Motor Mouth by Janet Evanovich Read Free Book Online

someplace where he’s going to be discovered,” I said. “If we leave him in the hauler, he might be taken to Mexico and disposed of and his family would never know what happened to him. Hard to know the killer’s plans. We could leave him in the hauler and make sure the police find him, but it’ll be even more of a scandal for NASCAR. And chances are good that Hooker and Beans will be brought into the investigation. Hooker might even become a suspect. So I think we need to find neutral ground. We need to leave Huevo someplace not associated with NASCAR and someplace where he’ll be found and recognized.”
    “The Huevo corporate yacht is tied up in South Beach,” Gobbles said. “We could put him on the yacht.”
    “That would be nice,” Felicia said. “We could take him for a ride. I bet he’d like that.”
    “He’s
dead
,” Hooker said. “He doesn’t like anything. And that’s a terrible idea. We’ll get caught and arrested and spend the rest of our lives in jail. We’ll never get him on the yacht without being seen.”
    “Then maybe someplace
close
to the yacht,” Felicia said. “God likes the yacht idea.”
    “What, do you have a direct line?” Rosa wanted to know.
    “I got a feeling.”
    “Uh-oh, is it just a feeling feeling? Or is it one of those Miguel Cruz feelings?”
    “I think it might be a Miguel Cruz feeling.”
    Rosa looked at me. “That’s a serious feeling. Felicia had a feeling Miguel Cruz was in trouble, and an hour later he fell into a sinkhole on Route One, car and all, and broke his back. And another time Felicia told Theresa Bell she should light a candle. And Theresa didn’t do it, and she came down with shingles.”
    Hooker looked pained. He drove race cars. The only vision he really related to was a back bumper.
    “How about this,” Hooker said. “In the interest of moving on with our lives, let’s put Oscar in the SUV and drive him to South Beach. We can go to the marina and look around for a nice final resting place for him. Then we can check into a hotel for the night, and we’ll figure the rest out in the morning when we’re not so creeped out.”
    I nodded agreement. I was hoping I’d go to sleep and wake up and find out none of this had ever happened.
    “We gonna have to scootch him to the door,” Felicia said. She looked at Huevo through the plastic wrap. “Okay, mister, we gonna move you now. You gonna be home soon.” She looked over at Gobbles. “You and Hooker gotta grab hold of Mr. Dead Guy’s behind, or something.”
    Gobbles clapped a hand over his mouth and ran for the bathroom.
    “Gobbles got a weak stomach,” Felicia said. “He’d never make it in wholesale fruit.”
    “If we scootch him along, we’ll rip the plastic,” Rosa said. “I think we gotta carry him. I’ll get one side and Hooker can get the other side.”
    I got disposable gloves from the box in the tool chest and gave them to Hooker and Rosa. They took opposite sides of Huevo. Hooker got his hands under Huevo, then turned white and started to sweat again.
    “I can do this,” Hooker said. “No problem. I’m a big, tough guy, right? I don’t go all pukey just because I’m carrying a dead guy around, right? It’s not like I’m gonna get cooties, right?”
    “Right,” I said. Trying to be supportive. Glad I wasn’t the one with my hands under Huevo’s dead ass.
    Hooker and Rosa got Huevo out the hauler door, down the ramp, and set him on the cement floor. We all took a couple steps back and fanned the air.
    “We gotta rewrap Mr. Dead Guy if we’re taking him for a ride,” Felicia said. “Mr. Dead Guy don’t smell good.”
    I ran to the hauler and came back with boxes of plastic wrap, some duct tape, and a can of room freshener I’d snitched from the bathroom. We sprayed Huevo with Tropical Breeze, rewrapped him in plastic, and secured him with duct tape.
    “I think he looks good,” Felicia said. “You can hardly see where he got chewed on. He looks like a