Four to Score

3

KENNY GAVE ME a shot to the shoulder that knocked me back a couple of feet. "Is that true, what Terry said? Are you a bounty hunter?"

"Hey!" I said. "Keep your hands off me."

He gave me another whack that had me against the wall. "Maybe you need to be taught a lesson not to mess with Kenny."

"Maybe you need to be taught a lesson not to jump bail." I had my hand in my bag, and I couldn't find the lousy defense spray, so I hauled out a can of extra-hold hair spray and let him have it square in the face.

"Yeow," Kenny yelped, jumping back, hands to his face. "You bitch, I'll get you for this. I'll . . ." He took his hands away. "Hey, wait a minute. What is this shit?"

Terry's smile widened. "You've been hair-sprayed, Kenny."

The little girl and an older woman hustled down the hall.

"What's going on?" the woman wanted to know.

An old man appeared. Vito Grizolli, looking like he'd walked off the set of The Godfather.

"Kenny's been hair-sprayed," Terry told everyone. "He put up a pretty good fight, but he just didn't have the muscle to stand up to extra hold."

The mother turned on me. "You did this to my boy?"

I tried not to sigh, but one escaped anyway. Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed. "I'm a bond enforcement officer," I told her. "I work for Vincent Plum. Your son failed to appear in court, and now I need to bring him in to reschedule and have his case reviewed."

Mrs. Martin sucked in air and faced-off at Kenny. "You did that? You didn't go to court? What's the matter with you? Don't you know anything?"

"It's all bullshit," Kenny said.

Mrs. Martin smacked him on the side of the head. "You watch your language!"

"And how is this to dress?" she said to me. "If you were my daughter I wouldn't let you out of the house."

I scrambled away before she could smack me, too.

"Kids," Vito Grizolli said. "What's happening to this world?"

From a man who had people killed on a regular basis.

He shook his finger at Kenny. "You should have kept your court date. You do this like a man. You go with her now, and you let the lawyers do their job."

"I got hair spray in my eye," Kenny said. "It's watering. I need a doctor."

I held the back door open for him. "Don't be such a big baby," I said. "I get hair spray in my eyes all the time."

Ranger was waiting under the canopy. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and black assault pants tucked into black boots. He had a body like Schwarzenegger, dark hair slicked back off his face and a two-hundred-watt smile. He was drop-dead sexy, he was as sane as Batman, and he was a primo bounty hunter.

He gave me all two hundred watts. "Nice touch with the hair spray."

"Don't start."

* * * * *

MONDAY MORNING I woke up feeling restless. I wanted to move on Maxine Nowicki, but I was stalled on the clue. I looked at the note again and felt frustration gnawing at me. Sally Sweet hadn't returned my call. I was itching to call him again, but it was eight o'clock, and I thought it was possible drag queens weren't early risers.

I was on my second cup of coffee when the phone rang.

"It's me," Sally said.

I read the note over the phone, letter by letter.

Silence.

"Sally?"

"I'm thinking. I'm thinking. I've been up all night, looking sexy, shaking my ass. It isn't easy, you know."

I could hear yelling in the background. "What's going on?"

"It's Sugar. He's got breakfast all made."

"Sugar makes your breakfast?"

"I'm on the phone with Stephanie," Sally yelled back.

"Boy, I don't have anyone make breakfast for me."

"What you have to do is live with a gay guy," Sally said. "They're into this cooking shit."

Something to think about.

"I don't want to rush your breakfast," I said. "I'll be home for another hour, then I'm going to the office. When you figure it out you can call me at the office, or you can leave a message on my machine."

"Ten four, kemosabe."

I took a shower and dressed for another scorcher day. I gave Rex fresh water and some hamster food, which he didn't deem worthy to so much as sniff at.

I slung my black leather tote over my shoulder, locked up and took the stairs to the lobby. Outside, the blacktop was steaming, and the sun was beginning to throb in a murky sky. I played Savage Garden all the way to the office and arrived psyched because I'd had good traffic karma, sailing through the lights.

Connie was bent over a file when I walked in. Her black hair was teased high around her face like a movie set that was all facade. Everything up front and nothing in the back. Killer hair as long as she didn't turn around.

"If you want to talk to the man, he isn't in," she said.

Lula popped up from behind a bank of file cabinets. "He's doin' a nooner with a goat today. I saw it on his calendar."

"So how's it going?" Connie asked. "Any action on the Nowicki thing?"

