and Con recognized them.'
'Then it would seem to me Con should be the one in the shallow grave.'
'Yes, but suppose Con told Spiro and Spiro came back and was extorting money from the four men? And then when he didn't think he could get any more he shot them.'
'It’s a lot of supposing,' Morelli said.
'And here's something else that's interesting. There's been no activity since your garage got blown up. Five days without a note, a sniping, or a bombing. Don't you think that's odd?'
'I think it's all odd.'
I sent the news article to Morelli, and then I went to the kitchen, got coffee with milk, no sugar, and went back to my desk and called my mother.
'Are you tippling yet?' I asked her.
'No,' she said.
Damn. 'Dad said you and Grandma were going to the memorial service.'
'Yes. It's at one o'clock. I feel so sorry for Carla and the three boys. What a terrible thing. I might have to tipple after the service. Do you think that would be bad?'
'Everybody tipples after a memorial service,' I told her. I knew it was the wrong thing to say. God help me, I was a rotten daughter, but I really needed dessert!
I disconnected and started working my way through the search requests. I called Morelli at noon.
'How's it going?'
'I talked to Con.'
'Just for the heck of it.'
'Yeah. Just for the heck of it. He said the army tried to keep the armoured truck robbery as quiet as possible. The two guards that Con was working with were shot and killed. Con said he was alive because he fainted when he got shot in the leg, and he supposed the hijackers thought he was dead. He couldn't identify any of the hijackers. They were all dressed in fatigues, wearing masks. For security purposes the army never released the entire death toll, but Con said it was rumored that there were three men in the truck who were killed.'
'Did he say how much money was involved?'
'He didn't know.'
'Did you ask him if he thought Barroni might have been involved in that hijacking?'
'Yeah. He looked at me like I was on drugs.'
'Did Spiro know about the hijacking?'
'Spiro knew his dad was shot. Con said there was a time when Spiro was a kid, and he was sort of obsessed with it. Kept the newspaper article in a scrapbook.'
'What does he have to say about the Spiro sightings?'
'Not much. He seemed confused more than anything else. He said he thought Spiro had perished in the fire. If he's telling the truth he's in a strange spot, not sure if he should be happy Spiro's alive or sad that Spiro blew up Mama Macaroni.'
'Do you think he's telling the truth?'
'Don't know. He sounds convincing enough. The big problem for me isn't that
Spiro came back to harass you. That I could easily believe, and you've actually seen him. My problem is I don't feel comfortable involving him in the Barroni murder.'
'You don't think Spiro's a multitasker.'
'Spiro's a rodent. You put a rodent in a maze, and he focuses on one thing, he goes for the piece of cheese.'
'Then who killed Michael Barroni?'
'Don't know. If I was going on gut instinct, I'd have to say it feels like Spiro's got his finger in that pie, but there's absolutely no evidence. We don't know why Barroni was killed, and we have no reason to believe he was involved in the hijacking.'
'Jeez, you're such a party pooper.'
'Yeah, insisting on evidence is always a downer.'
I hung up and went back to my searches, but I couldn't keep my mind on them.
I was getting double vision from looking at the computer, and I was tired of sitting in the cubby. And even worse, I was feeling friendly. I was thinking Morelli's voice had sounded nice on the phone. I was wondering what he was wearing. And I was remembering what he looked like when he wasn't wearing anything. And I was thinking I might have to leave work early, so I could be naked by the time Morelli walked through the door at four o'clock.
I pushed away from my desk, stuffed myself into the windbreaker, and grabbed the key fob.
'I need to get some air,' I told Hal. 'I won't be gone long.'
I rode the elevator to the garage and got on the bike. When I pushed away from my desk I didn't have a direction in mind. By the time I'd reached the garage I knew where I was going. I was going to the memorial service. I got to Stiva's exactly at one o'clock. Latecomers were hunting parking places and hustling up to the big
