Eleven on top

"There's no eating on the job, but she can eat for free on her dinner break.

Takeout gets a twenty percent discount."

"That sounds fair," Lula said. "She'll take the job."

"Come in a half hour early tomorrow," Mann said to me. "I'll give you your uniform and you can fill out the paperwork."

"Look at that," Lula said, claiming her tray of food, steering me back to the table. "See how easy it is to get a job? There's jobs everywhere."

"Yeah, but I don't want this job. I don't want to work here."

"Twenty percent off on takeout," Lula said. "You can't beat that. You can feed your family . . . and friends."

I took a piece of fried chicken from the bucket on the tray. "My car is back at the dry cleaner."

"And I didn't get my sweater. That was my favorite sweater, too. It was just the right shade of red to flatter my skin tone."

I finished my piece of chicken. "Are you going back to get your sweater?"

"Damn skippy I'm going back. Only thing is I'm waiting until they're closed and it's nice and dark out." Lula looked over my shoulder and her eyes focused on the front door. "Uh oh," Lula said. "Here comes Officer Hottie, and he don't look happy."

Morelli moved behind me and curled his fingers into the back of my jacket collar. "I need to talk to you . . . outside."

"I wouldn't go if I was you," Lula said to me. "He's wearing his mad cop face. At least you should make him leave his gun here."

Morelli shot Lula a look, and she buried her head in the chicken bucket.

When we got outside Morelli dragged me to the far side of the building, away from the big plate glass windows. He still had a grip on my jacket, and he still had the don't-mess-with-me cop face. He held tight to my jacket, and he stared at his shoes, head down.

"Practicing anger management?" I asked.

He shook his head and bit into his lower lip. "No," he said. "I'm trying not to laugh. That crazy old lady shot at you and I don't want to trivialize it, but I totally lost it at Kan Klean. And I wasn't the only one. I was there with three uniforms who responded to the call, and we all had to go around to the back of the building to compose ourselves. Your friend Eddie Gazarra was laughing so hard he wet his uniform. Was there really a shoot-out between the old lady and Lula?"

"Yeah, but Mama Macaroni did all the shooting. She trashed the place. Lula and I were lucky to get out alive. How'd you know where to find me?"

"I did a drive-by on all the doughnut shops and fast-food places in the area. And by the way, Mama Macaroni said to tell you that you're fired."

Morelli leaned into me and nuzzled my neck. "We should celebrate."

"You wanted to celebrate when I got the job. Now you want to celebrate because I've lost the job?"

"I like to celebrate."

Sometimes I had a hard time keeping up with Morelli's libido. "I'm not talking to you," I told Morelli.

"Yeah, but we could still celebrate, right?"

"Wrong. And I need to get back inside before Lula eats all the food."

Morelli pulled me to him and kissed me with a lot of tongue. "I really need to celebrate," he said. And he was gone, off to file a report on my shootout.

Lula was finishing her half gallon of soda when I returned to the table.

"How'd that go?" she wanted to know.

"Average." I looked in the chicken bucket. One wing left.

"I'm in a real mean mood after that whole cleaning incident," Lula said. "I figure I might as well make the most of it and go after my DV. When I was a file clerk I didn't usually work on Sunday, unless I was helping you. But now that I'm a bounty hunter I'm on the job twentyfour/seven. You see what I'm saying? And I know how you're missing being a bounty hunter and all, so I'm gonna let you ride with me again."

"I don't miss being a bounty hunter. And I don't want to ride with you."

"Please?" Lula said. "Pretty please with sugar on it? I'm your friend, right? And we do things together, right? Like, look at how we just shared lunch together."

"You ate all the chicken."

"Not all the chicken. I left you a wing. 'Course, it's true I don't particularly like wings, but that's not the point. Anyways, I kept you from putting a lot of ugly fat on your skinny ass. You aren't gonna be getting any from Officer Hottie if you get all fat and dimply. And I know you need to be getting some on a regular basis because I remember when you weren't getting any and you were a real cranky pants."

"Stop!" I said. "I'll go with you."

FIVE

It took us a half hour to get to the public housing projects and work our way through the grid of streets that led to Emanuel Lowe, also known as the DV.

Lula had the Firebird parked across the street from Lowe's apartment, and we were both watching the apartment door, and we were both wishing we were at Macy's shopping for shoes.

"We need a better plan this time," Lula said. "Last time, I did the direct approach and that didn't work out. We gotta be sneaky this time. And we can't use me on account of everybody here knows me now. So I'm thinking it's going to have to be you to go snatch the DV."

"Not in a million years."

"Yeah, but they don't know you. And there's hardly anybody sneakier than you. I'd even cut you in. I'd give you ten bucks if you collected him for me."

I did raised eyebrows at Lula. "Ten dollars? I used to pay you fifty and up."

"I figure it goes by the pound and a little bitty thing like you isn't worth as much as a full-figured woman like me." Lula took a couple beats. "Well okay, I guess that don't fly. It was worth a try though, right?"

"Maybe you should just sit here and wait for him to come out and then you can run over him with your Firebird."

"That's sarcasm, isn't it? I know sarcasm when I hear it. And it's not attractive on you. You don't usually do sarcasm. You got some Jersey attitude going, don't you?"

I slumped lower in my seat. "I'm depressed."

"You know what would get you out of that depression? An apprehension. You need to kick some butt. You need to get yourself empowered. I bet you'd feel real good if you snagged yourself an Emanuel Lowe."

"Fine. Okay. I'll get Lowe for you. The day's already in the toilet. Might as well finish it off right." I unbuckled my seat belt. "Give me your gun and your cuffs."

"You haven't got your own gun?"

"I didn't think I needed to carry a gun because I didn't think I was going to be doing this anymore. When I left the house this morning I thought I was going to be working at the dry cleaners."

Lula handed me her gun and a pair of cuffs. "You always gotta have a gun. It's like wearing undies. You wouldn't go out of the house without undies, would you? Same thing with a gun. Boy, for being a bounty hunter all that time you sure don't know much."

I grabbed the gun from Lula and marched up to Lowe's front door. I knocked twice, Lowe opened the door, and I pointed the gun at him. "On the ground,"

I said. "Now."

Lowe gave a bark of laughter. "You not gonna shoot me.

I'm an unarmed man. You get twenty years for shooting me."

I aimed high, squeezed a round off, and took out a ceiling fixture.

"Crazy bitch," he said. "This here's public housing. You costing the taxpayer money. I got a mind to report you."

"I'm not in a good mood," I said to Lowe.

"I can see that. How you like me to improve your mood? Maybe you need a man to make you feel special."

Emanuel Lowe was five foot nine and rail thin. He had no ass, no teeth, and I was guessing no deodorant, no shower, no mouthwash. He was wearing a wife-beater T-shirt that had yellowed with age, and baggy homeboy-style brown pants precariously perched on his bony hips. And he was offering himself up to me. This was the state of my life. Maybe I should just shoot myself. I leveled the barrel at his head. "On the floor, on your stomach, hands behind your back."

"Tell you what. I'll get on the floor if you show me some pussy. It gotta be good pussy, too. The full show. You aren't bald down there, are you? I don't know what white bitches thinking of, waxing all the bush off. Gives me the willies. It's like bonin' supermarket chicken."

So I shot him. I did it for women worldwide. It was a public service.

"Yow!" he said. "What the fuck you do that for? We just talking, having some fun."

"I wasn't having any fun," I said.

I'd shot him in the foot, and now he was hopping around, howling, dripping blood. From what I could see, I'd nicked him somewhere in the vicinity of the little toe.

"If you aren't down on the floor, hands behind your back, in three seconds I'm going to shoot you again," I said.

Lowe dropped to the floor. "I'm dying. I'm gonna bleed to death."

I cuffed him and stood back. "I just tagged your toe. You'll be fine."

Lula poked her head in. "What's going on? Was that gunshot?" She walked over to Lowe and stood hands on hips, staring down at Lowe's foot. "Damn," Lula said. "I hate when I have to take bleeders in my Firebird. I just got new floor mats, too."

"How bad is it?" Lowe wanted to know. "It feels real bad."

"She just ripped a chunk out of the side of your foot," Lula said. "Looks to me like you got all your toes and everything."

I ran to the kitchen and got a kitchen towel and a plastic garbage bag. I wrapped Lowe's foot in the towel and pulled the plastic bag over the foot and the towel and tied it at the ankle. "That's the best I can do," I said to Lula. "You're going to have to deal with it."

We got him to the curb, and Lula looked down at Lowe's foot. "Hold on here," she said. "We ripped a hole in the Baggie when we dragged him out here, and he's bleeding through the towel. He's gonna have to hang his leg out the window."

"I'm not hanging my leg outta the window," Lowe said. "How's that gonna look?"

"It's gonna look like you're on the way to the hospital," Lula said. "How else you think you're gonna get to the hospital and get that foot stitched up? You gonna sit here and wait for an ambulance? You think they're gonna rush to come get your sorry behind?"

"You got a point," Lowe said. "Just hurry up. I'm not feeling all that good. It wasn't right of her to shoot me. She had no call to do that."

"The hell she didn't," Lula said. "You gotta learn to cooperate with women. My opinion is she should have shot higher and rearranged your nasty."

Lula rolled the rear side window down, and Lowe got in and hung his legs out the window.

"I feel like a damn fool," Lowe said. "And this here's uncomfortable. My foot's throbbing like a bitch."

Lula walked around to the driver's side. "I saw a picture of what he did to his girlfriend," Lula said. "She had a broken nose and two cracked ribs, and she was in the hospital for three days. My thinking is he deserves some pain, so I'm gonna drive real slow, and I might even get lost on the way to the emergency room."

"Don't get too lost. Wouldn't want him to bleed to death since I was the one who shot him."

"I didn't see you shoot him," Lula said. "I especially didn't see you shoot him with my gun that might not be registered on account of I got it from a guy on a street corner at one in the morning. Anyways, I figured Lowe was running away and tore himself up on a broken bottle of hooch. You know how these guys always have broken bottles of hooch laying around." Lula muscled herself behind the wheel. "You coming with me or you staying behind to tidy up?"

I gave Lula her gun. "I'm staying behind."

"Later," Lula said. And she drove off with Lowe's legs hanging out her rear side window, the plastic bag rattling in the breeze.

I went into Lowe's apartment and prowled through the kitchen. I found a screwdriver and a mostly empty bottle of Gordons gin. I used the screwdriver to dig the bullet out of Lowe's floor. I pocketed the round and the casing.

Then I dropped the bottle of gin on the bloodiest part of the floor and smashed it with the screwdriver. I went back to the kitchen and washed the screwdriver, washed my hands, and threw the screwdriver into a pile of garbage that had collected in the corner of the kitchen. Discarded pizza boxes, empty soda bottles, fast-food bags, crumpled beer cans, and stuff I preferred not to identify.

"I hate this," I said to the empty apartment. I pulled my cell phone out of my bag and called my dad. A couple years ago my dad retired from his job at the post office, and now he drives a cab part-time.

"Hey," I said when he answered. "It's me. I need a cab."

I locked the doors and secured the windows while I waited for my dad. Not that there was much to steal from Lowe's apartment. Most of the furniture looked like Lowe had shopped at the local Dumpster. Still, it was his and I felt an obligation to be a professional. Probably should have thought about my professional obligation before shooting Lowe in the foot.

I called Ranger. "I just shot a guy in the foot," I told him.

"Did he deserve it?"

"That's sort of a tough moral question. I thought so at the time, but now I'm not so sure."

"Did you destroy the evidence? Were there witnesses? Did you come up with a good lie?"

"Yes. No. Yes."

"Move on," Ranger said. "Anything else?"

"No. That's about it."

"One last word of advice. Stay away from the doughnuts." And he disconnected.

Great.

Twenty minutes later, my father rolled to a stop at curbside. "I thought you were working at the button factory," he said.

My father's body showed up at the dinner table every evening. His mind was usually somewhere else. I suppose that was the secret to my parents' marital success. That plus the deal that my father made money and my mother made meatloaf and the division of labor was clear and never challenged. In some ways, life was simple in the Burg.

"The button factory job didn't work out," I told my father. "I helped Lula with an apprehension today and ended up here."