I passed a copy of the note to Connie and Lula. "I have a message from her that's written in some kind of code."

"Lose me," Lula said. "Code isn't one of my specialties."

Connie sunk two teeth into a heavily lipsticked lower lip. "Maybe the numbers are really letters."

"I thought of that, but I couldn't get it to work."

We all stared at the note for a while.

"Might not mean anything," Lula finally said. "Might be a joke."

I nodded. Joke note was a possibility.

"I helped Ranger with an apprehension yesterday," I said. "Kenny Martin."

Connie gave a low laugh. "Vito Grizolli's nephew? Bet that was fun."

"There was a woman with him that I can't place. I know I've seen her before, but it keeps slipping away from me."

"What'd she look like?"

"Slim, pretty, short blond hair. He called her Terry."

"Terry Gilman," Connie said. "Used to be Terry Grizolli. Was married to Billy Gilman for about six hours and kept his name."

"Terry Grizolli! That was Terry Grizolli?" Terry Grizolli was two years older than me and had been linked with Joe Morelli all through high school. She'd been voted prom queen and had created a school scandal by choosing Joe as her escort. After graduation, she'd gone on to become a professional cheerleader for the New York Giants. "I haven't seen her in years," I said. "What's she doing now? Is she still a cheerleader?"

"Rumor has it she's working for Vito. She has a lot of money and no discernible job."

"You telling me she's like a wise guy?"

"Affirmative action," Connie said.

The front door opened, and we all turned to look. Lula was the first to find her voice. "Killer earring."

It was a parrot swinging on a gold hoop that was looped through one of Sally's ears.

"Got it at the shore," he said. "You buy a pair of thong briefs and they throw in the earring." He made a grab at his ass and hiked himself up. "Christ, I don't know how they wear these thong things. They're giving me hemorrhoids."

He was minus the Farrah wig, and his own hair was a mess of dark brown corkscrew strands. Sort of Rasta without the dreds. He was wearing cut-off denims, a white T-shirt, red clogs and was freshly manicured with silver polish.

"This is Sally Sweet," I told Connie and Lula.

"I bet," Lula said.

Sally handed me the translation of the coded message and looked around. "I thought there'd be wanted posters on the walls and gun racks filled with shotguns."

"This isn't Dodge City," Lula said. "We got some class here. We keep the guns in the back room with the pervert."

I read the note. " 'One-thirty-two Howser Street. Under the bench.' That's Maxine's mother's address."

Sally slouched onto the couch. "When I was a kid I watched reruns of Steve McQueen. Now he was a bounty hunter."

"Damn skippy," Lula said. "He was the shit."

"So now what?" Sally wanted to know. "We going to Howser Street?"

Foreboding sliced into my stomach. We?

Lula slammed her file drawer shut. "Hold on. You're not going off without me! Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose you need a big full-figure woman like me to help straighten things out?"

I like Lula a lot, but last time we worked together I gained seven pounds and almost got arrested for shooting a guy who was already dead.

"I'm going to Howser Street," I said. "Only me. One person. Steve McQueen worked alone."

"I don't mean to be insulting," Lula said, "but you ain't no Steve McQueen. And something happens you'll be happy I'm around. Besides, this'll be fun . . . the two of us working on a case together again."

"Three of us," Sally said. "I'm going, too."

"Oh boy," Lula said. "The three muffkateers."

* * * * *

LULA GAVE THE NOWICKI HOUSE the once-over. "Don't appear like Maxine's mama spends much time spiffing up the old homestead."

We were in Lula's Firebird with Sally in the backseat doing air guitar to Lula's rap music. Lula cut the engine, the music stopped, and Sally snapped to attention.

"Looks kind of spooky," Sally said. "You guys have guns, right?"

"Wrong," I said. "We don't need guns to retrieve a clue."

"Well, this is fucking disappointing. I figured you'd kick the door down and blast yourselves into the house. You know, rough up some people."

"You want to cut down on the breakfast drugs," Lula said to Sally. "You keep going like this all your nose hairs are gonna fall out."

I unbuckled my seat belt. "There's a little wooden bench on the front porch. With any luck, we won't have to go in the house."

We crossed the patchy lawn, and Lula tested the bottom porch step, pausing when it groaned under her weight. She moved to the next step and picked her way around floorboards that were obviously rotted.

Sally tiptoed behind her. Clonk, clonk, clonk with his clogs. Not exactly the stealth transvestite.

