the amount of crime, of course.
Oh, and the fact that Helen Plum's two grown daughters were unmarried and the wrong side of thirty.
I really wasn't up to another dinner at my parents. I had had a really long day chasing elusive skips, and after my late night phone call with Ranger I had gotten next to no sleep.
The prospect of dinner with yet another prospective husband was not something I was looking forward too.
Ernie "the wink' Winski was ringing my mother's doorbell as I pulled up. I'll admit I seriously considered driving off, but Grandma spotted me before I had the chance.
And besides Mum had made a pineapple upside down cake for dessert.
Ernie was a kid from the neighbourhood when we were growing up. He had gone away for college but had recently moved back. He was some kind of computer guy now. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with Ernie. Except the way he said me name; Stef-annie
It bugged me in grade school, and it bugs me now.
My mother sat Ernie between my sister and I at the table. And by Plum standards it was a relatively quiet meal. No explosions (if you don't count grandma, she blames the dog. The dog has been dead for 15 years) no dramas (if you don't count Mary-Alice mistaking Angie's homework for horse food)
Just a normal night.
But apparently it was all too much for poor old Ernie, who faked an asthma attack and left before dessert.
Oh, well. That just meant one less person to share the cake with.
My phone rang as I was helping my mother and Valerie do the washing up. It was Connie giving me the heads up, it seems that all the people that Vinnie had bonded out earlier that week were failing to appear at their court dates and Vinnie was on the warpath.
'Thanks Connie, I'll be by early too pick up the files'
'Do you think that you could take Lula with you tomorrow. She accidentally forgot to post the subscription renewal to Vinnie's favorite porn mag or some shit. I think he's gonna her killer honest '
I told her it was cool, at that I would see her in the morning. We finished the dishes and I managed to leave without a lecture and with leftovers.
I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.
