thing.'
Something to keep in mind if I ever want to do it with a beast.
'We have all the Lethal Weapon movies at Morelli's house. You can borrow them if you want.'
'You sure he won't mind?'
'He isn't home. He's locked down with a witness. And even if he was home, he wouldn't mind.'
'That'd be great since I was going to have to kite a check to get movie money.'
THIRTEEN
MORELLI'S HOUSE IS officially outside the Burg, but not by much. It was a five-minute drive from the bonds office. I parked the Cayenne and fished Morelli's house key out of my bag.
'I'll be right out,' I said to Lula. 'Stay here.' Morelli lives in a narrow two-story house configured a lot like my parents'. Rooms are shotgunned with living room going to dining room going to kitchen. Front door. Back door. Downstairs powder room. Small, barren backyard leading to an alley. Three small bedrooms and old-fashioned bath upstairs. Morelli inherited the house from his Aunt Rose and little by little has been making it his own. I unlocked the front door and stepped into the short hallway that serves as foyer and also leads to the stairs. I'd expected the house would be silent and empty, but the television was on in the living room. My first reaction was confusion, fast followed by a rush of embarrassment. Someone was living here in Morelli's absence. Maybe an out-of-town relative or a down-on-his-luck cop. And I'd barged in unannounced.
I was about to quietly sneak out when Dickie Orr walked in from the kitchen. He was eating ice cream out of the tub, his hair was a mess, as if he'd just rolled out of bed, and he was in his underwear-a white undershirt with a chocolate ice cream stain dribbling down the front and baggy striped boxers.
Time stood still. The earth stopped rotating. My heart stuttered in my chest.
'Wha…' I said. 'Wha…'
Dickie rolled his eyes and shoved his spoon into the ice cream. 'Joe!' he yelled. 'You've got company.'
I could hear Morelli's sneakered feet on the stairs and then he was in the room.
'Oh, shit,' Morelli said when he saw me.
I gave him a little finger wave. 'Hi.'
I was feeling awkward. Embarrassed that I had stumbled into this, and angry that it had been kept from me.
'I can explain,' Morelli said.
'Uh-hunh.'
'Good luck on that one,' Dickie said. 'There's no explaining to her. You make one slipup and that's it. Sayonara.'
'Shut up, Dick breath,' I said. 'And anyway, it wasn't one slipup. In the fifteen minutes we were married, you screwed half the women in Trenton.'
'I have a high libido,' Dickie said to Morelli.
'It had nothing to do with your libido. It had to do with the fact that you're a pathological liar and a worm.'
'You have control issues,' Dickie said. 'Men aren't designed for monogamy, and you can't handle that.'
I narrowed my eyes at Morelli. 'Hit him.'
'I can't hit him,' Morelli said. 'He's in my protective custody.'
'And you!' I said to Morelli.
'I had no choice,' Morelli said. 'He had to get squirreled away somewhere, and I had the house, so he got dropped in my lap.'
'You could have told me!'
'I couldn't tell you. You would have acted differently.'
'I thought I was going to jail for murder!'
'I told you not to worry,' Morelli said.
'How was I supposed to know that actually meant something? People say that all the time.'
'What about me?' Morelli said. 'Where's the sympathy for me? I've been trapped in my house with this idiot.'
'Boy, that hurts,' Dickie said. 'I thought we were bonding.'
'What about the shooting at your house the night you disappeared?' I asked Dickie. 'And what about the blood on your floor?'
Morelli was hands in pockets, rocked back on his heels. 'Dickie shot one of the hired help in the knee. And then he ran like hell out his back door, right Dickie?'
'I ran like the wind.'
'And why is Dickie here in protective custody?'
'They wanted him on ice while they investigated the law firm's client list. The original thought was we needed him to testify against his partners, but his partners have disappeared in one way or another. One is confirmed dead and another presumed dead. And the third dropped off the face of the earth when Dickie went missing.'
'You can't find Petiak?'
'Vanished. We know he's still around because from time to time one of his goon squad surfaces.'
'So I'm off the hook.'
'Yep,' Morelli said.
'What about Gorvich? I thought I was a suspect there.'
'I wanted you to dredge up an alibi in case the press came to you.' His attention fixed on my RangeMan jacket. 'What are you doing in RangeMan clothes? You were head-to-toe RangeMan this morning.'
'I ran out of clean clothes and these were available.'
'Available? Where were they available?'
'In Ranger's closet.'
'Are you fucking kidding me? I'm holed up here with the witness from hell and you've moved in with Ranger?'
'You told him to take care of me.'
'Not that way!'
'There's no that way going on. It's no different from what you've got here. You've got Dick-head in protective custody. Does that mean you're sleeping with him?'
The color was rising in Morelli’s face. 'I'll kill him.'
'You will not kill him. Read my lips… nothing has happened between us.' At least, not the main event. I chose to believe the prelims didn't count in this case. 'And I'm not moved in with him. I'm going home and I'm going to get on with my life now that I know I'm not a murder suspect.'
'Maybe you should move in here,' Morelli said. 'There's a lunatic out there with a flamethrower, and you're mixed up in it somehow.'
'No thanks. I already did time with Dickie. I'll take my chances with the flamethrower.' I went to the television and looked through the DVDs stacked alongside. 'I just stopped around to borrow the Lethal Weapon collection.' I found the boxed set and looked over at Morelli. 'You don't mind?'
'What's mine is yours,' Morelli said.
I let myself out and jogged to the Porsche.
'I thought you decided to take a nap in there,' Lula said.
I handed the DVDs over to her and pulled the car out of Morelli's driveway. 'It took a while to find them.'
In a half hour, we were in front of Coglin's house. I paged through his file, found his phone number, and called him.
'I'm in front of your house,' I said. 'I want to talk to you, and I don't want to end up with squirrel guts in my hair. Can we call a truce for ten minutes?'
'Yeah, I guess that would be okay,' Coglin said. 'If you promise you won't try to take me in now.'
'Promise.'