They each took an end of the bench and flipped it over.

No note stuck to the bottom.

"Maybe it blew away," Lula said.

There wasn't a stray breath of air in all of Jersey, but we checked the surroundings anyway, the three of us fanning out, covering the yard.

No note.

"Hunh," Lula said. "We been given the runaround."

There was a crawl space under the porch, enclosed with wooden lattice. I dropped to hands and knees and squinted through the lattice. "The note said 'under the bench.' It could have meant under the porch, under the bench." I jogged to the car and retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment. I returned to the porch, scrunched low and flashed the beam around the dirt floor. Sure enough, there was a glass jar directly under the part of the porch that supported the bench.

Two yellow eyes caught in the light, held for a second, and skittered away.

"Do you see it?" Lula wanted to know.

"Yep."

"Well?"

"There are eyes under there. Little beady yellow ones. And spiders. Lots of spiders."

Lula gave an involuntary shiver.

Sally made another adjustment on his thong.

"I'd go get it, but a big woman like me wouldn't fit," Lula said. "Sure is a shame it isn't just a little roomier."

"I think you'd fit."

"Nope, unh ah, I know I wouldn't fit."

I considered the spiders. "I might not fit, either."

"I'd fit," Sally said, "but I'm not doing it. I paid twenty bucks for this manicure, and I'm not fucking it up crawling under some rat-infested porch."

I hunkered down for another look. "Maybe we can stick a rake in there and pull the jar out."

"Nuh ah," Lula said. "A rake isn't gonna be big enough. You gotta go in from the end here, and it's too far away. Where you gonna get a rake anyway?"

"We can ask Mrs. Nowicki."

"Oh yeah," Lula said. "From the looks of this lawn she does lots of gardening." Lula stood on tiptoes and looked in a window on the side of the house. "Probably not even home. Seems like she'd be out by now what with us up on her porch and all." Lula moved to another window and pressed her nose to the glass. "Uh oh."

"What uh oh?" I hated uh oh.

"You'd better look at this."

Sally and I trotted over and pressed our noses to the glass.

Mrs. Nowicki was stretched out on the kitchen floor. She had a bloody towel wrapped around the top of her head, and an empty bottle of Jim Beam was on the floor beside her. She was wearing a cotton nightgown, and her bare feet were splayed toes out.

"Looks to me like dead city," Lula said. "You want a rake, you better get it yourself."

I knocked on the window. "Mrs. Nowicki!"

Mrs. Nowicki didn't move a muscle.

"Think this must have just happened," Lula said. "If she'd laid there for any amount of time in this heat she'd be swelled up big as a beach ball. She'd have burst apart. There'd be guts and maggots all over the place."

"I hate to miss seeing the guts and maggots," Sally said. "Maybe we should come back in a couple hours."

I turned from the window and headed for the car. "We need to call the police."

Lula was on my heels. "Hold the phone on the we part. Those police people give me the hives."

"You're not a hooker anymore. You don't have to worry about the police."

"One of them traumatic emotional things," Lula said.

Ten minutes later, two blue-and-whites angled to the curb behind me. Carl Costanza emerged from the first car, looked at me and shook his head. I'd known Carl since grade school. He was always the skinny kid with the bad haircut and wise mouth. He'd bulked up some in the last few years, and he'd found a good barber. He still had the wise mouth, but under it all, he was a decent person and a pretty good cop.

"Another dead body?" Carl asked. "What are you going for, a record? Most bodies found by an individual in the city of Trenton?"

"She's on the kitchen floor. We haven't been in the house. The door is locked."

"How do you know she's on the floor if the door is locked?"

"I was sort of looking in the window, and . . ."

Carl held up his hand. "Don't tell me. I don't want to hear this. Sorry I asked."

The cop in the second car had gone to the side window and was standing there, hands on gun belt. "She's on the floor all right," he said, peering in. He rapped on the window. "Hey, lady!" He turned to us and narrowed his eyes against the sun. "Looks dead to me."

Carl went to the front door and knocked. "Mrs. Nowicki? It's the police." He knocked louder. "Mrs. Nowicki, we're coming in." He gave the door a good shot with his fist, the rotted molding splintered off, and the door swung open.

I followed Carl into the kitchen and watched while he stooped over Mrs. Nowicki, feeling for a pulse, looking for a sign of life.

