Short Stories To Tickle Your Funnybone (8 page)

BEST NEW MYSTERY NOVEL - Fall 2012

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BOOK ENTREPRENEURS

Will American politics always be dominated by the two major
political parties or are voters longing for an Independent candidate to
challenge the establishment?
Everyone thought that the slate of candidates for the presidential election
had been set until Benjamin Franklin Foster came on the scene capturing the
hearts of American voters with his message of change and reform.

Powerful interests intent on preserving the status quo with their
bought-and-paid-for politicians were determined to take Ben Foster out of
the race.

The Secret Service comes up with a quirky plan to
protect the
Candidate and strike a blow for Lady Justice.
Join
Walt
on
the
campaign
trail
for
an
adventure
full
of
surprises, mystery, intrigue and laughs!

http://booksbybob.com/lady-justice-and-thecandidate_367.html

Their peaceful plans are soon shipwrecked by
the murder of two fellow passengers.
The murders appear to be linked to a centuryold legend involving a cache of gold stolen from a
prospector and buried by two thieves.
Their seven day cruise is spent hunting for the
gold and eluding the modern day thieves intent on
possessing it at any cost.
Another nail-biting mystery that will have you
on the edge of your seat one minute and laughing out
loud the next.
http://booksbybob.com/lady-justice-and-the-cruise-ship

I'm an old retired guy who lives with his
wife, Peg, in Independence, Mo.
We read a lot.
A few years ago, a friend turned us on to
Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum
series and we
fell
in love. We read all
14 books that were
available at the time and laughed till we cried.
I had
never written a
book, a
blog or
anything of substance, but I was so fired up when I
finished
Fearless Fourteen
, I had to do something.
I went into our office, sat down at my
computer and pretended I was Janet. I wrote three
chapters and gave them to Peg who had also read
all 14 books.
I heard her laughing and thought that was a
good sign. After she finished, she came to the
office and said "Janet doesn't need any help. You
should write a book of your own. Stop writing
Stephanie Plum, develop your
OWN
characters
and plot. I know you can do it."
So
I
did,
and
the
Lady
Justice
mystery/comedy series was born.

Currently there are eleven novels in the series:
Lady Justice Takes a C.R.A.P. City Retiree Action
Patrol
Lady Justice and the Lost Tapes
Lady Justice Gets Lei'd
Lady Justice and the Avenging Angels
Lady Justice and the Sting
Lady Justice and Dr. Death
Lady Justice and the Vigilante
Lady Justice and the Watchers
Lady Justice and the Candidate
Lady Justice and the Book Club Murders
Lady
Justice
and the Cruise
Ship Murders
Following are the three Stephanie Plum Chapters
that I wrote.

Please remember ---- I was sixty-six years old
and this was the
FIRST THING
that I had ever
written.

It
was
Christmas
time
in
the
Burg.
Shopping Malls were decked in holiday tradition;
city fathers hung plastic bells from lampposts;
miniature elves cavorted on front lawns; shoppers
of all ages and descriptions scurried about looking
for that perfect gift and, of course, petty crime was
on the rise as shoplifters used the bustling crowds
to mask their petty thievery. Break and enter
complaints
flourished
as
burglars
relieved
unhappy
shoppers of their Christmas treasures
from their homes and cars.

As regrettable as this crime surge may be,
it’s kinda good for me. I’m Stephanie Plum and
I’m a bounty hunter or, as we
put on loan
applications, a fugitive apprehension agent. I work
for my cousin Vinnie’s Bond Company.

