“Mom!” I shouted, rushing at her like a linebacker and tackling her in a big bear hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

She was shaking like a leaf and the stun gun dropped from her hands as she hugged me back. “Oh, Maddie, I think I just killed him!”

Mrs. Rosenblatt nudged Monaldo with the toe of her orthopedic sneaker. “I don’t know. He doesn’t look dead to me. My third husband, Alf, he died on the living room sofa watching Wheel of Fortune. When he hadn’t gotten up after Alex Trebek came on, I poked him in the arm. And, I gotta tell ya, his skin was a lot more rubbery than this guy’s.”

“I only meant to scare him,” Mom muttered, her eyes kind of dazed. “I didn’t mean to kill anyone.”

“What happened?” I asked.

Mrs. Rosenblatt gave Monaldo another poke. “He was making your aura brown, so your mom and I decided someone had to talk to this punk. No one messes with our Maddie.”

I might have been touched by this had we not been standing over the motionless body of a Mafia member.

“And,” Mom added, “after we saw Dana had two cell phones, we thought we’d take-”

“Borrow,” Mrs. Rosenblatt corrected.

“Right. Borrow one just in case things got out of hand.”

“Which they did,” Mrs. R. cut in, poking Monaldo with a finger that resembled an Oscar Meyer cocktail sausage. “We told this guy to leave you alone and he says, ‘Oh yeah, and who are you?’ and we said, ‘Maddie’s mom, that’s who,’ and then he says, ‘Who the heck is Maddie?’ Okay, well, actually he didn’t say ‘heck,’ he said a word a whole lot worse than heck, but seeing as I’m a real lady, I won’t repeat what he really said. So then your Mom says, ‘Maddie, Larry’s daughter,’ and then he gets this grin like he’s got some really bad gas or something and then he just starts laughing and says, ‘You married that fruit?’ And, well, you can imagine how your mother reacted to that one.”

From the look of Monaldo on the floor, not well.

“She may have called him a couple of names.”

“Schmuck,” Mom supplied. “Putz. Jerk. Motherfu-”

“Okay, I get the point.” Apparently Mom wasn’t as worried about being a real lady.

“Any-hoo,” Mrs. R. continued, “this clown starts yelling how he’s gonna tear us limb from limb so your mom pulls out the phone to call nine-one-one and the next thing you know, he’s out like a light.” She paused to nudge Monaldo again. “That thing don’t work like any cell phone I’ve ever seen.”

“Honestly, I didn’t mean to shoot him,” Mom said, her hands still shaking.

“You didn’t shoot him,” I reassured her. “He’s just a little zapped.”

She looked at me, her voice going into soprano range. “Zapped?”

“Don’t worry, he’ll be fine,” Dana said. “Rico said the jolt only lasts for a couple of minutes. Right, Marco?”

Marco shuddered as if he only knew too well.

“Well, I’ve got a feeling he’s not gonna be too happy when he wakes up,” Mrs. R. said, scrutinizing Monaldo’s face. His legs did a little jimmy thing.

“In that case, I suggest we go now.” I dragged Mom away by the arm, her eyes still glued to the crumpled form on the floor, and ushered our little band of accidents waiting to happen out the door.

I’d like to say we made an inconspicuous group as we made a beeline for the club’s front doors, but between Marco’s slinking, Mom’s state of catatonic shock and Mrs. Rosenblatt’s three hundred-pound frame clad in shower-curtain chic, we might as well have been carrying a flashing sign that read SUSPICIOUS PEOPLE HERE. Luckily, this was Vegas, and, though we incurred a couple of stares, no one tried to stop us.

We were almost to the front doors when Mom snapped out of her stupor and yelled, “Wait!”

We all halted, Marco running into the back of Mrs. R. with a little moan.

“What?” I asked.

Mom pointed to the office. “I left the cell phone in there.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll buy a new one,” I said, pushing her toward the door. Just a few more feet and we were home free. Monaldo would wake up none the wiser and Ramirez would never know my pinky swear was worth less than flip-flops on a Payless clearance rack.

“But my prints are all over that one!” Mom protested.

I paused. Damn. She had a point. Not that Monaldo looked like the type to keep fingerprint dust in his back pocket, but Ramirez might. And I knew for certain Detective Sipowicz did. Considering the way I’d already gotten on the LVMPD’s bad side, I wasn’t sure I wanted to chance another encounter with Mizz Belushi and the soda-pushers.

“Fine,” I conceded. “I’ll go get it. You guys go to the car, and I’ll meet you there.”