There were more bloody towels in the sink and a bloody paring knife on the counter. My first thought had been gunshot, but there were no guns in sight and no sign of struggle.

"You better call this in for the ME," Carl said to the second cop. "I don't know exactly what we've got here."

Sally and Lula had taken positions against the wall.

"What do you think?" Lula asked Carl.

Carl shrugged. "Nothing much. She looks pretty dead."

Lula nodded. "That what I thought, too. Soon as I saw her I said to myself, Hell, that woman's dead."

The second cop disappeared to make the call, and Lula inched closer to Mrs. Nowicki. "What do you think happened to her? I bet she fell and hit her head, and then she wrapped her head in a towel and croaked."

That sounded reasonable to me . . . except for the paring knife with blood and pieces of hair stuck to it.

Lula bent at the waist and examined the towel, wrapped turban style. "Must have been a good clonk she took. Lots of blood."

Usually when people die their bodies evacuate and the smell gets bad fast. Mrs. Nowicki didn't smell dead. Mrs. Nowicki smelled like Jim Beam.

Carl and I were both registering this oddity, looking at each other sideways when Mrs. Nowicki opened one eye and fixed it on Lula.

"YOW!" Lula yelled, jumping back a foot, knocking into Sally. "Her eye popped open!"

"The better to see you with," Mrs. Nowicki rasped out, alto voiced, one pack short of lung cancer.

Carl stepped into Mrs. Nowicki's line of sight. "We thought you were dead."

"Not yet, honey," Mrs. Nowicki said. "But I'll tell you, I have one hell of a headache." She raised a shaky hand and felt the towel. "Oh, yeah, now I remember."

"What happened?"

"It was an accident. I was trying to cut my hair, and my hand slipped, and I gave myself a little nick. It was bleeding some, so I wrapped my head in a towel and took a few medicinal hits from the bottle." She struggled to sit. "Don't exactly know what happened after that."

Lula had her hand on her hip. "Looks to me like you drained the bottle and passed out. Think you took one too many of them medicinal hits."

"Looks to me like she didn't take enough," Sally murmured. "I liked her better dead."

"I need a cigarette," Mrs. Nowicki said. "Anybody got a cigarette?"

I could hear cars pulling up outside and footsteps in the front room. The second uniform came in, followed by a suit.

"She isn't dead," Carl explained.

"Maybe she used to be," Lula said. "Maybe she's one of them living dead."

"Maybe you're one of them nut cases," Mrs. Nowicki said.

Lights from an EMS truck flashed outside, and two paramedics wandered into the kitchen.

I eased my way out the door, to the porch and onto the lawn. I didn't especially want to be there when they unwound the towel.

"I don't know about you," Lula said, "but I'm ready to leave this party."

I didn't have a problem with that. Carl knew where to find me if there were questions. Didn't look like there was anything criminal here, anyway. Drunken lush slices scalp with a paring knife and passes out. Probably happens all the time.

We piled into the Firebird and hauled ass back to the office. I said good-bye to Lula and Sally, slid behind the wheel of my CRX and motored home. When things calmed down I'd go back with some sort of long-handled mechanism for retrieving the bottle. I didn't want to explain to the cops about the clues.

In the meantime, there were a few phone calls I could make. I'd only gotten partially through Eddie Kuntz's list. It wouldn't hurt to run through the rest of the names.

Mrs. Williams, one of my neighbors, was in the lobby when I swung through the doors. "I've got a terrible ringing in my ears," she said. "And I'm having a dizzy spell."

Another neighbor, Mrs. Balog, was standing next to Mrs. Williams, checking her mailbox. "It's the hardening of the arteries. Evelyn Krutchka on the third floor has it something awful. I heard her arteries are just about turned to stone."

Most of the people in my building were seniors. There were a couple of single mothers with babies, Ernie Wall and his girlfriend, May, and one other woman my age, who only spoke Spanish. We were the segment of society on fixed incomes or incomes of dubious reliability. We weren't interested in tennis or sitting at poolside. For the most part we were a quiet, peaceful group, armed to the teeth for no good reason, violent only when a premium parking slot was at stake.

I took the stairs to the second floor, hoping they'd have some effect on the pie I'd had for breakfast. I let myself into my apartment and made an instant left turn into the kitchen. I stuck my head in the refrigerator and pushed things around some, searching for the perfect lunch. After a few minutes of this I decided on a hard-boiled egg and a banana.

