Smokin Seventeen

FIFTEEN

LULA AND CONNIE cleared out of the coffee shop a little before five, and I motored off to my parents’ house. I parked, let myself in, and stood for a moment in the small foyer enjoying the smell of chocolate cake fresh out of the oven.

I should learn how to make chocolate cake, I thought. I should go out and buy cake pans and a box mix. How hard could it be? And then my apartment would smell wonderful. And it would be fun to make a cake. And maybe I can’t commit to Morelli because I can’t cook. Okay, that was a stretch, but I hadn’t been able to come up with anything better.

My father was asleep in front of the television. I could hear my grandmother and my mother in the kitchen. And I heard a male voice mixed into their conversation.

“I like buttercream frosting,” he said.

I’d been suckered in again. It was Dave Brewer.

Grandma stuck her head out the kitchen door. “I thought I heard you come in. Look who we got here. It’s Dave, and he’s cooking with us. He’s real good at it, too.”

“Surprise,” Dave said.

He was wearing a white three-button collared knit shirt and jeans, and he had a red chef’s apron wrapped around him.

“Just in time,” Grandma said. “We’re icing the cake.”

This isn’t a surprise, I thought. This is an ambush. I took a moment to calm myself and make an attitude adjustment. A couple minutes ago I was thinking I wanted to bake a cake. So here was my opportunity. The cake was cooling on a wire rack, and Dave was in the middle of making frosting.

I looked into the frosting bowl. “Chocolate.”

“Not just chocolate,” Dave said. “This is my special fudge mocha icing. It goes on like icing but then it sets up like fudge.”

“He brought sausage from Frankie the butcher, and he made his own red sauce for the lasagna,” Grandma said. “And he got good Italian cheese to grate up. Too bad you didn’t get here sooner. We just put the lasagna in the oven.”

“Gee, sorry I missed all that,” I said, trying to sound cheery, not feeling cheery at all. Not only wasn’t I happy to have Dave foisted on me, I didn’t like him taking over my mom’s kitchen. I didn’t like him making his own red sauce, grating his good Italian cheese. That was stuff my mom was supposed to do. It was her freaking kitchen. Although truth is, she looked content to have someone make a meal for her.

Dave dribbled coffee into his icing, liked the consistency, and spread it on the layers. He made it look easy, but I’d tried it in the past, and it hadn’t turned out glorious for me.

He swiped a glob of icing up with his finger and held it out to me. “Want a taste?”

Okay, I know he was captain of the football team and he could bake a cake — that didn’t mean I was ready to suck his finger. I was picky about what I put in my mouth.

“I’ll wait,” I told him. “Wouldn’t want to spoil my appetite.”

I wandered into the dining room and set the table. I laid out plates, knives, forks, spoons, napkins, glasses. I fidgeted with each one and checked my watch. I was stalling. I rolled my eyes. This is ridiculous, I thought. I was a big tough bounty hunter. I faced off with vampires and guys with stiffies. Surely I could manage another evening with Dave Brewer. And if I didn’t already have two men in my life, I probably would be happy for the fix up. Probably.

I marched myself back into the kitchen. “Now what?” I asked.

My mother was at the sink, washing dishes, happily drinking booze from a water glass. My grandmother was slicing tomatoes.

“Dave’s making his original salad dressing,” my grandmother said.

“It’s not really original dressing,” Dave said. “It’s oil and vinegar, but I brought some olive oil infused with herbs and some twenty-five-year-old balsamic vinegar.”

“You’re going to make some woman real happy,” Grandma said to Dave. She cut her eyes to me. “Some woman who can’t cook.”

“I could cook if I wanted to,” I said.

Dave broke the seal on the vinegar. “I have some recipes that take almost no time.” He looked over at me. “I’ll print them out and bring them over to your apartment.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t have time to do much cooking right now.”

And I don’t especially want you in my apartment, I thought. He seemed like a perfectly okay guy, but I wasn’t interested, and I suspected he wanted to do more than cook.

“Margaret Yaeger called and said she saw the M.E.’s meat wagon back at the lot where the bonds office used to sit,” Grandma said.

