A/N: Characters belong to Janet Evanovich.

The next morning was Wednesday, and the day started without me. I woke up at 9 am with a throbbing headache, and my entire body ached. I drug myself out of bed and into clothes, forgoing the shower. I made an effort to tame my hair in the bathroom mirror but eventually gave up, throwing it into a ponytail and swiping mascara on my lashes. I entered the kitchen to make coffee and wished my pet hamster Rex a good morning, filling his bowl with Hamster crunchies. He scurried out of his soup can, filled his cheeks with breakfast, and ran back into the can. I washed down four Tylenol with a cup of coffee, then headed to the parking lot with my messenger bag in hand.

I stood in the parking lot, disoriented looking for my car. It took me a few minutes to register that Lula had taken my car to the bonds office yesterday after the Carol Cantell mishap. I swore under my breath and pulled my phone out of my bag. I stared at a list of missed calls, voicemails, and text messages on the screen, an audible sigh of annoyance escaping my lungs. I had left the phone on silent and hadn't checked it last night. I decided to check the texts first.

Mom, 6:15 pm: Hello? Are you alive? I've been calling you and leaving voicemails all evening. Call me.

Grandma, 6:32 pm: You caught Carol Cantell! Go get 'em, tiger! I need a ride to the funeral parlor Wednesday night. Do you think you could manage with that lump on your head?

Joe Morelli, 7:22 pm: I heard about your fall. You alright? Call me if you need anything. Bob misses you.

Mom, 7:48 pm: Should I call the police for a welfare check?

Mom, 8:02 pm: If you don't call me back soon, I'm banning you from chocolate cake for life.

Lula, 8:07 pm: I'll pick you up tomorrow. Call me when you need a ride.

Mom, 8:46 pm: Don't make me call Joseph!

Mom, 9:33 pm: I'm calling Joseph.

Joe 11:12 pm: Call your mom. She's called me five times in the past hour. She's driving me nuts.

I texted Lula to come get me before listening to the voicemails.

Mom: "Stephanie? This is your mother. I heard you fell from a second story window chasing some no-good fugitive. Are you okay? Did you break anything? Betsy Kuwicki's daughter doesn't fall out of windows at work. She has a safe job at the personal products plant. Ethel Nizzi's daughter works there too, and she's never fallen out of a window or had a gun fired her way. I saw they're hiring. Call me."

Ranger: "Babe."

Unknown number: "Hi, my name is Robert Banks from the Trenton Times. I was wondering if I could interview you about the incident at the Harmon Home yesterday…"

I deleted the message before it ended and dialed my mother. She picked up on the first ring.

"Hello?"

"Hi mom, it's Stephanie."

"Oh, thank god you're alive!" my mother raved. "I've been trying to get ahold of you for more than twelve hours. I was worried about you! I thought maybe you had died in your apartment, or maybe you had been kidnapped. It wouldn't be the first time."

"I'm fine mom. Mild concussion. I'll be good as new in a few days," I said.

"Yuri Kaughman is laid out at Stiva's tonight, and your grandmother needs a ride. Can you take her? It's supposed to be a closed casket, so she'll need a chaperone. Why don't you come by for dinner? We're having cabbage rolls."

My grandma Mazur is not a fan of closed caskets. She lives by the rule, "If you don't get to see the deceased dead in their casket, how do you know they're really dead?" My grandma is like an older version of my mother with steel grey hair and too much skin for her small, saggy frame. Time hasn't been nice to grandma. What she lacks in physical size she makes up for in grit, tenacity, and comedy.

Stiva's funeral parlor is the social center for elderly residents in the Chambersburg section of Trenton. The funeral parlor hasn't been owned or operated by anyone named Stiva in years, but the name sticks as a nod to times gone by.

"Sure mom," I sighed. "I'll come by for dinner, and I'll take grandma to the viewing."

"Why don't you invite Joseph to dinner? We'd love to see Joseph."

I rolled my eyes so hard I almost fell over. "No mom, I'm not bringing Joe to dinner."

My mother whimpered on the other end of the line. "But Stephanie, Joseph is a nice man. He may be your last chance at marriage! He's got a good job, and…"

Lula's red Firebird rolled into my lot, and I took this as my opportunity to escape the conversation. "Sorry mom, got to go. See you at six." I hung up and dropped my phone into my bag. I heard it vibrate, my mother calling me back, but I ignored it. I didn't want to talk about Joe.

Joseph Morelli is a Burg native and a Trenton plain-clothes cop. We're currently in an "off-again" phase of our on-again, off again relationship. I've known Joe my entire life. When I was six and Joe was eight, we played choo-choo in his garage. I was the tunnel. When I was sixteen, Joe rid me of my virginity on the Tasty Pastry Bakery's floor, and he wrote about it in public bathrooms all around the Burg. In a fit of rage several years later, I ran him over with my parent's car, breaking his leg. In my defense, he deserved it.

