Seven Up

  “Is the price the same?”

  “This is a freebie.”

  AFTER I GOT wired, Lula and I decided to head for the mall. Lula needed shoes, and I needed to keep my mind off Grandma.

  Quaker Bridge is a two-level mall just off Route 1, between Trenton and Princeton. It has all the typical mall stores plus a couple larger department stores anchoring each end with a Macy's in the middle. I parked the bike close to the Macy's door because Macy's was having a shoe sale.

  “Look at this,” Lula said to me in the Macy's shoe department. “We're the only people here with a picnic cooler.”

  Truth is, I had a death grip on the cooler, clutching it to my chest with both hands. Lula was still in full leather. I was in boots and jeans with my two black eyes and Igloo cooler. And people were crashing into display cases and mannequins, staring at us.

  Bounty hunter rule number one . . . be inconspicuous.

  My phone rang and I almost dropped the cooler.

  It was Ranger. “What the hell are you doing? You're attracting so much attention you've got a security guard following you around. He probably thinks you've got a bomb in the cooler.”

  “I'm a little nervous.”

  “No shit.”

  And he disconnected.

  “Listen,” I said to Lula, “why don't we go have a piece of pizza and just chill until it's time.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Lula said. “I don't see any shoes I like anyway.”

  At six-thirty I drained the ice melt out of the cooler and asked the kid at the pizza counter for some fresh ice.

  He handed me a cupful.

  “Actually I need it for the cooler,” I said. “I need more than a cup.”

  He looked over the counter at the cooler. “I don't think I'm allowed to give you that much ice.”

  “You don't give us ice and our heart's gonna go bad,” Lula said. “We gotta keep it cold.”

  The kid did another take on the cooler. “Your heart?”

  Lula slid the top back and showed him the heart.

  “Holy crap, lady,” the kid said. “Take all the ice you want.”

  We filled the cooler half full, so that the heart looked nice and fresh on its bed of new ice. Then I went into the ladies' room and flipped the wire on.

  “Testing,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

  A second later my phone rang. “I can hear you,” Ranger said. “And I can hear the woman in the stall next to you.”

  I left Lula at the pizza place and walked to the middle of the mall, in front of Macy's. I sat on a bench with the cooler on my lap and my cell phone in my jacket pocket for easy access.

  At exactly seven the phone rang.

  “Are you ready for the instructions?” Eddie DeChooch asked.

  “I'm ready.”

  “Drive to the first underpass going south on Route One . . .”

  And at that moment I was tapped on the shoulder by the security guard.

  “Excuse me, ma'am,” he said, “but I'm going to have to ask to see the contents of that cooler.”

  “Who's there?” DeChooch wanted to know. “Who is that?”

  “It's no one,” I said to DeChooch. “Go ahead with the directions.”

  “I'm going to have to ask you to step away from the cooler,” the guard said. “Now.”

  From the corner of my eye I could see another guard approaching.

  “Listen,” I said to DeChooch. “I've got a little problem here. Could you call me back in about ten minutes?”

  “I don't like this,” DeChooch said. “It's off. It's all off.”

  “No! Wait!”

  He hung up.

  Shit.

  “What is the deal with you?” I said to the guard. “Couldn't you see I was talking on the phone? This is so important it couldn't wait two seconds? Don't they teach you anything in rent-a-cop school?”

  He had his gun out now. “Just move away from the chest.”

  I knew Ranger was watching from somewhere, and he was probably having a hard time keeping from laughing.

  I placed the chest on the bench and stepped away.

  “Now reach out with your right hand and slide the top open so I can look inside,” the guard said.

  I did as I was asked.

  The guard leaned forward and looked in the chest. “What the hell is that?”

  “It's a heart. Is there a problem with that? Is it illegal to take a heart to the mall?”

  There were two guards there now. They exchanged glances. The rent-a-cop handbook didn't cover this.

  “Sorry to have disturbed you.” the guard said. “It looked suspicious.”

  “Moron,” I snapped.

  Then I slid the top closed, took my cooler, and stormed back to Lula at the pizza stand.

  “Uh-oh,” Lula said. “How come you still got that cooler? You're supposed to have Granny.”

  “It got screwed up.”

  Ranger was waiting by my bike. “If I ever need to be ransomed, do me a favor and decline the job,” he said. He reached under my shirt and turned the wire off. “Don't worry. He'll call back. How could he refuse a pig heart?” Ranger looked inside the chest and smiled. “It's really a pig heart.”

  “It's supposed to be Louie D's heart,” I told Ranger. “DeChooch removed it by mistake. And then somehow DeChooch managed to lose the heart while en route back to Richmond.”