"You're like your Uncle Peppy. Went from one job to the next. Wasn't that he was dumb, either. Was just that he didn't have a direction. He didn't have a passion, you know? It didn't look like he had any special talent. Like take me. I was good at sorting mail. Now, I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was something I was good at. Of course, I got replaced by a machine. But that doesn't take away that I was good at something. Your Uncle Peppy was forty-two before he found out he could do latch hook rugs."

"Uncle Peppy's doing time at Rahway for arson."

"Yeah, but he's doing latch hook there. When he gets out he can make a good living with rugs. You should see some of his rugs. He made a rug that had a tiger head in it. You ask me, he's better hooking rugs than arson. He never got the hang of arson. Okay, so he set a couple good fires, but he didn't have the touch like Sol Razzi. Sol could set a fire and no one ever knew how it started. Now, that's arson."

Jerseys one of the few places where arson is a profession.

"Where are we going?" my father wanted to know.

"What's Mom making for supper?"

"Meatballs with spaghetti. And I saw a chocolate cake in the kitchen."

"I'll go home with you."

There were two cars parked in front of my parents' house. One belonged to my sister. And one belonged to a friend of mine who was helping my mom plan my sisters wedding. My father paused at the driveway entrance and stared at the cars with his eyes narrowed.

"If you smash into them your insurance will go up," I said.

My father gave a sigh, pulled forward, and parked. When my father blew out the candles on his birthday cake I suspect he wished my grandmother would go far away. He'd wish my sister into another state, and my friend Sally Sweet, a.k.a. the Wedding Planner, into another universe. I'm not sure what he wanted to do with me. Maybe ride along on a bust. Don't get me wrong. My dad isn't a mean guy. He wouldn't want my grandmother to suffer, but I think he wouldn't be too upset if she suddenly died in her sleep. Personally, I think Grandmas a hoot. Of course, I don't have to live with her.

All through school my sister, Valerie, looked like the Virgin Mary. Brown hair simply styled, skin like alabaster, beatific smile. And she had a personality to match. Serene. Smooth. Little Miss Perfect. The exact opposite of her sister, Stephanie, who was Miss Disaster. Valerie graduated college in the top percent of her class and married a perfectly nice guy. They followed his job to L.A. They had two girls. Valerie morphed into Meg Ryan. And one day the perfectly nice guy ran off to Tahiti with the babysitter. No reflection on Meg. It was just that time in his life. So Valerie moved back home with her girls. Angie is the firstborn and a near perfect clone of Valerie the Virgin. Mary Alice is two years behind Angie.

And Mary Alice thinks she's a horse.

It's a little over a year now since Valerie returned, and she's since gained sixty pounds, had a baby out of wedlock, and gotten engaged to her boss, Albert Kloughn, who also happens to be the baby's father. The baby's name is Lisa, but most often she's called The Baby. We're not sure who The Baby is yet, but from the amount of gas she produces I think she's got a lot of Kloughn in her.

Valerie and Sally were huddled at the dining room table, studying the seating chart for the wedding reception.

"Hey, girlfriend," Sally said to me. "Long time no see."

Sally drove a school bus during the week, and weekends he played in a band in full drag. He was six foot five inches tall, had roses tattooed on his biceps, hair everywhere, a large hook nose, and he was lanky in a guitar-playing-maniac kind of way. Today Sally was wearing a big wooden cross on a chain and six strands of love beads over a black Metallica T-shirt, black hightop Chucks, and washed-out baggy jeans-Okay, not your average wedding planner, but he'd sort of adopted us, and he was free. He'd become one of the family with my mom and grandma and they endured his eccentricities with the same eyerolling tolerance that they endured mine. I guess a pothead wedding planner seems respectable when you have a daughter who shoots people.

Angie was doing her homework across from Valerie. The Baby was in a sling attached to Valerie's chest, and Mary Alice was galloping around the table, whinnying.

My father went straight to his chair in the living room and remoted the television. I went to the kitchen.

My mother was at the stove, stirring the red sauce. "Emily Restler's daughter got a pin for ten years' service at the bank," my mother said. "Ten years and she was never once in a shootout. I have a daughter who works one day at a dry cleaners and turns it into the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. And on a Sunday, too. The Lords Day."

"It wasn't me. I didn't even have a gun. It was Mama Macaroni. And she wouldn't give Lula her dry cleaning."

Grandma was at the small kitchen table. "I hate to think you couldn't take down Mama Macaroni. If I'd been there you would have got the dry cleaning. In fact, I got a mind to go over there and get it for you."

"No," my mother and I said in unison.

I got a soda from the fridge and eyed the cake on the counter.

"It's for supper," my mother said. "No snitching. It's got to be nice. The wedding planner is eating with us."

Sally is one of my favorite people, but Sally didn't care a lot about what went in his mouth unless it was inhaled from a bong or rolled in wacky tobacky paper.

"Sally wouldn't notice if there were roaches in the icing," I told my mom.

"It has nothing to do with Sally," my mom said. "My water glasses don't have spots. There's no dust on the furniture. And I don't serve guests half-eaten cake at my dinner table."

I didn't serve guests half-eaten cake either. To begin with, I never had guests, unless it was Joe or Ranger. And neither of them was interested in my cake.

Okay, maybe Joe would want cake . . . but it wouldn't be the first thing on his mind, and he wouldn't care if it was half-eaten.

I grated parmesan for my mother, and I sliced some cucumbers and tomatoes.

In the dining room, Valerie and Sally were yelling at each other, competing with the television and the galloping horse.

"Is there any news about Michael Barroni?" I asked.

"Still missing," Grandma said. "And they haven't found his car, either. I hear he only had it for a day. It was brand-new right out of the showroom."

"I saw Anthony yesterday. He was driving a Corvette that looked new."

Grandma got dishes from the cupboard. "Mabel Such says Anthony's spending money like water. She don't know where he's getting it from. She says he doesn't make all that much at the store. She says he was on a salary just like everybody else. Michael Barroni came up the hard way, and he wasn't a man to give money away. Not even to his sons."

I got silverware and napkins, and Grandma and I set the table around Valerie and Sally and Angie.

"You can stare at that seating chart all you want," Grandma said to Valerie.

"It's never gonna get perfect. Nobody wants to sit next to Biddie Schmidt. Everybody wants to sit next to Peggy Linehart. And nobody's going to be happy sitting at table number six, next to the restrooms."

My mother brought the meatballs and sauce to the table and went back for the spaghetti. My father moved from his living room chair to his dining room chair and helped himself to the first meatball. Everyone sat except Mary Alice. Mary Alice was still galloping.

"Horses got to eat," Grandma said. "You better sit down."

"There's no hay," Mary Alice said.

"Sure there is," Grandma said. "See that big bowl of spaghetti? It's people hay, but horses can eat it, too."

Mary Alice plunged her face into the spaghetti and snarfed it up.

"That's disgusting," Grandma said.

"It's the way horses eat," Mary Alice told her. "They stick their whole face in the feed bag. I saw it on television."

The front door opened and Albert Kloughn walked in. "Am I late? I'm sorry I'm late. I didn't mean to be late. I had a client."

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at Kloughn. Kloughn didn't get a lot of clients. He's a lawyer and his business has been slow to take off. Partly the problem is that he's a sweetie pie guy... and who wants a sweetie pie lawyer? In Jersey you want a lawyer who's a shark, a sonuvabitch, a first-class jerk. And partly the problem is Kloughn's appearance. Kloughn looks like a soft, chubby, not-entirely-with-the-program fourteen-year-old boy.

"What kind of client?" Grandma asked.

Kloughn took his place at the table. "It was a woman from the Laundromat next to my office. She was doing her whites, and she saw my sign and the light on in my office. I went in to do some filing, but I was actually playing poker on my computer. Anyway, she came over for advice." Kloughn helped himself to spaghetti. "Her husband took off on her, and she didn't know what to do. Sounded like she didn't mind him leaving. She said they'd been having problems. It was that he took their car, and she was stuck with the payments. It was a brand-new car, too."

I felt the skin prickle at the nape of my neck. "When did this guy disappear?"

"A couple weeks ago." Kloughn scooped a meatball onto the big serving spoon.

The meatball rolled off the spoon, slid down Kloughn's shirt, and ski jumped off his belly into his lap. "I knew that was going to happen," Kloughn said.

"This always happens with meatballs. Does it happen with chicken? Does it happen with ham? Okay, sometimes it happens with chicken and ham, but not as much as meatballs. If it was me, I wouldn't make meatballs round. Round things roll, right? Am I right? What if you made meatballs square? Did anybody think of that?"

"That would be meatloaf" Grandma said.

"Did this woman report her missing husband to the police?" I asked Kloughn.

"No. It was just one of those personal things. She said she knew he was going to leave her. I guess he was fooling around on the side and things weren't working out for them." Kloughn retrieved the meatball and set it on top of his spaghetti. He dabbed at his shirt with his napkin, but the smear of red sauce only got worse. "I felt sorry for her with the car payment and all, but boy, can you imagine being that dumb? Here she is living with this guy and all of a sudden he just up and leaves her. And it turns out she has nothing but bills. They had two mortgages that she didn't even know about. The bank account was empty. What a dope."

My mother, father, and Grandma and I all sucked in some air and slid our eyes to Valerie. This was exactly what happened to Valerie. This was like calling Valerie a dope.

"You think this woman is a dope because her husband managed to swindle her out of everything?" Valerie asked Kloughn.

"Well yeah. I mean, duh. She was probably too lazy to keep track of things and got what she deserved."

The color rose from Valerie's neck clear to the roots of her hair. I swear I could see her scalp glowing like hot coals.

"Oh boy," Grandma said.

Sally inched his chair away from Valerie.

Kloughn was working at the stain on his shirt and not looking at Valerie, and I was guessing he hadn't a clue what he'd just said. Somehow the words got put together into sentences and fell out of his mouth. This happened a lot with Kloughn. Kloughn looked up from his shirt to dead silence. Only a slight sizzle where Valerie's scalp was steaming.

"What?" Kloughn said. He searched the faces in the room. Something was wrong, and he'd missed it. He focused on Valerie, and you could see his mind working backward. And then it hit him. Kaboom.

"You were different," he said to Valerie. "I mean, you had a reason for being a dope. Well, not a dope actually. I don't mean to say you were a dope. Okay, you might have been a little dopey. No, wait, I don't mean that either. Not dopey or dope or any of those things. Okay, okay, just a teensy bit dopey, but in a good way, right? Dopey can be good. Like dumb blond dopey. No, I don't mean that either. I don't know where that came from. Did I say that? I didn't say that, did I?"

Kloughn stopped talking because Valerie had gotten to her feet with the fourteen-inch bread knife in her hand.

"You don't want to do anything silly here," I said to Val. "You aren't thinking of stabbing him, are you? Stabbing is messy."

"Fine. Give me your gun, and I'll shoot him."

"It's not good to shoot people," I said. "The police don't like it."

"You shoot people all the time."

"Not all the time."

"I'll give you my gun," Grandma said.

My mother glared at my grandmother. "You told me you got rid of that gun."

"I meant I'd give her my gun if I had one," Grandma said.

"Great," Valerie said, flapping her arms, her voice up an octave. "Now I'm dopey. I'm fat, and I'm dopey. I'm a big fat dope."

"I didn't say you were fat," Kloughn said. "You're not fat. You're just... chubby, like me."

Valerie went wild-eyed. "Chubby? Chubby is awful! I used to be perfect. I used to be serene. And now look at me! I'm a wreck. I'm a big, fat, dopey, chubby wreck. And I look like a white whale in my stupid wedding gown. A big, huge white whale!" She narrowed her eyes and leaned across the table at Kloughn.

"You think I'm dopey and lazy and chubby, and that I got what I deserved from my philandering husband!"

"No. I swear. I was under stress," Kloughn said. "It was the meatball. I never think. You know I never think."

"I never want to see you again," Valerie said. "The wedding is off." And Valerie gathered up her three kids, her diaper bag, her sling thing, her kids' backpacks, and the collapsible stroller. She went to the kitchen and took the chocolate cake. And she left.

"Dudes," Sally said. "I did the best I could with the dress."

"We're not blaming you," Grandma said. "But she does look like a white whale."

Kloughn turned to me. "What happened?"

I looked over at him. "She took the cake."

I caught a ride home with Sally, and I was parked in front of my television when my doorbell rang at nine I o'clock. It was Lula, and she was dressed in black from head to toe, including a black ski mask.

