Smokin Seventeen

NINE

I SWAPPED OUT the red tank top and jeans for a deep blue stretchy knit sweater with a low scoop neck, a little black skirt, and spiky heels. The only reason Morelli wanted me to wear the red shirt was because he hadn’t seen the blue sweater. I had cleavage in the blue sweater. Okay, so I had a little help from a push-up bra, but it was cleavage all the same. I had my hair long in big loose curls and waves, and I added extra gunk to my eyelashes. I was in date-night mode. I was going to get meatloaf, rice pudding, a back rub, and then I was most likely going to get naked. Shazaam. Could life possibly get any better?

I gave myself one last look in the bathroom mirror. Yes, in fact, life could get better. The pimple in the middle of my forehead could disappear. I’d tried makeup and that didn’t work. Only one thing left. Bangs. I sectioned off some hair, took the scissors to it, and the deed was done. A moment with the flat iron. Swiped the bangs partially to the side. Some hairspray. Goodbye pimple.

My parents eat dinner at six o’clock. Precisely. If everyone’s ass is not in the seat promptly at six, and the dinner is delayed by five minutes, my mother declares the meal ruined. The pot roast is dry, the gravy is cold, the beans are overcooked. It all tastes perfectly fine to me, but what do I know? My major cooking accomplishment is a peanut butter and olive sandwich.

I arrived at ten minutes to six, said hello to my dad in the living room, and paused at the dining room table on my way to the kitchen. The table was set for five people. My mom, my dad, my grandmother, me … and one other person. I immediately knew in my gut I’d been suckered in.

“Why is there an extra place set at the table?” I asked my mother. “Who did you invite?”

She was at the counter next to the sink, and she was bent over a steaming pot of drained potatoes, mashing them for all she was worth, her lips pressed tight together.

“We invited that nice young man, Dave Brewer, who swindled all those people out of their houses,” Grandma said, pulling a meatloaf out of the oven.

“He didn’t swindle anyone,” my mother said. “He was framed.”

I eyeballed the pudding, sitting in a bowl on the kitchen table, and gauged the distance to the door. If I moved fast I could probably get away with the pudding before my mother tackled me.

“There’s something different about you,” Grandma said to me. “You’ve got bangs.”

My mother looked up from the potatoes. “You’ve never had bangs.” She studied me for a beat. “I like them. They bring out your eyes.”

The doorbell rang and my mother and grandmother snapped to attention.

“Someone get the door,” my father yelled.

My father took the trash out, washed the car, and did anything associated with plumbing, but he didn’t get the door. It wasn’t on his side of the division of labor.

“I got my hands full with the meatloaf,” Grandma said.

I blew out a sigh. “I’ll get it.”

If Dave Brewer was too awful I could let him in and just keep right on going, out to my car. The heck with the pudding.

I opened the door and took a step back. Brewer was a pleasant-looking guy with a lot less hair than I remembered. The athletic body he’d had in high school had turned soft around the middle; in direct contrast to Morelli and Ranger who seemed to come into sharper focus as they aged. He was half a head taller than me. His blue eyes had some squint lines at the corners. What was left of his sandy blond hair was trimmed short. He was dressed in black slacks and a blue dress shirt that was open at the neck.

“Stephanie?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“This is awkward.”

“For the record, this wasn’t my idea. I have a boyfriend.”

“Morelli.”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t want to tangle with him,” Brewer said.

I felt my eyebrows go up every so slightly. “But you’re here?”

“I’m temporarily living with my mother,” he said. “She made me come.”

Good grief, I thought, the poor dumb schmuck was worse off than I was.

At one minute to six the food was set on the table, and my father pushed himself out of his chair and headed for the dining room. My father took early retirement from his job at the post office and now drives a cab part-time. He has a couple steady fares that he takes to the train station five days a week, and then he picks his friends up and drives them to the Sons of Italy lodge where they play cards. He’s 5?10? and stocky. He’s got a lot of forehead and beyond that a fringe of curly black hair. He doesn’t own a pair of jeans, preferring pleated slacks and collared knit shirts from the Tony Soprano collection at JCPenney. He endures my grandmother with what seems like grim resignation and selective deafness, though I suspect he harbors murderous fantasies.

I was seated next to Dave with Grandma across from us. “Isn’t this nice,” Grandma said. “It isn’t every day we get to have a handsome young man at the table.”

My father shoveled in food and murmured something that sounded a little like just shoot me. Hard to tell with the meatloaf rolling around in his mouth.

“So what are you doing here in Trenton?” Grandma asked.

“I’m working for my Uncle Harry.”

Harry Brewer owned a moving and storage company. When I moved out of my house after the divorce, I used Brewer Movers.

“Are you moving furniture?” Grandma asked.

“No. I’m doing job estimating and general office work. My cousin Francie use to do it, but she had some words with my uncle, left work, and never came back. So I stepped in to help out.”

Grandma made a sucking sound with her dentures. “Has anyone heard from her?”