  “And you were going to pawn a pig heart off on him,” Ranger said.

  “It was short notice,” Lula said. “We tried to get a regular one, but they were special order.”

  “Nice bike,” Ranger said to me. “Suits you.”

  And then he was in his car and gone.

  Lula fanned herself. “That man is so hot.”

  I CALLED MY mother when I got back to my apartment. “About Grandma,” I said. “She's spending the night with her friend.”

  “Why didn't she call me?”

  “I guess she figured it was enough to talk to me.”

  “That's very strange. Is this a man friend?”

  “Yeah.”

  I heard the sound of a dish breaking and then my mother hung up.

  I had the cooler sitting on the kitchen counter. I looked inside and wasn't happy with what I saw. The ice was melting and the heart wasn't looking all that good. There was only one thing to do. Freeze the damn thing.

  I very carefully scooped it up and plopped it into a sandwich bag. I gagged a couple times, but I didn't blow chow so I was pretty pleased. Then I put the heart into the freezer.

  There were two messages from Joe on my machine. Both of them said call me.

  This wasn't something I wanted to do. He'd ask questions I didn't want to answer. Especially since the pig-heart swap had gotten snafued. There was an annoying voice in my head that kept whispering, If the cops were involved it might have gone off better.

  And what about Grandma? She was still with Eddie DeChooch. Crazy, depressed Eddie DeChooch.

  Crap. I dialed Joe. “I need you to help me,” I said. “But you can't be a cop.”

  “Maybe you should spell that out for me.”

  “I'm going to tell you something, but you have to promise it stays between us and doesn't become official police business.”

  “I can't do that.”

  “You have to.”

  “What is it?”

  “Eddie DeChooch has kidnapped Grandma.”

  “No offense, but DeChooch is lucky if he survives.”

  “I could use some company. Can you spend the night?”

  A half hour later, Joe and Bob arrived. Bob ran through the apartment, snuffling chair seats, investigating waste baskets, and ended by clawing at the refrigerator door.

  “He's on a diet,” Morelli said. “He went to the vet today for shots and the vet says he's too fat.” He clicked the television on and found the Rangers game. “You want to tell me about it?”

  I burst into tears. “He's got Grandma and I screwed it up. And now I'm scared. I've hav
en't heard from him. What if he's killed Grandma?” I was sobbing. Unable to stop. Big, wracking, stupid sobs that made my nose run and my face get puffy and splotchy.

  Morelli wrapped his arms around me. “How did you screw it up?”

  “I had the heart in the cooler and the security guard stopped me and then DeChooch called it off.”

  “The heart?”

  I pointed to the kitchen. “It's in the freezer.”

  Morelli broke loose and went to the freezer. I heard him open the freezer door. A moment passed. “You're right,” he said. “There's a heart in here.” And the freezer door squished shut.

  “It's a pig heart,” I told him.

  “That's a relief.”

  I gave him the whole story.

  The thing about Morelli is that he can be a tough person to read. He was a wise-ass kid and a wild teen. I guess he was living up to expectations. Morelli men have a certain reputation for hard living. But then somewhere in his twenties Morelli starting being his own man. So that now it's hard to tell where the new Morelli starts and the old Morelli stops.

  I suspected the new Morelli would think foisting a pig heart off on Eddie DeChooch was a crackpot scheme. And I further suspected this would fan the flames of his fear that he was about to marry Lucy Ricardo of I Love Lucy fame.

  “That was pretty clever of you to try a pig heart,” Morelli said.

  I almost fell off the couch.

  “If you'd called me instead of Ranger I could have secured the area.”

  “Hindsight,” I said. “I didn't want to do anything that would spook DeChooch.”

  We both jumped when the phone rang.

  “I'm giving you another chance,” DeChooch said. “You screw this one up and your grandmother's gone.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She's driving me nuts.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  “You can talk to her when you deliver the heart. Here's the new plan. Take the heart and your cell phone to the diner in Hamilton Township.”

  “The Silver Dollar?”

  “Yeah. I'll call you tomorrow night at seven.”

  “Why can't we make the swap sooner?”

  “Believe me, I'd love to make the swap sooner, but it don't work out for me. Is the heart still in good shape?”

  “I've got it on ice.”

  “How much ice?”

  “It's frozen.”

  “I figured you'd have to do that. Just make sure you don't chip a piece off. I was real careful taking it out. I don't want you messing it up.”

  He disconnected and my stomach felt sick.

  “Ick.”

  Morelli put his arm around me. “Don't worry about your grandmother. She's like that '53 Buick. Frighteningly indestructible. Maybe even immortal.”

  I shook my head. “She's just an old lady.”