"Are you ready?" Lula wanted to know.

"Ready for what?"

"To get my cleaning. What do you think?"

"I think we should give up on the cleaning and send out for a pizza. Aren't you hot in that ski mask?"

"That Mama Macaroni got my favorite sweater. I need that sweater. And on top of that it's the principle of the thing. It's just not right. I was a hundred percent in the right. I'm surprised at you wanting to let this go. Where's your crusading spirit? I bet Ranger wouldn't let it go. And you got to get your car, anyway. How're you gonna get over there to get your car if you don't go with me?"

My car. Mental head slap. I'd forgotten about the car.

Ten minutes later, we were idling across the street from Kan Klean. "It's nice and dark tonight," Lula said. "We got some cloud cover. Not a star in the sky and it looks like someone already took out the streetlight."

I looked at Lula and grimaced.

"Hey, don't give me that grimace. I expected you'd compliment me on my shooting. I actually hit that freaking lightbulb!"

"How many shots did it take?"

"I emptied a whole clip at it." Lula cut the engine and pulled her ski mask back over her head. "Come on. Time to rock and roll."

Oh boy.

We got out of the Firebird and waited for an SUV to pass before crossing the street. The SUV driver caught a glance at Lula in the ski mask and almost jumped the curb.

"If you can't drive, you shouldn't be on the road," Lula yelled after him.

"It was the mask," I said. "You scared the crap out of him."

"Hunh," Lula said.

We got to the store and Lula tried the front door. Locked. "How many other doors are there?" she asked.

"Just one. It's in back. But it's a fire door. You'll never get through it. There aren't any windows back there either. Just a couple big exhaust fans."

"Then we got to go in through the front," Lula said. "And I don't mind doing it because I'm justified. This here's a righteous cause. It's not every day I can find a sweater like that." She turned to me. "You go ahead and pick the lock."

"I don't know how to pick a lock."

"Hell, you were the big bounty hunter. How could you be the big bounty hunter without knowing how to pick a lock? How'd you ever get in anywhere?"

She stood back and looked at the store. "Ordinarily I'd just break a window, but they got one big-ass window here. It's just about the whole front of the place. It might look suspicious if I broke the window."

Lula ran across the street to the Firebird and came back with a tire iron.

"Maybe we can pry the door open." She put the tire iron to the doorjamb and another car drove by. The car slowed as it passed us and then took off.

"Maybe we should try the back door," Lula said.

SIX

We went around to the back and Lula tried to wedge the tire iron under the bolt. "Don't fit," she said. "This door's sealed up tight." Lula gave the door a whack with the tire iron and the door swung open. "Will you look at this," Lula said. "Have we got some luck, or what?" "I don't like it. They always lock up and set the alarm." "They must have just forgot. It was a traumatic day." "I think we should leave. This doesn't feel right." "I'm not leaving without my sweater. I'm close now. I can hear my sweater calling to me. Soon's we get inside I'll switch on my Maglite, and you can work that gizmo that makes the clothes go around, and before you know it we'll be outta here."

We both took two steps forward, the door closed behind us, and Lula hit the button on the Maglite. We cautiously walked past the commercial washers and dryers and the large canvas bins that held the clothes. We stopped and listened for sirens, for someone else breathing, for the beeping of an alarm system ready to activate.

"Feels okay to me," Lula said.

It didn't feel okay to me. All the little hairs on my arm were standing at attention, and my heart was thumping in my chest.

"We got the counter right in front of us," Lula said. "You switch on the whirly clothes thing."

I reached for the switch and every light in the store suddenly went on. It was as bright as day. And there was Mama Macaroni, perched on her chair, a hideous crone dressed in a black shroud, sighting us down the barrel of a gun, her mole hairs glinting under the fluorescent light.

"Holy crap," Lula said. "Holy Jesus. Holy cow."

Mama Macaroni held the gun in one hand and Lula's dry cleaning in the other.

"I knew you'd be back," she said. "Your kind has no honor. All you know is stealing and whoring."

"I quit whoring," Lula said. "Okay, maybe I do a little recreational whoring once in a while ..."

"Trash," Mama Macaroni said. "Cheap trash. Both of you." She turned to me.

"I never want to hire you. I tell them anything that come from your family is bad. Hungarians!" And she spat on the floor. "That's what I think of Hungarians."

"I'm not Hungarian," Lula said. "How about giving me my dry cleaning?"

"When hell freezes. And that's where you should be," Mama Macaroni said. "I put a curse on you. I send you to hell."

Lula looked at me. "She can't do that, can she?"

"You never get this sweater," Mama Macaroni said. "Never. I take this sweater to the grave with me."

Lula looked at me like she wouldn't mind arranging that to happen.

"It'd be expensive," I said to Lula. "Be cheaper just to buy a new sweater."

"And you," Mama Macaroni said to me. "You never gonna see that car again. That my car now. You leave it in my lot and that make it mine." She squinted down the barrel at me, leveling it at forehead level. "Give me the key."

"You don't suppose she'd actually shoot you, do you?" Lula asked.

There was no doubt in my mind. Mama Macaroni would shoot me, and I'd be dead, dead, dead. I pulled the car key out of my pocket and gingerly handed it over to Mama.

"I'm gonna leave now," Mama said. "I got a TV show I like to watch. And you gonna stay here." She backed away from us, past the washers and dryers to the rear door. She set the alarm and scuttled through the fire door. The door closed after her, and I could hear her throw the bolt.

I immediately went to the front of the store and stood behind the counter so I could look out the window. "We'll wait until we see her drive away, and then we'll leave," I said to Lula. "We'll trip the alarm when we open the door, but we'll be long gone before the police get here."

I heard the Saturn engine catch, and then there was an explosion that rocked the building. The explosion blew the fire door off its hinges, shattered the big front window, and knocked Lula and me to our knees.

"Fudge!" Lula said.

My instinct was to leave the building. I didn't know what caused the explosion, but I wanted to get out before it happened again. And I didn't know if the building was structurally sound. I grabbed Lula and got her to her feet and pulled her to the front door. We were walking carefully, crunching over glass shards.

Lucky we'd been behind the counter when the explosion occurred. The door had been blown open, and Lula and I picked our way through the debris, onto the sidewalk.

Kan Klean was in a mixed neighborhood of small businesses and small homes, and people were coming out of their houses, looking around for the source of the explosion.

"What the heck was that?" Lula said. "And why's there a tire in the middle of the sidewalk?"

I looked at Lula and Lula looked at me, and we knew why there was a tire in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Car bomb," Lula said.

We ran around to the parking lot on the side of the building and stopped short. The Saturn was a blackened skeleton of smoking, twisted metal. Difficult to see details in the dark. Chunks of shredded fiberglass body, upholstered cushion, and odds and ends of car parts were scattered over the lot.

Lula had her flashlight out, playing it across the disaster. She momentarily held the light on a segment of steering wheel. Part of a hand still gripped the wheel. A ragged shred of black cloth was attached to the hand.

"Uh oh," Lula said. "It don't look good for my dry cleaning."

I felt a wave of nausea slide through my stomach. "We should secure this area until the police get here."

Fifteen minutes later, the entire block was cordoned. Yellow police tape stretched everywhere and fire trucks and emergency vehicles were angled between police cars lights flashing. Banks of portable lights were going up to better see the scene. Macaronis from all parts of the Burg-were gathered in a knot to one side of the lot.

Morelli arrived shortly after the first blue-and-white, and he immediately whisked me away, lest I be torn limb from limb by Macaronis. He got the story, and then he stuffed me into his SUV with police escort. Forty-five minutes later, he returned and slid behind the wheel.

"Tell me again how this happened," Morelli said.

"Lula and I were driving by and I saw the light on, so I thought I'd go in and try to get Lula's dry cleaning. Mama Macaroni was alone in the store, she pulled a gun on me, demanded the keys to the Saturn, and left through the back door. Moments later, I heard the explosion."

"Good," Morelli said. "Now tell me what really happened."

"Lula and I broke in through the back door so we could steal her dry cleaning. Mama Macaroni was waiting for us, and the rest of the story is the same."

"Definitely go with the first version," Morelli said.

"Did they find the rest of Mama Macaroni?"

"Most of her. They're still looking through the bushes. Mama Macaroni covered a lot of ground." Morelli turned the key in the ignition. "Do you want to go home with her?"

"Yeah. I'm a little creeped out."

"I was hoping you'd want to go home with me because I'm smart and sexy and fun."

"That, too. And I like your dog."

"That car bomb was meant for you," Morelli said.

"I thought my life would get better if I stopped chasing after bad guys."

"You've made some enemies."

"It's Spiro," I told him.

Morelli stopped for a light and looked at me. "Spiro Stiva? Constantine's kid? Do you know this for sure?"

"No. It's just a gut feeling. The notes sound like him. And he was friends with Anthony Barroni. And now Barroni's dad is missing, and people say Anthony is spending money he shouldn't have."

"So you think something's going on with Anthony Barroni and Spiro Stiva?"

"Maybe. And maybe Spiro's whacko and decided I ruined his life and now he's going to end mine."

Morelli thought about it for a moment and shrugged. "It's not much, but it's as good as anything I've got. How do the other two disappearances fit in?"

"I don't know, but I think there might be one more." And I told him about Kloughn's client. "And there's something else. Kloughn's client's husband disappeared in their brand-new car. Michael Barroni also disappeared in a

brand-new car."

Morelli slid a sideways look at me.

"Okay, so I know lots of people have new cars. Still, it's something they had in common."

"Barroni, Gorman, and Lazar were the same age within two years, and they all owned small businesses. Does Kloughn's client fit that profile?"

"I don't know."

Morelli turned a corner, drove two blocks, and parked in front of his house.

"You'd think someone would have seen Spiro if he was back. The Burg's not good at keeping a secret."

"Maybe he's hiding."

My mother called on my cell phone. "People are saying you blew up Mama

Macaroni."

"She was in my car, and she accidentally blew herself up. I did not blow her up."

"How can someone accidentally blow themself up? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm going home with Joe."

It was early morning, and I was sitting on the side of the bed, watching Morelli get dressed. He was wearing black jeans, cool black shoes with a thick Vibram sole, and a long-sleeved blue button-down shirt. He looked like a movie star playing an Italian cop.

"Very sexy," I said to Morelli.

He strapped his watch on and looked over at me. "Say it again and the clothes come off."

"You'll be late."

Morelli's eyes darkened, and I knew he was weighing pleasure against responsibility. There was a time in Morelli's life when pleasure would have won, no contest. I'd been attracted to that Morelli, but I hadn't especially liked him. The moment passed and Morelli's eyes regained focus. The guy part was under control. Not to give him more credit than he deserved, I suspected this was made possible by the two orgasms he'd had last night and the one he'd had about a half hour ago.

"I can't be late today. I have an early meeting, and I'm way behind on my paperwork." He kissed the top of my head. "Will you be here when I come home

tonight?"

"No. I'm working the three-to-eleven shift at CluckinaBucket."

"You're kidding."

"It was one of those impulse things."

Morelli grinned down at me. "You must need money real bad."

"Bad enough."

I followed him down the stairs and closed the door after him. "Just you and me," I said to Bob.

Bob had already eaten his breakfast and gone for a walk so Bob was feeling mellow. He wandered away, into the living room where bars of sunshine were slanting through the window onto the carpet. Bob turned three times and flopped down onto the sunspot.

I shuffled out to the kitchen, got a mug of coffee, and took it upstairs to Morelli's office. The room was small and cluttered with boxes of income tax files, a red plastic milk carton filled with old tennis balls collected during dog walks in the park, a baseball bat, a stack of phone books, gloves and wraps for a speed bag, a giant blue denim dog bed, a well-oiled baseball glove, a power screwdriver, roles of duct tape, a dead plant in a clay pot, and a plastic watering can that had obviously never been used. He had a computer and a desktop printer on a big wood desk that had been bought used.

And he had a phone.

I sat at the desk, and I took a pen and a yellow legal pad from the top drawer. I had the morning free, and I was going to use it to do some sleuthing.

Someone wanted me dead, and I didn't feel comfortable sitting around doing nothing, waiting for it to happen.

First on my list was a call to Kloughn.

"She wouldn't let me in the house," he said. "I had to sleep here in the office. It wasn't so bad since I have a couch, and the Laundromat is next door.