I poured myself a glass of red wine and left the bottle on the counter. “They found another body.”

Grandma sucked in air. “It’s gotta have something to do with the bonds office. Maybe Vinnie’s burying people as a side job.”

“Maybe it was just an easy place to dump a body,” Dave said.

“It’s not real private,” Grandma said. “There’s always someone driving down Hamilton Avenue.”

Dave shook his head. “Not in the middle of the night.”

“Yeah, but you could go to the landfill and there’s never anyone there.”

“They installed security cameras at the landfill,” Dave said. “And besides, you have to drive the body to the landfill and then you get DNA traces in the trunk of your car. I guess you could steal a car.”

“I see you’ve thought this through,” I said to Dave.

Dave helped himself to the wine. “My cousin got a ticket for dumping toxic waste. They caught him on video. And everything I know about DNA I learned from CSI. I’ve been watching a lot of television since I moved home.”

An hour later, I pushed back from the table and took a deep breath. The lasagna had been way too good, and I’d eaten way too much. And I almost had an orgasm eating the cake. My jeans were uncomfortably tight. My thoughts were conflicted. Possibly it was the three glasses of wine I’d chugged, but I was thinking it wouldn’t be so bad to have a husband who loved to cook. Heck, I could even get involved. I could do the chopping, and he could throw it all into a wok or whatever. And I could buy some candlesticks, and we could have a dinner party.

I plugged Ranger into the picture, and I could see him as an expert chef, because Ranger is good at everything. I couldn’t see him at the dinner party. Two people is a party for Ranger. Morelli would be good at the dinner party, but he’d burn all the food if a ball game was on. Dave was a perfect fit in the kitchen and at the dinner party, but I wasn’t especially attracted to him. He felt bland compared to Ranger and Morelli.

• • •

I was asleep on the couch when Morelli slipped his arm around me, and Bob gave me a lick on the cheek with his giant tongue.

“Who? What?” I said, disoriented on waking.

Morelli clicked through channels on the television. “You must have had a hard day. It’s only nine o’clock.”

“I ate too much at dinner. Lasagna and chocolate cake at my parents’ house. It’s going to take me days to digest it.” I looked down at my jeans. The top snap was open and there was no hope of closing it. “I brought a piece of cake home for you. It’s in the kitchen.”

He kissed me on the top of my head, went to the kitchen, and returned with his cake. He forked some into his mouth and nodded approval. “This is really good.”

“It’s the icing.”

“Yeah. It’s like fudge.”

“Dave Brewer made it. Turns out he likes to cook.”

“I’m missing something. How did you get Dave Brewer to make you a cake?”

“My mom met Dave’s mom in Giovichinni’s, and they decided I should be his girlfriend. So I’ve gotten sucked into two dinners with him. One of which he made.”

“And?”

“And what?”

Morelli ate the last piece. “Are you going to be his girlfriend?”

“No. He makes great cake, but I’m sticking with you.”

“Just checking. Nice to know I don’t have to beat the crap out of him.”

“You can’t smack him around anyway. We’re supposed to have an open relationship, right? Were you and Dave friends in high school?”

“He was a year younger than me and a world away. I was the screwup with the bad reputation, and he was the football hero. He was dating Julie Barkalowski, the pom-pom queen.”

“How about you? Did you ever date Julie Barkalowski?”

“I dated every girl in that school. I was a horn dog back then.”

“And now?”

Morelli put his plate down and wrapped his arms around me. “And now I’m your horn dog.”

“Lucky me.”

He clicked the television off, slipped his hands under my T-shirt, and kissed me. Minutes later we were in bed, we were naked, and Morelli was doing a demo for me on the various ways I was lucky. He found the way I was most lucky and just as I was moments away from scoring a home run, a vision of Dave Brewer in an apron popped into my head and broke my concentration.

“Damn!” I said through clenched teeth.

Morelli picked his head up and looked at me. “Is there an issue?”

“I lost it.”

“No problemo. I’ll start over. I have to work off the chocolate cake, anyway.”