“You’re gonna have to get out of the car and come with me,” Lula said. “You’re the one with the lucky bottle. And besides, I’m not getting back behind the wheel until we do this. And I’m gonna hold my breath, too.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” I said, unsnapping my seat belt. I got out of the car, slammed the door, and stomped into the store.

“We want lottery tickets,” Lula said to the clerk. “Here’s our borrowed twenty, which is okay because we got a lucky bottle. And we haven’t got time for the Powerball. We’re gonna take those five-dollar scratch things.”

Lula took her tickets and stepped back and started scratching. Nothing on the first ticket. Nothing on the second ticket. Nothing on the third ticket.

“This is it,” Lula said. “I can feel it. This here’s the lucky ticket.” She scratched the ticket and shrieked. “I won! I won! I knew I’d win. What did I tell you?”

I looked over her shoulder. “How much did you win?”

“Ten dollars.”

“I don’t want to rain on your parade, but you spent twenty to win ten.”

“Yeah, but I won. We need more money, now that we’re on a roll. This is just the beginning.”

“We haven’t got more money.”

“Chopper has money. His wallet was full of money. We just need to borrow more.”

“No!”

“Yeah, but how are we going to pay him back if we don’t borrow more?”

“I’ll mail it to him,” I said.

Lula handed her lottery ticket in and got her ten dollars.

“Hold on,” Lula said. “I need a cookie. I got a cookie craving.” Lula went to the cookie aisle and came back with a bunch of bags and boxes.

“That’s twelve-fifty,” the clerk said.

Lula looked at me.

I blew out a sigh, dug into my purse, and came up with two dollars and change.

“Now we can celebrate our winnings,” Lula said.

We took our cookies and went back to the Firebird.

“What the heck?” Lula said.

No Chopper.

“Did we put him in the trunk and I forgot?” Lula asked.

“He’s on foot, probably trying to get back to his car. Maybe we can catch him.”

Lula peeled out of the lot and drove the two blocks to Meat & Go. The black Lexus SUV was gone.

“Yeah, but you gotta look on the bright side,” Lula said. “We won the lottery.”

I took a package of Hostess Snowballs out of the plastic bag and stuffed one into my mouth.

“See if you can find him,” I said to Lula.

We cruised the other lunch locations, and Lula did a loop past Chopper’s apartment. No Lexus SUV parked there, either. He was most likely somewhere getting my cuffs removed.

“No disrespect intended. And I don’t mean to blaspheme your bottle. But I’m starting to think it sucks as a lucky bottle,” Lula said.

I was glad she felt that way, because between the bottle and my Smith & Wesson, my shoulder bag was giving me a neck cramp. I’d be more than happy to leave them home tomorrow.