I got up early and did some laundry. What should I do? Should I call? Should I go over there? I had this terrible nightmare last night. Valerie was floating over top of me in the wedding gown except she was a whale. I bet it was because she kept saying how she was a whale in the wedding gown. Anyway, there she was in my dream ... a big huge whale all dressed up in the white wedding gown. And then all of a sudden she dropped out of the sky, and I was squashed under her, and I couldn't breathe. Good thing I woke up, hunh?"

"Good thing. I need to know your client's name," I told him. "The one with the missing husband."

"Terry Runion. Her husband's name is Jimmy Runion."

"Do you know what kind of car he just bought?"

"Ford Taurus. He got it at that big dealership on Route One. Shiller Ford."

"His age?"

"I don't know his exact age, but his wife looks like she's late fifties."

"What about his job? Did he quit his job when he disappeared?" "He didn't have a job. He used to work for some computer company, but he took early retirement. About Valerie..."

"I'll talk to Valerie for you," I said. And I hung up.

Valerie answered on the second ring. "Yuh," she said.

"I just talked to Albert. He said he slept in his office."

"He said I was fat."

"He said you were chubby."

"Do you think I'm chubby?" Val asked.

"No," I told her. "I think you're fat."

"Oh God," Valerie wailed. "Oh God! How did this happen? How did I get fat?"

"You ate everything. And you ate it with gravy."

"I did it for the baby."

"Well, something went wrong because only seven pounds went to the baby, and you got the rest."

"I don't know how to get rid of it. I've never been fat before."

"You should talk to Lula. She's good at losing weight."

"If she's so good at losing weight, why is she so big?"

"She's also good at gaining weight. She gains it. She loses it. She gains it. She loses it."

"The wedding is on Saturday. If I really worked at it, do you think I could lose sixty pounds between now and Saturday?"

"I guess you could have it sucked out, but I hear that's real painful and you get a lot of bruising."

"I hate my life," Val said.

"Really?"

"No. I just hate being fat."

"That doesn't mean you should hate Albert. He didn't make you fat."

"I know. I've been awful to him, and he's such an adorable oogie woogams."

"I think it's great that you're in love, Val. And I'm happy for you... I really am. But the baby talk cuddle umpkins oogie woogams thing is making me a little barfy warfy. What about the Virgin Mary, Val? Remember when everyone said you were just like the Virgin Mary? You were cool and serene like the Virgin Mary, like a big pink plaster statue of the Virgin. Would the Virgin refer to God as her cuddle umpkins? I don't think so."

The next call was to my cousin Linda at the DMV. "I need some information,"

I said to Linda. "Benny Gorman, Michael Barroni, Louis Lazar. I want to know if they got a new car in the last three months and what kind?"

"I heard you quit working for Vinnie. So what's up with the names?"

"Part-time job. Routine credit check for CBNJ." I had no idea what CBNJ stood for, but it sounded good, right?

I could hear Linda type the names into her computer. "Here's Barroni," she said. "He bought a Honda Accord two weeks ago. Nothing on Gorman. And nothing's coming up on Lazar."

"Thanks. I appreciate it."

"Boy, the wedding's almost here. I guess everyone's real excited."

"Yeah. Valerie's a wreck."

"That's the way it is with weddings," Linda said.

I disconnected and took a moment to enjoy my coffee. I liked sitting in Morelli's office. It wasn't especially pretty, but it felt nice because it was filled with all the bits and pieces of Morelli's life. I didn't have an office in my apartment. And maybe that was a good thing because I was afraid if I had an office it might be empty. I didn't have a hobby. I didn't play sports. I had a family, but I never got around to framing pictures. I wasn't learning a foreign language, or learning to play the cello, or learning to be a gourmet cook.

Well hell, I thought. I could just pick one of those things. There's no reason why I can't be interesting and have an office filled with stuff. I can collect tennis balls in the park. And I can get a plant and let it die.

And I can play the damn cello. In fact, I could probably be a terrific cello player.

I took my coffee mug downstairs and put it in the dishwasher. I grabbed my bag and my jacket. I yelled goodbye to Bob as I was going out the door. And I set off on foot for my parents' house. I was going to borrow Uncle Sandors Buick. Again. I had no other option. I needed a car. Good thing it was a long walk to my parents' house and I was getting all this exercise because I was going to need a doughnut after taking possession of the Buick.

Grandma was at the door when I strolled down the street. "It's Stephanie!"

Grandma yelled to my mother.

Grandma loved when I blew up cars. Blowing up Mama Macaroni would be icing on the cake for Grandma. My mother didn't share Grandma's enthusiasm for death and disaster. My mother longed for normalcy. Dollars to doughnuts, my mother was in the kitchen ironing. Some people popped pills when things turned sour. Some hit the bottle. My mother's drug of choice was ironing. My mother ironed away life's frustrations.

Grandma opened the door for me, and I stepped into the house and dropped my bag on the hall table.

"Is she ironing?" I asked Grandma Mazur.

"Yep," Grandma said. "She's been ironing since first thing this morning. Probably would have started last night but she couldn't get off the phone. I swear, half the Burg called about you last night. Finally we disconnected the phone."

I went to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee. I sat down at the little kitchen table and looked over at my mother's ironing basket. It was empty.

"How many times have you ironed that shirt you've got on the board?" I asked

my mother.

"Seven times," my mother said.

"Usually you calm down by the time the basket's empty."

"Somebody blew up Mama Macaroni," my mother said. "That doesn't bother me. She had it coming. What bothers me is that it was supposed to be you. It was your car."

"I'm being careful. And it's not certain that it was a bomb. It could have been an accident. You know how it is with my cars. They catch on fire, and they explode."

My mother made a strangled sound in her throat, and her eyes sort of glazed over. "That's true," she said. "Hideously true."

"Marilyn Rugach said Stiva's got most of Mama Macaroni at the funeral parlor," Grandma said. "Marilyn works there part-time doing bookkeeping. I talked to Marilyn this morning, and she said they brought the deceased to the home in a zippered bag. She said there was still some parts missing, but she wouldn't say if they found the mole. Do you think there's any chance that they'll have an open casket at the viewing? Stiva's pretty good at patching people up, and I sure would like to see what he'd do with that mole."

My mother made the sign of the cross, a hysterical giggle gurgled out of her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

"You should give up on the ironing and have a snort," Grandma said to my mother.

"I don't need a snort," my mother said. "I need some sanity in my life."

"You got a lot of sanity," Grandma said. "You got a real stable lifestyle. You got this house and you got a husband . . . sort of. And you got daughters and granddaughters. And you got the Church."

"I have a daughter who blows things up. Cars, trucks, funeral parlors, people."

"That only happens once in a while," I said. "I do lots of other things besides that."

My mother and grandmother looked at me. I had their full attention. They wanted to know what other things I did besides blowing up cars and trucks and funeral parlors and people.

I searched my mind and came up with nothing. I did a mental replay of yesterday. What did I do? I blew up a car and an old lady. Not personally but I was somewhere in the mix. What else? I made love to Morelli. A lot. My mother wouldn't want to hear about that. I got fired. I shot a guy in the foot. She wouldn't want to hear that either.

"I can play the cello," I said. I don't know where it came from. It just flew out of my mouth.

My mother and grandmother stood frozen in openmouthed shock.

"Don't that beat all," Grandma finally said. "Who would have thought you could play the cello?"

"I had no idea," my mother said. "You never mentioned it before. Why didn't you tell us?"

"I was... shy. It's one of those personal hobbies. Personal cello playing."

"I bet you're real good," Grandma said.

My mother and grandmother looked at me expectantly. They wanted me to be good.

"Yep," I said. "I'm pretty good."

Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie, I said to myself. What are you doing? You are such a goofus. You don't even know what a cello looks like. Sure I do, I answered. It's a big violin, right?

"How long have you been taking lessons?" Grandma wanted to know.

"A while." I looked at my watch. "Gee, I'd like to stay, but I have things to do. I was hoping I could borrow Uncle Sandor's Buick."

Grandma took a set of keys out of a kitchen drawer. "Big Blue will be happy to see you," she said. "He doesn't get driven around too much."

Big Blue corners like a refrigerator on wheels. It has power brakes but no power steering. It guzzles gas. It's impossible to park. And it's powder blue. It has a shiny white top, powder blue body, silver-rimmed portholes, fat whitewall tires, and big gleaming chrome bumpers.

"I guess you need a big car like Blue so you can carry that cello around with you," Grandma said.

"It's a perfect fit for the backseat," I told her.

I took the keys and waved myself out of the house. I walked to the garage, opened the door, and there it was . . . Big Blue. I could feel the vibes coming off the car. The air hummed around me. Men loved Big Blue. It was a muscle car. It rode on a sweaty mix of high-octane gas and testosterone. Step on the gas and hear me roar, the car whispered. Not the growl of a Porsche. Not the vroooom of a Ferrari. This car was a bull walrus. This car had cajones that hung to its hubcaps.

Personally, I prefer cajones that sit a little higher, but hey, that's just me. I climbed aboard, rammed the key in, and cranked Blue over. The car came to life and vibrated under me. I took a deep breath, told myself I'd own a Lexus someday, and slowly backed out of the garage.

Grandma trotted over to the car with a brown grocery bag. "Your mother wants you to drop this off at Valerie's house. Valerie forgot to take it last night."

Valerie was renting a small house at the edge of the Burg, about a half mile away. Until yesterday, she was sharing the house with Albert Kloughn. And since she was back to calling him her oogie woogams, I suppose he was about to return.

I wound through a maze of streets, brought Big Blue to the curb in front of Val's house, and stared at the car parked in front of me. It was Lula's red Firebird. Two possibilities. One was that Valerie had skipped out on a bond. The other was that she'd taken my smart-mouth advice and called Lula for diet tips. I rolled out of the Buick and got on with the brown-bag delivery.

Val opened the door before I reached the porch. "Grandma called and said you were on your way."

"Looks like Lula's here. Are you FTA?"

"No. I'm F-A-T. So I called Lula like you suggested. And she came right over."

"I take other people's dieting seriously," Lula said to Valerie. "I'm gonna have you skinny in no time. This might even turn out to be a second career for me. Of course, now that I'm a bounty hunter I've got a lot of demands on my time. I've got a real nasty case that I'm working on. I should be out tracking this guy down right now, only I figured I could take a break from it and help you out."

"What kind of case is it?" Val asked.

"He's wanted for AR and PT," Lula said. "That's bounty hunter shorthand for armed robbery and public tinkling. He held up a liquor store and then took a leak in the domestic table wines section. I bet Stephanie here is gonna be so happy I'm helping you that she's gonna ride along and help out with the apprehension."

"Not likely," I said. "I have to be at work at three."

"Yeah, but at the rate you're going, you'll be fired by five," Lula said. "I just hope you last through dinnertime because I was planning on coming in for a bucket of extra crispy."

"Is that on my diet?" Val asked.

"Hell no," Lula said. "Ain't nothing on your diet. You want to lose weight, you gotta starve. You gotta eat a bunch of plain-ass carrots and shit."

"What about that no-carb diet? I hear you can eat bacon and steak and lobster."

"You didn't tell me what kind of diet you wanted to do. I just figured you wanted the starvation diet on account of it's the easiest and the most economical. You don't have to weigh anything. And you don't have to cook anything. You just don't eat anything." Lula motored off to the kitchen.

"Let's check out your cupboards and see if you got good food or bad food."

Lula poked around. "Uh oh, this don't look like skinny food. You got chips in here. Boy, I sure would like some of these chips. I'm not gonna eat them, though, 'cause I got willpower."

"Me, too," Valerie said. "I'm not going to eat them either."

"I bet you eat them when we leave," Lula said.

Valerie bit into her lower lip. Of course she'd eat them. She was human, wasn't she? And this was Jersey. And the Burg, for crissake. We ate chips in the Burg. We ate everything.

"Maybe I should take those chips," Lula said. "It would be okay if I ate the chips later being that I'm currently not in my weight-losing mode. I'm currently in my weight-gaining mode."

Valerie pulled all the bags of chips out of the cupboard and dumped them into a big black plastic garbage bag. She threw boxes of cookies and bags of candy into the bag. She added the junk-sugar-loaded cereals, the toaster waffles, the salted nuts. She handed the bag over to Lula. "And I'm only going to eat one pork chop tonight. And I'm not going to smother it in gravy."

