Sizzling Sixteen

NINETEEN

MOST MORNINGS, I’M rushed and my refrigerator is empty and I take breakfast where I find it. This morning, I was flush with food from my supermarket stop, so I had orange juice, coffee, and a bowl of Rice Krispies for breakfast. I gave Rex a chunk of apple, some hamster crunchies, and fresh water. I checked my e-mail. I lined my eyes with a very thin line of smoky black and brushed on a smidgen of mascara. My sneakers still smelled a little, but, fortunately, they were far from my nose.

I’d taken the lucky bottle out of my bag last night, and I had it sitting on my kitchen counter. If I was to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t all that great a bottle. And I wasn’t sure why Uncle Pip left it to me. I liked Uncle Pip, but I wasn’t any closer to him than a lot of other relatives. Why he singled me out to have his lucky bottle was a mystery. I held the bottle to the light, but I couldn’t see inside. I thought I heard something when I shook the bottle, but it was very faint. Hard to tell if it was bringing me luck. I didn’t get trampled by stampeding cows, eaten by an alligator, or shot while robbing a funeral home, so maybe the bottle was working.

I put my dishes in the sink, told Rex to be a good hamster, and I set off for my parents’ house with my garbage bag of stink-bomb clothes. There are washers and dryers in the basement of my building, but I’m pretty sure trolls live there.

My grandmother was sitting with her foot up on a kitchen chair when I walked in.

“How’s the foot?” I asked.

“It’s a pain in the keister. I’m tired of hearing clomp, clomp, clomp. And it takes me a half hour to go up the stairs. And it hurts if I walk on it too much, so I’m sitting around going nuts. I’m not used to sitting around.” She leaned forward and wrinkled her nose. “Holy cow, who let one go? What’s that smell?”

I held up the garbage bag. “My clothes were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They need washing.”

“Leave them on the back porch,” my mother said. “I’ll do them later.”

“We got coffee cake,” Grandma said to me. “And there’s some breakfast sausages in the refrigerator.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I just ate breakfast.”

My mother and grandmother looked at me.

“You ate breakfast?” my mother asked. “I thought you broke up with Joseph.”

Morelli isn’t Martha Stewart, but it’s a known fact he’s more organized than I am. Morelli almost always has food in his house. When we’re a couple, and I spend the night, I eat breakfast at his little wooden kitchen table. Sometimes it’s leftover pizza and sometimes it’s a frozen toaster waffle. And Morelli is always the one to start coffee brewing, because Morelli is always the first one up. His kitchen is almost identical to my mom’s, but it feels entirely different. He’s refinished the wood floor and put in new cabinets. The lighting is pleasant, and the counters are for the most part uncluttered in Morelli’s house. My mom’s kitchen hasn’t changed much since I was a kid. Some new appliances, and new curtains on the back window. The floor is vinyl tile. The counters are Formica. The cabinets are maple. And the kitchen smells like coffee, apple pie, and bacon even when my mother isn’t cooking.

“I ate breakfast at home,” I said.

“Are you pregnant?” Grandma asked. “Sometimes women do strange things when they’re pregnant.”

“I’m not pregnant! I went shopping and got orange juice and Rice Krispies, and I ate breakfast at home. Jeez. It’s not like I never eat at home.”

“You only got one pot,” Grandma said.

“I had more pots, but they got wrecked when my stove caught fire.” I put the garbage bag on the back porch and took a seat at the table with Grandma. “Maybe just one piece of coffee cake,” I said.

Two pieces of cake and two cups of coffee later, I pushed back and stood.

“I need Lula to help me decorate this big black boot,” Grandma said. “I think it needs some of that glitter, or some rhinestones. Lula has a real flare for fashion.”

TEN MINUTES LATER, I was looking for a parking place in front of the bonds office. Cars were lined up on the curb. Some were double-parked. Some were angled in nose first. Soccer mom vans, junkers, tricked-out Escalades, Civics, and F150s. Mooner’s RV was parked in front of the bookstore. A crowd of people was milling around on the sidewalk. Hard to tell what was going on from the road. And then I saw the sign as I drove past. SIDEWALK SALE.