Mom nodded, letting Dana lead her out the front doors and into the sunlight again. I waited until I saw Mrs. Rosenblatt bring up the rear, waddling to safety, before I spun on my heels and ran as quickly as my strappy slingbacks would allow back to the office.

I paused a moment outside Monaldo’s door, putting my ear to the wood and listening for any signs of movement inside. Nothing. I did a two count before reassuring myself he was still out and slowly pushed open the door.

He hadn’t moved from his crumpled heap on the floor, though his limbs were convulsing like he’d stuck a finger in a light socket. Which, I guess technically, he kind of had. I tippy-toed into the room, carefully stepping over Monaldo’s twitching form, and grabbed the stun gun, slipping it into my purse. Then I tippy-toed back out, keeping one eye on the drooling wise guy. I shuddered to think what he’d do if he woke up. The phrase “limb from limb” came to mind.

I shut the office door behind me and skittered back down the hallway, out onto the main floor of the club again. I was just gearing up to sprint the last few feet to the front doors when I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled into my ear.

Oh, crud. But with the way my luck was going, I shouldn’t have been surprised. In fact, I was starting to think they should rename Murphy’s Law, Maddie’s Law. Anything bad that could happen, did happen. And usually to me.

I slowly turned around to find Ramirez giving me the death glare-arms crossed over his chest, vein in his neck bulging, jaw clenched so tight he could crush diamonds with that thing.

“Uh…hi?” I did a little one-finger wave at him.

“Hi?” he gritted through clenched teeth. “Is that the best you can do?”

I gulped. “Hi there, handsome?”

He looked to the ceiling and muttered something in Spanish. Probably praying to the saint of ditzy blondes again for the patience not to strangle this one.

“See, I can explain,” I said, knowing I was gonna have to talk fast to get myself out of this one. “I was going to stay in the room. I really was! But then the latte was so good, and I really needed a change of underwear, and it had been such a long night with the tossing and the turning and the trying not to maul you with my leg stubble. So I went to the New York, New York, and I was just going to be a second, but then Dana told me about the visions, and we had to stop Mom, but we were too late and she’d already zapped Monaldo.”

Ramirez narrowed his eyes at me, that vein in his neck pulsing double time. “Zapped Monaldo?”

I nodded. “Just a little. He should be waking up soon.”

He opened his mouth to say something (which I’m pretty sure involved more naughty words), but was interrupted as the cell phone on his belt chirped to life.

He looked down at the readout. “Shit. Monaldo.”

I gulped, my eyes instinctively going to the hallway where any minute I expected to see a red-faced, jimmylegged mobster with a gun.

“See, I told you he’d be waking up soon,” I said, trying to put a positive spin on things.

Ramirez ignored the comment, instead doing another growl slash glare thing and grabbing me by the arm. He steered me around the bar, carefully avoiding the private offices, and through the maze of mostly empty tables, toward the back of the club.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I stumbled over my feet, trying to keep up with him. “Hey, not all of us have 6′1″ long, I-can-leg-press-a-Buick strides, you know.”

“I am going to convince Monaldo he was not just zapped by some nosy blonde’s mother,” he answered, not slowing his pace any. “And you are going to wait for me. Then I am going to drive you to the airport and personally put you on the first plane back to L.A. Got it?”

“But what about Hank and Bobbi and Lar-”

But Ramirez cut me off, giving me that death look again.

Right. Never mind.

He pushed me ahead of him through a door in the back of the club leading out into a small parking lot behind the building. A handful of cars filled the spaces, mostly second handers spotted with an impressive variety of dents and dings. Two long black Town Cars that I recognized as Monaldo’s preferred method of transportation were parked in the spaces up front. In the back corner of the lot sat Ramirez’s black SUV. He marched me in front of him and unlocked the doors with his remote before shoving me into the backseat.

“You,” he said, pointing a finger at my nose, “stay.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not a puppy, you know.”

His eyes narrowed again. “No, you’re not. You’re a little pain in the ass that’s driving me up a wall. And, by the way, you’re also running precariously close to being hauled downtown for obstruction of justice, assault with a semi-deadly weapon, and pissing off an officer of the law.”

“You made those last two up.”

His eyes narrowed into fine slits. “Don’t try me.”

I gulped. Trust me, trying Bad Cop’s last nerve was not high on my list of to-dos.

“I’m sorry,” I said instead.

His eyes softened just a little, his jaw relaxing as he rubbed one hand over his eyes. “Maddie, you make me crazy, you know that?”