"Good for you," Lula said. "You're gonna be skinny in no time with an attitude like that."

Valerie turned to me. "Grandma was all excited when she called. She said they just found out you've been playing the cello all these years."

Lula's eyes bugged out. "Are you shitting me? I didn't know you played a musical instrument. And the cello!

That's real fancy-pants. That's fuckin' classy. How come you never said anything?"

Small tendrils of panic curled through my stomach. This was getting out of control. "It's no big thing," I said. "I'm not very good. And I hardly ever play. In fact, I can't remember the last time I celloed."

"I don't ever remember seeing a cello in your apartment," Valerie said.

"I keep it in the closet," I told her. I was such a good fibber! It had been my one real usable talent as a bounty hunter. I made a show of checking my watch. "Boy, look at the time. I have to go."

"Me, too," Lula said. "I gotta go get that stupid AR." She wrapped her arms around the bag of junk food and lugged it out to her car. "It would be like old times if you rode with me on this one," Lula said to me. "It wouldn't take us long to round up Mr. Pisser, and then we could eat all this shit."

"I have to go home and take a shower and get dressed for work. And I have to feed Rex. And I don't want to do bond enforcement anymore."

"Okay," Lula said. "I guess I could understand all that."

Lula roared off in her Firebird. And I slowly accelerated in the Buick. The Buick was like a freight train. Takes a while to get a full head of steam, but once it gets going it'll plow through anything.

I stopped at Giovichinni's Meat Market on the way home. I idled in front of the store and looked through the large front window. Bonnie Sue Giovichinni was working the register. I dialed Bonnie Sue and asked her if there were any Macaronis in the store.

"Nope," Bonnie Sue said. "The coast is clear."

I scurried around, gathering the bare essentials. A loaf of bread, some sliced provolone, a half pound of sliced ham, a small tub of chocolate ice cream, a quart of skim milk, and a handful of fresh green beans for Rex. I added a couple Tastykakes to my basket and lined up behind Mrs. Krepler at the checkout.

"I just talked to Ruby Beck," Mrs. Krepler said. "Ruby tells me you've left the bonds office so you can play cello with a symphony orchestra. How exciting!"

I was speechless.

"And have you heard if they found the mole yet?" Mrs. Krepler asked.

I paid for my groceries and hurried out of the store. The cello-playing thing was going through the Burg like wildfire. You'd think with something as good as Mama Macaroni getting blown to bits there wouldn't be time to care about my cello playing. I swear, I can't catch a break here.

I drove home and docked the boat in a spot close to the back door. I figured the closer to the door, the less chance of a bomb getting planted. I wasn't sure the theory held water, but it made me feel better. I took the stairs and opened the door to my apartment cautiously. I stuck my head in and listened.

Just the sound of Rex running on his wheel in his cage in the kitchen. I locked and bolted the door behind me and retrieved my gun from the cookie jar.

The gun wasn't loaded because I'd forgotten to buy bullets, but I crept through the apartment, looking in closets and under the bed with the gun drawn anyway. I couldn't shoot anyone, but at least I looked like I could kick ass.

I took a shower and got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. I didn't spend a lot of time on my hair since I'd be wearing the dorky Cluck hat. I lined my eyes and slathered on mascara to make up for the hair. I gave Rex a couple beans, and I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich. I glanced at my gun while I ate my sandwich. The gun was loaded. I went to the cookie jar and looked inside. There was a Rangeman business card in the bottom of the jar. A single word was handwritten on the card, babe!

I had a momentary hot flash and briefly considered checking out my underwear drawer for more business cards. "He's trying to protect me," I said to Rex.

"He does that a lot."

I got the tub of ice cream from the freezer and took it to the dining room table, along with a pad. I sat at the table and ate the ice cream and made notes for myself. I had four guys who were all about the same age. They all had a small business at one time or another. Two bought new cars. They all disappeared on the same day at about the same time. None of their cars were ever retrieved. That was all I knew.

My hunch about Anthony and Spiro didn't really amount to much. Probably I

was trying to make a connection where none existed. One thing was certain.

Someone was stalking me, trying to scare me. And now it looked like that person was trying to kill me. Not a happy thought.

I'd eaten about a third of the tub of ice cream. I put the lid on the tub and walked it back to the freezer. I put all the food away and wiped down the countertop. I wasn't much of a housekeeper, but I didn't want to be killed and have my mother discover my kitchen was a mess.

SEVEN

I left my apartment at two-thirty and gingerly circled the Buick, looking for signs of tampering. I looked in the window. I crouched down and looked under the car. Finally I put the key in the lock, squinched my eyes closed, and opened the door. No explosion. I slid behind the wheel, took a deep breath, and turned the engine over. No explosion. I thought this was good news and bad news. If it had exploded I'd be dead, and that would be bad. On the other hand, I wouldn't have to wear the awful Cluck hat, and that would be very good.

Twenty minutes later, I was standing in front of Milton Mann, receiving instructions.

"We're going to start you off at the register," he said. "It's all computerized so it's super simple. You just punch in the order and the computer sends the order to the crew in the back and tells you how much to charge the customer. You have to be real friendly and polite. And when you give the customer their change you say, 'Thank you for visiting Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Have a clucky day.' And always remember to wear your hat. It's our special trademark."

The hat was egg-yolk yellow and rooster-comb red. It had a bill like a ball cap, except the bill was shaped like a beak, and the rest of the hat was a huge chicken head, topped off with the big floppy red comb. Red chicken legs with red chicken toes hung from either side of the bottom of the hat. The rest of the uniform consisted of an egg-yolk yellow short-sleeve shirt and elastic-waist pants that had the Cluck-in-a-Bucket chicken logo imprinted everywhere in red. The shirt and pants looked like pajamas designed for the criminally insane.

"You'll do a two-hour shift at the register and then we'll rotate you to the chicken fryer," Mann said.

If it was in the cards that the bomber was going to succeed in killing me, I prayed that it happened before I got to the chicken fryer.

It turns out the three-to-five shift at the register is light. Some after-school traffic and some construction workers.

A woman and her kid stepped up to the counter.

"Tell the chicken what you want," the woman said.

"It's not a chicken," the kid said. "It's a girl in a stupid chicken hat."

"Yes, but she can cluck like a chicken," the woman said. "Go ahead," she said to me. "Cluck like a chicken for Emily."

I looked at the woman.

"Last time we were here the chicken clucked," the woman said.

I looked down at Emily. "Cluck."

"She's no good," Emily said. "The other chicken was way better. The other chicken flapped her arms."

I took a deep breath, stuffed my fists under my armpits, and did some chicken-wing flapping. "Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, clu-u-u-u-ck," I said.

"I want french fries and a chocolate shake," Emily said.

The next guy in line weighed three hundred pounds and was wearing a torn

T-shirt and a hard hat. "You gonna cluck for me?" he asked. "How about I want you to do something besides cluck?"

"How about I shove my foot so far up your ass your nuts get stuck in your throat?"

"Not my idea of a good time," he said. "Get me a bucket of extra crispy and a Diet Coke."

At five o'clock I was marched back to the fryer.

"It's a no-brainer," Mann said. "It's all automated. When the green light goes on the oil is right for frying, so you dump the chicken in."

Mann pulled a huge plastic tub of chicken parts out of the big commercial refrigerator. He took the lid off the tub, and I almost passed out at the site of slick pink muscle and naked flesh and cracked bone.

"As you can see, we have three stainless-steel tanks," Mann said. "One is the fryer and one is the drainer and one is the breader. It's the breader that sets us apart from all the other chicken places. We coat our chicken with the specially seasoned secret breading glop right here in the store."

Mann dumped a load of chicken into a wire basket and lowered it into the breader. He swished the basket around, raised it, and gently set it into the hot oil. "When you put the chicken into the oil you push the Start button and the machine times the chicken. When the bell rings you take the chicken out and set the basket in the drainer. Easy, right?"

I could feel sweat prickle at my scalp under my hat. It was about two hundred degrees in front of the fryer, and the air was oil saturated. I could smell the hot oil. I could taste the hot oil. I could feel it soaking into my pores.

"How do I know how much chicken to fry?" I asked him.

"You just keep frying. This is our busy time of day. You go from one basket to the next and keep the hot chicken rolling out."

A half hour later, Eugene was yelling at me from the bagging table. "We need extra-spicy. All you're doing is extra-crispy. And there's all wings here.

You gotta give us some backs and some thighs. People are bitchin' about the friggin' wings. If they wanted all wings, they'd order all wings."

At precisely seven o'clock, Mann appeared at my side. "You get a half-hour dinner break now, and then we're going to rotate you to the drive-thru window until closing time at eleven."

My muscles ached from lifting the chicken baskets. My uniform was blotched with grease stains. My hair felt like it had been soaked in oil. My arms were covered with splatter burns. I had thirty minutes to eat, but I didn't think I could gag down fried chicken. I shuffled off to the ladies' room and sat on the toilet with my head down. I think I fell asleep like that because next thing I knew, Mann was knocking on the ladies' room door, calling my name.

I followed Mann to the drive-thru window. The plan was that I remove my

Cluck hat, put the headset on, and put the Cluck hat back over the headset.

Problem was, after tending the fryer, my hair was slick with grease and the headset kept sliding off.

"Ordinarily I don't put people in the drive-thru after the fryer just for this problem," Mann said, "but Darlene went home sick and you're all I got."

He disappeared into the storeroom and came back with a roll of black electrical tape. "Necessity is the mother of invention," he said, holding the headset to my head, wrapping my head with a couple loops of tape. "Now you can put your hat on and get clucky, and that headset isn't going anywhere."

"Welcome to Cluck-in-a-Bucket," I said to the first car.

"I wanna crchhtra skraapyy, two orders of fries, and a large crchhhk."

Mann was standing behind me. "That's extra crispy chicken, two fries, and a large Coke." He gave me a pat on the shoulder. "You'll get the hang of it after a couple cars. Anyway, all you have to do is ring them up, take their money, and give them their order. Fred is in back filling the order." And he left.

"Seven-fifty," I said. "Please drive up."

"What?"

"Seven-fifty. Please drive up."

"Speak English. I can't understand a friggin' thing you're saying."

"Seven-fifty!"

The car pulled to the window. I took money from the driver, and I handed him the bag. He looked into the bag and shook his head. "There's only one fries in here."

"Fred," I yelled into my mouthpiece, "you shorted them a fries."

Fred ran over with the fries. "Sorry, sir," he said to the guy in the car.

"Have a clucky day."

Fred was a couple inches taller than me and a couple pounds lighter. He had pasty white skin that was splotched with grease burns, pale blue eyes, and red dreads that stuck out from his hat, making him look a little like the straw man in The Wizard of Oz. I put him at eighteen or nineteen.

"Cluck you," the guy said to Fred, and drove off.

"Thank you, sir," Fred yelled after him. "Have a nice day. Go cluck yourself." Fred turned to me. "You gotta go faster. We have about forty cars in line. They're getting nasty."

After a half hour I was hoarse from yelling into the microphone.

"Seven-twenty," I croaked. "Please drive up."

"What?"

I took a sip of the gallon-size Coke I had next to my register.

"Seven-twenty."

"What?"

"Seven fucking twenty."

An SUV pulled up to the window, I reached for the money, and I found myself

staring into Spiro Stiva's glittering rat eyes. The lighting was bad, but I could see that his face had obviously been badly burned in the funeral home fire. I stood rooted to the spot, unable to move, unable to speak.

His mouth had become a small slash in the scarred face. The mouth smiled at me, but the smile was tight and joyless. He handed me a ten. His hand shook, and the skin on his hand was mottled and glazed from burn scars.

Fred gave me a bag, and I automatically passed it through to Spiro.

"Keep the change," Spiro said. And he tossed a medium-size box wrapped in

Scooby-Doo paper and tied with a red ribbon through the drive-thru window.

And he drove away.

The box bounced off the small service counter and landed on the floor between Fred and me. Fred picked the box up and examined it. "There's a gift tag attached.

It says Time is ticking away.' What's that supposed to mean? Hey, and you know what else? I think this thing is ticking. Do you know that guy?"

"Yeah, I know him." I took the box and turned to throw it out the drive-thru window. No good. Another car had already pulled up.

"What's the deal?" Fred asked.

"I need to take this outside."

