Hot Six

'Don't think Hannibal would leave a body in his own garage.'

'Well, I don't care who killed him,' Cynthia said. 'I got the Porsche, and I'm going home.'

The dead guy was lying in a heap on the floor, legs bent at odd angles, hair mussed, shirt out.

'What about him?' I asked. 'We can't just leave him like this. He looks so… uncomfortable.'

'It's his legs,' Lula said. 'They froze up in a seated position.' She pulled a lawn chair off a stack at the back of the garage and set the chair next to the dead guy. 'If we put him in a chair he'll look more natural, like he was waiting for a ride or something.'

So we picked him up, set him into the chair, and backed away to take a look. Only, when we backed away, he fell out of the chair. Smash, right on his face.

'Good thing he's dead,' Lula said, 'or that would have hurt like the devil.'

We heaved him back into the chair and this time we wrapped a bungee cord around him. His nose was a little smashed and one eye had been jarred closed from the impact when he fell, so one was open and one was closed, but aside from that he looked okay. We backed away again, and he stayed in place.

'I'm outta here,' Cynthia said. She rolled all the windows down in the car, hit the garage-door opener, backed out, and took off down the street.

The garage door slid closed, and Lula and I were left with the dead guy.

Lula shifted foot to foot. 'Think we should say something over the deceased? I don't like to disrespect the dead.'

'I think we should get the hell out of here.'

'Amen,' Lula said, and she made the sign of the cross.

'I thought you were Baptist.'

'Yeah, but we don't got any hand signals for an occasion like this.'

We vacated the garage, peeked out the back window to make sure no one was around, and scurried out the patio door. We closed the gate behind us and walked the bike path to the car.

'I don't know about you,' Lula said, 'but I'm gonna go home and stand in the shower for a couple hours, and then I'm gonna rinse myself off with Clorox.'

That sounded like a good plan. Especially since a shower would give me a chance to put off seeing Morelli. I mean, what would I say to him? 'Guess what, Joe, I broke into Hannibal Ramos's house today and found a dead guy. Then I destroyed the crime scene, helped a woman remove evidence, and left. So, if you still find me attractive after ten years in jail…' Not to mention, this was the second time Ranger had been seen walking away from a homicide.

By the time I got home I had all the makings of a bad mood. I'd gone to Hannibal's town house looking for information. Now I had more information than I really wanted to have, and I didn't know what any of it meant. I paged Ranger and made lunch, which in my distracted state consisted of olives. Again.

I took the phone into the bathroom with me while I showered. I changed clothes, dried my hair, and gave my lashes a couple swipes of mascara. I was contemplating eyeliner when Ranger called.

'I want to know what's going on,' I said. 'I just found a dead guy in Hannibal's garage.'

'And?'

'And I want to know who he is. And I want to know who killed him. And I want to know what you were doing sneaking out of Hannibal's town house last night.'

I could feel the force of Ranger's personality at the other end of the line. 'You don't need to know any of those things.'

'The hell I don't. I just involved myself in a murder.'

'You happened on a crime scene. That's different from being involved in a murder. Have you called the police yet?'

'No.'

'It would be a good idea to call the police. And you might want to be vague about the breaking-and-entering part.'

'I might want to be vague about a lot of things.'

'Your call,' Ranger said.

'You have a rotten attitude!' I yelled at him over the phone. 'I'm fed up with this Mysterious Ranger thing. You have a problem sharing, do you know that? One day you have your hands up my shirt, and next day you're telling me nothing's any of my business. I don't even know where you live.'

'If you don't know anything, you can't pass anything on.'

'Thanks for the vote of confidence.'

'It's the way it is,' Ranger said.

'And another thing, Morelli wants you to call him. He's been watching somebody for a long time, and now you're involved with this somebody, and Morelli thinks you could be of some help to him.'

'Later,' Ranger said. And he hung up.

Fine. If that's the way he wants it, then that's just peachy fine.

I huffed off to the kitchen, got my gun out of the cookie jar, grabbed my shoulder bag, and stomped down the hall, down the stairs, through the lobby to the Buick. Joyce was parked in the lot, in the car with the crumpled bumper. She saw me come out of the building and gave me the finger. I gave it back to her and took off for Morelli's house. Joyce was following one car length behind. Okay by me. She could follow me all she wanted today. As far as I was concerned Ranger was on his own. I was taking myself out of the picture.

MORELLI AND BOB were sitting side by side on the couch, watching ESPN, when I came in. There was an empty Pino's Pizza box on the coffee table, an empty container of ice cream and a couple crushed beer cans.

'Lunch?' I asked.

'Bob was hungry. And don't worry, he didn't get any beer.' Morelli patted the seat next to him. 'There's room for you, here.'

When Morelli was being a cop, his brown eyes were hard and assessing, his face was lean and angular, and the scar that sliced through his right eyebrow gave the correct impression that Morelli had never lived a cautious life. When he was feeling sexy, his brown eyes were molten chocolate, his mouth softened, and the scar gave the mistaken impression that he might need a teensy bit of mothering.

And right now, Morelli was feeling very sexy. And I was feeling very unsexy. In fact, I was feeling absolutely grumpy. I plopped myself down on the couch and scowled at the empty pizza box, remembering my lunch of olives.

Morelli slid his arm around my shoulders and nuzzled my neck. 'Alone at last,' he said.

'I have something to tell you.'

Morelli went still.

'I sort of happened on a dead guy today.'

He slouched back on the couch. 'I have a girlfriend who finds dead guys. Why me?'

'You sound like my mother.'

'I feel like your mother.'

'Well, don't,' I snapped. 'I don't even like when my mother feels like my mother.'

'I suppose you want to tell me about this.'

'Hey, if you don't want to hear it, that's no problem. I can just call it in to the station.'

He sat up straighter. 'You haven't called it in? Oh shit, let me guess: you broke into someone's house and stumbled onto a homicide.'

'Hannibal's house.'

Morelli was on his feet. 'Hannibal's house?'

'But I didn't break in. His back door was open.'

'What the hell were you doing walking into Hannibal's house?' he yelled. 'What were you thinking?'

I was on my feet, too, and I was yelling back. 'I was doing my job.'

'Breaking and entering isn't your job.'

'I told you, it wasn't breaking. It was only entering.'

'Well, that makes all the difference. Who did you find dead?'