“If I get arrested and sent to prison, I’m never talking to you again,” I said to Hooker. “Not ever!”

We drove the short distance to Felicia’s house, and Beans got excited the instant we opened Felicia’s front door. His eyes got bright, his nose lifted and twitched, and drool pooled in his mouth and oozed over loose lips.

Hooker leaned into me. “This house reeks of pork barbecue and fried bread. Beans probably thinks he’s arrived at the all-you-can-eat buffet in dog heaven.”

Felicia rushed over to us. “Just in time,” she said. “Everyone’s waiting to meet you. Let me introduce you. This is my cousin Maria. And this is my other cousin Maria. And these are Maria’s two girls. And this is my good neighbor Eddie. And his boy. And my sister Loretta. And this is Joe and Joe’s wife, Lucille. And over there is Marjorie and her husband. They’re big fans. And you already know my daughter and Sister Marie Elena and Lily.”

Beans was jumping around like a rabbit, going nuts over the food smells and the mix of people. I had the leash shortened and wrapped around my wrist, and he was yanking me forward, gaining inches in his quest to get to the pork.

Hooker was chatting and signing autographs. No help there. I dug my heels in and leaned back, but Beans had me outweighed, dragging me toward the dining room in unrelenting determination. I reached out, snagged Hooker by the waistband on his jeans, and held tight.

“Darlin’,” Hooker said, wrapping an arm around me. “You’re gonna have to wait your turn.”

“It’s your darn dog!”

Beans made a lunge at a round little lady carrying a bowl of beans and sausage, planting his two front feet squarely on her back. They went down to the ground with a woof from Beans and an oouf from the woman, food flying everywhere. Beans flopped on top of the woman and snarfed up the sausage that had landed in her hair.

Hooker muscled Beans off the woman, grabbed her under the armpits, and dragged her to her feet. “Sorry,” he said to the woman. “He gets playful.”

“He should be in a zoo,” she said, brushing at the sauce on her shirt. “What is he? He looks like a Yak dog. Like a Chewbacca.” She felt on top of her head. “What’s this goo in my hair?”

It was a glob of dog drool.

“Must be from the casserole,” I told her, luring Beans away with a roll.

“Everybody come eat before the food gets cold,” Felicia said.

Felicia had her table extended to maximum capacity, and we fit around it cheek by jowl, with a couple kids sitting on parents’ laps. Every inch of table was covered with bowls of food…rice, beans, fried bread, pork barbecue, sweet potatoes, fruit casseroles, chicken, and who-knows-what.

Maria passed a platter of fried sweet-potato cakes. “How about that Mexican race-car man who got killed? It’s all that’s on the news.” She turned to Hooker. “Did you know him?”

“Only in passing.”

“I heard he was ripped apart by a man-eating swamp monster.”

Hooker and I glanced under the table at Beans. He was making sloppy wet snorking sounds, licking his privates.

“Lucky bastard,” Hooker whispered. “Every time I try to do that, I throw my back out.”

“I don’t know how that swamp monster got to South Beach,” Loretta said. “I get goose bumps thinking about it.”

“Yeah, and how’d the swamp monster get all that plastic wrap? What’d he do, go rob a Winn-Dixie? Personally, I don’t think it was a swamp monster,” Maria said.

“So what do you think?” Loretta asked.

“Werewolf.”

“How’s the werewolf gonna get the plastic wrap?”

“Simple,” Maria said. “He eats the guy, only the guy’s too big to finish up in one meal. There’s a lot left over, right? So when the sun comes up, the werewolf turns into a human, and the human goes to the store and buys the plastic wrap and wraps the guy so he stays fresh.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Loretta said.

Felicia made the sign of the cross and passed the fried bread.

“If he wrapped him up to keep him fresh, then why did he leave him at the restaurant?” Lily asked.

“Changed his mind,” Maria said. “Maybe the werewolf got indigestion. Like when I eat too many chiles and I get heartburn.”

Felicia’s husband opened another bottle of wine. “It wasn’t a werewolf. There wasn’t a full moon. Werewolves need a full moon.”

“Are you sure they need a full moon?” Maria asked. “I thought they only needed a piece of the moon. How much of the moon was showing when this guy was killed? Anybody know?”

“I’ll show you a moon,” Luis said. “Anybody want to see a moon?”

“No,” everyone said. No one wanted to see Luis’s moon.

Two hours later we were still at the table, and Hooker and I were antsy to get back to the warehouse. Hard to relax when the hauler was sitting there beside a mound of scrap metal that used to be two race cars.

“This has been great,” I said to Felicia, “but Hooker and I need to get back to work.”

“What about dessert?” Felicia wanted to know. “I haven’t brought dessert out yet.”

“We’ll be back later for dessert.” A lot later.

“Should I come with you?” Gobbles asked.

Gobbles had been tending bar and looked like he’d been drinking more than serving.

“Going to leave you here, buddy,” Hooker said. “Some body needs to stick around and protect the homestead.”

“That’s me,” Gobbles said. “I’m the homestead protectorer.”

Turns out you work a lot slower when you’re full of pork and fried bread. It was close to ten o’clock and I was struggling with the last large piece of metal when Felicia opened the side door and peeked in at us.

“It’s me,” she said. “I brought you dessert, but I’m afraid to come in and get jumped on by the doggie.”

“It’s okay,” Hooker said. “He’s sleeping in the lounge in the hauler. It’s past his bedtime.”

It was past my bedtime, too. Taking a car apart is hard physical labor, and I was exhausted.

Hooker closed the door to the lounge and went to help Felicia. She was carrying two grocery bags and had a newspaper tucked under her arm.

“I brought the paper,” she said. “It has a big story about the dead guy. I didn’t know if you saw it.”

“Does it say he was killed by a swamp monster?” Hooker asked.

“No. It says the medical examiner believes the man was attacked by a large dog. And that he was already dead when the dog attacked him.”

“Time to get out of Dodge,” Hooker said.

I agreed, but we couldn’t leave before cleaning house.

“What’s this?” Felicia said. “What’s this pile of stuff?”

“Car parts,” Hooker told her.

“Are you making a car?”

“No,” he said. “We unmade a car. Now we have to get rid of the parts.”

Felicia was pulling containers out of the bag and setting them on a toolbox. “That’s a lot of parts. How are you going to get rid of them?”

“Dump truck,” Hooker said.

“You got one?”

“Not yet.”

The last thing to come out of the bag was a thermos of coffee and two cups. “I know someone who has a dump truck,” Felicia said. “Rosa’s uncle owns a junkyard. Sells scrap metal. He’s got a nice big dump truck.” Felicia had her purse on her arm. She took her cell phone out of her purse and punched in a number. “You eat your dessert, and I’ll get the dump truck,” Felicia said.

“We can’t have anyone else involved in this,” Hooker said.

“Don’t worry. We keep it nice and quiet.”

I poured the coffee and Hooker and I laid waste to the dessert. Bananas drenched in rum, some kind of fruitcake smothered in whipped cream, fried dough balls coated with cinnamon sugar, a chocolate cake that had obviously been soaked in booze, an assortment of little cookies, and some sort of parfait that was crumble cake, fruit, whipped cream, and liquor.

“This is the first time I’ve ever gotten buzzed from dessert,” I told Hooker. “My life is dirt, but I’m suddenly feeling very happy.”