I sat at my dining room table, which is actually in a little alcove off my living room, and I ate my egg and started on the list of names and businesses Kuntz had given me. I dialed Maxine's cleaner first. No, they hadn't seen her lately. No, she didn't have any clothes to pick up. I called my cousin Marion, who worked at Maxine's bank, and asked about recent transactions. No new postings, Marion said. The most recent transaction was two weeks ago when she withdrew three hundred dollars from the outside ATM.

Last name on the list was a 7-Eleven in north Trenton, a quarter mile from Eddie Kuntz and Mama Nowicki. The night manager had just come on when I called. She said a woman meeting Maxine's description had been in the night before. She remembered the woman because she was a regular. It had been late at night and store traffic had been slow. The woman had been chatty and had relieved the tedium.

I stuffed Maxine's photo into my shoulder bag and took off for the 7-Eleven to confirm the identification. I parked nose-in to the curb at the front of the store and stared beyond the plate glass windows to the register. There were four men in line. Three still in suits, looking rumpled from the heat and the workday. By the time I made my way through the door, there were two men left. I waited for them to complete their business before introducing myself to the woman behind the counter.

She extended her hand. "Helen Badijian. I'm the night manager. We spoke on the phone."

Her brown hair was plaited in a single braid that reached to her shoulder blades, and her face was devoid of makeup with the exception of eyes lined in smudgy black liner. "I didn't get it straight on the phone," Helen said. "Are you with the police?"

I usually try to avoid answering that question directly. "Bond enforcement," I said, leaving Helen to believe whatever. Not that I would lie about police affiliation. Imitating a police officer isn't smart. Still, if someone misunderstood because they weren't paying attention . . . that wasn't my problem.

Helen looked at Maxine's photo and nodded her head. "Yep, that's her. Only she's a lot more tan now."

So I knew two things. Maxine was alive, and she had time to sit in the sun.

"She bought a couple packs of cigarettes," Helen said. "Menthol. And a large Coke. Said she had a long drive ahead of her. I asked her if she was going to buy a lottery ticket because that's what she always did . . . bought a ticket every week. She said no. Said she didn't need to win the lottery anymore."

"Anything else?"

"That was it."

"You notice the car she was driving?"

"Sorry. I didn't notice."

I left my card and asked Helen to call if Maxine returned. I expected the card would go in the trash the moment I pulled out of the lot, but I left one anyway. For the most part, people would talk to me when confronted face-to-face but were unwilling to take a more aggressive step like initiating a phone call. Initiating a phone call felt like snitching, and snitching wasn't cool.

I rolled out of the lot and drove past the hot spots . . . Margie's house, Maxine's apartment, Kuntz's house, Mama Nowicki's house and the diner. Nothing seemed suspicious. I was itching to get the next clue, but there were people out on Howser Street. Mrs. Nowicki's neighbor was watering his lawn. A couple of kids were doing curb jumps on skateboards. Better to wait until dark, I thought. Two more hours and the sun would go down and everyone would move inside. Then I could skulk around in the shadows and, I hoped, not have to answer any questions.

I returned to my apartment and found Joe Morelli sitting on the floor in my hall, back to the wall, long legs stretched in front of him, crossed at the ankles. He had a brown paper bag next to him, and the entire hall smelled like meatballs and marinara.

I gave him the silent question look.

"Stopped by to say hello," Morelli said, getting to his feet.

My gaze dropped to the bag.

Morelli grinned. "Dinner."

"Smells good."

"Meatball subs from Pino's. They're still hot. I just got here."

Ordinarily I wouldn't let Morelli into my apartment, but it would be a sin against everything holy to turn away Pino's meatballs.

I unlocked the door, and Morelli followed me in. I dumped my shoulder bag on the small hall table and swung into the kitchen. I took two plates from the wall cabinet and set them on the counter. "I'm having a hard time believing this is entirely social."

"Maybe not entirely," Morelli said, close enough for me to feel his breath on the back of my neck. "I thought you might want a medical update on Maxine Nowicki's mother."

I put the subs on plates and divided up the tub of coleslaw. "Is it going to ruin my appetite?"

Morelli moved off to the fridge in search of beer. "She was scalped. Like in the old cowboy and Indian movies. Only in this case, not enough was removed to kill her."

"That's sick! Who would do such a thing?"

"Good question. Nowicki isn't saying."

I took the plates to the table. "What about prints on the knife?"

"None."

"Not even Mrs. Nowicki's?"