I parked half a block away and walked back to where Lula was directing pedestrian traffic.

“You want genuine first-class handcuffs, you just go to table number three,” she called out. “You could have a lot of fun with these handcuffs. They fit just right around a bedpost. Handguns are table six. We got a nice selection. Kitchen appliances and jewelry’s inside.”

“What’s going on?” I asked her.

“Sale,” Lula said. “Sunflower wouldn’t negotiate, so we’re sellin’ everything. You want a lawnmower? It’s gonna go cheap.”

“I haven’t got a lawn.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

“Where’s Connie?”

“Inside. She’s doing credit card sales. I’m strictly cash out here.”

Lula was dressed in four-inch black micro-fiber heels decorated with multicolored glitter, a short purple Spandex skirt, a gold metallic tank top, and she was wearing a Tavor Assault Rifle as an accessory.

“What’s with the gun?” I asked her.

“It’s in case some of these people get unruly.”

A big bald guy in a wifebeater shirt and cami cargo pants came up to Lula.

“Hey, Lula,” he said.

“My man,” Lula said to him.

“I need a gun,” he said to Lula. “Are these legal?”

“Do you want them to be?” Lula asked.

“No. Shit, what would I want with a legal gun?”

“Don’t know,” Lula said, “but these suckers are whatever the hell you want them to be. Cash only.”

I snaked my way through the crowd to Connie. “What’s going on?” I asked her.

Connie stepped back, away from a woman checking out a waffle iron. “Sunflower won’t deal. He wants all the money, so Lula and I came up with the idea for the sidewalk sale. This stuff was all taken in exchange for bond and never reclaimed. It was just taking up space in the back room, so we figured we’d sell it.”

“Lula’s selling weapons out there!”

“That’s great,” Connie said. “They’re a high-ticket item.”

“I think it’s illegal to sell guns like this.”

Connie craned her neck and looked through the front window at Lula. “It’s okay,” Connie said. “That guy’s a cop.”

“How much are these dishes with the roses on them?” a woman wanted to know.

“Twenty dollars,” Connie said.

A second woman elbowed in. “Wait a minute. Those are my dishes. I gave them to you so my nephew could get out of jail.”

Connie looked at the sticker on the bottom of a plate. “We’ve had these dishes for a year and a half.”

“It don’t matter. They’re mine.”

“Where’s your nephew?” Connie asked.

“Tennessee.”

The first woman handed Connie a twenty and started stacking up her dishes.

“Police!” the second woman yelled. “There’s a robbery going on here.”

Lula ran in with her gun. “Did someone say robbery?”

“It was a misunderstanding,” I told Lula. “Don’t shoot anyone.”

“It was no misunderstanding,” the second woman said. “Those are my dishes. This old lady here was gonna walk out with them.”

“Old? Excuse me,” the first woman said. “You’re not exactly a spring chicken. And these are my dishes. I saw them first.”

They both had hold of a plate, and they were nose to nose, eyes narrowed.

Mooner strolled over with a plate of brownies. “Ladies, have a bite of a Moon Man brownie. We’re selling them out front, but these are free samples. I made these brownies in my very own test kitchen in the Love Bus.”

We all took a time-out so the ladies and Lula could have a brownie.

“These are real good brownies,” Lula said. “These are doughnut-quality brownies.”

“I changed my mind,” woman number one said. “I don’t want the dishes. I’m buying brownies.”

“I don’t want the dishes, either,” woman number two said. “I never liked them anyway.”

Lula took a second brownie and went back to patrol the sidewalk.

“If she keeps eating brownies, we’re going to have to take her keys away,” Connie said. “I don’t know exactly what’s in Mooner’s brownies, but my guess is they’re at least sixty percent controlled substance.”

“I’m surprised Sunflower wouldn’t take what you offered for Vinnie.”

“He was in a vicious mood. He said we were lucky he was holding at a million three. And we have until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Did you discuss how the trade-off was going to work?”

“No. He didn’t want to talk. He was really cranky. He gave me his demand and hung up on me.”