When a neer-do-well is apprehended by
police, they call Vinnie to bond them out of jail
until their court date. If the slacker shows up for
court Vinnie’s bond is returned and he collects a
fee for his services. If he doesn’t appear, he
forfeits his bond (meaning Vinnie’s money) unless
he can be found and persuaded to return for a
court date. That’s where I come in. My job is to
find the FTA (failure to appear) and persuade him
or her to return to the police station to get a new
court date and be rebonded out.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it. Right!
A few FTAs legitimately forget their court
dates,
but
most
are
adamantly
opposed
to
incarceration and will go to any extremes to avoid
the lockup. I’ve been punched, tased, shot at,
bombed and generally maimed by these fugitives
and if, by chance, I happen to be successful in
bringing one to justice, I am paid a percentage of
the bond for my trouble.
In a way, I’m like a real estate agent or a
car salesman; they only get paid when they make a
sale; I only get paid when I return a scumbag to
the police booking desk. Unfortunately, I’m not a
real superstar bond apprehension agent. You might
say I’m just a shade
under mediocre and my
income reflects my apprehension shortcomings.
So here we are. It’s Christmas and I’m
broke. I’m driving a yucky brown piece of crap
car that barely passed the vehicle inspection and
probably wouldn’t have except my cousin Jenny’s
husband is a mechanic at the inspection station.
Reluctantly, I told myself that now was the
time to correct my financial woes. Crime was up;
FTAs were
skipping
their court dates
at
an
astounding rate and best of all, most of them were
just
petty
thieves: no
rapists or murders or
gangbangers. Easy Money! I probably wouldn’t
even have to use my pepper spray, stun gun or
cuffs and I certainly wouldn’t need my little 38
caliber pistol which mostly stays in my cookie jar.
As I
pulled up
to the
bond office
on
Hamilton, I noticed that Lula was already there.
Her red Firebird was parked in the prime spot in
front of the office. Upon reflection, I decided not
to park my heap next to her fine ride, so I drove
around back and parked next to the dumpster.
Appropriate! Maybe if I’m lucky the trash man
will load it up and haul it away.
Lula is something! In her former life she
was a ho. She had been severely beaten and almost
killed by a deranged prizefighter.
As luck would have it, I happened to be
nearby and helped save her. Actually, it happened
on my balcony, but it wasn’t my fault. Since then,
we have become friends. Lula now does filing in
Vinnie’s bond office; mostly her nails, but
sometimes real files, and on occasion, she is my
sidekick as we
seek out fugitives. Kinda
like
Batman and Robin; Roy Rogers and Gabby Hays;
Well actually, its more like the Two Stooges.
I entered the office through the rear door
and waved to Connie, our office manager. Connie
runs the place. Without her, Vinnie would be up a
creek. She puts the FTA files together, searches
databases for current information on the perps
whereabouts, assigns the files to one of us agents
and best of all, signs our checks when we actually
bring someone in.
Connie looked particularly
harried this
morning and I noticed the stack of file folders on
her desk.
“Busy day?” I said.
“You gotta be kidding me,” she replied.
“I’ve been busting my ass since 7:00 this morning
trying to get these files ready to assign.”
“What have you got?” I asked
“Mostly small stuff, but there’s a lot of it.
Two B&E’s, 3 shoplifters, indecent exposure, and
a traffic violation.”
“Great!” I said. “Sounds like something I
can handle.” She handed me a stack of files.
“Don’t be shy about assigning files to me for
awhile,” I said. “I am sufficiently motivated by the
lack of funds in my Christmas savings account and
I’ll take as many as I can get.”
“Glad to hear it,” Connie said. “Because
you and Joyce are about it right now.”
There are 3 bond enforcement agents in
our office: myself, Ranger, and Joyce Barnhart.
Ranger was my mentor and had taught me the few
apprehension techniques that I actually used. He is
a Cuban hottie. Besides being an agent for Vinnie,
he owns his own security company and has been
doing more for himself and less for Vinnie lately.
Joyce is my arch enemy. She has been since grade
school. She has made my life miserable in so
many ways, the worst being getting caught by me,
boinking
my
husband
shortly
after
our
honeymoon. Too bad we
work in the same
company. It doesn’t do much for office morale.
“OK,” I said, “I’m off. Today is going to
be a good day”.
“Hold on there a minute,” Lula said.
“Don’t I even get a Howdy Do? Anyway you
gonna need me if you gonna try to get through that
big stack.”
“Sorry Lula, I was just so focused on work.
I didn’t mean to ignore you. But don’t you have
filing to do?”
“Wow, I’ve never seen you that focused,”
Lula said. “You must really be broke. And
besides, there ain’t no filing here that can’t wait a
couple of hours. Plus, it’s my special time of the
month and I’m feeling kinda cranky. It would do
me some good to
thump on a
few
of them
perverts.”
“NO thumping,” I said. “These are all just
petty thieves and first time offenders. It should be
a piece of cake.”
“Speaking of cake,” Lula said, “ if I can’t
thump nobody, maybe we can stop on the way for
a bite to eat. Food always helps me get through the
cramps. I could sure use one of them breakfast