A lot of time has passed since the early days of our relationship. Joe is a good cop, and sometimes he's a good boyfriend. We've dated off and on for years, even cohabitating for months at a time. Usually, our cohabitation phase ended in a string of swear words, Italian hand gestures, empty threats, and me moving back to my apartment. Most recently, Joe's boyfriend title was stripped after an argument about my career path, which happened to result in the decimation of two cars in one week. This particular argument is a broken record in my love life. I've heard the argument so many times I have it memorized. Joe doesn't like that I continue my job as a bounty hunter. Yes, it sometimes puts me in physical danger. So what if I'm not an expert at my job? What I lack in apprehension skills I make up for in stubbornness and grit, and I always get my man. I'm not saying it's pretty, but it's effective. And I've learned to love the thrill of my job. I'd be bored out of my mind in a job at the personal products plant, and I'd go certifiably insane at the Button Factory. Being a housewife is out of the question, though Joe has proposed it on occasion.

"Hey girl!" Lula crooned as I slid into her Firebird, and she pointed her tires in the direction of the bonds office. Today, Lula was wearing head-to-toe flamingo pink—pink tank top that showed miles of cleavage, pink Victoria's Secret sweat suit, and pink Converse sneakers. Even her hair was pink today, clearly a long-haired pink wig. Lula reached behind her seat and pulled out a bakery box. "I thought you might need doughnuts after yesterday. How's your head?"

I sighed with contentment as I ripped the lid to the box open and yanked out a Boston Crème Doughnut, sinking my teeth into the pastry. "I'll make it," I said, "but I have a killer headache."

"Fuckin' a," Lula swore. "You're lucky you just have a headache. I thought you broke your neck when you fell like that yesterday! Don't scare me like that!"

I sighed, shoving the last bite of the doughnut in my mouth and digging in the box for a second. "Have you been to the office already this morning?"

"Yeah. One of Ranger's men in black brought by Carol's body receipt this morning. Connie has your check on her desk."

Ten minutes later, Lula parked in front of the bonds office. When we walked in, Connie was sitting at her desk. She was on the phone, and her volume was one decibel short of deafening. It made my already-throbbing head unbearable.

"I don't care if you're the fucking pope, I'm not gonna bail out that slime ball!" she shouted. And she hung up.

Connie Rizzoli is the office manager at Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. She looks a lot like Betty Boop… that is, if Betty Boop had a moustache. Connie is 5'4" tall, and fifty percent of her body mass is located in her chest. Today, she was wearing a grey pencil skirt, a lavender v-neck sweater, and four inch black spike heels. Her black, Italian hair was perfectly tamed, teased and straightened into submission.

"Who the hell was that?" Lula asked, setting down the box of doughnuts on Connie's desk.

"Vinnie. He's in Atlanta for a few days, but he wants me to bond out Dickie Orr."

Lula and I both stared at Connie in silence, dumbstruck.

Before I was a bond enforcement agent, I was married for fifteen minutes to Dickie Orr That marriage ended when I caught him on our dining room table doing the dirty with my arch nemesis, Joyce Barnhardt. Dickie is a Trenton lawyer, and our divorce will go down in history books as one of the ugliest and most dramatic in the history of the Burg.

I spoke up first. "What the hell is Dickie in jail for?"

"Apparently he got caught soliciting some action down on Stark Street with an undercover cop. Vinnie got the call that his brother wants to post his bail, but I think it's best if he takes his business elsewhere. Conflict of interest, you know? He can go through Les Sebring for bond."

A gleeful smirk passed my lips before responding. As much as I'd love to haul Dickie's sorry behind to the Trenton Jail, I figured he'd comply with the terms of his bond. His law career, including his six-figure income, was worth showing up for. "Times must be tough if Dickie is having to pay to get some these days."

Lula chimed in. "That man is nasty. I was with a lot of men when I was a professional, but I don't think I could stand to be with Dickie Orr. That man gives me the heebie jeebies. I don't want no Dickie cooties. Ain't enough money in Trenton for that." She crossed her arms defiantly and took a seat on the worn faux leather couch.

"Here's your check for Carol Cantell," said Connie, passing me a check. "We've got two new skips today." She handed me the files.

"Oh boy," I said, cracking open the first file. "Anything good?"

"No high bonds," Connie said. "These are low bonds. Non-violent criminals. Probably a good thing with that bump on your head."

"William Earling?" I said with a hint of a smile on my face. "Again?"

"Arrested for indecent exposure at the Senior Center. He went to afternoon bingo naked."

William Earling was a regular at Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. Mr. Earling was one of the many senior citizens who lived in my apartment building. He had an affinity for watching the news, drinking coffee, and being naked. I'd hauled him in countless times for failure to appear in court. Appearing in court required appropriate clothing, and Mr. Earling didn't look forward to getting dressed. Getting him to the station was easy… as long as I didn't consider clothes as a requirement for the trip.

"No problem," I said, opening the second file. I scanned its contents. "Sharonda Blake, age 28. Arrested for shoplifting in Victoria's Secret at Quaker Bridge Mall. Her address is an apartment on the third block of Stark."

"I know her," Lula said filing her nails. "She's got a corner down on stark. She's a specialty ho."

I looked at Lula. "Specialty ho? What is a specialty ho?"

"Specialty hos specialize in hard-to-find fetishes like bondage and spanking and stuff like that. I think Sharonda's specialty was golden stream."

Connie and I looked blankly at one another before looking back at Lula.

"Golden stream?" Connie asked.

"Some guys like to pee on their woman."

Connie and I stared at Lula in stupefied horror, our upper lips curling in disgust.

"That's why you got specialty hos," said Lula. "Ain't no perverted asshole gonna pee on me. Mark my words, I'd never let some Tom, Harry, or Dickie Orr pee on me."