Well, that had gone well. I turned to my best friend. “You are a maniac! I don’t ever want to see that thing again.”

“What?” Dana protested.

“You just zapped a puppy!”

“On accident.”

“Right, and as long as the gun stays in your purse,” I ennunciated very slowly, “there will be no more accidents.”

Dana pouted. “This is just like the Ben Affleck set.”

“Why, did you stun Ben too?”

“No,” she said as we got in the car. Then added as an afterthought, “I kind of, totally accidentally, stunned his cat.”

Never mind fur traders, PETA should be going after Dana.

After we left the condo, we made a quick lunch stop at Burger King, where I ordered a double Whopper with cheese, fries, and a thick vanilla milkshake. I had completely given up on fitting into the Nicole Miller. It was last season’s cut anyway. Dana, on the other hand, ordered a side salad and bottled water.

“I can’t believe you actually eat those things,” Dana said, scrunching up her little ski jump nose at my burger.

“Why?” I asked around a bite of pure heaven. I’m not ashamed to say I was two inches away from a gooey cheddar-induced orgasm.

“Uh, hello? Mad cow. Do you have any idea what that burger was fed when it was alive?”

I looked over at her salad. “Probably your lunch.”

“Other ground-up cows. Antibiotics. Growth hormones. Why don’t you just hook yourself up to an IV full of toxins?”

I looked down at my burger. “Because this tastes better?”

Dana shook her head at me and took a bite of her wilted lettuce.

I was just wolfing down the last of my heaven on a bun, when my purse rang. I slipped my cell out as I chomped on a deliciously greasy french fry.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mads.”

Cripes!

“Uh, hi, Mom.”

“How’s Palm Springs?”

“Uh…” I glanced around at the full Burger King, hoping she couldn’t hear the ding of the slot machine in the corner. “It’s great.”

“How’s the weather out there?”

“Great!”

“And your fellow? How are things with him?”

“Grrrrrrreat,” I said, sounding a little too much like Tony the Tiger for comfort. “Everything’s just great.”

“I’m so glad. Listen, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I just wanted to let you know I bought you a plant.”

“A plant?”

“Yes, I went by to water your plants and I got rid of that plastic thing you had. I bought you a real ficus instead.”

Great. Just what I needed. A ficus.

“Now, you’re going to have to water it every three days,” Mom continued, “but not too much; you don’t want to over water. Just until the soil is moist. But don’t let it overflow. I got you a dish to set it on, but it could still overflow onto your carpet, so easy on the water. And just a touch of plant food once a month. You can mix it right in your watering can.”

I rubbed my eyes, the sleepless nights catching up to me. “I don’t have a watering can, Mom.”

Mom paused. “What do you mean you don’t have a watering can? Everyone has a watering can. How do you water your plants without a watering can?”

“I don’t have any plants!”

“Yes, you do. You have a ficus. Never mind, I’ll go out and get you a watering can tomorrow.”

I gritted my teeth together. “Mom, I have to go.”

“Sure, honey. I understand. You don’t want to keep that man of yours waiting. I know how you young folks are. I was young once too, you know. Of course, with Ralphie, I feel like I’m twenty-three again. God bless those little blue pills.” She giggled.

My eye did a little twitch.

“Right. Okay, well, bye now, Mom, gotta go.”

I hung up, wondering how much longer I could keep up this charade. Mom may not have been the sharpest dresser in the world, but she was no dummy. Any second now I was ready for her to do the big ah-ha! and realize that not only was I not in Palm Springs with the guy I was not having sex with, but instead I was running around Sin City zapping puppies and chasing after her ex-husband, who now wore skirts. I shuddered to think what the punishment would be then. Suffice it to say, this was bad enough to make those Hot Dog on a Stick hats look like haute couture.

Once I finished my fries (and added a Hershey’s Sundae Pie for dessert. Hey, after the conversation with Mom, I needed comfort food) and Dana finished the last of her rabbit food, we hopped into the Mustang and headed back to the hotel. As we merged onto the 15 heading south toward the Strip, I pulled down the visor to check for chunks of Mad Cow stuck in my teeth and touch up my lip gloss. I was applying one last swipe of Raspberry Perfection when I caught a flash of blue in the mirror.

I whipped my head around. “Sonofabitch.” Sure enough, there in brilliant Dodge blue was my friendly neighborhood stalker, his Neon hanging back one car length in the next lane over.

Chapter Ten

“What?” Dana craned around in her seat trying to see what I was staring at.

“That blue Dodge Neon.”

