Notorious Nineteen

Morelli was always the bad boy wild child, and I was always the mostly good girl. Not to say I didn’t have my moments in high school. And I for sure was never as good as my sister, Valerie. Still, an odd reversal took place when I wasn’t looking, and I now find myself on the short end of maturity and financial stability.

I heard Morelli’s front door open and close, and then footsteps coming our way. Bob jumped out of his dog bed, ran to the back door, and whined to get out.

“I’ve never seen him do that,” I said to Morelli. “He always rushes to see who came in.”

Morelli stood and let Bob out. “It’s probably Grandma Bella. He’s terrified of her.”

Bob wasn’t the only one terrified of Bella. Everyone was terrified of Bella, including me. She was whacko, making with the evil eye and putting spells on people. Okay, so it was a stretch to think she could make someone break out in boils just by looking at them cockeyed, but there were enough bizarre coincidences to make you want to err on the side of caution and not piss her off.

Bella marched into the kitchen. As always, she was wearing a black dress, black stockings, black low-heeled shoes. Very old school Sicily. Her white hair was pulled back into a bun, she wore no makeup, and her eyebrows were thick and black, forming a unibrow. She could have been an extra in a Godfather movie, speaking broken English and using offensive Italian hand gestures. It was as if the longer she lived in the country, the more Sicilian she became.

She plunked a casserole down onto the table. “It’s Sunday. Why you not at church?” she said to Morelli. “And what this woman doing here?”

“Having breakfast,” he said. “You remember Stephanie.”

Bella narrowed her eyes at me. “Slut. You keeping my grandson from church.”

“Last time I was in church it was Christmas mass,” Morelli said.

Bella made the sign of the cross. “Holy Mother, help him. He good boy but he weak.” She shook her head. “All the Morelli men weak.”

“Thank you for the casserole,” I said.

“I not give it to you,” Bella said. “I make that for my grandson. You eat his casserole and bad thing happen to you. Warts.” She spotted Tiki sitting on the countertop. “What’s this?”

“It’s a Hawaiian wood carving,” Morelli said.

“You don’t have statue of the Virgin in your house but you have this silly thing,” Bella said. “You know nothing. I give it the eye. I fix it good.”

We heard a horn honk from the street.

“Did my mother drive you here?” Morelli asked Bella.

“No. That’s Mrs. Giovi. We’re going to second mass.”

Morelli put his arm around Bella and guided her back through the house to the front door. “Say hello to Mrs. Giovi for me.”

I heard him throw the bolt after Bella left.

“Too late to lock the door now,” I said when he came back to the kitchen. “You’ve got a casserole that’ll give me warts, and she put the eye on Tiki.”

“Too bad about the warts,” Morelli said. “The casserole looks pretty good.”

There was no way in heck I was touching it.

We walked Bob, and then got into Morelli’s SUV to pick up my car at the Mexicana Grill.

“Have you heard any more about Geoffrey Cubbin?” I asked Morelli when he stopped for a light.

“Only that he hasn’t surfaced. I don’t think he’s a priority with Schmidt. He’s counting on you to find him.”

“That’s not a good plan. I’m at a total dead end. I know there’s something wrong at the hospital but I haven’t a clue what it is. Four people have gone missing in the last three years. Dr. Fish operated on three of them. All mysteriously disappeared in the early morning. All had a reason to want to disappear. Geoffrey Cubbin, Floyd Dugan, and a guy named Hernandez. It’s been suggested someone at the hospital might be helping with the disappearance process for a bag of money.”

“Not a big payday in medicine anymore,” Morelli said. “I could see where that might lead to entrepreneurial activities.”

“And there’s a giant albino involved. Lula and I went to talk to Cubbin’s wife, and this guy jumped out of a closet at us. Lula thought it was a Yeti.”

“What did Cubbin’s wife say about it?”

“She wasn’t home.”

“I don’t want to hear this. You did B&E on Cubbin’s house, didn’t you?”

“Actually I just did ‘E.’ The door was unlocked.”

“That makes all the difference,” Morelli said.

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Yes!”

“Anyway, it looks to me like Susan Cubbin took off with a bunch of newly purchased surveillance equipment. And this big guy with white hair and one blue eye and one brown eye was snooping in her house.”

“What happened after he jumped out of the closet?”

“He tagged Lula and me with a stun gun and that was the last we saw of him.”

“You got stunned?”

“Yeah. This wasn’t one of my better weeks.”

Morelli swung into the Mexicana Grill lot and parked next to the Buick. “Do you suppose we could spend some time exploring other employment options for you?”

“Such as?”

“An office job. Retail. Housewife.”

“Is that a proposal?”

“Not entirely. Thought I’d throw it out there to see how it sounded.”

I looked at Morelli. “Well?”

“It sounded scary.”

“Kind of took my breath away,” I said.

“I’ll test drive it again next week and see if it gets more comfortable.”

“Do you have plans for today? Do you want to go to the beach?”

“The beach would be good,” Morelli said. “I’ll pick you up in an hour.”

I had my bikini on under my shorts and my T-shirt. I had a floppy hat, sunscreen, sunglasses, beach towel, plus all the usual other stuff in my tote bag. My doorbell bonged while I was searching for my flip-flops. I gave up the search and answered the door.

“You’re early,” I said to Morelli. And then I realized it wasn’t Morelli. It was Brody Logan with a large knife.

He jumped into my apartment, and I stumbled back.

“I want Tiki,” he said.

“I don’t have Tiki,” I told him. “I left him at a friend’s house.”

“I don’t believe you. What’s your friend’s name?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Tell me or I’ll cut you up into tiny bits.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I could do it,” he said. “I have this knife. It’s not just any old knife either. It’s a ceremonial knife.”

“It looks like a butcher’s knife.”

“It used to be a butcher’s knife, but now it’s a ceremonial knife on account of it’s being used for a righteous purpose. It’s like a holy tool now.”

I had my stun gun sitting on my kitchen counter. If I could get Logan to relax his guard and I could get to the stun gun, it would be my holy tool against his holy tool.

Logan craned his neck, looking around. “Where’s Tiki? I don’t see him.”

“I told you. He’s not here. How did you get here, anyway? And how did you find out where I live?”

“I googled you. You’re like famous. There were all these articles about how you burned down a funeral home, and how your apartment got firebombed.”