Notorious Nineteen

FOUR

MORELLI IS ALWAYS fully awake at the crack of dawn, ready to go out and enforce the law or, if I’m in his bed, to grab a quickie while I’m still half asleep. I opened an eye and saw that he was moving around in the dimly lit room. He was clean-shaven, his hair was still damp from his shower, and he was dressed in slacks and a blue dress shirt.

“Is this dress-up Friday?” I asked him.

“I have court.” He took his watch off the nightstand and slipped it on. “I’ll probably be there most of the morning.”

I looked under the covers. I was naked. “Did we have sex this morning?”

“Yeah. You thanked me after and said it was great.”

“You’re fibbing. I never thank you.”

I got out of bed and dropped one of Morelli’s T-shirts over my head. I shuffled after him, down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Morelli’s kitchen is small but cozy. He’s laid new tile on the floor, put in a new countertop, and repainted the cabinets and walls. His appliances aren’t new but they’re newer than mine. His refrigerator is usually filled with food. His cereal doesn’t have bugs in it. And he has a toaster. This all puts him light-years ahead of me in the domestic goddess race.

A door opens off the kitchen onto Morelli’s narrow backyard. He’s had it fenced in for Bob, and Bob was impatiently waiting to get let out to tinkle. Morelli opened the door, and Bob bolted out into the darkness.

“You never get up this early,” Morelli said, closing the door, pushing the BREW button on the coffeemaker. “What’s going on?”

“I was hoping you knew something about Geoffrey Cubbin.”

“The guy who disappeared from Central Hospital? I don’t know much. It’s not my case.”

“How could someone just walk away in the middle of the night without anyone seeing him?”

“I’m told it happens,” Morelli said. “And he had good reason to want to walk away. He didn’t have a promising future.”

“Who has the case?”

“Lenny Schmidt.”

“Did he check to see if Cubbin called a cab?”

Morelli did a palms-up. He didn’t know. “I assume you’re looking for Cubbin because Vinnie wrote the bond.”

I dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. “It’s a high bond, and I could use the money. I need a new car.”

“You always need a new car. What you really need is a new job.”

I got two mugs out of his over-the-counter cabinet and put them on the little kitchen dining table. “Which brings me to the other issue. I’m going to have to cancel our date tonight. I told Ranger I’d do security for him at a party. He needed a woman.”

“I bet,” Morelli said.

“It’s security at a party.”

“I don’t like you working with him. He’s not normal. And he looks at you like you’re lunch.”

“You look at me like that too.”

“Cupcake, you are my lunch.” Morelli filled the mugs with coffee and spread strawberry jelly on his piece of toast. “Call me if you get done with the party early. If I run into Schmidt I’ll ask about the cab, but I doubt Schmidt’s done much to find Cubbin. Schmidt’s got a full caseload, and at this point Cubbin is more your problem than his.” He looked at the black T-shirt I was wearing. It hung about six inches below my doo-dah. “Do you have anything under that shirt?”

“You could peek and find out.”

“Tempting, but I’m late for my morning meeting.”

“Then I guess you’ll never know.”

Morelli lifted the hem of the shirt, looked under, and smiled. “I’m in love.”

“What about your meeting?”

“I might make some of it if I use my flashers and run the lights.”

Connie and Lula were already at the office when I rolled in. The door to Vinnie’s lair was open, and I could smell cigar smoke.

“Is that her?” Vinnie yelled.

There was the sound of a chair scraping back, and Vinnie charged out, the cigar clamped between his teeth. Vinnie is slightly taller than me and looks like a weasel. His dark hair is slicked back, his eyes are crafty, his pants are too tight, and his shoes are too pointy. He has an affinity for pain inflicted by women wielding cuffs and paddles, and he’s been rumored to enjoy intimate relationships with barnyard animals. He’s married to a perfectly nice woman named Lucille, who for reasons I’ll never understand has chosen to endure the marriage. And last but not least, probably because he’s such a loser himself, Vincent Plum has a good understanding of the criminal mind, and that makes him an excellent bail bondsman.

“Where is he?” Vinnie asked me.

“Where’s who?”

“That asshole Cubbin. Who else? You got him nailed down, right?”

“Not exactly.”

Vinnie had his hands in the air. “What not exactly? What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t know where he is.”

“You’re killing me,” Vinnie said. “If this agency tanks, it’s all your fault. It’s on your head. Fatso over there will have to go back to the streets. And Connie’ll be doing wet work.”

“Excuse me?” Lula said. “Fatso? Did I hear you call me Fatso? Because you better tell me I heard wrong on account of I might have to beat the crap out of you if I heard right.”

Vinnie clamped down tighter on his cigar and growled. “Just find him,” he said to me. And he retreated into his office and slammed the door shut.

“Get a grip,” I yelled at him. “He’s not even officially FTA until Monday.”

“We’ve got donuts,” Connie said, pointing to a box on her desk. “Help yourself.”

“I’m going to talk to Cubbin’s wife,” I said to Connie. “And then I’m going to take a look at the nursing home. Maybe you could make some phone calls for me and find out if he took a cab somewhere when he checked out of the hospital.”

Lula was on her feet, her head swiveled around trying to check out her ass. “That’s the second person told me I was fat this week. I don’t feel fat. I just feel like I got a lot of all the good stuff. What do you think?” she asked Connie and me. “Do you think I’m fat?”

“Well, you’re not thin,” Connie said.

“Some of me’s thin,” Lula said. “I got thin legs. I got Angelina Jolie ankles.”

Connie and I looked at her ankles. Not fat. Possibly Angelina quality.

