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Lula lived in a small two-story Victorian-style house with gingerbread trim. The house was currently painted pink and yellow and lavender. It was the only house in the neighborhood with not a smidgeon of graffiti because if some idiot came near the house with a can of spray paint the lesbian owner would beat the crap out of him. The owner lived on the ground floor. Lula was one of two people who lived on the second floor. And a seventy-five-year-old woman lived in the attic. Apparently she thought she was Katharine Hepburn, but aside from that she managed very nicely, according to Lula.
•••
We left the Zeta house and went to the student center. Julie Ruley wasn’t in the newspaper office, wasn’t in the food court, wasn’t in sight.
“This beer smell coming out of my clothes is making me hungry,” Lula said. “I need onion rings to go with the beer. I’m voting to move on to Billy Bacon.”
Sounded like a good idea to me. We weren’t getting anywhere with the Gobbles search, and I wasn’t feeling a lot of love for Kiltman College. We heard a car alarm wailing when we got to the
administration building. We rounded the corner and saw that the noise was coming from the Mercedes. I used my key fob to shut the alarm off, and Lula and I approached the car.
“There’s a goose in your car,” Lula said. She looked more closely. “There’s a whole bunch of gooses. And they pooped on everything.”
A small crowd had gathered on the fringe of the lot. Mintner was one of them.
“This has all the earmarks of a Zeta stunt,” Mintner said.
“Somebody should let those gooses out,” Lula said. “I don’t think they’re happy about being locked up in there.”
Not happy was a vast understatement. The geese were in a blind rage, viciously pecking at the windows, shredding the leather seats, crapping their brains out.
The crowd took a step back. No one wanted to get in the way of the freaked-out geese.
“Maybe you should be the one to open the door,” Mintner said to Lula.
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Lula said. “They just want to get out and go about their business.”
Lula opened the door, and the geese rushed out at her. There was a lot of wing flapping and Lula shrieking. It was like she was caught in a goose blizzard, and then they moved on, hurling themselves at whoever got in their way. Everyone but Lula and I fled to the safety of the building.
Lula stood dazed for a couple beats. The geese had pecked at her lavender afro and torn holes in her clothes. There were fresh globs of goose poop dotted across the pavement and a lot of honking in the distance.
“That’s the gratitude I get for setting those stupid things free,” Lula said. “Those geese are freakin’ rude.”
Ranger’s black Porsche 911 cruised into the lot. Ranger got out, looked at the Mercedes, and smiled.
“Do not smile,” I said to him. “This is all your fault for giving me a Mercedes. I was perfectly happy with my junky old car, but you had to come along and set me up for disaster. You knew this was going to happen. You’ve probably been sitting around all morning, counting down the minutes until I destroyed the car. It’s a record breaker, right? Headline: ‘Stephanie Plum Destroys a Car in Less than Four Hours.’?”
Okay, so I knew I was out of control, but I couldn’t seem to reel it in. I was doing a goose imitation, flapping my arms and yelling, pacing around.
“I am just so aggravated,” I said. “Why me? Why do these things happen to me?”
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” Lula said. “You didn’t get no beer dumped on you. And you didn’t get yourself pecked apart by a herd of pissed-off honkers.”
Ranger slung an arm around me and hugged me into him, and I could feel him laughing.
“It’s not funny,” I said.
“Babe, I haven’t got a lot of funny in my life. Let me enjoy the moment.”
“You have a strange sense of humor.”
“Most people think I have no sense of humor.”
I pushed away and looked at him. “How did you happen along just now?”
“The control room picked up the break-in and reported it to me. I was in the area so I thought I’d come take a look. I got here just in time to see Lula open the car door.” The smile returned. “I almost ran up on the curb when the geese flew out.”
“I’m pretty sure someone at Zeta did this.”
