Three To Get Deadly

I didn’t know. I wondered the same thing. In fact, I wondered all the way home. I wasn’t such a bad person. I only cheated a little on my taxes, and I paid most of my bills. I didn’t cuss at old people (at least not to their face). I didn’t do drugs. So why was I having such rotten luck? Okay, so I didn’t go to church as often as I should, but my mother went regularly. I thought that should count for something.

I rolled Big Blue into the lot. It was late. All the good spots were taken, so I was back by the Dumpster again. What’s new. At least it afforded me cover from a drive-by. Maybe I’d park here all the time.

I looked up at my apartment and realized my lights were on. That was weird, because I was almost positive I’d shut them off when I left this afternoon. I got out of the car and walked to the middle of the lot. I looked up at my windows again. The lights were still on. What did this mean? It could mean the lights had been on when I left, and I was suffering from early onset of dementia. Probably I could add a touch of paranoia to the dementia.

A shadowy figure appeared briefly toward the far wall of my living room, and my heart skipped a beat. Someone was in my apartment. I was relieved to be able to rule out the dementia, but I still had a problem. I really didn’t want to do my own investigating and get shot at for the third time today. Unfortunately, the alternative was to call the police. Since I was low on Kaopectate, I didn’t think calling the police was a good alternative.

The figure reappeared. Long enough for me to decide it was a man. He moved closer to the window, and I was able to see his face.

The face belonged to Morelli.

Of all the nerve. Morelli had broken into my apartment. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. He was eating something. I suspected it was spice cake.

“PIG!” I yelled. “Creep!”

He didn’t seem to hear. Probably the TV was on.

I did a fast walk around the lot and found Morelli’s black Toyota 4x4. I gave the back bumper a kick, and the alarm went off.

Faces appeared in the windows above me while the alarm wailed away.

Mrs. Karwatt on the second floor threw her window open and leaned out. “What’s going on out there?”

A shotgun barrel poked from Mr. Weinstein’s window. “Whose alarm is that? It’s not my Cadillac, is it?”

The only window without a face was mine. I figured that was because Morelli was thundering down the stairs.

I ran to my car with my keys in my hand.

“Stay away from that car, or I’ll shoot,” Mr. Weinstein shouted.

“It’s my car,” I yelled back.

“The hell it is,” Mr. Weinstein said, squinting at me through his inch-thick trifocals. BOOM! Mr. Weinstein fired and took out the windshield on the car next to me.

I bolted across the grass median into the street and streaked for the houses on the other side. I stopped and looked back. Morelli was pacing under the rear overhang, shouting at Mr. Weinstein, obviously afraid to venture out into the lot for fear of getting shot.

I slipped into the shadows between two houses, hopped a backyard fence and came out onto Elm Street. I crossed Elm and repeated the pattern, bringing me to Hartland. I jogged a block up Hartland, crossed Hamilton and plastered myself against the brick wall of an all-night convenience store.

The previous owner of the store had been Joe Echo. He’d sold it in November, and the new Asian owner, Sam Pei, had changed the name to The American Store. I thought the name was appropriate. The American Store contained a sampling of everything an American might need at four times the price. A box of Fig Newtons for $7.50. No matter that there were only twelve in a box. I guess when you needed a Fig Newton in the middle of the night, you damn well didn’t care what it cost.

I pulled a knit cap out of my pocket and tugged it down over my ears. The battery was low on my cell phone, so I searched in my shoulder bag for a quarter, found one, dropped it into the pay phone and dialed my number.

Morelli answered on the fourth ring.

I unclenched my teeth enough to get a few words out. “What the hell are you doing in my apartment?”

“Waiting for you,” Morelli said.

“What were you eating just now?”

“Spice cake. There’s still some left, but you’d better hurry.”

I neatly clicked the phone back into the receiver. “Ugh!”

I bought a Snickers from Mr. Pei and ate it while I walked. Time to be realistic. Morelli was a lot better at this cops-and-robbers stuff than I was. It seemed to me that if he wanted to arrest me, he would have done it by now. For that matter, if he was serious about bringing me in for further questioning he would have done it. Probably there was no immediate need for the Kaopectate.

So why was Morelli harassing me? Because he wanted something. What did he want? Information that I might be withholding? Maybe he thought he could worm some missing details out of me better under more casual circumstances. Or maybe he wanted to threaten me without witnesses. Or maybe he wanted to ask me for a date.

I turned the corner at Hartland and decided I should talk to Morelli. This was no longer a simple recovery. Mo was still missing. A man had been killed. I’d been threatened. And there were some details I’d neglected to tell Morelli when I’d been questioned at the station. Not to mention the spice cake.

Everything looked status quo when I got to my parking lot. Lights were on in my apartment. Morelli’s car hadn’t been moved. A small gathering of people were clustered around the Chrysler Mr. Weinstein had used for target practice. Mr. Weinstein was there with a big piece of plastic bagging and a roll of duct tape in his hand.

“Another minute and he would have been driving off in this car, I’m telling you,” Mr. Weinstein was saying.