  “I'd feel a lot better if I honestly believed that,” Morelli said. “But what I think we have here is a generation of women and cars that defy science and logic.”

  “You're thinking of your own grandmother.”

  “I've never admitted this to anyone before, but sometimes I worry she can actually give people the eye. Sometimes she scares the hell out of me.”

  I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it. Morelli had always been so casual about his grandmother's threats and predictions.

  I slipped my number 35 jersey on over my T-shirt, and Morelli and I watched the Rangers game. After the game we walked Bob, and crawled into bed.

  Crash. Scratch, scratch. Crash.

  Morelli and I looked at each other. Bob was foraging, knocking dishes off the kitchen counter, looking for crumbs.

  “He's hungry,” Morelli said. “Maybe we should lock him in the bedroom with us so he doesn't eat a chair.”

  Morelli got out of bed and returned with Bob. Morelli locked the door and got back into bed. And Bob jumped into bed with us. Bob turned in a circle five or six times, scratched at the quilt, turned some more, looked confused.

  “He's kind of cute,” I said to Morelli. “In a prehistoric way.”

  Bob did a few more turns and then wedged himself between Morelli and me. He laid his big dog head on a corner of Morelli's pillow, gave a sigh of contentment, and instantly fell asleep.

  “You need to get a bigger bed,” Morelli said.

  And I didn't have to worry about birth control, either.

  MORELLI ROLLED OUT of bed at the crack of dawn.

  I opened one eye. “What are you doing? It's barely light out.”

  “I can't sleep. Bob is hogging my side. Besides, I promised the vet I'd make sure Bob got some exercise, so we're going out running.”

  “That's nice.”

  “You, too,” Morelli said.

  “No way.”

  “You're the one who stuck me with this dog. You're going to get your ass out of there and run with us.”

  “No way!”

  Morelli grabbed me by the ankle and dragged me out of bed. “Don't make me get rough,” he said.

  We both stood there looking at Bob. He was the only one left in bed. He still had his head on the pillow, but he looked worried. Bob wasn't an early morning sort of dog. And he wasn't much of an athlete.

  “Get up,” Morelli said to Bob.

  Bob squeezed his eyes shut, pretending to sleep.

  Morelli tried to drag Bob out of bed and Bob growled low in his throat like he meant business.

  “Shit,” Morelli said. “How do you do it? How do you get him to crap on Joyce's lawn so early in the morning?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Gordon Skyer lives across the street from Joyce. I play racquetball with Gordon.”

  “I bribe him with food.”

  Morelli went off to the kitchen and returned with a bag of carrots. “Look what I found,” he said. “You have healthy food in your refrigerator. I'm impressed.”

  I didn't want to burst his bubble, but the carrots were for Rex. The only way I like carrots is if they're dipped in batter and deep-fat-fried or incorporated into carrot cake with lots of cream cheese frosting.

  Morelli held a carrot out for Bob, and Bob gave him a you've got to be kidding look.

  I was starting to feel sorry for Morelli. “Okay,” I said, “let's just get dressed and go out into the kitchen and rattle some things around. Bob will cave.”

  Five minutes later we were suited up and Bob was collared and clipped to his leash.

  “Hold on,” I said. “We can't all go out and leave the heart home alone. People break into my apartment on a regular basis.”

  “What people?”

  “Benny and Ziggy for starters.”

  “People can't just walk into your house. That's illegal. That's breaking and entering.”

  “It's no big deal,” I said. “The first couple times it caught me by surprise, but you get used to it after a while.” I took the heart out of the freezer. “I'll leave this with Mr. Morganstern. He's an early riser.”

  “My freezer is on the blink,” I told Mr. Morganstem, “and I don't want this to defrost. Could you keep it for me until dinnertime?”

  “Sure,” he said. “It looks like a heart.”

  “It's a new diet. Once a week you have to eat a heart.”

  “No kidding. Maybe I should do that. I've been a little sluggish lately.”

  Morelli was waiting for me in the parking lot. He was jogging in place, and Bob was looking bright-eyed and smiley now that he was out in the fresh air.

  “Is he empty?” I asked Morelli.

  “All taken care of.”

  Morelli and Bob took off at a brisk pace, and I slogged along behind them. I can walk three miles in four-inch heels and I can shop Morelli into the ground, but I don't do running. Now if I was running to a sale on handbags, maybe.

  Little by little, I fell farther and farther behind. When Morelli and Bob turned the corner and were lost from sight, I cut through a yard and came out at Ferarro's Bakery. I got an almond danish
and leisurely walked hone, eating my pastry. I was almost to my parking lot when I saw Joe and Bob loping down St. James. I immediately started jogging and gasping for air.