Three to Get Deadly

  Rex backed out of his soup can and gave me the onceover. He looked startled at my appearance, so I explained my day. When I got to the part about driving Elliot around in Lula's trunk, I burst out laughing. My God, what had I been thinking! It was an absurd thing to do. I laughed until I cried, and then I realized I was no longer laughing. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, and I was sobbing. After a while my nose was running, and my mouth was open but the sobs were soundless.

  “Shit,” I said to Rex. “This is exhausting.”

  I blew my nose, dragged myself into the bathroom, stripped and stood under the shower until my skin was scorched and my mind was empty. I got dressed in sweats and cotton socks and cooked my hair into ten inches of red frizz with the hair dryer. I looked like I'd taken a bath with the toaster, but I was way beyond caring. I collapsed onto the bed and instantly fell asleep.

  I came awake slowly, my eyes swollen from crying, my mind gauzy and stupid. The clock at bedside said nine-thirty. Someone was knocking. I shuffled into the hall and opened the door without ceremony.

  It was Morelli, holding a pizza box and a six-pack.

  “You should always look before you open the door,” he said.

  “I did look.”

  “You're lying again.”

  He was right. I hadn't looked. And he was right about being careful.

  My eyes locked on the pizza box. “You sure know how to get a person's attention.”

  Morelli smiled. “Hungry?”

  “Are you coming in, or what?”

  Morelli dumped the pizza and beer on the coffee table and shrugged out of his jacket. “I'd like to go over the day's events.”

  I brought plates and a roll of paper towels to the coffee table and sat beside Morelli on the couch. I wolfed down a piece of pizza and told him everything.

  By the time I was done, Morelli was on his second beer. “You have any additional thoughts?”

  “Only that Gail probably lied to us, so she wouldn't get in trouble with her landlady. Elliot had full rigor when we found him, so he'd been dead awhile. My guess is either Gail told Mo where to find Elliot, or else Elliot was in Gail's room when Mo showed up.”

  Morelli nodded affirmation. “You're watching the right TV shows,” he said. “We ran the plates on the tan car. The car belonged to Elliot Harp.”

  “Did you find Mo's connection to Montgomery Street?”

  “Not yet, but we have men in the neighborhood. The garage was used by a lot of people. It's possible to buy a key card on a monthly basis. No ID necessary. Freedom Church members use the garage. Local merchants use it.”

  I ate another slice of pizza. I wanted to bring up the topic of Mickey Maglio, but I didn't feel secure about the accusation. Besides, I'd mentioned it once. Morelli was too good a cop to let it slide by and be forgotten.

  “So now what?” I asked. “You want to watch some TV?”

  Morelli looked at his watch. “Think I'll pass. I should be getting home.” He stood and stretched. “Been a long day.”

  I followed him to the door. “Thanks for helping me dispose of Elliot.”

  “Hey,” Morelli said, punching me lightly on the arm. “What are friends for?”

  I blinked. Friends? Morelli and me? “Okay, what's going on?”

  “Nothing's going on.”

  Boy, was that ever the truth. No flirting. No grabbing. Sexist remarks held to a minimum. I narrowed my eyes as I watched him walk to the elevator. There was only one possible explanation. Morelli had a girlfriend. Morelli was enamored with someone else, and I was off the hook.

  He disappeared behind the elevator doors, and I retreated into my apartment.

  Hooray I told myself. But I didn't actually feel like hooray. I felt like someone had thrown a party, and I hadn't been included on the guest list. I puzzled on this, trying to determine the cause for my discomfort. The obvious reason, of course, was that I was jealous. I didn't like the obvious reason, so I kept working for another. Finally I gave up in defeat. Truth is, there was unfinished business between Morelli and me. A couple months ago we'd had Buick interruptus, and as much as I hated to admit it, I'd been thinking of him in torrid terms ever since.

  And then there was the house move, which seemed so out of character for Morelli the bachelor. But suppose Morelli was thinking of cohabitating? My God, suppose Morelli was thinking of marriage?

  I didn't at all like the idea of Morelli getting married. It would wreck my fantasy life, and it would put added pressure on me. My mother would be saying to me . . . Look! Even Joe Morelli is married!

  I dropped onto the couch and punched up the television, but there wasn't anything worth seeing. I cleaned the beer cans and pizza off the coffee table. I plugged the telephone back into the wall and reset the answering machine. I tried the television again.

  I had a third beer, and when that was done I felt slightly buzzed. Damn Morelli, I thought. He has a lot of nerve getting involved with some other woman.

  The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I became. Who was this woman, anyway?

  I called Sue Ann Grebek and discreetly asked who the hell Morelli was boffing, but Sue Ann didn't know. I called Mary Lou and my cousin Jeanine, but they didn't know either.

  Well, that settles it, I decided. I'll find out for myself. After all, I'm some sort of investigator. I'll simply investigate.