"No way. There are a bazillion cars lined up. Mann will have a cow." Fred reached for the box. "Give it to me. I'll put it in the back room for you."

"No! This might be a bomb. I want you to very quietly call the police while I take this outside."

"Are you shitting me?"

"Just call the police, okay?"

"Holy crap! You're serious. That guy gave you a bomb?"

"Maybe . . ."

"Put it under water," Fred said. "I saw a show on television and they put the bomb under water."

Fred ripped the box out of my hand and dumped it into the chicken fryer. The boiling oil bubbled up and spilled I over the sides of the fryer. The oil slick carried to the grill, there was a sound like phuunf, and suddenly the grill was covered in blue flame.

Fred's eyes went wide. "Fire!" he shrieked. He grabbed a super-size cup and

scooped water from the rinse sink.

"No!" I yelled. "Get the chemical extinguisher."

Too late. Fred threw the water at the grill fire, a whoosh of steam rose in the air, and fire raced up the wall to the ceiling.

I pushed Fred to the front of the store and went back to make sure no one was left in the kitchen area. Flames were running down the walls and along the counters and the overhead sprinkler system was shooting foam. When I was sure the prep area was empty I left through a side door.

Sirens were screaming in the distance and the flash of emergency-vehicle strobes could be seen blocks away. Black smoke billowed high in the sky and flames licked out windows and doors and climbed up the stucco exterior.

Customers and employees stood in the parking lot, gawking at the spectacle.

"It wasn't my fault," I said to no one in particular.

Carl Costanza was the first cop on the scene. He locked eyes with me and smiled wide. He said something to Dispatch on his two-way, and I knew Morelli would be getting a call. Fire trucks and EMT trucks roared into the parking lot. More cop cars. The crowd of spectators was growing. They spilled onto the street and clogged the sidewalk. The evening news van pulled up. I moved away from the building to stand by the Buick at the outermost perimeter of the lot. I would have driven home, but the keys were in my bag, and my bag was barbecued.

The flashing strobes and the glare of headlights made it difficult to see into the jumble of parked cars and emergency trucks. Fire hoses snaked across the lot and silhouettes of men moved against the glare. Two men walked toward me, away from the pack. The silhouettes were familiar. Morelli and Ranger.

They had a strange alliance. They were two very different men with similar goals. They were teammates of a sort. And they were competitors. They were both smiling when they reached me. I'd like to think it was because they were happy to see me alive. But probably it was because I was my usual wreck. I was grease stained and smoke smudged. I still had the headset taped to my head. I was still wearing the awful chicken hat and Cluck pajamas. And globs of pink foam hung from the hat and clung to my shirt.

They both stood hands on hips when they reached me. They were smiling, but there was a grim set to their mouths.

Morelli reached over and swiped at the pink gunk on my hat.

"Fire extinguisher foam," I said. "It wasn't my fault."

"Costanza told me the fire was started with a bomb."

"I guess that might be true... indirectly. I was working the drive-thru window, and Spiro pulled up. He tossed a gift-wrapped box at me and drove away. The box was ticking, and Fred got all excited and dumped the box in the vat of boiling oil. The oil bubbled over onto the grill and next thing the place was toast."

"Are you sure it was Spiro?"

"Positive. His face and hands are scarred, but I'm sure it was him. The card on the box said 'Time is ticking away'"

Morelli took a quarter from his pocket and flipped it into the air. "Call it," he said to Ranger.

"Heads."

Morelli caught the quarter and slapped it over. "Heads. You win. I guess I have to clean her up."

"Good luck," Ranger said. And he left.

I was too exhausted to get totally irate, but I managed to muster some half-assed outrage. I glared at Morelli. "I don't believe you tossed for me."

"Cupcake, you should be happy I lost. He would have put you through the car wash at the corner of Hamilton and Market." He took my hand and tugged me forward.

"Let's go home."

"Will Big Blue be safe here?"

"Big Blue is safe everywhere. That car is indestructible."

Morelli was in the shower with me. "Okay," he said. "There's some bad news, and then there's some bad news. The bad news is that it would seem some clumps of hair got yanked out of your head when we ripped the electrician's tape off. The other bad news is that you still smell like fried chicken, and it's making me hungry. Why don't we towel you off and send out for food?"

I put my hand to my hair. "How bad is it?"

"Hard to tell with all that oil in it. It's sort of clumping together."

"I shampooed three times!"

"I don't think shampoo is going to cut it. Maybe you need something stronger... like paint stripper."

I grabbed a towel, stepped out of the shower, and looked at myself in the mirror over the sink. He was right. Shampoo wasn't working, and I had bald spots at the side of my head where the tape had been bound to me. "I'm not going to cry," I said to him.

"Thank God. I hate when you cry. It makes me feel really shitty."

A tear slid down my cheek.

"Oh crap," Morelli said.

I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. "It's been a long day."

"We'll figure this out tomorrow," Morelli said. He took the cap off a tube of aloe ointment and carefully dabbed the ointment on my chicken-fryer burns.

"I bet if you go to that guy at the mall, Mr. Whatshisname . . ."

"Mr. Alexander."

"Yeah, he's the one. I bet he'll be able to fix your hair." Morelli recapped the tube and reached for his cell phone. "I'm calling Pino. What do you want to eat?"

"Anything but chicken."

I woke up thinking Morelli was licking me, but it turned out to be Bob. My face was wet with Bob slurpees, and he was gnawing on my hair. I made a sound that was halfway between laughing and crying, and Morelli opened an eye and batted Bob away.

"It's not his fault," Morelli said. "You still smell like fried chicken."

"Great."

"Could be worse," Morelli said. "You could still smell like cooked car."

I rolled out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom. I soaped myself in the shower until there was no more hot water. I got out and sniffed at my arm.

Fried chicken. I returned to the bedroom and checked out the bed. Empty. Large grease stain on my pillowcase. I borrowed some sweats from Morelli's closet and followed the coffee smell to the kitchen.

Bob was sprawled on the floor next to his empty food bowl. Morelli was at the table, reading the paper.

I poured out a mug of coffee and sat across from Morelli. "I'm not going to cry."

"Yeah, I've heard that before," Morelli said. He put the paper aside and slid a bakery bag over to me. "Bob and I went to the bakery while you were in the shower. We thought you might need happy food."

I looked inside the bag. Two Boston cream doughnuts. "That's so nice of you," I said. And I burst into tears.

Morelli looked pained.

"My emotions are a little close to the surface," I told him. I blew my nose in a paper napkin and took a doughnut. "Any word on the fire?"

"Yeah. First, some good news. Cluck-in-a-Bucket is closed indefinitely, so you don't have to go back to work there. Second, some mixed news. Big Blue is parked at the curb in front of my house. I'm assuming this is Rangers handiwork. Unfortunately, unless you have an extra key you're not going tobe driving it until you get a locksmith out here. And now for the interesting stuff. They were able to retrieve the gift box from the chicken fryer."

I pulled the second doughnut out of the bag. "And?"

"It was a clock. No evidence that it was a bomb."

"Is that for sure?"

"That's what the lab guys said. I also got a report back on the car bomb. It was detonated from an outside source."

"What does that mean?"

"It means it didn't go off when Mama Macaroni stepped on the gas or turned the key in the ignition. Someone pushed the button on Mama Macaroni when they saw her get into the car. We'll assume it was Spiro since he gave you the box. Hard to believe he'd mistake Mama Macaroni for you, so I have to think he blew her away for giggles."

"Yikes."

Bob lumbered over and sniffed at the empty doughnut bag. Morelli crumpled the bag and threw it across the room, and Bob bounded after it and tore it to shreds.

"I'm guessing Spiro was waiting for you and when Mama Macaroni showed up he couldn't resist blowing her to smithereens. Hell, I'm not sure I could resist."

Morelli took a sip of my coffee. "Anyway, it looks like he isn't trying to kill you... yet."

I drank a second cup of coffee. I called Mr. Alexander and made an appointment for eleven o'clock. I stood to leave and realized I had nothing.

No key to the Buick. No key to my apartment. No credit cards. No money. No shoes. No underwear. We'd thrown all my clothes, including my shoes, into the trash last night.

"Help," I said to Morelli.

Morelli smiled at me. "Barefoot and desperate. Just the way I like you."

"Unless you also like me with a greasy head you'd better find a way to get me dressed and out to the mall."

"No problemo. I have a key to your apartment. And I have the day off. I'm ready to roll anytime you are."

"How did this happen?" Mr. Alexander asked, studying my hair. "No. On second thought, don't tell me. I'm sure it's something awful. It's always awful!"

He leaned over me and sniffed. "Have you been eating fried chicken?"

Morelli was slouched in a chair, hiding behind a copy of GQ. He was armed, he was hungry, and he was hoping for a nooner. From time to time, women walked in and checked Morelli out, starting with the hip work boots, going to the long legs in professionally faded jeans, pausing at the nicely packaged goods.

He didn't have a ring on his left hand. He didn't have a diamond stud in his ear. He didn't look civilized enough to be gay. He also didn't return the interest. If he looked beyond the magazine it was to assess the progress Mr. Alexander was making. If he locked eyes with an ogling woman his message wasn't friendly and the woman hurried on her way. I suspected the unfriendly disinterest was more a reflection of Morelli's impatience than of his single-minded love for me.

"I'm done!" Mr. Alexander said, whipping the cape off me. "This is the best I can do to cover up the bald spots. And we've gotten all the oil out." He looked over at Morelli. "Do you want me to tame the barbarian?"

"Hey, Joe," I yelled to him. "Do you need a haircut?"

Morelli always needed a haircut. Ten minutes after he got a haircut he still needed a haircut.

"I just got a haircut," Morelli said, getting to his feet.

"It would look wonderful if we took a smidgeon more off the sides," Mr. Alexander said to Morelli. "And we could put the tiniest bit of gel in the top."

Morelli stood hands on hips, his jacket flared, his gun obvious on his hip.

"But then maybe not," Mr. Alexander said. "Maybe it's perfect just as it is."

Morelli's cell phone rang. He answered the phone and passed it over to me.

"Your mother."

"I've been calling and calling you," my mother said. "Why don't you answer your cell phone?"

"My phone was in my bag and my bag was in CluckinaBucket when it burned down."

"Omigod, it's true! People have been calling night and day, and I thought they were joking. Since when do you work at Cluck-in-a-Bucket?"

"Actually, I don't work there anymore."

"Where are you? You're with Joseph. Are you in jail?"

"No. I'm at the mall."

"Four days to your sisters wedding and you're burning down the Burg. You have to stop exploding things and burning things. I need help. Someone has to check on the cake. Someone has to pick up the decorations for the cars. And the flowers for the church."

"Albert is in charge of the flowers."

"Have you seen Albert lately? Albert is drinking. Albert is locked away in his office having conversations with Walter Cronkite."

"I'll talk to him."

"No! No talking. It's better he's drunk. If he gets sober he might back out. And leave him in the office. The less time spent with Valerie the more likely he is to marry her."

I could see Morelli losing patience. He wasn't much of a mall person. He was more a bedroom and bar and playingfootball-in-the-park person. My grandmother was yelling in the background. "I gotta go to a viewing tonight. Stiva's laying out Mama Mac. I need a ride."

"Are you insane?" my mother said to my grandmother. "The place will be filled with Macaronis. They'll tear you to pieces."

Morelli parked the SUV in front of my parents' house and looked over at me.

"Don't get any ideas about your powers of persuasion. I'm only doing this for the meatloaf."

"And later you're going to play detective with me."

"Maybe."

"You promised."

"The promise doesn't count. We were in bed. I would have promised anything."

"Spiro's going to make an appearance, one way or another. I know it. He's going to have to see his handiwork. He's going to want to be part of the process."

"He won't see any of his handiwork tonight. The lid will be nailed down. I know Stiva's good, but trust me, all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Mama Macaroni together again."

Morelli and I got out of the SUV and watched a car creep down the street toward us. It was a blue Honda Civic. It was Kloughn's car. Kloughn hit the curb and eased one tire over before coming to a complete stop. He looked through the windshield at us and waved with just the tips of his fingers.

"Snockered," I said to Morelli.

"I should arrest him," Morelli said.

"You can't arrest him. He's Valerie's cuddle umpkins."

Morelli closed the distance, opened the door for Kloughn, and Kloughn fell out of the car. Morelli dragged Kloughn to his feet and propped him against the Civic.