sandwiches, you know, the kind with the big fluffy
biscuit with eggs and bacon and cheese inside.
Matter of fact, I could probably use two of them.”
It did sound kinda good. I had overslept
this morning and had woofed down a TastyKake
and a cup of coffee as I went out the door.
“Fine by me,” I said, “let’s get rolling. My
car is parked out back.”
“Hold on there, girlfriend,” Lula said.
“You don’t expect me to go riding around town in
that brown turd of yours, do you? In my previous
profession, I was a well respected ho. I got a
reputation to uphold. It’s degrading to be seen in
that thing. What if I see someone I know?”
“Well,” I replied, “we can certainly take
your pristine Firebird, as long as you don’t mind
our fugitives peeing or puking in your back seat.”
After
a
long
pause
Lula
replied,
“Hmmmm, maybe we should take your car. If I
see someone I know, I’ll just hunker down in the
seat so I won’t be noticed.”
Sure. Making Lula’s 200 pounds, bright
orange
hair and fluorescent
green tube top
unnoticed would be a cinch.
So off we went. Two professional bond
apprehension agents out to save the city. But, of
course, first things first, and we headed to the
McDonald’s drive through.
I pulled into the drive-through lane and
inched my way closer to the order speakerphone.
As I rolled the window down, a muffled voice
came from the speaker “Mlunth drsjp?” Having
been here before, I figured that was speakerease
for “May I take your order?”
“Yes,” I yelled into the speaker, “we’d like
three
breakfast biscuits with egg, bacon and
cheese and two large coffees.”
“Tufshk leabn,” came the reply.
“Oh yeah,” Lula said, “give me one of
them little crispy potato cakes, too.”
“Beavun yusfh,” was all I heard.
I saw the amount of the bill registered on
the digital readout by the speaker and it looked
about right, so I pulled through to the pickup
window. The window flew open. I looked up and
“YIKES!” The girl at the window looked like she
had lost a fight with a nail gun. Each ear was
pierced three times, each hole adorned with large
hoop earrings. There was a stud bar through her
eyebrow, a diamond stud on her left nostril, and
two studs protruding from her lower lip. When she
opened her mouth to speak, her tongue flopped out
sporting a stud the size of a pea.
“No wonder the girl can’t talk,” Lula said.
“Her mouth’s stapled shut.”
I handed her a ten and tried not to think
about the fact that the food I was about to eat had
been prepared by a practitioner of self mutilation.
I pulled out of the line and out into traffic.
Lula
was
opening
the
sack
of goodies and
distributing the food when I heard her exclaim,
“Oh crap! That little bitch put sausage on my
biscuit instead of bacon. I don’t want no sausage. I
want bacon.”
I thought about having to sit through the
line and talking to studface
again and I said,
“Sorry about that. But we gotta get moving. How
about you eat your biscuit with just egg and cheese
and maybe we can get a bacon cheeseburger for
lunch.”
“Dumb bitch,” Lula murmured. “Now this
sandwich reminds me of one of my customers
when I was a ho. The dude was all eggs and no
meat.” She flopped the greasy sausage patty on a
napkin on the dashboard.
Lula had finished distributing the food and
placed my coffee in the lone cup holder on the
console. She had just taken the lid off of her cup
when a black SUV swerved in front of us and hit
its brakes. I
jammed on my
brakes to avoid
running into its rear end, causing Lula’s hot coffee
to pour into lap.
“Oh God,” Lula shrieked. “I’ve scalded my
twat and ruined my skirt. I don’t believe this.”
The SUV and I came to a stop. The door of
the SUV flew open and Joyce Barnhart marched
up to Lula’s window. Lula was frantically trying
to sop up hot coffee from her private parts when
Joyce banged on her window.
“You!” Lula screamed. “I shoulda known
only a dumb bitch like you would pull a stunt like
that.”
“Pipe down fatty,” Joyce sneered. “I need
to talk to you,” she said to me.
Oh oh! The one thing you absolutely don’t
want to do is call Lula fat. She can take almost any
verbal abuse except that. I saw that look in her eye
and I figured she was getting as hot as the coffee
in her lap.
“What do you want, Joyce? We’ve got
work to do,” I said.
“That’s the problem. You have work and I
don’t. You came into the office this morning and
cherry picked all
the good FTA
files. I have
nothing to do till Connie gets new files ready to
go. Now give me half of those files and I’ll be on
my way.”
One thing about Joyce: she always wants
to look the part of the TV bounty hunter. She
wears tight leather
pants and an even tighter
leather button front top with most of the buttons
undone. I hate to admit it, but she does have a
great bod. Her boobs are about two sizes bigger
than mine and with the aid of a push-up bra, her
ample cleavage spills out the front of the leather
blouse. It was this bosom at that very moment that
was inches from an infuriated Lula’s face.
“You ain’t getting no files, bitch,” Lula
roared, “but you can have this.” With one quick
sweep, she grabbed the greasy sausage patty off
the dash and stuffed it in the crack of Joyce’s
cleavage.
Joyce
pulled away
from the window
fishing between her boobs for the greasy sausage.
“Oops, we better get out of here,” I said,
and I shoved the car into reverse and peeled away
leaving Joyce on the side of the road screaming
and shaking her fist. As we drove away, I grinned
at Lula. She grinned back and we did a high five.