Book 16 in the Stephanie Plum series, 2010

Thanks to Laura A. Koppe for suggesting the title for this book.

MY UNCLE PIP died and left me his lucky bottle. I suppose I’m fortunate, because he left my Grandma Mazur his false teeth. So I’ve got this bottle now, and I don’t exactly know what to do with it. It’s not like I have a mantel. My name is Stephanie Plum, and I live in a bare-bones apartment on the outer edge of Trenton, New Jersey. I share the apartment with my hamster, Rex, and he doesn’t know what to do with the bottle, either. The lucky bottle is the size and shape of a beer bottle. The glass is red, and it looks hand blown. It’s not entirely ugly, especially if you like beer, but it’s also not exotically pretty. And so far, it hasn’t been very lucky. I have the bottle sitting on my kitchen counter, between Rex’s hamster cage and the brown bear cookie jar that holds my gun. It was Monday morning, halfway through June, and Lula was in my apartment doing a pity pick up because my hunk-of-junk car was dead and I needed a ride to work.

“Hunh,” Lula said. “What’s that red bottle on your counter?”

“It’s my lucky bottle.”

“Oh yeah, what’s so lucky about it? It don’t look too lucky to me. Looks like one of them designer beer bottles, only it’s got a fancy glass stopper in it.”

“It’s my inheritance from Uncle Pip.”

“I remember Uncle Pip,” Lula said. “He was older than dirt, right? Had a big carbuncle on his forehead. He was the one wandered out of the senior complex a couple weeks ago during that thunderstorm, pissed on a downed electric wire, and electrocuted himself.”

“Yep. That was Uncle Pip.”

I’m a bond enforcement agent, working for my cousin Vinnie, and Lula is the office file clerk, wheelman, and fashion maven. Lula likes the challenge of fitting her plussize body into a size 8 poison green spandex miniskirt and leopard-print top, and somehow it all comes together for Lula. Lula’s skin is milk chocolate, her hair this week is fire-engine red, and her attitude is pure Jersey.