“I’m pretty sure he said Fogg. ”
“Nuh uh. He say something else that wasn’t the least bit nice, girlfriend. I think that Bubba redneck call you a fag.””
“Well now, if that doesn’t take the cake. ” Barbie was mystified. “You positive he didn’t say Fogg?”
“I ain’t gonna go ask him. He a mean redneck and probably got a hood in his closet, you know what I’m saying?”
Barbie didn’t know what she meant.
“You know, a white sheet, ” Hooter explained. “He probably some cross-burning gran dragon for the Ku Klack Klan!”
“Anyone who burns a cross will go straight to hell, ” Barbie said with pious indignation.
“I don’t care where people like him go after they’s dead. I just don’t want them stopping at my tollbooth and maybe trying to find out where I live so they can shoot out my windows and burn a cross in my yard. Except I don’t have a yard. I guess they could burn a cross in the parking lot, though. ”
“So many crazy people. ” Barbie was getting discouraged. “The world just gets worse every day. ”
“Ever since the new milminimum, everything’s worse. Don’t see how they could get worsen” Hooter could not have agreed with Barbie Fogg more.
Andy didn’t see how things could get much worse, either, as he turned off 9th Street, bound for the morgue with Regina sitting in the passenger’s seat smacking gum and playing with the scanner.
“How do you turn on the lights and siren in this thing?” she asked.
“We’re not turning on the lights and siren, ” he told her.
“Why not? You’re responding to a murder, aren’t you? Seems to me you could turn them on if you wanted to. ”
“No, I couldn’t. We’re not pursuing anyone or in a hurry. ” He worked hard to keep his irritation to himself.
“Well, aren’t we in a pissy mood today?” Regina commented as she stared out the window at people aimlessly searching for parking places and waiting in the cold to cross the street.
She did not have to subject herself to common inconveniences, and for the first time in years, she was happy. She could not believe she had escaped the EPU at last and was inside a brand-new state police car, on her way to the morgue with Andy.
“I will make a very good partner for you, ” she went on. “I know a lot of things you don’t and probably more things than that medical examiner woman does, for that matter. I bet you don’t know what to do if you get stuck in quicksand, now do you?”
“I don’t intend to ever get stuck in quicksand, ” Andy replied. “I would avoid it. ”
“Huh. That’s easy to say. If it was a simple thing to avoid quicksand, then people wouldn’t get stuck in it and sink to death. So what you do is spread your arms and legs and try to float. ” She showed him. “Then you put your walking stick under your back to keep your hips from sinking, and you pull your legs out and escape. And if you want to break down a door, you kick the lock, and you can pick a car lock with an Allen wrench and a bobby pin. I also know how to survive python, alligator, and killer-bee attacks, ” she bragged. “And I could deliver a baby in a taxi-cab or save myself if my parachute doesn’t open. ”
“Only because you’ve obviously read The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook, ” Andy replied, to her annoyance and surprise. “And just because you read about a dire situation while you’re safely sitting in the mansion doesn’t mean you could really save yourself if the worst really happened. ”
“Papa gave it to me for my birthday, ” Regina smugly said. “And he’s never given that book to my sisters because they don’t care about adventure and are cowards. I can just imagine Faith trying to land a plane after the pilot has a heart attack, and Constance would panic to death if she were lost in the desert or adrift at sea. “