Mary Lou and my cousin Jeanine, but they didn’t know either.
Well, that settles it, I decided. I’ll find out for myself. After all, I’m some sort of investigator. I’ll simply investigate.
Trouble was, the events of the last two days had me pretty much freaked out. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, but I wasn’t in love with it either. Well, okay, I was afraid of the dark. So I called Mary Lou back and asked her if she wanted to spy on Morelli with me.
“Sure,” Mary Lou said. “Last time we spied on Morelli we were twelve years old. We’re due.”
I laced up my running shoes, pulled a hooded sweatshirt over the sweatshirt I was wearing and shoved my hair under a black knit cap. I trucked down the hall, down the stairs, and ran into Dillon Ruddick in the lobby. Dillon was the building super and an all-around nice guy.
“I’ll give you five dollars if you’ll walk me to my car,” I said to Dillon.
“I’ll walk you for free,” Dillon said. “I was just taking the garbage out.”
Another advantage to parking by the Dumpster.
Dillon paused at the Buick. “This is a humdinger of a car,” he said.
I couldn’t argue with that.
Mary Lou was waiting at the curb when I pulled up to her house. She was wearing tight black jeans, a black leather motorcycle jacket, black high-heeled ankle boots and big gold hoop earrings. Evening wear for the well- dressed burg peeper.
“You ever tell anybody I did this, and I’ll deny it. And then I’ll hire Manny Russo to shoot you in the knee,” Mary Lou said.
“I just want to see if he has a woman with him.”
“Why?”
I looked over at her.
“Okay,” she said. “I know why.”
Morelli’s car was parked in front. The living room lights were out in his house, but the kitchen light was on, just as it had been earlier in the evening.
A figure moved through the house, up the stairs. A light blinked on in one of the upstairs rooms. The figure returned to the kitchen.
Mary Lou giggled. And then I giggled. Then we slapped ourselves so we’d stop giggling.
“I’m a mother,” Mary Lou said. “I’m not supposed to be doing stuff like this. I’m too old.”
“A woman’s never too old to make an idiot of herself. It goes along with equality of the sexes and potty parity.”
“Suppose we find him in the kitchen with a sock on his dick?”
“In your dreams.”
This drew more giggles.
I drove around the corner to the paved alley road that intersected the block. I slowly rolled down the single lane, cut my lights and paused at Morelli’s backyard. Morelli moved into view through a rear window. At least he was home. He hadn’t gone from my house to some hot babe. I continued to the end of the lane and parked the Buick around the corner, on Arlington Avenue.
“Come on,” I said to Mary Lou. “Let’s take a closer look.”
We crept back to Morelli’s yard and stood outside the weathered picket fence, hidden in shadow.
After a few moments Morelli once again crossed in front of the window. This time he had the phone to his ear, and he was smiling.
“Look at that!” Mary Lou said. “He’s smiling. I bet he’s talking to
We slipped inside the gate and tippytoed to the house. I flattened myself against the siding and held my breath. I inched closer to the window. I could hear him talking, but I couldn’t make out the words. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
A door opened two houses down, and a big black dog bounded into the small yard. He stopped and stood with ears pricked in our direction.
“WOOF!” the dog said.
“Omigod,” Mary Lou whispered. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Mary Lou wasn’t an animal person.
“WOOF!”
Suddenly this didn’t seem like such a good idea. I didn’t like the prospect of getting torn to shreds by the hound from hell. And even worse, I didn’t want to get caught by Morelli. Mary Lou and I executed a panic-inspired crab scuttle to the back gate and held up just outside Morelli’s broken-down fence. We watched the neighbor’s dog slowly move to the edge of his yard. He didn’t stop. His yard wasn’t fenced. He was on the road now, and he was looking directly at us.
Nice dog, I thought. Probably wanted to play. But just in case…it might be smart to head for the car. I backed up a few paces, and the dog charged. “YIPES!”
We had two house widths on Rover, and we ran flat out for all we were worth. We were twenty feet from Arlington when I felt paws impact on my back, knocking me off my feet. My hands hit first, then my knees. I belly-
