Smokin' Seventeen

  I got out of the Firebird, I looked through the big plate-glass window of Cluck-in-a-Bucket, and I saw Merlin Brown standing in line, waiting for his order.

  “Do you see what I see?” Lula asked. “I see Merlin Brown getting two bags of chicken. He’s probably got a gun and wants to get even with me. And even if he doesn’t have a gun, look at him. He’s huge and most likely he don’t have a stiffy no more, and he could run fast and grab me, and rip my toes off. And I just got a pedicure, too.”

  “We need a plan.”

  “Yeah, too bad we don’t have a big net. We could catch him if we had a big net. Except for the big net I don’t have any ideas.”

  Merlin pushed through the door, and I could see his foot was totally wrapped in a massive white bandage, and he was limping.

  “Let’s get him,” I said to Lula.

  “What? How?”

  “We’ll tackle him. We have the element of surprise. We’ll take him down to the ground, and I’ll cuff him.”

  “Seems mean, what with his toe bein’ shot off and all. Maybe we want to wait for him to be feeling better … like April.”

  I gave Lula a shove. “Now!”

  Lula and I ran at Merlin, and Lula was waving her arms and yelling. “Ga-a-a-a-a-a!”

  Merlin saw us coming and froze. He had a bag of chicken in each hand and a look of total disbelief on his face. Lula went low, hitting him at the knees. I ran at him flat out and put my shoulder into his chest. And Merlin didn’t move. It was like hitting a brick wall.

  Merlin shook us off and opened the door to his car. “Crazy ass bitches,” he said. And he drove away.

  Lula picked herself up off the ground. “That was humiliating.”

  “What was all that arm waving and yelling?”

  “I was trying to scare him. They do that in the movies when the angry horde of marauders is storming the castle.”

  We went inside, bought our chicken and biscuits, and returned to the Firebird. I ate a biscuit, and Lula ate a couple pieces of chicken, and we drove back to Mooner’s bus.

  “You go on in and deliver the chicken,” I said to Lula. “I’ll wait here in the car.”

  “Don’t you want to say hello to Bruce?”

  “No.”

  “As far as bears go, he’s a pretty nice bear.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Lula took the chicken buckets and bags of biscuits into the bus. There was a loud growwwwwl and a shriek, and Lula jumped out of the bus and hustled back behind the wheel of the Firebird.

  “Is everyone okay in there?” I asked her.

  “Bruce was hungry and forgot his manners.”

  FIFTEEN

  LULA AND CONNIE cleared out of the coffee shop a little before five, and I motored off to my parents’ house. I parked, let myself in, and stood for a moment in the small foyer enjoying the smell of chocolate cake fresh out of the oven.

  I should learn how to make chocolate cake, I thought. I should go out and buy cake pans and a box mix. How hard could it be? And then my apartment would smell wonderful. And it would be fun to make a cake. And maybe I can’t commit to Morelli because I can’t cook. Okay, that was a stretch, but I hadn’t been able to come up with anything better.

  My father was asleep in front of the television. I could hear my grandmother and my mother in the kitchen. And I heard a male voice mixed into their conversation.

  “I like buttercream frosting,” he said.

  I’d been suckered in again. It was Dave Brewer.

  Grandma stuck her head out the kitchen door. “I thought I heard you come in. Look who we got here. It’s Dave, and he’s cooking with us. He’s real good at it, too.”

  “Surprise,” Dave said.

  He was wearing a white three-button collared knit shirt and jeans, and he had a red chef’s apron wrapped around him.

  “Just in time,” Grandma said. “We’re icing the cake.”

  This isn’t a surprise, I thought. This is an ambush. I took a moment to calm myself and make an attitude adjustment. A couple minutes ago I was thinking I wanted to bake a cake. So here was my opportunity. The cake was cooling on a wire rack, and Dave was in the middle of making frosting.

  I looked into the frosting bowl. “Chocolate.”

  “Not just chocolate,” Dave said. “This is my special fudge mocha icing. It goes on like icing but then it sets up like fudge.”

