"With vanilla ice cream," Grandma said. "The good kind with all them fat grams." She cut her eyes to me. "And hot fudge sauce to go on top."
Grandma wasn't above delivering a well-placed sucker-punch.
"Suppose homicide doesn't figure it out?" I asked Grandma and Lula.
Grandma took a moment to consider. "I guess if it would make you feel better, we could visit Biggy once in a while in the big house. Bring him some cookies."
"Yeah," Lula said, "or we could chip in for a TV. They let them lifers have TV sets."
"We can't just stand by and let a man spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit!"
"The hell we can't," Lula said.
"And besides," Grandma said, "what about all the crimes he got away with? What about the stuff he stole and the people he beat up? What about evening the score?"
I pressed my lips together. "This isn't hockey."
We all shuffled our feet some more, and a drop of rain splattered on my bare arm. Then another. And another.
"It's a sign from God," Lula said, tilting her face heavenward, squinting into the rain. "God wants us to forget about all this shit and go eat some cake."
Wonderful. Now God was in on it.
"God's no dummy," Lula said. "He knows chocolate cake helps clear a person's head for making important decisions."
I thought about the bruise on Kathy's face. And then I thought about the way the oldest Zaremba kid always looked scared. And then I thought Lula might be right... that I wouldn't want to make a decision without the benefit of chocolate cake. In fact, to ensure that I wasn't making a terrible mistake, it might take me a very, very, very long time to make any decision at all.
The End
Janet Evanovich - Last Peep Page 4