“Guess things aren’t going good in Sunflower Land.”

Lula pushed her way back to us.

“Watch out. Comin’ through. Outta my way,” she was saying. “I just sold all our guns,” she said to Connie. “We got any more?”

“No, that was it,” Connie said. “I saved the good stuff for our personal use. I have them locked down in the back room.”

“Too bad,” Lula said. “There’s a couple guys buying up everything. I sold them a case of cuffs Vinnie got at that fire sale. And they bought the box of dynamite that got wet when the roof leaked in January.”

“Local guys?”

“Nope. They were from Idaho. They said they were part of some militia, here on a recruiting drive.”

“Uh-oh,” Connie said, looking past me. “Morelli’s at the door, and he doesn’t look happy.”

“Probably, he wanted some of them guns,” Lula said. “That’s what happens when you don’t get here early. You miss out on all the best stuff.”

Morelli made his way back to us and clamped a hand around my wrist. “We need to talk.”

“Howdy,” Lula said. “You’re lookin’ fine today, Officer Morelli.”

Morelli made a half-hearted attempt not to smile. “You’re going to have to cut her off from the brownies,” he said to Connie.

“I’d chain her to the street light, but she sold all my handcuffs,” Connie said.

Morelli pulled me past the file cabinets to the back door.

“What the hell’s going on?” he said. “I was driving by on my way to the station, and I saw a couple neo-Nazis loading guns into the back of their van.”

“They were neo-Nazis?”

“And there’s a line halfway down the block to buy Mooner’s brownies. I don’t suppose you checked the ingredients?”

“Chocolate, eggs, flour…” I said.

“There’s not a person in that line who’ll be able to pass a drug test.”

He leaned close to me, nuzzling my neck, his lips brushing my ear. “You smell nice again.”

“You, too. You smell like… brownie!”

Morelli grinned down at me. “I don’t know where he’s getting it, but he’s got some really good shit in those brownies.”

“Are you going to shut him down?”

“No. By the time I get back to him, he’ll have sold out, and the problem will be solved.”

“How’d it go with the dead lawyers?”

“Complete cluster fuck. I didn’t get home until four in the morning. I’ve had four hours of sleep. The feds had to come in and do their thing. The crime-scene truck broke down and was two hours late. It took forever to get the bodies released to the ME. And now I’ve got extra paperwork.”

He looked to the front of the office. “This is a zoo. It’s like vultures fighting over a dead cow.”

I looked around. “Yeah, getting to be only bones left. It’s amazing what Connie’s sold in two hours.”

“The brownies helped.”

“Do you like being a cop?” I asked him.

“Sometimes. Why do you ask?”

“I’m not sure I like being a bounty hunter anymore.”

“What would you rather do?”

“That’s the problem,” I said. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a passion for anything. I went into retail after college because I like to shop, but I didn’t especially like my job. And I’m not sure I was good at it. And then I became a bounty hunter because I couldn’t get anything else. And I know I’m not the world’s best bounty hunter.”

“You make a lot of captures,” Morelli said.

“Wow, are you being supportive of my job?”

“No. I hate your job, but you’re not horrible at it.”

“That’s the problem. I’m not horrible at it. I want to be wonderful at something.”

“I know a few things you’re wonderful at.”

“Good grief.”

Morelli hooked a finger under the shoulder strap on my tank top. “Would you like me to list them?”

“No!”

“Tonight?”

“Maybe tonight,” I said.

Morelli leaned into me and kissed me lightly on the lips. “You’re such a cupcake.”

I supposed that was good, but I wasn’t sure. I watched Morelli walk away, and I had a rush of tenderness, and then I got a rush of lust. Morelli was flat-out handsome, and I knew a few of his talents, too.

I went back to Connie. She was packing the service for eight in a box while a woman waited. She gave the woman the box and she left, elbowing her way through the crowd.

“I’m going to cut this off at noon,” Connie said. “We only have junk left. Nothing that’s going to bring any real money.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Yeah, you can get food. When I shut this down, we’ll count everything up. Lula’s either going to be passed out or have the munchies real bad by then.”