  “He brought sausage from Frankie the butcher, and he made his own red sauce for the lasagna,” Grandma said. “And he got good Italian cheese to grate up. Too bad you didn’t get here sooner. We just put the lasagna in the oven.”

  “Gee, sorry I missed all that,” I said, trying to sound cheery, not feeling cheery at all. Not only wasn’t I happy to have Dave foisted on me, I didn’t like him taking over my mom’s kitchen. I didn’t like him making his own red sauce, grating his good Italian cheese. That was stuff my mom was supposed to do. It was her freaking kitchen. Although truth is, she looked content to have someone make a meal for her.

  Dave dribbled coffee into his icing, liked the consistency, and spread it on the layers. He made it look easy, but I’d tried it in the past, and it hadn’t turned out glorious for me.

  He swiped a glob of icing up with his finger and held it out to me. “Want a taste?”

  Okay, I know he was captain of the football team and he could bake a cake—that didn’t mean I was ready to suck his finger. I was picky about what I put in my mouth.

  “I’ll wait,” I told him. “Wouldn’t want to spoil my appetite.”

  I wandered into the dining room and set the table. I laid out plates, knives, forks, spoons, napkins, glasses. I fidgeted with each one and checked my watch. I was stalling. I rolled my eyes. This is ridiculous, I thought. I was a big tough bounty hunter. I faced off with vampires and guys with stiffies. Surely I could manage another evening with Dave Brewer. And if I didn’t already have two men in my life, I probably would be happy for the fix up. Probably.

  I marched myself back into the kitchen. “Now what?” I asked.

  My mother was at the sink, washing dishes, happily drinking booze from a water glass. My grandmother was slicing tomatoes.

  “Dave’s making his original salad dressing,” my grandmother said.

  “It’s not really original dressing,” Dave said. “It’s oil and vinegar, but I brought some olive oil infused with herbs and some twenty-five-year-old balsamic vinegar.”

  “You’re going to make some woman real happy,” Grandma said to Dave. She cut her eyes to me. “Some woman who can’t cook.”

  “I could cook if I wanted to,” I said.

  Dave broke the seal on the vinegar. “I have some recipes that take almost no time.” He looked over at me. “I’ll print them out and bring them over to your apartment.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t have time to do much cooking right now.”

  And I don’t especially want you in my apartment, I thought. He seemed like a perfectly okay guy, but I wasn’t interested, and I suspected he wanted to do more than cook.

  “Margaret Yaeger called and said she saw the M.E.’s meat wagon back at the lot where the bonds office used to sit,” Grandma said.

  I poured myself a glass of red wine and left the bottle on the counter. “They found another body.”

  Grandma sucked in air. “It’s gotta have something to do with the bonds office. Maybe Vinnie’s burying people as a side job.”

  “Maybe it was just an easy place to dump a body,” Dave said.

  “It’s not real private,” Grandma said. “There’s always someone driving down Hamilton Avenue.”

  Dave shook his head. “Not in the middle of the night.”

  “Yeah, but you could go to the landfill and there’s never anyone there.”

  “They installed security cameras at the landfill,” Dave said. “And besides, you have to drive the body to the landfill and then you get DNA traces in the trunk of your car. I guess you could steal a car
.”

  “I see you’ve thought this through,” I said to Dave.

  Dave helped himself to the wine. “My cousin got a ticket for dumping toxic waste. They caught him on video. And everything I know about DNA I learned from CSI. I’ve been watching a lot of television since I moved home.”

  An hour later, I pushed back from the table and took a deep breath. The lasagna had been way too good, and I’d eaten way too much. And I almost had an orgasm eating the cake. My jeans were uncomfortably tight. My thoughts were conflicted. Possibly it was the three glasses of wine I’d chugged, but I was thinking it wouldn’t be so bad to have a husband who loved to cook. Heck, I could even get involved. I could do the chopping, and he could throw it all into a wok or whatever. And I could buy some candlesticks, and we could have a dinner party.

