One for the Money (Stephanie Plum, #1)

by Janet Evanovich

Two weeks later, Joe Morelli came into the bakery where I worked every day after school, Tasty Pastry, on Hamilton. He bought a chocolate-chip cannoli, told me he’d joined the navy, and charmed the pants off me four minutes after closing, on the floor of Tasty Pastry, behind the case filled with chocolate éclairs. The next time I saw him, I was three years older. I was on my way to the mall, driving my father’s Buick when I spotted Morelli standing in front of Giovichinni’s Meat Market. I gunned the big V-8 engine, jumped the curb, and clipped Morelli from behind, bouncing him off the front right fender. I stopped the car and got out to assess the damage. “Anything broken?” He was sprawled on the pavement, looking up my skirt. “My leg.” “Good,” I said. Then I turned on my heel, got into the Buick, and drove to the mall. I attribute the incident to temporary insanity, and in my own defense, I’d like to say I haven’t run over anyone since.

The clock on the dash told me I was seven minutes late, and the urge to scream told me I was home.

Two years ago, when Grandpa Mazur’s fat-clogged arteries sent him to the big pork roast in the sky, Grandma Mazur had moved in with my parents and had never moved out.

Rex opened his black eyes and blinked. He twitched his whiskers, gave a good sniff, and rejected the nuggets. I couldn’t blame him. I’d tried them for breakfast yesterday and hadn’t been impressed.

My feeling is, if you’re going to spend that much time on your knees, you could find something that pays better.

And I know about the duck.”

“Sold him a cannoli when I was in high school.”

“Honey, half of all the women in New Jersey have sold him their cannoli.”

I had a long history of calamitous mishaps.

I shot that sucker right in the gumpy.”

I’d criticized foreign governments for using chemical warfare, and here I was buying nerve gas from a woman who waxed off all her pubic hair.

And what about this shower curtain? Shower curtains don’t grow on trees, you know.”

“I’m telling you, it’s fucking hard to be classy,”

When I was done I looked like Cher on a bad day.

I laced up my hightop Reeboks, crunched down my white socks, and felt pretty cool.

My body was not designed to run. My body was designed to sit in an expensive car and drive.

“Big woman like me don’t gotta be careful,” she said. “I just stomp on them weird-ass motherfuckers. Nobody mess with Lula.”

“I’m all scared out. I don’t have any more scare left in me. Maybe tomorrow.”

“I hear Macy’s has openings for makeover ladies.”

You got Alpha with five rounds to the heart, all within an inch of each other. Pretty amazing, considering you also shot the shit out of your pocketbook.”