I stopped at a deli on lower Stark, and Lula made a sandwich run while I took a call from Briggs.
“I need to go food shopping,” Briggs said.
“And?”
“I haven’t got a car.”
“Do you have feet?”
“Yeah, but there aren’t any supermarkets nearby, and I can’t carry a whole lot anyway. I swear this is the last favor I’ll ever ask of you. Ever, ever, ever.”
I dropped Lula at the office and picked Briggs up at the back door of my apartment building. He’d cleaned himself up as best he could, but his hair was singed, his face looked sunburned, and he still smelled slightly of smoking rubber.
“I just need some basic things,” Briggs said. “And I want a bottle of wine.”
“There’s a liquor store next to Shop and Bag.”
“This is a really nice car,” he said. “I like riding in it. These seats are real leather, too. Do you get it on with Ranger in this car?”
“Ranger isn’t my boyfriend. Ranger and I have a professional relationship.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play hide the salami once in a while.”
I punched XM Radio on, tuned in to an electronic dance station, and turned the volume up. Ten minutes later I swung into the Shop and Bag strip mall parking lot.
“You work on your grocery list, and I’ll get the wine,” I said. “What kind of wine do you want?”
“I want a cabernet. California is okay. And get me a Russian River pinot noir.”
“Sure. What’s your price point? Do you want something in a box or in a bottle?”
“How about you get the food and I’ll get the wine,” Briggs said.
I took his shopping list and looked it over. Seemed simple enough. Bread, milk, cereal, butter, coffee, some deli meat, cookies, and cheese. I added a bag of chips, a frozen pizza, a jar of peanut butter for me, and a chew toy for Bob. I was at the checkout when an explosion rattled the store windows. I left my shopping cart and ran outside. Black smoke billowed off a flaming inferno, and people were running toward something lying in the parking lot.
“Briggs,” I said on a sigh. “And Ranger’s Porsche.”
A couple people got Briggs to his feet and walked him away from the fire toward the store. I met them halfway.
“What happened?” I asked Briggs.
“Boom,” Briggs said. His eyes were glazed, and his hair was smoking. “Big boom.”
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “How do I look?”
“You look good,” I told him.
That was a lie. He looked like an overcooked marshmallow. The one that got dropped into the fire and retrieved and was all sooty.
“Yeah,” he said. “I feel okay. Did you get the cookies?”
“Yeah, I got cookies.”
“I think the wine got blown up.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll get more wine. Maybe you should sit down over there by the store.”
“It went boom,” Briggs said. “There was a big boom.”
I stayed with Briggs until the paramedics came and checked him out. He had some superficial burns and scrapes, but he was basically okay. I went back inside the store, paid for my groceries, and returned to Briggs with the bag of cookies.