"You shouldn't be driving," Morelli said to Kloughn.

"I know," Kloughn said. "I tried walking, but I was too drunk. It's okay. I was driving very slooooowly and 'sponsibly."

Kloughn started to sink to the ground, and Morelli grabbed him by the back of his coat. "What do you want me to do with him?" Morelli asked.

Here's the thing. I like Albert Kloughn. I wouldn't marry him. And I wouldn't hire him to defend me if I was accused of murder. I might not eventrust him to babysit Rex. Kloughn sort of falls into the Bob Dog category. Kloughn inspires maternal pet instincts in me. "Bring him inside," I told Morelli. "We'll put him to bed and let him sleep it off."

Morelli carted Kloughn into the house and up the stairs with Grandma trotting behind.

"Put him in the third bedroom," Grandma said to Morelli. "And then let's get to the table. Dinner's almost ready, and I don't want to get a late start on the meatloaf. I gotta get to the viewing."

"Over my dead body," my mother yelled from the bottom of the stairs.

My father was already at the table. He had his fork in his hand, and he was watching the kitchen door, as if the food would come marching out to him without my mothers help.

A car pulled up outside. Car doors opened and slammed shut, and then there was chaos. Valerie, Angie, The Baby, and the horse were in the house, and the house suddenly got very small.

Grandma bustled down the stairs and took the diaper bag off Valerie's shoulder. "Everybody sit," Grandma said. "The meatloaf's done. We got meatloaf and gravy and mashed potatoes. And we got pineapple upside-down cake for dessert. And we put lots of whipped cream on the cake." Grandma eyed Mary Alice. "And only horses who sit at the table and eat their vegetables and meatloaf are gonna get any of the whipped cream and cake."

"Where's my oogie woogie bear?" Valerie wanted to know. "I saw his car on the curb."

"He's upstairs drunk as a skunk," Grandma said. "I just hope his liver don't explode before we get you married off. You should make sure he's got life insurance."

My mother brought the meatloaf and green beans to the table. Grandma brought the red cabbage and a bowl of mashed potatoes. I pushed my chair back and went to the kitchen to fetch the gravy and get milk for the girls.

Dinner at my parents' house is survival of the fastest. We all sit down at the table. We all put napkins on our laps. And that's where the civility ends and the action heats up. Food is passed, shoveled onto plates, and consumed at warp speed. To date, no one has been stabbed with a fork for taking the last dinner roll, but that's only because we all understand the rules. Get there first and fast. So we were all a little stunned when Valerie put five green beans on her big empty plate and angrily stabbed them with her fork. Thunk, thunk, thunk.

"What's with you?" Grandma said to Valerie.

"I'm on a diet. All I get to eat are these beans. Five boring hideous beans." The grip on her fork was white-knuckled, her lips were pressed tightly together, and her eyes glittered feverishly as she took in Joe's plate directly across from her. Joe had a mountain of creamy mashed potatoes and four thick slabs of meatloaf, all drenched in gravy.

"Maybe this isn't a good time to be on a diet, what with all the stress over the wedding and all," Grandma said.

"It's because of the wedding that I have to diet," Valerie said, teeth clenched.

Mary Alice forked up a piece of meatloaf. "Mommy's a blimp."

Valerie made a growling sound that had me worrying her head was going to start doing full rotations on her neck.

"Maybe I should check on Albert," Morelli said to me.

I narrowed my eyes and looked at him sideways. "You're going to sneak out, aren't you?"

"No way. Honest to God." He blew out a sigh. "Okay, yeah, I was going to sneak out."

"I had a good idea today," Grandma said, ignoring the possibility that Valerie might be possessed. "I thought it would be special if we could have Stephanie play the cello at Valerie's wedding. She could play it at the church while the people are coming in. Myra Sklar had a guitar player at her wedding, and it worked out real good."

My mother's face brightened. "That's a wonderful idea!" Morelli turned to me. "You play the cello?" "You bet she does," Grandma said. "She's good, too."

"No, really, I'm not that good. And I don't think it would work if I played at the church. I'm in the wedding party. I have to be with Valerie."

Valerie was momentarily distracted from her green-bean stabbing. "It would just be while the people are walking in," Valerie said. "And then you can put the cello aside and take your place in line."

Morelli was smiling. He knew I didn't play the cello. "I think you should do it," Morelli said. "You wouldn't want all those years of cello lessons to go to waste, would you?" I shot him a warning look. "You are so toast."

EIGHT

"This is going to be a humdinger of a wedding," Grandma said, returning her attention to her meatloaf and potatoes. "And it's going to be smooth sailing because we got a wedding planner."

Morelli and I exchanged glances. The Kloughn wedding was going to be a disaster of epic proportions.

We heard some scuffling and mumbling from the second floor. There was a moment of silence. And then Kloughn rolled down the stairs and landed at the bottom with a good solid thud. We all pushed back from the table and went to assess the damage.

Kloughn was spread-eagled on his back. His face was white and his eyes were wide. "I had the nightmare again," he said to me. "The one I told you about.

It was awful. I couldn't breathe. I was suffocating. Every time I go to sleep I get the nightmare."

"What nightmare is he talking about?" Valerie wanted to know. I didn't want to tell Valerie about the whale. It wasn't the sort of recurring dream a bride could get all gushy about. Especially since Val had almost gone into cardiac arrest when Mary Alice had called her a blimp.

"It's a nightmare about an elevator," I said. "He's in this elevator, and all the air gets sucked out, and he can't breathe."

"All that white," Kloughn said, sweat popping out on his forehead. "It was all I could see. I could only see white. And then I couldn't breathe."

"It was a white elevator," I said to Valerie. "You know how dreams can get weird, right?"

Morelli had Kloughn on his feet, holding him up by the back of his jacket again. "Now what?" Morelli said. "Where do you want him this time?"

"We should lock him up someplace safe where he can't get away," Grandma said. "Someplace like jail. Maybe you should bust him."

"What's in his jacket pocket?" Valerie asked, patting the pocket. "It's a candy bar!" She ran her fingers over it. "It feels like a Snickers."

Some people can read Braille . . . my sister can feel up a candy bar in a pocket and identify it.

"I need that candy bar," Valerie said.

"It wouldn't be good for your diet," I told her.

"Yeah," Grandma said. "Go eat another green bean."

"I need that candy bar," Valerie said, eyes narrowed. "I really need it."

Kloughn pulled the candy bar out of his pocket, the candy bar slipped through his fingers, flew through the air, and bounced off Valerie's forehead.

Valerie blinked twice and burst into tears. "You hit me," she wailed.

"You're a nutso bride," Grandma said, retrieving the candy bar, tucking it into the zippered pocket of her warm-up suit jacket. "You're imagining things. Just look at Snoogie Boogie here. Does he look like he could hit someone? He don't know the time of day."

"I don't feel so good," Kloughn said. "I want to lie down."

"Put him on the couch," my mother said to Morelli. "He'll be safer there. He's lucky he didn't break his neck when he fell down the stairs."

We went back to the table and everybody dug in again.

"Maybe I don't want to get married," Valerie said.

"Of course you want to get married," Grandma told her. "How could you pass up Snogle Wogle out there? It'll be his job to take the garbage out on garbage day. And he'll get the oil changed in the car. You want to do those things all by yourself? And after we get you married off we gotta work on Stephanie."

Grandma fixed an eye on Morelli. "How come you don't marry her?"

"Not my fault," Morelli said. "She won't marry me."

"Of course it's your fault," Grandma said. "You must be doing something wrong, if you know what I mean. Maybe you need to buy a book that tells you how to do it. I hear there are books out there with pictures and everything. I saw one in the store the other day. It was called A Sex Guide for Dummies."

Morelli paused with a chunk of meatloaf halfway to his mouth. No one had ever questioned his expertise in the sack before. His sexual history was legend in the Burg. My sister gave a bark of laughter and quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. My mother went pale. And my father kept his head down, not wanting to lose the fork-to-mouth rhythm he had going.

Morelli sat frozen in his seat for a long moment and then obviously decided no answer was the way to go. He gave me a small tight smile and got on with his meal. Things quieted down after that until Grandma started checking her watch halfway through dessert.

"No," my mother said to her. "Don't even think it."

"Think what?" Grandma asked.

"You know what. You're not going to the viewing. It would be in terrible taste. The Macaronis have suffered enough without us adding to their grief."

"The Macaronis are probably dancing in their socks," Grandma said. "Susan Mifflin saw them eating at Artie's Seafood House the day after the accident.

She said they were going at the all-you-can-eat crab legs like it was a party."

When the only thing left of the pineapple upside-down cake was a smudge of

whipped cream on the cake plate, I helped my mother clear the table. I promised I'd get the decorations for the cars. And I made a mental note that in the future I would avoid weddings, mine or anyone else's. And while I was making my never-again list, I might add never have another dinner at my parents' house... although it was pretty funny when Grandma suggested Morelli get a Dummies' guide to good sex.

Ten minutes later, Morelli and I were parked on Hamilton, across from the

funeral home.

"Tell me again why we're doing this," Morelli said.

"The bad guy always returns to the scene of the crime. Everybody knows that."

"This isn't the scene of the crime."

"Work with me here, okay? It's close enough. Spiro seems like the kind of guy who would hate to be left out. I think he'd want to watch the spectacle."

We sat for a couple minutes in silence and Morelli turned to me. "You're smiling," Morelli said. "It's making me uneasy. Anyone in their right mind wouldn't be smiling after that dinner."

"I thought there were some good moments."

Morelli was dividing his attention between the people arriving for the viewing and me. "Like when your grandmother suggested I get a book?"

"That was the best moment."

It was deep twilight. Light pooled on the sidewalk and road from overhead halogens, and Stiva's front porch was glowing. Stiva didn't want the old folks falling down the stairs after visiting with the deceased.

Morelli reached out to me in the darkened car. His fingertips traced along my hairline. "Do you want to throw out a comment here? Was your grandmother

right? Is that why we're not married?"

"You're fishing for compliments."

That got Morelli smiling. "Busted."

Someone rapped on the drivers-side window, and we both flinched. Morelli rolled the window down a crack, and Grandma squinted in at us.

"I thought I recognized the car," Grandma said.

"What are you doing here?" I asked Grandma. "I thought it was settled that you'd stay away."

"I know your mother means well, but sometimes she can be a real pain in the patoot. This viewing will be the talk of the town. How can I go to the beauty parlor tomorrow if I don't know anything about the viewing? What will I say to people? I got a reputation to uphold. People expect me to know the dirt. So I sneaked out when your mother went to the bathroom. I was lucky to be able to hitch a ride with Mabel from next door."

"We can't let Grandma go to that viewing," I said to Morelli. "She'll be nothing but a grease spot on Stiva's carpet after the Macaronis get done with her."

"You really shouldn't go to the viewing," he said to Grandma. "Why don't you get in the car, and we'll go to a bar and get wasted?"

"Not a bad offer," Grandma said. "But no can do. I can't take a chance on them having the lid up."

"There's no chance they'll have the lid up," Morelli said. "I saw them collecting the pieces, and they're not going to fit together."

Grandma slid her dentures around in her mouth while she weighed her choices.

"Don't seem right not to pay my respects," she finally said.

"Here's the deal," Morelli said. "I'll go in and scope things out. If the lid is up I'll come get you. If the lid is down I'll drive you home."

"I guess that sounds reasonable," Grandma said. "I don't want to get torn limb from limb by the Macaronis for no good cause. I'll wait here."

"And ask Constantine if he's seen Spiro," I told Morelli.

Morelli got out, and Grandma took his place behind the wheel. We watched Morelli walk into the funeral home.

"He's a keeper," Grandma said. "He's turned into a real nice young man. And he's nice looking, too. Not as hot as that Ranger but pretty darn close."

Cars rolled past us on Hamilton. People parked in the lot next to Stiva's and made their way to the big front porch. A group of men stood just outside the door. They were smoking and talking and occasionally there'd be a bark of laughter.

"I guess you're unemployed again," Grandma said. "You have any ideas where you'll go next?"

"I hear they're hiring at the sanitary products plant."

"That might work out. That plant is way down Route One and they might not have heard about you yet."

The light changed at the end of the block and cars began moving again. An SUV slid by us going in the opposite direction... and Spiro was behind the wheel.