  I plugged Ranger into the picture, and I could see him as an expert chef, because Ranger is good at everything. I couldn’t see him at the dinner party. Two people is a party for Ranger. Morelli would be good at the dinner party, but he’d burn all the food if a ball game was on. Dave was a perfect fit in the kitchen and at the dinner party, but I wasn’t especially attracted to him. He felt bland compared to Ranger and Morelli.

  • • •

  I was asleep on the couch when Morelli slipped his arm around me, and Bob gave me a lick on the cheek with his giant tongue.

  “Who? What?” I said, disoriented on waking.

  Morelli clicked through channels on the television. “You must have had a hard day. It’s only nine o’clock.”

  “I ate too much at dinner. Lasagna and chocolate cake at my parents’ house. It’s going to take me days to digest it.” I looked down at my jeans. The top snap was open and there was no hope of closing it. “I brought a piece of cake home for you. It’s in the kitchen.”

  He kissed me on the top of my head, went to the kitchen, and returned with his cake. He forked some into his mouth and nodded approval. “This is really good.”

  “It’s the icing.”

  “Yeah. It’s like fudge.”

  “Dave Brewer made it. Turns out he likes to cook.”

  “I’m missing something. How did you get Dave Brewer to make you a cake?”

  “My mom met Dave’s mom in Giovichinni’s, and they decided I should be his girlfriend. So I’ve gotten sucked into two dinners with him. One of which he made.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  Morelli ate the last piece. “Are you going to be his girlfriend?”

  “No. He makes great cake, but I’m sticking with you.”

  “Just checking. Nice to know I don’t have to beat the crap out of him.”

  “You can’t smack him around anyway. We’re supposed to have an open relationship, right? Were you and Dave friends in high school?”

  “He was a year younger than me and a world away. I was the screwup with the bad reputation, and he was the football hero. He was dating Julie Barkalowski, the pom-pom queen.”

  “How about you? Did you ever date Julie Barkalowski?”

  “I dated every girl in that school. I was a horn dog back then.”

  “And now?”

  Morelli put his plate down and wrapped his arms around me. “And now I’m your horn dog.”

  “Lucky me.”

  He clicked the television off, slipped his hands under my T-shirt, and kissed me. Minutes later we were in bed, we were naked, and Morelli was doing a demo for me on the various ways I was lucky. He found the way I was most lucky and just as I was moments away from scoring a home run, a vision of Dave Brewer in an apron popped into my head and broke my concentration.

  “Damn!” I said through clenched teeth.

  Morelli picked his head up and looked at me. “Is there an issue?”

  “I lost it.”

  “No problemo. I’ll start over. I have to work off the chocolate cake, anyway.”

  SIXTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING I dragged myself into the coffee shop and ordered a grande with extra caffeine. Connie and Lula were already hard at work, settled into the window seating area. Lula was doing the day’s Jumble, and Connie was tweeting on her laptop.

  Lula stared up at me. “You look like you been run over by a truck.”

  I eased myself down to the couch. “Long night. I couldn’t get Dave Brewer out of my head. It was like he was haunting me.”

  “You’re just all clogged up with men,” Lula said. “You got confused hormones.”

  “I don’t feel confused. Mostly I feel tired.”

  “Hope you’re not too tired,” Connie said. “Ziggy violated his bond last night, and you need to bring him in.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He attacked Myra Milner at bingo. He said he just wanted to get cozy, but he had his teeth in, and he gave her a couple punctures. I guess he has a thing for the ladies. Anyway, she pressed charges. He was long gone by the time the police got to the bingo hall.”

  “Myra Milner is eighty-two years old,” I said to Connie. “What the heck was he thinking?”

  Connie gave me the RIGHT TO APPREHEND papers. “Probably he was thinking she was easy. Myra told the police the batteries conked out on her hearing aid, and she didn’t hear him sneaking up on her.”

  “I don’t like this,” Lula said. “I had a close call last time, and I still don’t know if I’m outta the woods here. I had a real craving for a Bloody Mary and a rare hamburger last night.”

  “There’s no blood in a Bloody Mary,” I told her.

  “Yeah, but it’s the idea.”