  Trouble was, the events of the last two days had me pretty much freaked out. I wasn't afraid of the dark, but I wasn't in love with it either. Well, okay, I was afraid of the dark. So I called Mary Lou back and asked her if she wanted to spy on Morelli with me.

  “Sure,” Mary Lou said. “Last time we spied on Morelli we were twelve years old. We're due.”

  I laced up my running shoes, pulled a hooded sweatshirt over the sweatshirt I was wearing and shoved my hair under a black knit cap. I trucked down the hall, down the stairs, and ran into Dillon Ruddick in the lobby. Dillon was the building super and an all-around nice guy.

  “I'll give you five dollars if you'll walk me to my car,” I said to Dillon.

  “I'll walk you for free,” Dillon said. “I was just taking the garbage out.”

  Another advantage to parking by the Dumpster.

  Dillon paused at the Buick. “This is a humdinger of a car,” he said.

  I couldn't argue with that.

  Mary Lou was waiting at the curb when I pulled up to her house. She was wearing tight black jeans, a black leather motorcycle jacket, black high-heeled ankle boots and big gold hoop earrings. Evening wear for the well-dressed burg peeper.

  “You ever tell anybody I did this, and I'll deny it. And then I'll hire Manny Russo to shoot you in the knee,” Mary Lou said.

  “I just want to see if he has a woman with him.”

  “Why?”

  I looked over at her.

  “Okay,” she said. “I know why.”

  Morelli's car was parked in front. The living room lights were out in his house, but the kitchen light was on, just as it had been earlier in the evening.

  A figure moved through the house, up the stairs. A light blinked on in one of the upstairs rooms. The figure returned to the kitchen.

  Mary Lou giggled. And then I giggled. Then we slapped ourselves so we'd stop giggling.

  “I'm a mother,” Mary Lou said. “I'm not supposed to be doing stuff like this. I'm too old.”

  “A woman's never too old to make an idiot of herself. It goes along with equality of the sexes and potty parity.”

  “Suppose we find him in the kitchen with a sock on his dick?”

  “In your dreams.”

  This drew more giggles.

  I drove around the corner to the paved alley road that intersected the block. I slowly rolled down the single lane, cut my lights and paused at Morelli's backyard. Morelli moved into view through a rear window. At least he was home. He hadn't gone from my house to some hot babe. I continued to the end of the lane and parked the Buick around the corner, on Arlington Avenue.


  “Come on,” I said to Mary Lou. “Let's take a closer look.”

  We crept back to Morelli's yard and stood outside the weathered picket fence, hidden in shadow.

  After a few moments Morelli once again crossed in front of the window. This time he had the phone to his ear, and he was smiling.

  “Look at that!” Mary Lou said. “He's smiling. I bet he's talking to her!”

  We slipped inside the gate and tippytoed to the house. I flattened myself against the siding and held my breath. I inched closer to the window. I could hear him talking, but I couldn't make out the words. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

  A door opened two houses down, and a big black dog bounded into the small yard. He stopped and stood with ears pricked in our direction.

  “WOOF!” the dog said.

  “Omigod,” Mary Lou whispered. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  Mary Lou wasn't an animal person.

  “WOOF!”

  Suddenly this didn't seem like such a good idea. I didn't like the prospect of getting torn to shreds by the hound from hell. And even worse, I didn't want to get caught by Morelli. Mary Lou and I executed a panic-inspired crab scuttle to the back gate and held up just outside Morelli's broken-down fence. We watched the neighbor's dog slowly move to the edge of his yard. He didn't stop. His yard wasn't fenced. He was on the road now, and he was looking directly at us.

  Nice dog, I thought. Probably wanted to play. But just in case . . . it might be smart to head for the car. I backed up a few paces, and the dog charged. “YIPES!”

  We had two house widths on Rover, and we ran flat out for all we were worth. We were twenty feet from Arlington when I felt paws impact on my back, knocking me off my feet. My hands hit first, then my knees. I belly-whopped onto the blacktop and felt the air whoosh from my lungs.

  I braced for the kill, but the dog just stood over me, tongue lolling, tail wagging.

  “Good dog,” I said.

  He licked my face.

  I rolled onto my back and assessed the damage. Torn sweats, scraped hands and knees. Large loss of self-esteem. I got to my feet, shooed the dog back home and limped to the car where Mary Lou was waiting.

  “You deserted me,” I said to Mary Lou.

  “It looked like it might turn into one of those sexual things. I didn't want to interfere.”

  Fifteen minutes later I was in my apartment, dressed in my nightgown, dabbing antiseptic cream on my skinned knees. And I was feeling much better. Nothing like a totally infantile act to put things into perspective.

  I stopped dabbing when the phone rang. Not Morelli, I prayed. I didn't want to hear that he'd seen me running from his yard.

  I answered with a tentative hello.

  Pause on the other end.

  “Hello,” I repeated.

