Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich

she hauled out her gun and jogged around the house to secure the back door. I felt comfortable she wouldn't have to shoot anyone because Lula, holding her big Glock, dressed in her Sasquatch boots, poison-green tights, and matching spandex mini skirt, topped off with a shocking-pink rabbit fur jacket, was enough to make a strong man faint.
    I had my cell phone on speaker, clipped to my jacket, the line open. "Are you in place?" I asked Lula.
    "Yep," Lula said from the back of the house.
    I rapped on the front door with my two-pound Maglite. No one answered, so I rapped again, and yelled, "Bond enforcement!"
    "Shit," Lula said on speakerphone. "Turn your head when you do that. You just about busted my eardrum."
    "I'm going in," I told her.
    "Don't exert yourself breaking the door down. The back is open." I heard a gunshot and had a moment of panic.
    "Oops," Lula said. "Ignore that."
    The front was locked, so I waited for Lula to open the door for me. She was smiling wide when she let me in.
    "You're not gonna believe this," she said. "We hit the jackpot on this one. We must have died and gone to heaven, and no one told us."
    I stepped into a small foyer constructed of raw wall-board. A door opened off the foyer, and beyond the door was cannabis. The house was a pot farm. Grow lights, silver reflective walls, fans and vents, and racks and more racks of shelves filled with plants in various stages of growth.
    'Wait until you see the dining room," Lula said. "They got primo shit growing in the dining room."
    I gave her a raised eyebrow.
    "Not that I would know," Lula said.
    "There's weed sticking out of the pockets of your jacket."
    "I gathered some evidence on my way through the house."
    "I assume you didn't see any Hansens?"
    "No, but there's a car back there. And the back door to the house was open. I wouldn't be surprised there's someone hiding in here."
    "Do we have to worry about them getting away in the car?"
    "No. Someone shot a hole in the right front tire."
    I locked and bolted the front door, and Lula and I began working our way through the house.
    "You go first and open the doors, and I'll be behind you with my gun," Lula said. "I'd go first, but it's hard to hold a gun and open a door. I want to be able to concentrate on the gun. It's not like I'm afraid or anything."
    "Just don't shoot me in the back."
    "Have I ever shot you? Honest to goodness, you'd think I didn't know what I was doing." We searched the living room, dining room, and kitchen.
    "At least these boys are neat," Lula said. "They got their empty beer bottles all lined up. Guess that's so they have room in here for planting the little seedlings and weighing and bagging. And they got a nice digital scale here. You could see they put some thought to this." I poked around in the collection of pots and pans and bottles and jars by the stove. "Looks like they have a science experiment going on. Alcohol, coffee filters, ether."
    "These guys are nuts," Lula said. "They're making hash oil. You could turn yourself into a barbecue making that stuff."
    We moved down the hall to the bedrooms. No need to search under beds because there weren't any. Two sleeping bags were thrown against a wall in one of the bedrooms. A television sat on the floor. The closet was filled with clothes. The rest of the room was cannabis.
    "This is kind of cozy," Lula said. "I bet it's like sleeping in the jungle." We checked out the bathroom and the second bedroom. Lots of weed drying out in the second bedroom, but no Hansens.
    "We're missing something," I said to Lula, going back to the kitchen.
    "We opened every door," Lula said. "We looked around all the racks. We looked behind the shower curtain, and we moved the clothes all around in the closet. There's no cellar and no garage and no attic."
    "There's a cup of coffee sitting on the counter, and the coffee is still warm. Someone was in here, and I don't think they had time to leave. You were at the back door, and I was at the front