Lenny and the four-year-old were sitting in front of the TV watching a rerun of
Mary Lou dumped the fireplug people into a plastic laundry basket that was filled with toys, and the two-year- old let out a howl. He cried flat out with his hands clasping and unclasping, reaching for who knows what. Mary Lou, I suppose. Or maybe for his toys that were being put away for the night. He cried with his mouth wide open and his eyes scrunched tight, and in between sobs he shrieked, “No, no, no!”
Mary Lou took a graham cracker from her pocket and gave it to Mikey.
Mikey shoved the cracker into his mouth and continued to blubber, chewing and rubbing his face with his fat baby hands. Cracker mush mixed with tears and baby snot worked its way into his hair and onto his face. Brown drool rolled off his chin and stained his shirt.
Mary Lou gave Mikey a “been there, seen this” look. “Mikey’s tired,” she said.
Like I said before, kids were okay from a distance, but I didn’t think they’d ever replace hamsters.
“I need to use your phone to call home,” I said to Mary Lou.
She wiped at the mush with her shirttail. “Help yourself.”
I dialed from the kitchen, straining to hear over the racket in Mary Lou’s living room. “Is Morelli still there?” I asked my mother.
“He just left.”
“Are you sure? He’s not hanging around outside, is he?”
“I heard his car drive away.”
I borrowed a sweatshirt from Mary Lou and ran back to my parents’ house. I cut through the backyard and jogged down the driveway to check the street. The street looked clear. No Morelli. I retraced my steps to the kitchen door and let myself in.
“Well,” my mother said, “what gives?”
“Never catch me walking out on a hunk like Joe Morelli,” Grandma said. “I guess I’d know what to do with a man like that.”
I guessed I knew what to do with him too, but probably it was illegal to neuter a cop. “You didn’t give him any spice cake to take home, did you?” I asked my mother.
My mother tipped her chin up a fraction of an inch. “I gave him the whole thing. It was the least I could do after you left him sitting here high and dry.”
“The whole thing!” I shouted. “How could you do that? I didn’t get a single piece!”
“That’s what happens when you walk out. And how was I to know where you were? You could have been kidnapped. You could have had a brain seizure and wandered off with amnesia. How was I to know you’d be back and want spice cake?”
“I had reasons for leaving,” I wailed. “Perfectly good reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“Morelli was going to arrest me…maybe.”
My mother took a deep breath. “Arrest you?”
“There’s a small possibility that I might be a homicide suspect.”
My mother made the sign of the cross.
Grandma didn’t look nearly so glum. “There was a woman on TV the other day. On one of them talk shows. She said she’d been arrested for smoking dope. She said when you get arrested the cops lock you up in a little cell and then sit around watching you on closed-circuit TV, waiting for you to go to the bathroom. She said there’s this stainless steel commode in one corner of your cell, and it hasn’t got a toilet seat or anything, and that’s where you have to go. And she said the commode faces the TV camera just so they can all get a good view of the whole thing.”
My stomach went hollow and little black dots danced in front of my eyes. I wondered if I had enough money in my bank account to buy a ticket to Brazil.
Grandma’s expression got crafty. “The woman on TV said what you needed to do before you got arrested was to drink a lot of Kaopectate. She said you needed to get good and plugged up so you could wait until you got out on bail.”
I sat down in a chair and put my head between my knees.
“This is what comes of working for your father’s cousin,” my mother said. “You’re a smart girl. You should have a decent job. You should be a schoolteacher.”
I thought of Mary Lou’s kid with the graham crackers smeared in his hair, and felt better about being a bounty hunter. You see, it could always be worse, I thought. I could be a schoolteacher.
“I need to go home,” I said, retrieving my coat from the hall closet. “Lots of work to do tomorrow. Got to get to bed early.”
“Here,” my mother said, handing me a grocery bag. “Some meat loaf. Enough for a nice sandwich.”
I looked in the bag. Meat loaf. No spice cake.
“Thanks,” I said to my mother. “Are you sure there isn’t any spice cake left?”
“A homicide suspect,” my mother said. “How could such a thing happen?”