“Not that I know.”

“Just like Lou Dugan,” Grandma said.

I knew about Francie, and it wasn’t exactly like Lou Dugan. Francie’s boyfriend was also missing, and when Francie stormed out of the office she took almost $5,000 in petty cash with her. The theory going around is that Francie and her boyfriend were in Vegas.

“Who wants wine?” my mother asked. “We have a nice bottle of red on the table.”

Grandma helped herself to the wine and passed it across the table to Dave. “I bet you and Stephanie have a lot in common being that you went to school together.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nada.”

Dave stopped his fork halfway to his mouth. “There must be something.”

“What?” I asked him.

“A mutual friend.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You played football, and she was a twirler,” Grandma said. “You must have been on the field together.”

“Nope,” I said. “We were on at halftime, and they were in the locker room.”

He turned and looked at me. “Now I remember you. You flipped your baton into the trombone section during ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”

“It wasn’t my fault,” I said. “It was cold and my fingers were frozen. And if you so much as crack a smile over this I’ll stab you with my fork.”

“She’s pretty tough,” Grandma said to Dave. “She’s a bounty hunter, and she shoots people.”

“I don’t shoot people,” I said. “Almost never.”

“Show him your gun,” Grandma said.

I spooned mashed potatoes onto my plate. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to see my gun. Anyway, I don’t have it with me.”

“She’s got just a little one,” Grandma said. “Mine’s bigger. Do you want to see my gun?”

My mother poured herself a second glass of wine, and my father gripped his knife so hard his knuckles turned white.

“Maybe later,” Dave said.

“You are not supposed to have a gun,” my mother said to my grandmother.

“Oh yeah. I forgot. Okay, I gave the gun away,” Grandma said to Dave. “But it’s a beaut.”

“What about you?” my father asked Dave. “Do you have a gun?”

Dave shook his head. “No. I don’t need a gun.”

“I don’t trust a man who doesn’t own a gun,” my father said, slitty-eyed at Dave, forkful of meatloaf halfway to his mouth.

“I don’t usually agree with my son-in-law,” Grandma said, “but he’s got a point.”

“Do you have a gun?” Dave asked my dad.

“I used to,” my dad said. “I had to get rid of it when Edna moved in. Too much temptation.”

My mother drained her wineglass. “Anyone want more potatoes?” she asked.

“I’ll have another piece of meatloaf,” Dave said.

“The way to good meatloaf is to use lots of ketchup when you’re mixing it up,” Grandma said. “It’s our secret ingredient.”

“I’ll remember that,” Dave said. “I like to cook. I’d like to go to culinary school, but I can’t afford it right now.”

My father stopped chewing for a beat and gave his head an almost imperceptible shake, as if this sealed the deal on his assessment of Dave Brewer.

“How about you?” Dave asked me. “Do you like to cook?”

Interesting question. He didn’t ask me if I could cook. The answer to that was easy. No. I for sure couldn’t cook. Anything beyond a sandwich and I was a mess. The thing is, he asked me if I liked to cook. And that was a more complicated question. I didn’t know if I liked to cook. Someone was always cooking for me. My mom, Morelli’s mom, Ranger’s housekeeper, and a bunch of professionals at delis, pizza places, supermarkets, sandwich shops, and fast-food joints.

“I don’t know if I like to cook,” I told him. “I’ve never had reason to try. I wasn’t married long enough to get the stickers off the bottoms of the pots.”

“And then her apartment got firebombed and her cook-book got burned up,” Grandma said. “That was a pip of a fire.”

“That’s too bad,” Dave said. “Cooking can be fun. And you get to eat what you make.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat anything I made.

“We got to get a move on with this dinner,” Grandma said. “Mildred Brimmer is laid out at Stiva’s, and I don’t want to miss anything. Everyone’s going to be talking about Lou Dugan, and I’m going to be the star on account of Stephanie was right on the spot.”

Dave turned to me. “Is that true? I heard they found him buried on the bonds office property.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The backhoe guy uncovered a hand and part of the arm. I wasn’t there when they exhumed the rest of him.”

“I heard they recognized him by his ring,” Dave said.

I nodded. “Morelli spotted it. I’m sure they’ll do more forensic work to be certain.”

“That’s the good part about living in the Burg,” Grandma said. “There’s always something interesting going on.”

We made our way through the dinner in record time, so Grandma could get to her viewing. No one spilled the wine or set the tablecloth on fire by knocking over a candlestick. The conversation was mildly embarrassing, since it was full of not-so-subtle references about Dave and me becoming a couple, but I’d been through far worse.

“Sorry about the matchmaking,” I said to Dave as I showed him to the door after dinner was over.

“By the end of the meal I was almost convinced we were engaged.” He stared down at my cleavage. “I was starting to warm to the idea.” He gave me a polite kiss on the cheek. “Maybe we can be friends. I can give you a cooking lesson.”

“Sure,” I said. “Cooking would be good.”