Four to Score

I cleared my throat and glared at Morelli.

'Okay, okay,' Morelli said. 'No bambinos. Stephanie moved in with me because she needs a place to live while her apartment gets repaired. That's all there is to it.'

'What do you think, I'm a fool?' Grandma Bella said. 'I see what goes on. I know what you do.'

Morelli helped himself to chicken. 'Stephanie and I are just good friends.'

I went rigid with my fork halfway to my mouth. He'd used those words to describe his relationship with Terry Gilman. Wonderful. Now what was I supposed to believe? That I was on equal footing with Terry? Well, you pushed him into it, stupid. You forced him to tell Bella this wasn't a serious relationship. Well, yeah, I thought, but he could have made me sound a little more important than Terry Gilman!

Bella's head rolled back, and she put her hands palms down on the table. 'Silence!'

Mary Elizabeth made the sign of the cross.

Mrs. Morelli and Joe exchanged long-suffering glances.

'Now what?' I whispered.

'Grandma Bella's having a vision,' Joe said. 'It goes with having the eye.'

Bella's head snapped up, and she pointed two fingers at Joe and me. 'I see your wedding. I see you dancing. And I see after that you will have three sons, and the line will continue.'

I leaned toward Joe. 'Those things you bought . . . they were good quality, right?'

'The best money can buy.'

'I gotta go lay down now,' Bella said. 'I always gotta rest after I have a vision.'

We waited while she left the table and climbed the stairs. The bedroom door clicked closed, and Joe's mother gave an audible sigh of relief.

'Sometimes she gives me the willies,' Mary Elizabeth said.

And then we all dug into the meal, avoiding talk about marriage and babies and crazy old Italian women.

I sipped my coffee and scarfed down a plateful of homemade cookies, keeping one eye on the time. Eddie Kuntz wouldn't show at the bar until nine, but I wanted to be in place earlier than that. My plan was to plant Lula and Sally inside the bar while I did surveillance on the street.

'It was very nice of you to invite me for dinner,' I told Mrs. Morelli. 'Unfortunately, I have to leave early. I have to go to work tonight.'

'Is this bounty hunter work?' Mary Elizabeth wanted to know. 'Are you hunting down a fugitive?'

'Sort of.'

'It sounds exciting.'

'It sounds like a sin against nature,' Grandma Bella said from the hallway, freshly risen from the guest bed. 'No kind of work for someone expecting.'

'Grandma Bella,' I said. 'I'm really not expecting.'

'A lot you know,' she said. 'I've been to the other side. I see these things. I got the eye.'

*    *    *    *    *

'OKAY,' I said to Morelli when we were half a block from the house, 'just how accurate is this eye thing?'

'I don't know. I never paid much attention to it.' He turned onto Roebling and pulled over to the curb. 'Where are we going?'

'I'm going to the Blue Moon Bar. It's the next point of pickup in Maxine's treasure hunt. Take me back to the house, and I'll get my car.'

Morelli swung out into traffic. 'I'll go with you. Wouldn't want anything to happen to my unborn child.'

'That's not funny!'

'All right. The truth is there's only crap on television tonight, so I might as well come along.'

The Blue Moon Bar was down by the State Complex. There was a public parking lot on the next block, and there was on-street parking in front of the bar. There were small businesses on either side of the bar, but the businesses were closed at this time of the night. The bar had been a disco in the seventies, a sports bar in the eighties, and a year before it had been transformed into a fake micro-brewery. It was basically one large room with a copper vat in the corner, a bar running the entire length of one side and tables in the middle of the room. Besides serving booze, the Blue Moon Bar sold snack food. French fries, onion rings, nachos and fried mozzarella. On Saturday nights it was packed.

It was still early for the bar crowd, and Morelli was able to get a spot on the street, two cars down from the door. 'Now what?' Morelli asked.

'Kuntz's supposed to show up at nine. Then we see what happens.'

'What usually happens?'

'Nothing.'

'Gosh, I can't wait.'

By eight-thirty Lula and Sally were in the building. Kuntz arrived fifteen minutes later. I left Morelli in the truck with a photo of Maxine, and I went in to be with Kuntz.

'You look different,' Kuntz said.