08bis Visions of Sugar Plums by Janet Evanovich Page A

it up for you. What's the address?"
    "I'm not telling you. I don't want to lose the job." And he hung up.
    I looked over at Diesel. "When the car in front of us stops and Briggs gets out, I want you to run over him."
    "I'd really like to do that, but then he'd probably be dead and we couldn't follow him to work tomorrow."
    I glanced at the almost empty bag of food sitting between my feet, and I had an idea.
    "What does Elaine do with all her cookies?" I asked Diesel.
    "Is this a trick question?"
    "She said she bakes cookies every day. Lots of cookies, if yesterday's batch was any indicator. So what does she do with them? They don't have family in the area. Sandy wasn't at home. Does she eat them all herself?"
    "Maybe she gives them away."
    "Turn around," I said. "Go back to the employment place."
    It took less than five minutes for us to get back to the storefront office. "Wait here," I said. "I'll only be a minute." I jumped out of the car, ran across the street and into the office. It was still wall-to-wall little people but now the little people were all wearing fake elf ears. I was about ten feet into the fake elves when I realized the room had gone dead silent.
    "Hi," I said brightly. "I saw the sign in the window, and I'd like to apply for a job."
    "You're too big," someone said behind me. "These jobs are for elves."
    "That's not fair," I said. "I could report you for height discrimination." I wasn't sure exactly who was in charge of height discrimination, but it seemed like there should be some agency somewhere that would address the issue. I mean, where are the protections for the masses? Where are the protections for people who are average?
    "We don't want your kind here," someone else said. "Get out."
    "My kind?"
    "Big and stupid."
    "Hey! Listen to me, shorty—"
    A cookie came flying through the air and hit me in the back of the head. I looked down at the cookie. Gingerbread!
    "Where'd this cookie come from?" I asked. "Do you have any more? Did Sandy's sister, Elaine, make this cookie?"
    "Get her!" someone yelled, and I was hit with a barrage of cookies. They were coming from everywhere. Gingerbread, peanut butter, chocolate macaroons. The elves were berserk, yelling and swarming around me. I was hit in the forehead with an iced butter cookie, and someone bit me in the back of the leg. I had elves hanging on me like ticks on a dog.
    I felt Diesel come up hard to my back. He wrapped his arm around me, holding me tight against him, and he hauled me out of there with my feet two inches off the ground. He was kicking elves out of the way as he went, occasionally grabbing one by the shirt and throwing him across the room. He got to the sidewalk, rammed the office door closed, and did his magical locking thing, trapping the elves inside.
    Contorted little elf faces smushed up against the large glass windows, glaring out at us, yelling elf threats, their pudgy little elf middle fingers extended. Inside, the room was a wreck. Tables and chairs were overturned, and cookies were smashed everywhere.
    Diesel set me on my feet, took me by the hand, and yanked me to the car. "What the hell was that about?" he asked. "I've never seen anything like it. A whole room filled with pissed-off little people. It was fucking frightening."
    "I think they were elves. Did you see their ears?"
    "Their ears were fake," Diesel said.
    I slid onto the passenger seat and a sigh escaped. "I know. I just don't want to have to tell anyone I was attacked by a horde of angry little people. A horde of angry elves sounds better, somehow."
    A fake elf smashed through the plate-glass door with a fire ax, and Diesel took off.
    "Did you see the cookies?" I asked him. "They looked just like Elaine's cookies."
    "Honey, all cookies look alike."
    "Yes, but they might have been Elaine's cookies."
    My cell phone chirped. "I'm at the mall," Valerie said, "and I need help. I can't remember everything that was on Mary Alice's list. I got her the Barbie, the