"Correct. Not even Mrs. Nowicki's."

I ate my sub and thought about this latest turn of events. Scalped. Yuk.

"You're looking for her daughter," Morelli said. Statement, not question.

"Yep."

"Think there could be a tie-in?"

"Two days ago I interviewed one of Maxine's friends from the diner. She had a big bandage on her hand. Said she'd whacked her finger off in a kitchen accident."

"What's this friend's name?"

"Margie something. Lives on Barnet. Works the dinner shift at the Silver Dollar."

"Any other mutilations I should know about?"

I tried some of the coleslaw. "Nope. That's it. It's been a slow week."

Morelli watched me. "You're holding something back."

"What makes you say that?"

"I can tell."

"You can tell nothing."

"You're still mad at me for not calling."

"I am not mad!" I slammed my fist down on the table, making my beer bottle jump in place.

"I meant to call," Morelli said.

I stood and gathered the empty plates and the silverware. CRASH, clang, clang! "You are a dysfunctional human being."

"Oh yeah? Well, you're fucking frightening."

"Are you saying you're afraid of me?"

"Any man in his right mind would be afraid of you. You know that scarlet letter thing? You should have a tattoo on your forehead that says 'Dangerous Woman. Stand Back!' "

I stormed into the kitchen and slapped the dishes onto the countertop. "I happen to be a very nice person." I turned on him and narrowed my eyes. "What's so dangerous about me?"

"Lots of things. You have that look. Like you want to pick out kitchen curtains."

"I do not have that look!" I shouted. "And if I did it would not be for your kitchen curtains!"

Morelli backed me into the refrigerator. "And then there's the way you make my heart beat fast when you get excited like this." He leaned into me and kissed the curve of my ear. "And your hair . . . I love your hair." He kissed me again. "Dangerous hair, babe."

Oh boy.

His hands were at my waist and his knee slid between mine. "Dangerous body." His lips skimmed my mouth. "Dangerous lips."

This wasn't supposed to be happening. I had decided against this. "Listen, Morelli, I appreciate the meatball sub and all, but . . ."

"Shut-up, Stephanie."

And then he kissed me. His tongue touched mine, and I thought, Well, what the hell, maybe I am dangerous. Maybe this isn't such a bad idea. After all, there was a time when I'd wanted nothing more than a Morelli-induced orgasm. Well, here was my chance. It wasn't as if we were strangers. It wasn't as if I didn't deserve it.

"Maybe we should go into the bedroom," I said. Get away from sharp knives in case something goes wrong and I'm tempted to stab him.

Morelli was wearing jeans with a navy T-shirt. Under the drape of the T-shirt he was wearing a pager and a .38. He unclipped his pager and put it in the refrigerator. He threw the bolt on the front door and kicked his shoes off in the hall.

"What about the gun?" I asked.

"The gun stays. Nothing's stopping me this time. You change your mind, and I'll shoot you."

"Um, there's the issue of safety."

He had his hand on his zipper. "Okay, I'll leave it on the nightstand."

"I wasn't talking about the gun."

Morelli stopped the progress of the zipper. "You're not on the pill?"

"No." I didn't think sex once a millennium warranted it.

"What about . . ."

"I haven't got any of them, either."

"Shit," Morelli said.

"Nothing in your wallet?"

"You're going to find this hard to believe, but cops aren't required to carry emergency condoms."

"Yes, but . . ."

"I'm not eighteen years old. I no longer score with nine out of ten women I meet."

That was encouraging. "I don't suppose you'd want to tell me the current ratio?"

"Right now, it's zero for zero."

"We could try a plastic sandwich bag."

Morelli grinned. "You want me bad."

"Temporary insanity."

The grin widened. "I don't think so. You've wanted me for years. You've never gotten over having me touch you when you were six."

I felt my mouth drop open and instantly closed it with a snap, leaning forward, hands fisted to keep from strangling him. "You are such a jerk!"

"I know," Morelli said. "It's genetic. Good thing I'm so cute." Morelli was many things. Cute wasn't one of them. Cocker spaniels were cute. Baby shoes were cute. Morelli wasn't cute. Morelli could look at water and make it boil. Cute was much too mild an adjective to describe Morelli.

He reached out and tugged at my hair. "I'd run to the store, but I'm guessing your door would be locked when I got back."

"It's a good possibility."

"Well, then I guess there's only one thing to do."

I braced myself.