“It’s just between my armpits and my hoo-ha that I’m better than most ladies,” Lula said. “I got stuff a man could hang on to. That’s one of the reasons I was so good as a ’ho.”

“As long as you’re healthy,” I said to her. “You’re healthy, right?”

“Yeah, I feel great. And one of these days I’m gonna go get myself checked out to take a look at my cholesterol, my sugar, and my blood pressure.”

Connie took the box of donuts off her desk and threw it into her wastebasket.

“So now what?” Lula asked. “We going to see Mrs. Cubbin?”

I had Cubbin’s file open to his bond sheet. He looked worried in the photo, or maybe he was squinting in the sun.

“He lives in Hamilton Township, by the high school,” I said.

“We could sneak around and look in his windows and see if he’s hanging out in his undies, watching television and popping painkillers,” Lula said.

Twenty minutes later Lula and I pulled up to Cubbin’s house. It was a modest white ranch with black shutters and a forest green front door. A white Camry was parked in the driveway leading to the attached garage. Very Middle America.

“Which one of us is going to do the sneaking around, and which one the doorbell ringing?” Lula asked.

“I’m ringing the doorbell,” I told her. “You can do whatever you want.”

I walked to the small front porch, rang the bell, and Lula skirted the side of the house. The front door opened, and a woman looked out at me.

“What?” she said.

She had fried blond hair, an extra forty pounds on her small frame, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, and a spray tan that had turned a toxic shade of orange.

“Mrs. Susan Cubbin?”

“Unfortunately.”

“You don’t like being Mrs. Cubbin?”

“For eight years I’ve been married to a man with a two-inch penis and one nut. The loser finally grows balls and steals five million dollars, and I can’t get my hands on it.” She took a long pull on her cigarette and squinted at me through the smoke haze. “And?”

I introduced myself, showed her my semi-fake badge, and gave her my card.

“Bounty hunter,” she said. “So I’m going to help you why?”

“For starters, this house was put up as insurance against the bond.”

“Like I care. It’s got mold in the basement, the roof’s falling apart, and the water heater is leaking. The mortgage is killing me, and the bank won’t take it back. I can’t even get this disaster foreclosed. I don’t want the house. I want the friggin’ money. I want to get my stomach stapled.”

“Have you seen your husband or heard from him since he left the hospital?”

“No. He didn’t even have the decency to tell me not to come pick him up to go home.”

“Has anyone heard from him?”

“Not that I know about.”

“Did he withdraw any money from your bank account?”

“Do I look like someone who has money in the bank?”

“Most people who skip at least take clothes, but your husband disappeared with just the clothes he wore when he checked in to the hospital.”

“He’s got five million dollars stashed somewhere. The jerk can buy new clothes.”

“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

“If I knew where he went, I’d be there, and I’d choke him until he coughed up the money.”

“Cranberry Manor would be grateful.”

“I don’t give a fig about Cranberry Manor,” Susan said. “Those people are old. They’re gonna die. I want the money.”

A police car angled to a stop behind Lula’s Firebird and two guys got out. One was sort of a friend of mine, Carl Costanza. We’d done Communion together, among other things. Costanza and his partner stood, hands on their gun belts, looking at Lula’s Firebird, then looking at me, sizing up the situation. I gave them a little wave and they walked over.

“We got a report from a neighbor that a woman was acting suspiciously, creeping around this house,” Carl said.

“That might be Lula,” I told him.

“Who’s Lula?” Susan Cubbin asked.

“She’s my partner,” I said.

“And why is she creeping around my house?”

“She thought she saw a cat. And she’s a real cat lover.”

“Oh jeez,” Susan said, “don’t tell me my cat got out again.”

“It could always be some other cat,” I said.

“I gotta make sure. What color was it? Where’s your partner?”

“Hey, Lula!” I yelled.

Lula poked her head around the side of the house. “You call me?”

“What color cat did you see?”

“Say what?”

“You know, the cat you went to find . . . when you were walking around the house just now. What color was it?”

“White,” Lula said.

“Thank goodness,” Susan said. “My Fluffy is orange.”

“Case closed,” Carl said.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know if you hear from your husband,” I said to Susan.

“Yeah,” Susan said. “Likewise.”

We followed Carl and his partner to the curb.

“Was he in there?” Carl asked Lula.

“Not that I could see,” Lula said. “You’re talking about the white cat, right?”

“Right,” Carl said.

We all got into our cars and drove away.

“Now what?” Lula wanted to know.

“Now we visit Cranberry Manor. Did you see anything unusual when you were snooping?”

“I didn’t see any sign of Geoffrey Cubbin, but someone had been packing a suitcase.”

“Men’s clothes or women’s clothes?”

“Looked like women’s clothes.”

My cellphone rang, and Grandma’s number came up.

“I’m at the beauty parlor, and I need a ride,” Grandma said.

“Where are you going?”

“To the hospital, of course. I’m on the job. I just made that baloney up about the beauty parlor to get out of the house. I figured if your mother knew I was going to the hospital she’d head for the liquor cabinet.”

“We’ll be in big trouble if she finds out I took you to the hospital.”

“She won’t find out. I’m wearing a disguise, and I have a fake ID. As far as anyone knows I’m Selma Whizzer today.”

“What’s going on?” Lula wanted to know.

“It’s Grandma. She’s at the beauty parlor, and she needs a ride to the hospital so she can snoop for us. She said she’s in disguise.”

“I gotta see this. Is she at the beauty parlor on Hamilton by the bridal shop?”

“Yes.”

“I’m on it. Tell her we’re fifteen minutes out.”