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are of Ethel.”
“No way,” I said.
“Me neither,” Lula said.
“She’s no bother,” Simon said. “You just gotta feed her once a week. Just come in and leave her a groundhog or something.”
“They don’t usually sell groundhog in the supermarket,” Lula said.
“I get them from the side of the road,” Simon said. “Ethel don’t care if they’re swelled up or anything. She likes fried chicken too. And she wouldn’t stick her nose up at a pizza. And if worse comes to worse I keep a bag of rats in the freezer.”
“You got electric?” Lula asked.
“’Course I got electric,” Simon said. “This here’s a civilized neighborhood.”
“How are you going to get Ethel out of the tree?”
“I got some hot dogs,” Simon said. “I’ll leave a trail of hot dogs that goes straight to the kitchen. And then once she’s inside we’ll lock the door.”
Ten minutes later Simon had the hot dogs all laid out.
“She don’t look interested,” Lula said, staring up at Ethel.
“It could take a while,” Simon said. “She don’t move so fast. I guess we could just leave the door open for her.”
“You could get robbed if you do that,” Lula said.
“I got a fifty-pound snake for a pet,” Simon said. “Nobody comes near here excepting the zombies.”
I cuffed Simon, promised him I’d look in on Ethel, loaded him into my SUV, and drove him to the police station. I handed him over to the cop in charge, and Simon explained that should a zombie show up, the cop needed to shoot the zombie in the brain. The cop assured Simon it was a done deal.
• • •
It was almost four o’clock when Lula and I got back to Simon’s double-wide. The snake wasn’t in the tree, and the hot dogs were all gone.
“I’ll stand here and keep watch that no one steals your car while you check up on Ethel,” Lula said.
“No one’s going to steal my car out here,” I said. “And I’ll take the key.”
“Okay then, how about I’m not going anywhere near that snake pit. It got snakes living under it, and it got a giant snake living in it. And I don’t like snakes. Plus I’m wearing my favorite Via Spigas, and Simon don’t keep his walkway up to Via Spiga level.”
Lula is a couple inches shorter than me and has about twice as much flesh. Much of the flesh is boob. This week her hair was straightened to the texture of boar bristle, was colored a metallic royal blue, and had been pulled up into a ponytail that stuck out of the top of her head. Between the hair and the heels, she was about seven feet tall. She was wearing a shiny silver tank top with a matching cardigan sweater and a short black skirt. The skirt barely covered her hoo-ha and was stretched out to maximum capacity over her ass. Her spike-heeled Via Spigas matched her hair.
I was in my usual work uniform of running shoes, jeans, sweatshirt, and a fitted V-neck T-shirt. I had a canvas messenger bag slung over my shoulder, and I was wearing La Perla lace bikini panties under my jeans. Not an entirely glamorous outfit, but I was pretty much ready for any emergency.
I carefully approached the double-wide, keeping watch for yard snakes.
“At least you don’t have to worry about rats,” Lula said. “Nothing a snake likes better than a nice fat rat.”
I crept up the makeshift stairs to Simon’s door, and said a small prayer before looking inside. I hoped Ethel was in full view, because I really didn’t want to go inside and search for her. I sucked in some air, stepped into the doorway, and froze. The double-wide was filled with raccoons. The raccoon closest to me was working on a jar of peanut butter. He opened his mouth and something fell out. It looked like a finger, but I’m going with hot dog. I backed out, turned, and hustled to my car.
“Was Ethel in there?” Lula asked. “How come you didn’t close the door?”
“Raccoons.”
“Say what?”
“It’s filled with raccoons. They were eating cereal and stuff and rearranging the furniture.”