  “I hope that little discussion we had last time meant something to you,” the man said. “Because if I find out you've opened your mouth about any of this, I'm going to come get you. And it's not going to be nice.”

  “Maglio?”

  The caller hung up.

  I checked all my locks, plugged the battery on my cell phone into the recharger, made sure my gun was loaded and at bedside along with the pepper spray. I cringed at the possibility that Maglio might be involved. It wasn't good to have a cop for an enemy. Cops could be very dangerous people.

  The phone rang again. This time I let the machine get it. The call was from Ranger. Just reporting in, he said. Running tomorrow at seven.

  I called Lula as promised and registered her for the program.

  I was downstairs at seven, but I wasn't in the finest form. I hadn't slept well, and I was feeling tapped out.

  “How'd it go yesterday?” Ranger asked.

  I gave him the unabridged version, excluding my juvenile visit to Morelli's backyard.

  Ranger's mouth tipped at the corners. “You're making this up, right?”

  “Wrong. That's what happened. You asked what happened. I told you what happened.”

  “Okay, let me get this straight. Elliot Harp flew off Mo's car, bounced off the Firebird onto the shoulder of Route 1. You picked Elliot up, and put him in the trunk and drove him to the police station.”

  “More or less.”

  Ranger gave a bark of laughter. “Bet that went over big with the boys in blue.”

  A taxi pulled into the lot, not far from where we were standing, and Lula got out. She was dressed in a pink polar fleece sweatsuit and pink furry earmuffs. She looked like the Energizer rabbit on steroids.

  “Lula's going running with us,” I told Ranger. “She wants to get in better shape.”

  Ranger gave Lula the once-over. “You don't keep up, you get left behind.”

  “Your ass,” Lula said.

  We took off at a pretty good clip. I figured Ranger was testing Lula. She was breathing hard, but she was close on his heels. She managed until we got to the track, and then she found a seat on the sidelines.

  “I don't run in circles,” she said.

  I sat beside her. “Works for me.”

  Ranger did a lap and jogged by us without acknowledgment of our presence or lack of.

  “So why are you really here?” I asked Lula.

  Lula's eyes never left Ranger. “I'm here 'cause he's the shit.”

  “The shit?”

  “Yeah, you know . . . the shit. The king. The cool.”

  “Do we know anyone else who's the shit?”

  “John Travolta. He's the shit, too.”

  We watched Ranger some, and I could see her point about Ranger being the shit.

  “I've been thinking,” Lula said. “Suppose there really were superheroes?”

  “Like Batman?”

  “That's it. That's what I'm saying. It'd be someone who was the shit.”

  “Are you telling me you think Ranger's a superhero?”

  “Think about it. We don't know where he lives. We don't know anything about him.”

  “Superheroes are make-believe.”

  “Oh yeah?” Lula said. “What about God?”

  “Hmmmm.”

  Ranger did a couple more laps and veered from the track.

  Lula and I jumped off the bench and followed in his footsteps. We collapsed in a heap two miles later, in front of my building.

  “Bet you could run forever,” Lula said to Ranger, gasping and wheezing. “Bet you got muscles that feel like iron.”

  “Man of steel,” Ranger said.

  Lula sent me a knowing look.

  “Well, this has been fun,” I said to everybody. “But I'm out of here.”

  “I could use a ride,” Lula said to Ranger. “The police still have my car. Maybe you could give me a ride on your way home. Of course I don't want to inconvenience you. I wouldn't want you to go out of your way.” She took a momentary pause. “Just exactly where do you live?” she asked Ranger.

  Ranger pressed his security remote and the doors clicked open on the Bronco. He motioned to Lula. “Get in.”

  Ricardo Carlos Manoso. Master of the two-syllable sentence. Superhero at large.

  I hooked Lula by the crook of her arm before she took off. “What's your schedule like today?”

  “Like any other day.”

  “If you get a chance maybe you could check some fastfood restaurants for me. I don't want you to spend all day at it, but if you go out for coffee break or lunch keep your eyes open for Stuart Baggett. He has to be working somewhere in the area. My guess is he'll go to what feels familiar.”

  An hour later I was on the road, canvassing eateries, doing my part. I figured Lula would stay close to the office, so I took Hamilton Township. I was on Route 33 when my cell phone chirped.

  “I found him!” Lula shouted at me. “I took early lunch, and I went to a couple places on account of everyone in the office wanted something different, and I found him! Mr. Cute-as-abutton is serving up chicken now.”

  “Where?”

  “The Cluck in a Bucket on Hamilton.”
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  “You still there?”

  “Hell yes,” Lula said. “And I didn't let him see me either. I'm holed up in a phone booth.”

  “Don't move!”

  I make lots of mistakes. I try hard not to make the same mistake more than three or four times. This time around, Stuart Baggett would be trussed up like a Christmas goose for his trip to the lockup.