I started climbing over the console. "Get out of the car," I yelled. "I need to follow that SUV."

"No way. I'm not missing out on this. I can catch him," Grandma said.

"Buckle your seat belt."

I opened my mouth to say no, but Grandma already had the car in gear. She shot back and rammed the car behind us, knocking him back a couple feet.

"That's better," Grandma said. "Now I got room to get out." She wheeled Morelli's SUV into traffic, stopped short, laid on the horn, and cut into the stream of oncoming cars.

Grandma learned to drive a couple years ago. She immediately racked up points for speeding and lost her license. She wasn't all that good a driver back then, and she wasn't any better now. I tightened my seat belt and started making deals with God. I'll be a better person, I told God. I swear I will. I'll even go to church. Okay, maybe that's not going to happen. I'll go to church on holidays. Just don't let Grandma kill us both.

"I'm coming up on him," Grandma said. "He's just two cars ahead of us."

"Keep the two cars between us," I told her. "I don't want him to see us."

The light changed at the corner. Spiro went through on the yellow, and we were stopped behind the two cars. Grandma yanked the wheel to the right, jumped the curb, and drove on the sidewalk to the intersection. She leaned on the horn, smashed her foot to the floor, and rocketed across two lanes of traffic.

I had my feet braced against the dash and my eyes closed.

"I have a better idea," I said. "Why don't we go back to the funeral home? You wouldn't want to miss hearing that the lid was up. And maybe it would be a good idea to pull over and let me drive, since you don't have a license."

"I got him in my sights," Grandma said, hunched over the wheel, eyes narrowed.

Spiro turned right and Grandma raced to the corner and took it on two wheels. One block ahead of us we saw Spiro right-turn again. Grandma stuck with him, and two turns later we found ourselves back on Hamilton, heading for the funeral home. Spiro was going to make another pass.

"This is convenient," Grandma said. "We can see if Joseph is waiting for us."

"Not good," I said. "He won't be happy to see you behind the wheel. He's a cop, remember? He arrests people who drive without a license."

"He can't arrest me. I'm an old lady. I got rights. And besides, he's practically family."

Was that true? Was Morelli practically family? Had I become accidentally married?

My attention returned to Spiro, and I realized Grandma had closed the gap, and we were one car behind him. We sailed past the funeral home, past Morelli standing at the side of the road, hands on hips. He gave his head a small shake as we whizzed by. Probably best not to second-guess his thoughts… they didn't look happy.

"I know I should have stopped to find out about the viewing," Grandma said, "but I hate to lose this guy. I don't know why I'm following him, but I can't seem to quit."

Spiro drove three blocks and did another loop, taking himself back down Hamilton. We lost the single-car buffer, and Grandma got on Spiro's bumper just as he came up to the funeral home. Spiro flashed his right-turn signal and after that it was all horror and panic and life in slow motion, because Spiro jumped the curb and plowed into a group of men on the sidewalk. He hit two men I'd never seen before and Morelli. One of the men was knocked aside. One was pitched off the hood. And Morelli spiraled off the right front fender of Spiro's SUV and was thrown to the ground.

Probably I should have gone after Spiro, but I acted without thought. I was out of the car and running to Morelli before Grandma had come to a complete stop. He was on his back, his eyes open, his face white.

"Are you okay?" I asked, dropping to my knees. "Do I look okay?"

"No. You look like you've just been run over by an SUV." "Last time this happened I got to look up your skirt," he said. And then he passed out. It was close to midnight when I was told Morelli was out of surgery. His leg had been broken in two places but aside from that he was fine. I'd taken Grandma home, and I was alone in the hospital. A bunch of cops had stopped by earlier. Eddie Gazarra and Carl Costanza had offered to stay with me, but I'd assured them it wasn't necessary. I'd already been informed Morelli's injuries weren't life threatening. The two other guys that were mowed down by Spiro were going to be okay, too. One had been sent home with scrapes and bruises. The other was being kept overnight with a concussion and broken collarbone.

I was allowed to see Morelli for a moment when he was brought up to his room. He was hooked to an IV drip, his leg was elevated on the bed, and he was still groggy. He was half a day beyond a five o'clock shadow. He had a bruise on his cheek. His eyes were partly closed, and his dark lashes shaded his eyes.

I brushed a light kiss across his lips. "You're okay," I told him.

"Good to know," he said. And then the drugs dragged him back into sleep.

I walked the short distance to the parking garage and found a blue-and-white parked next to Morelli's SUV. Gazarra was at the wheel.

"I had late shift and this is as good a place as any to hang," he said.

"Lock the car in Morelli's garage tonight. I wouldn't want to see you in the room next to Mama Mac tomorrow."

I left the garage and followed Gazarra's instructions. It was a dark moonless night with a chill in the air that ordinarily would have me thinking about pumpkins and winter clothes and football games. As it was, I had a hard time pushing the anger and fear generated by Spiro into the background. Hard to think about anything other than the pain he'd caused Morelli.

Morelli's garage was detached from his house and at the rear of his property. Bob was waiting for me when I let myself into the house through the back door.

He was sleepy-eyed and lethargic, resting his big shaggy orange head against my leg. I scratched him behind his ear and gave him a dog biscuit from the cookie jar on the counter.

"Do you have to tinkle?" I asked Bob.

Bob didn't look especially interested in tinkling.

"Maybe you should try," I told him. "I'm going to sleep late tomorrow."

I opened the back door, Bob picked his head up, his nose twitched, his eyes got wide, and Bob bolted through the door and took off into the night. Shit!

I could hear Bob galloping two yards over, and then there was nothing but the sound of distant cars and the whir of Morelli's refrigerator in defrost cycle behind me.

Great job, Stephanie. Things aren't bad enough, now you've lost Morelli's dog. I got a flashlight, pocketed the house key, and locked up behind me. I crossed through two yards and stopped and listened. Nothing. I kept walking through yards, occasionally sweeping the area with the light. At the very end of the block I found Bob munching his way through a big black plastic garbage bag. He'd torn a hole in the bag and had pulled out chicken remains, wads of paper towels, empty soup cans, lunch-meat wrappers, and God knows what else.

I grabbed Bob by the collar and dragged him away from the mess. Probably I should clean up the garbage, but I was in no mood. With any luck, a herd of crows would descend on the carnage and cart everything off to Crowland.

I dragged Bob all the way home. When I got to the house there was a piece of notebook paper tacked to the back door. A smiley face was drawn on thepaper, isn't THIS FUN? was printed under the smiley face.

I got Bob inside and threw the bolt. And then as a double precaution I locked us into Morelli's bedroom.

It was a little after nine, and I had the phone cradled between my ear and shoulder as I scoured Morelli's kitchen floor, cleaning up the chicken bones Bob had hacked up.

"I can come home," Morelli said. "I need some shorts and a ride."

"I'll be there as soon as I finish cleaning the kitchen." I disconnected and looked over at Bob. "Are you done?"

Bob didn't say anything, but he didn't look happy. His eyes cut to the back door.

I hooked a leash to Bob and took him into the yard. Bob hunched over and pooped out a red lace thong. I was going to have to check upstairs to be sure, but I strongly suspected it was mine.

Morelli was ON the couch with his foot propped up on a pillow on the coffee table. He had the television remote, a bowl of popcorn, his cell phone, a six-pack of soda, crutches, a week's supply of pills for pain, an Xbox remote, his iPod with headset, a box of dog biscuits, and a gun, all within reach. Bob was sprawled on the floor in front of the television.

"Is there anything else before I go?" I asked him.

"Do you have to go?"

"Yes! I promised my mother I'd get the decorations for the cars. I need to check in on Valerie. We have no food in the house. I used up all the paper towels cleaning up Bob barf. And I need to stop at the personal products plant and get a job application."

"I think you should stay home and play with me. I'll let you write dirty suggestions on my cast."

"Appealing, but no. Your mother and your grandmother are going to show up.

They're going to need to see for themselves that you're okay. They're going to bring a casserole and a cake, because that's what they always do. And if I'm here they're going to grill us about getting married, because that's what they always do. And then Bella is going to have a vision that involves my uterus, because that's also a constant. Better to take the cowards way out and run errands." Plus, I wanted to drop in at the funeral home and talk to Constantine Stiva about his son.

"What if I fall and I can't get up?"

"Nice try, but I've got it covered. I've got a babysitter for you. Someone who will attend to your every need while I'm gone."

There was a sharp rap on the front door, and Lula barged in. "Here I am, ready to baby-sit your ass," she said to Morelli. "Don't you worry about a thing. Lula's here to take care of you."

Morelli looked over at me. "You're kidding."

"I wanted to make sure you were safe."

And that was true. I was worried about Spiro returning and setting the house on fire. Spiro was nuts.

Lula set her bag in the hall and walked to the curb with me. Big Blue was soaking up sun on the street, ready to spring into action. I had an extra car key from Grandma. I'd gotten an extra apartment key from my building super, Dillon Ruddick. I had Morelli's credit card for the food. I was ready to roll.

It was early afternoon, and if I didn't hit too much traffic on Route One I'd be home to feed Morelli dinner.

"We'll be fine," Lula said. "I brought some videos to watch. And I got the whole bag of tricks with me if anything nasty goes down. I even got a taser. It's brand-new. Never been used. I bet I could give a guy the runs with that taser."

"I should be back in a couple hours," I told her. I slid behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. Something under the car went phunnnf, and flames shot out on all sides and the car instantly died. I got out, and Lula and I got on our hands and knees and checked the undercarriage.

"Guess that was a bomb," Lula said.

Little black dots floated in front of my eyes, and there was a lot of clanging in my head. When the clanging stopped, I stood and brushed road gravel off my knees, using the activity to get myself under control. I was freaking out deep inside, and that wasn't a good thing. I needed to be brave. I needed to think clearly. I needed to be Ranger. Get a grip, I said to myself. Don't give in to the panic. Don't let this bastard run your life and make you afraid.

"You're starting to scare me," Lula said. "You look like you're having a whole conversation with someone and it isn't me."

"Giving myself a pep talk," I said. "Tell Morelli about the bomb. I'm taking his SUV."

"You're whiter than usual," Lula said.

"Yeah, but I didn't totally faint or throw up, so I'm doing good, right?"

I backed Morelli's car out of the garage and hit the first stop on my list.

A party store on Route 33 in Hamilton Township. Valerie had, at last count, three bridesmaids, one maid of honor (me), and two flower girls (Angie and

Mary Alice). We were riding in six cars. The party store had dolls in fancy gowns for the hood, bows for all the door handles, and streaming ribbons that got attached to the back of each car. Everything corresponded to the color of the gown inside the car. Mine was eggplant. Could it get any worse?

I was going to look like the attendant to the dead.

"I'm here to pick up the car decorations for the Plum wedding," I said to the girl at the counter.

"We have them right here, ready to go," she said, "but there's a problem with one of them. I don't know what happened. The woman who makes these is always so careful. One of the dolls looks like ... an eggplant."

"It's a vegetarian wedding," I told her. "New Age."

I lugged the six boxes out to the car and drove them to my parents' house. I left the SUV idling at the curb, ran in with the boxes, dumped them on the kitchen table, and turned to leave.

"Where are you going so fast?" Grandma wanted to know. "Don't you want a sandwich? We have olive loaf."

"No time. Lots of errands today. And I need to get back to Morelli." Also I didn't want to leave the car unattended long enough for Spiro to set another bomb.

My mother was at the stove, stirring a pot of vanilla pudding. "I hope Joseph is feeling better. That was a terrible thing last night."

"He's on the couch, watching television. His leg is achy, but he's going to be okay." I looked over at Grandma Mazur. "He said to tell you the lid was down, and rumor has it Mama Mac went to the hereafter without the mole. Morelli said the medical examiner thinks the mole is still in the parking lot somewhere, but there might not be a lot left of it due to all the foot traffic around the scene."

"I get a chill just thinking about it," Grandma said. "Someone could be walking around with Mama Mac's mole on the bottom of their shoe."

From the corner of my eye I saw my mother take a bottle out of a cupboard, pour two fingers of whisky into a juice glass, and knock it back. Guess the ironing wasn't doing it for her anymore.

"Gotta go," I said. "If you need me I'll be staying with Morelli. He needs help getting around."

"The organist at the church would like to know if you want her to accompany you when you play the cello," Grandma said. "I saw her at the market this morning."