"Yeah, you got a lot to choose from. You ready to do this?"

I gave her a thumbs-up, and 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 its 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 door. We checked the windows. No one went out through a window."

Lula cut her eyes to the cupboard over the counter.

"Maybe he left just before we got here. You know, lucky coincidence for him."

"Yeah," I said, cuffs in one hand, stun gun in the other, attention focused on the cupboard. "That could be it."

Lula stepped back and two-handed the Glock, aiming it at the cupboard. I reached up and opened one of the doors. And Stewart Hansen tumbled out, crashing onto the counter, sending the science experiment flying. He flopped off the counter onto the floor and scrambled like a cat on black ice-legs moving but no intelligent forward motion.

In the excitement of the moment, Lula squeezed off a shot that went wide of Hansen but knocked out the ether bottle. The liquid splashed onto the gas stove, and we were all paralyzed for a moment.

"Pilot light," Hansen said.

We all dove for the back door, and I think I was in the air when the explosion occurred. Or maybe it was the explosion that threw me out of the house.

"Holy crap," Hansen said.

He was on the ground next to me, and Lula was on her back, skirt up to her neck, next to him.

"Who shot that bottle?" Lula said. "It wasn't me, was it?"

I clapped the cuffs on Hansen, and we all took a bunch of steps backward.

"Anyone else in the house?" I asked Hansen.

"No. I was alone."

We watched the fire rush through the house. It was like a brush fire, and almost instantly the whole house was burning, and clouds of pot smoke were billowing out over the Burg. Sirens were screaming in the distance, and the three of us leaned against Hansen's car and sucked it all in while tiny pieces of cannabis ash sifted down around us.

"This is good shit," Hansen said, taking a deep breath.

"Smells like you had some Hawaii 5-0," Lula said. "Not that I'd know."

I looked down to make sure my toes weren't smoking. "Maybe we should move back a little."

We all scurried to Hansen's rear boundary.

"This is pretty funny," Lula said. "We burned down a house." And Lula started laughing.

Hansen was laughing too. "Probably a million dollars' worth of grass in that house," Hansen said. "Up in smoke."

I was laughing so hard I tipped over and found myself on the ground. "Look at me," I said. "I can make snow angels."

"I'm getting wet," Lula said. "Is it raining?"

Sounds carried from the front of the house. The rumble of the fire truck engines and the crackle and squawk of police band radios.

"I am so fucking hungry," Lula said. "I need chips. I'd fucking kill for chips."

A black SUV slid to a stop behind Hansen's car. Tank left the car and walked toward us. "I've got her," he said into his walkie. "She's in the back with Lula."

Rangers Cayenne pulled in behind the SUV. Ranger got out, scooped me up off the ground, and held me close.

"I was afraid you were in the house," Ranger said. "Are you all right?"

"I got blown out of it," I told him. "And then it started raining."

"Its not rain. It's from the fire hoses on the other side of the house." He pulled back a little and looked at me. "Babe, you're high as a kite."

"Yes! And you are so cute."

Ranger put me in the Cayenne and handed Hansen and Lula over to Tank. We drove the length of the alley and turned onto Chambersburg Street.

"You're always so quiet," I said to Ranger. "What's with that?"

Ranger didn't move, but I suspected he was rolling his eyes.

"Well?" I said.

"I like quiet."

"Quiet, quiet, quiet," I said; And I gave Ranger a shot to the arm.

"Don't do that," Ranger said.

I gave him another shot.