Mrs. Zuppa was coming in from bingo just as I was leaving the building. "Looks like you're going to work," she said, leaning heavily on her cane. "What are you packin'?" "A thirty-eight." "I like a nine-millimeter myself." "A nine's good." "Easier to use a semiautomatic after you've had hip replacement and you walk with a cane," she said. One of those useful pieces of information to file away and resurrect when I turn eighty-three.

Amen" Lula said and she made the sign of the cross. "I thought you were Baptist." "Yeah, but we don't got any hand signals for an occasion like this.

He asked me if I had adequate health insurance.

As Stephanie and Lula were going after the bad guys, Lula was making preparations from the trunk of her Firebird. Stephanie looked inside and stopped breathing for a beat. "That's a rocket launcher!" "Yep," Lula said. "It's a big boy. I got it at a yard sale in the projects.

Just because i know how to change a guys oil doesn't mean i want to spend the rest of my life on my back, staring up his undercarriage.

That's one of the things I like about Mary Lou. She's willing to believe the worst about anyone.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what's love and what's only indigestion