Hard Eight

“It wasn’t like that. It was friendly.” In an uncomfortably tense sort of way.

“Friendly,” Lula said. “Hunh.”

“So how do you feel about that?” Connie asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess friendly is good.”

“Yeah, except naked and sweaty would be better,” Lula said.

We all thought about that for a moment.

Connie fanned herself with a steno pad. “Whew,” she said. “Hot flash.”

I resisted looking down to see if my nipples were hard. “Did Evelyn’s report come in?”

Connie leafed through a stack of folders on her desk and pulled one out. “Just got it this morning.”

I took the folder and read down the first page. I turned to the second page.“

“Not a lot there,” Connie said. “Evelyn stuck pretty close to home. Even as a kid.”

I stuffed the folder into my bag and looked up at the video camera. “Is Vinnie here?”

“He hasn’t come in yet. Probably got Candy inflating his ego,” Lula said. 9

I READ THROUGH Evelyn’s file one more time when I got to my car. Some of the information seemed invasive, but this is the age of data for anyone interested. I had a credit report and some medical history. Nothing struck me as incredibly helpful. A rap on my passenger-side window pulled me away from the file. It was Morelli. I unlocked the door, and he slid in next to me.

“Hung over?” he asked, but it was more of a statement than a question.

“How’d you know?”

He poked at the fast-food carton. “McDonald’s french fries and Coke for breakfast. Dark circles under your eyes. Hair from hell.”

I checked out my hair in the rearview mirror. Yow. “I overdid the wine last night.”

He took that in. Nothing was said for a long moment. I didn’t volunteer more. He didn’t ask.

He looked at the file in my hand. “Are you getting any closer to Evelyn?”

“I’ve made some progress.”

“You heard about Soder’s bar.”

“I just came from there,” I said. “It looked bad. Lucky no one was in the building.”

“Yeah, except so far we haven’t been able to locate Soder. His girlfriend said he never came home.”

“Do you think he could have been in the bar when the fire broke out?”

“The guys are in there checking. They had to wait for the building to cool. No sign of him so far. I thought you’d want to know.” Morelli had his hand on the door handle.

“I’ll let you know if we find him.”

“Wait a minute. I have a theoretical question. Suppose you were watching television with me. And we were alone in my apartment. And I had a couple glasses of wine, and I sort of passed out. Would you try to make love to me, anyway? Would you do a little exploring while I was asleep?”

“What are we watching? Is it the play-offs?”

“You can leave now,” I said.