“So are you staying for supper?” my mother wanted to know. “I have spice cake with chocolate mocha icing for dessert.”
“Sure,” I said. “That would be nice.”
I helped Grandma Mazur set the table while my mother finished up in the kitchen. We were about to sit down when the doorbell rang.
“Probably the paperboy trying to juice us out of more money,” Grandma said. “I’m wise to his tricks.”
I answered the door and found myself looking into Joe Morelli’s brown eyes.
He grinned when he saw me. “Surprise.”
“What do you want?”
“You asking for the long list or the short list?”
“I don’t want any list.” I made an attempt to close the door, but he muscled his way into the foyer. “Out!” I said. “This isn’t a good time.”
He ignored me and strolled into the dining room. “Evening,” he said to my mother. He acknowledged my father with a nod of his head, and he winked at my grandmother.
“We’re having meat loaf with olives,” Grandma Mazur said to Morelli. “You want some? We got plenty.”
“I wouldn’t want to impose,” Morelli said.
This triggered eye rolling on my part.
My mother pulled an extra side chair up next to me and laid out another plate. “We wouldn’t think of having you leave without supper,” she said to Morelli.
“I’d think of it,” I said.
My mother smacked me on the top of my head with a wooden serving spoon. “Miss Fresh Mouth.”
Morelli helped himself to two slabs of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans and applesauce. He made polite conversation with my mother and grandmother and discussed sports scores with my father. On the surface Morelli seemed relaxed and smiling, but there were unguarded moments when I caught him watching me with the offhand intensity of a tree toad eyeing a tasty insect.
“So what’s going on between you and my granddaughter?” Grandma asked Morelli. “Being that you’re here for supper I guess everything’s pretty serious.”
“Getting more serious by the minute,” Morelli said.
“Morelli and I have a working relationship,” I said to Grandma. “Nothing more.”
Morelli slouched back. “You shouldn’t fib to your grandma. You know you’re crazy about me.”
“Well, listen to that,” Grandma said, clearly charmed. “Isn’t he the one.”
Morelli leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Speaking of work, I have a matter I’d like to discuss with you in private. I thought maybe we could go for a ride together after the table is cleared.”
“Sure,” I said. And maybe I’ll poke out my eye with the turkey baster.
I gathered the plates together and hauled them off to the kitchen. My mother and Grandma Mazur followed with the serving dishes.
“You go ahead and cut the cake,” I told my mother. “I’ll get the coffee going.”
I waited a moment until I had the kitchen to myself, then I promptly did a quiet exit through the back door. I had no intention of going for a ride that would culminate in a body cavity search. Not that a body cavity search would be a new experience. Morelli had already performed this procedure on me at various ages, with varying degrees of success. The new twist would be that this time the search might be done by a prison matron—and that was even less appealing than falling prey to Morelli.
I was wearing jeans and boots and a flannel shirt over a T-shirt, and my teeth were chattering by the time I’d cut through my parents’ backyard and run the two blocks to Mary Lou’s house. Mary Lou’s been my best friend for as long as I can remember. For six years now she’s been more or less happily married to Leonard Stankovic of Stankovic and Sons, Plumbing and Heating. She has two kids and a mortgage and a part-time job as a bookkeeper for an Oldsmobile dealership.
I didn’t bother with the formality of knocking on her door. I just barged in and stood there stomping my feet and flapping my arms in her living room, and saying, “D-d-damn it’s c-c-cold!”
Mary Lou was on her hands and knees picking up little plastic cars and men that looked like fireplugs. “Maybe it would help if you tried wearing a coat.”
“I was at my parents’ house and Morelli showed up, and so I had to sneak out the back door.”
“I don’t buy into that one,” Mary Lou said. “If you were with Morelli just now you’d be missing a lot more clothes than your coat.”
“This is serious. I’m afraid he might want to arrest me.”
Mary Lou’s two-year-old, Mikey, toddled in from the kitchen and latched onto Mary Lou’s leg dog style.
I thought kids were okay from a distance, but I wasn’t all that excited about the way they smelled up close. I suppose when they belong to you it makes a difference.
“You probably should stop shooting guys,” Mary Lou said. “You shoot a lot of guys, and eventually the cops get cranky about it.”
“I didn’t shoot this one. Anyway, I had to sneak out of the house, and I had to leave my coat and everything behind.”