  Mooner’s bus pulled up at the curb, and Mooner and Vinnie got out and came into the coffee shop.

  “We got a problem,” Vinnie said. “Genius here was walking Bruce, and Bruce wandered away.”

  “He looked like he had to poop,” Mooner said, “but he was having a problem, like finding the right spot, and I thought maybe he needed privacy. I mean, not everyone can poop with an audience, right? So I turned my back for a minute. But then when I looked around he was gone.”

  We all went dead still, absorbing the fact that a large bear was loose in the Burg.

  “We’ve been riding around, but we can’t find him,” Vinnie said. “You need to help us look.”

  A man sitting at a table in the other window area leaned toward us. “I couldn’t help overhearing. I saw a bear walking down Hamilton when I was on my way here. I thought I was seeing things. A white Camry pulled alongside the bear, the driver whistled, and the bear got into the backseat. And then the car drove away.”

  “Describe the driver,” Vinnie said.

  “He was in the car, so I couldn’t see all of him, but he was Caucasian with brown hair that was kind of long. Middle-aged. I think he had sort of a thin face. And when he talked to the bear it wasn’t in English. I think it might have been Russian.”

  “Boris,” Vinnie said. “That’s Boris Belmen, the idiot who owns the bear.”

  Connie typed Belmen into her computer and came up with his temporary address in Trenton and his cell phone number.

  Vinnie called the cell phone. “I want my bear back,” Vinnie said to Boris.

  Even from where I was sitting I could hear Boris yelling at Vinnie, how Vinnie let his prize bear loose to walk around on a busy street, how now he was going to Vegas with Bruce, and Vinnie could go screw himself. And then Boris hung up and wouldn’t answer his phone again.

  “Don’t look at me,” Lula said. “I’m not going to get the bear. He growled at me when all I was doing was bringing him chicken. And on top of that he has bad breath.”

  I capped my coffee and stood. “Give me the address. I’ll talk to Belmen.”

  “I’m not going,” Lula said. “This job gets worse and worse. Vampires and bears and big guys with boners. Okay, so maybe I didn’t mind the big guy with the boner so much.”

  Connie wrote Belmen’s address on a note card and handed it to me. “If you want the whole file I have to go into the bus to print it.”

 
“Not necessary. This is all I need.”

  “And when you’re done tracking down my bear you’re gonna need to figure out who’s dumping bodies in my lot,” Vinnie said. “Business was bad before and now it’s nonexistent. It’s like we got death cooties.”

  “Morelli’s on the case,” I told him.

  “Well tell him to work faster. I’m dying here. We’re going under. Another week of this and Harry’s gonna pull his money and we’ll all be up shit’s creek.”

  • • •

  Belmen was staying in an inexpensive motel south of town, on the way to Bordentown. I pulled into the lot and parked next to a white Camry that shouted rental car and had bear slobber on the side window. The structure was classic 1970, two-story, pink stucco and white trim. Belmen was in unit 14A. I knocked on the door, and a trim forty-something man who fit Belmen’s description answered. A few feet behind him I could see Bruce sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “Where’s the pizza?” Belmen asked, giving me the once-over.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Aren’t you the pizza delivery lady? I ordered pizzas.”

  “Sorry. I work for Vincent Plum Bail Bonds.”

  “Vinnie’s a bad man,” Belmen said. He stepped to the side and made a swooping motion to the bear. “Kill!”

  Bruce lunged off the bed and rushed at me, mouth open. GROWL!

  I jumped back and slammed the door shut.

  “Jeez Louise,” I said to Belmen through the door. “I just want to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “Do I have to yell through the door?”

  “Yes.”

  I blew out a sigh and counted to five. “I know you’re anxious to get to Vegas, but you need to show up for your court date. If you don’t show up you’ll be considered a felon, and it will be one more charge against you. If you show up and explain what happened you might get off light since it’s your first offense.”

  “I don’t think it was my fault,” he said. “I don’t even remember. It happened so fast.”

  “The bartender said you were drunk.”

  “I’d had a couple drinks. Maybe I was drunk.”

  “Promise me you’ll show up for court.”