Smokin Seventeen

FOURTEEN

BY THE TIME I left my apartment it was mid-afternoon. My hair was clean and smelled only faintly of sauerkraut. I was in my usual uniform of jeans and T-shirt. And my plan was to stop at Giovichinni’s and get a sandwich for lunch and a piece of lasagna to save for dinner.

I passed Mooner’s bus on my way to the store. The bus looked normal enough. No indication of a bear inside. The M.E.’s truck was missing from the curb. Morelli and some uniforms were standing in the middle of the lot, watching the backhoe work. I took all this to mean the body had been removed, and the grave was getting filled in and graded.

I parked and joined Morelli.

“Was it the lawyer?”

“Probably, but we couldn’t make a positive ID.”

“No recognizable jewelry?”

“An expensive watch. No wedding band. No wallet.” Morelli leaned closer. “You smell like sauerkraut.”

“Does it make me undesirable?”

“No. It makes me hungry for a hot dog.”

“Do you think this is the last of the bodies buried here?”

“The CSI guys worked their way through the entire lot and found only this one.”

“Why do you suppose the two bodies had different burial spots?”

“They were probably buried at different times. We’re guessing he used the backhoe that was here doing debris removal, and he dug wherever the backhoe was parked.”

“Still no tie-in to the bail bonds office?”

Morelli shook his head. “No. But I’m going over some correspondence and financial records with Terry tonight. Something might turn up.”

Terry again. Unh. Mental head slap.

Morelli grinned down at me. “You’re such a cupcake.”

“Now what?”

“Every time I mention Terry your eyes cross.” He wrapped an arm around me and kissed me just above my ear. “Good thing I like sauerkraut,” he said.

• • •

I bypassed Mooner’s bus completely and went directly to Giovichinni’s. I ordered a turkey club and was in the middle of a critical dinner decision when Grandma Mazur called.

“We’re making lasagna tonight,” she said. “It’s a special recipe. And we’re having chocolate cake for dessert. Your mother wanted to know if you wanted some.”

I stared at the slab of lasagna in Giovichinni’s deli case and found it lacking. “Sure,” I said. “Set a plate for me.”

I carted my turkey club to the coffee shop and sat in the window area with Lula and Connie.

“They found another body on bonds office property,” I said. “Morelli thinks it might be Bobby Lucarelli, Dugan’s lawyer.”

“I knew he was missing,” Connie said. “He was Vinnie’s lawyer, too. Vinnie was using him for some real estate transactions.”

My phone buzzed with a text message from Dave. I HAVE A SURPRISE FOR YOU.

He probably meant well, but I had enough surprises in my life. I was sitting with my back to the window, and I felt a shadow pass over me. I turned to see what had caused the shadow, and I caught Bella standing outside, looking in. She put her finger to her eye and nodded and smiled at me.

“Holy mother,” Connie whispered.

Lula made a go away gesture at Bella. “Shoo!”

Bella glared at Lula, turned, and walked down the street.

“Do you feel any different?” Connie asked me. “Did you just get a hemorrhoid? Are you breaking out in hives?”

“I don’t believe in the eye,” I told her.

“That’s good,” Lula said. “You keep tellin’ yourself that. You’re gonna be fine. You don’t think she took offense that I shooed her, do you? Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. I already got a vampire hickey. I don’t need no more weird juju shit.”

Connie looked at her cell phone. “Vinnie just texted me that the bear’s hungry. Someone has to make a chicken nugget run.”

“I guess I could do that,” Lula said, “but I don’t get the whole bear thing.”

Connie gave Lula a wad of cash. “It was a high bond and apparently the bear’s worth a lot of money. He’s part of some Russian circus act booked into Vegas. I guess the owner got a little drunk and shot a bartender because he wouldn’t serve him. Anyway Vinnie took the bear because the case is scheduled to go to court on Friday. Fast cash turnaround.”

“So how many buckets of nuggets does the bear want?” Lula asked.

“Get him four extra big buckets,” Connie said. “No coleslaw, but he might like biscuits.”

I went with Lula because I didn’t have anything better to do, and I wanted to snitch a biscuit. Lula cruised down Hamilton, pulled into the Cluckin-a-Bucket lot, and parked.

“I’m not getting all this at the drive-thru,” Lula said. “They always short you chicken at the drive-thru. And they don’t give you the fresh, hot biscuits. They give you the nasty ass old ones.”

I got out of the Firebird, I looked through the big plate-glass window of Cluckin-a-Bucket, and I saw Merlin Brown standing in line, waiting for his order.

“Do you see what I see?” Lula asked. “I see Merlin Brown getting two bags of chicken. He’s probably got a gun and wants to get even with me. And even if he doesn’t have a gun, look at him. He’s huge and most likely he don’t have a stiffy no more, and he could run fast and grab me, and rip my toes off. And I just got a pedicure, too.”

“We need a plan.”

“Yeah, too bad we don’t have a big net. We could catch him if we had a big net. Except for the big net I don’t have any ideas.”

Merlin pushed through the door, and I could see his foot was totally wrapped in a massive white bandage, and he was limping.

“Let’s get him,” I said to Lula.

“What? How?”

“We’ll tackle him. We have the element of surprise. We’ll take him down to the ground, and I’ll cuff him.”

“Seems mean, what with his toe bein’ shot off and all. Maybe we want to wait for him to be feeling better … like April.”

I gave Lula a shove. “Now!”

Lula and I ran at Merlin, and Lula was waving her arms and yelling. “Ga-a-a-a-a-a!”

Merlin saw us coming and froze. He had a bag of chicken in each hand and a look of total disbelief on his face. Lula went low, hitting him at the knees. I ran at him flat out and put my shoulder into his chest. And Merlin didn’t move. It was like hitting a brick wall.

Merlin shook us off and opened the door to his car. “Crazy ass bitches,” he said. And he drove away.

Lula picked herself up off the ground. “That was humiliating.”

“What was all that arm waving and yelling?”

“I was trying to scare him. They do that in the movies when the angry horde of marauders is storming the castle.”

We went inside, bought our chicken and biscuits, and returned to the Firebird. I ate a biscuit, and Lula ate a couple pieces of chicken, and we drove back to Mooner’s bus.

“You go on in and deliver the chicken,” I said to Lula. “I’ll wait here in the car.”

“Don’t you want to say hello to Bruce?”

“No.”

“As far as bears go, he’s a pretty nice bear.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Lula took the chicken buckets and bags of biscuits into the bus. There was a loud growwwwwl and a shriek, and Lula jumped out of the bus and hustled back behind the wheel of the Firebird.

“Is everyone okay in there?” I asked her.

“Bruce was hungry and forgot his manners.”