“What about him?” she asked.

“I think he’s following me.”

“Oh Maddie.” Dana did a poo-pooing motion with her wrist and clucked her tongue. “You’re just being paranoid.”

“That’s what I thought, but I swear to you I have seen this same car four times in the last week. First in L.A. and now here. I’m telling you, he’s following me.”

I kept one eye on the rearview mirror as my hands did a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. I wasn’t sure which was worse, thinking someone was stalking me or actually knowing it.

Dana craned around again to get a look at the car. “So who is he?”

“I don’t know,” I said, accelerating. “But he’s really starting to freak me out.”

I angled my foot down on the accelerator, surging forward. Then I yanked the wheel, veering to the right and cutting in front of a limo with tinted windows. Neon swerved out into the left lane, pulling ahead of the limo, then quickly jumped right back onto my tail.

“He’s not real concerned about being seen, is he?” Dana asked, still looking out the back window.

No, he wasn’t. Which was a little unnerving. Either he didn’t know how to tail someone, or he was confident we wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup later. Like if we were dead or maimed from being run off the road.

I could clearly see the driver now. It was the same sandy-haired guy I’d seen at the casino. He was wearing tinted aviator glasses and a rumpled polo shirt, to all the world a normal commuter. Except for the fact that his Neon was practically kissing my back bumper now.

I took a deep breath and slammed on the brakes, veering into the far right lane between a pair of semitrucks. The driver of the second one laid on his horn and made a not-so-polite hand gesture out the window. Dana braced herself against the dashboard.

“Whoa! Take it easy, Miss Earnhardt.”

But it was too late. I was in serious fight or flight mode, and considering I had trouble keeping up in Dana’s low-impact Tae Bo class, I chose the flight option, hoping like anything there weren’t any highway patrol cars in the area. (I was already on a first-name basis with three of the L.A. county traffic court judges, I didn’t need to add Nevada to the list.) Luckily, the Neon driver wasn’t dealing with the added bonus of adrenaline-fueled reflexes and didn’t hit his brakes in time. He zipped past us in the left lane. I quickly veered off the freeway at the next exit, blindly driving surface streets like they were the Pomona Speedway until I was sure my back bumper was Neonless. I pulled the Mustang into the parking lot of a Denny’s as the surge of adrenaline receded, leaving my limbs feeling like Jell-O jigglers.

“Holy crap,” Dana said in the seat next to me as she dug her nails out of Marco’s Naugahyde dash. “What the hell was that about?”

I would have answered, but it was taking all my concentration just remembering to breathe. In, out, in, out…

“Who the hell was that freak?”

“I”-in-“don’t”-out-“know.”

Dana turned to face me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m”-in, out, in, out-“fine.” Sure, once I stopped panting and my heart returned to a pace slightly less spastic than a ten-year-old on Ritalin.

Dana dug around in the backseat and found a discarded Taco Bell bag, which she instructed me to breathe into. The odor of week-old Beefy Gordita Supreme was slighting nauseating, but after a few inhale-exhales, the urge to hyperventilate slowly dissipated. As I rhythmically inflated and deflated the fastfood bag, I racked my brain to think of who cared enough about my movements to not only follow me all the way across the desert, but ride my butt all over Las Vegas as well. Ramirez? Larry? Monaldo? Not likely, since I’d never even met two of them until yesterday. And I couldn’t see Ramirez paying some guy in a Neon to keep tabs on his girlfriend. So who was he? Not surprisingly, I drew a total blank.

Dana offered to drive back to the hotel (probably because she was afraid to ride shotgun with Miss Earnhardt again), and by the time we pulled up to the casino, I’m happy to report that my breathing was once again back to normal. (Though I was totally jonesing for a taco.) Dana got out at the casino entrance, but I declined her invitation to an afternoon at the roulette wheel. With the kind of luck I was having lately, I didn’t think it was wise to put money on the line.

I was too keyed up to go sit in the room, not feeling lucky enough for slots, and, considering I had a date with Mr. Hardbody tonight, seriously trying to resist the fattening allure of the buffet. I looked down at my watch. I still had an hour before my appointment at the salon. Which, I decided, left me more than enough time to do another quick drive-by of Larry’s house on the off chance he was spending a quiet afternoon at home. The more I learned about him the more questions I had. And while the whole Mob angle was just this side of reality TV for me, I had to admit the question topping my list was why Larry had called me in the first place. Okay, so he’d needed help, that much was obvious. But why me? I admit, the little-girl-lost in me was still holding out hope of that perfect father-daughter reunion.