Notorious Nineteen

  “Stephanie blew up another car,” Grandma Mazur announced, spooning out mashed potatoes.

  “Technically some gang guy blew it up,” Lula said. “And the car wasn’t worth much. The battery was dead.”

  My mother made the sign of the cross and belted back half a glass of what looked like ice tea but smelled a lot like Jim Beam. My father kept his head down and gnawed on a chicken leg.

  “I wasn’t in it,” I said. “It was an accident.”

  “I don’t understand how you have all these accidents,” my mother said. “I don’t know of a single other person who’s had his car blown up.” She looked down the table at my father. “Frank, do you know of anyone else who’s ever had their car blown up? Frank! Are you listening to me?”

  My father picked his head up and a piece of chicken fell out of his mouth. “What?”

  “It’s our job,” Lula said. “It’s one of them occupational hazards. Like another hazard is getting hospital cooties. We had to do some investigating in a hospital today, and I might have got the cooties.”

  “I bet you were tracking down Geoffrey Cubbin,” Grandma said. “Connie called me asking about his doctor. I know something about it on account of Lorraine Moochy has a relative in Cranberry Manor, and Lorraine said Cubbin is gonna need a lot of doctors if those people get their hands on him.”

  “What else did Lorraine say about him?” I asked Grandma.

  “She said he seemed like a real nice man and then next thing he stole all the money. Cranberry Manor’s one of them places you buy into, and it isn’t cheap. Cranberry Manor’s top of the line considering it’s in Jersey. Lorraine says it could close down, and her relative would have her keester tossed out onto the street.”

  “Sounds like she’s boned,” Lula said.

  “Boned?” my mother asked.

  Grandma selected another piece of chicken. “That’s a polite way of using the f word.”

  My mother cut her eyes to the kitchen, and I knew she was thinking about refilling her “ice tea.” Grandma and I are a trial to her. My mother tries hard to be a good Christian woman and a model of decorum, but Grandma and I not so much. It isn’t that we don’t want to be decorous Christian women. It’s just that it doesn’t always go that way.

  “Vinnie bonded Geoffrey Cubbin out,” Lula said. “And now we gotta find him.”

  “It’s a real interesting case,” Grandma said. “He just up and got dressed in the middle of the night and walked out. If you ask me it’s fishy. And I know his doctor is named Fish, but I don’t mean that way. Cubbin had stitches and everything. You don’t go jogging down the hall and hailing a cab two days after you get your appendix cut out. You creep around hunched over, doing a lot of moaning and complaining.”

  “So what do you think happened to him?” Lula asked.

  “I don’t know, but seems to me he had to have help,” Grandma said.

  “That’s what I think too. And why didn’t anyone see him standing waiting for the elevator?” Lula asked.

  “Budget cuts,” Grandma said. “They hardly got any nurses working. And used to be they had cameras in the elevators, but I hear they go on the fritz all the time. I tell you, hospitals aren’t what they used to be. Myra and I go to Central for lunch once a week, but the food’s gotten terrible lately and people are turning surly.”

  “You must know a lot of sick people,” Lula said.

  “We don’t go to visit sick people,” Grandma said. “We just go for lunch. They always have a big buffet in the cafeteria, and it’s cheap because that’s where the people who work at the hospital eat. Everybody’s wearing those scrub clothes. It’s just like being in Grey’s Anatomy. All the seniors eat there, and sometimes you can score a date. I met a real hottie there last month, but he had an aneurysm and died before I could haul him in. And then after lunch we go to the Costco and get desserts from the free-sample ladies.”

  “I love those ladies,” Lula said.

  “At the end of the month if Myra and me run out of Social Security we skip the hospital and just have lunch from the free-sample ladies,” Grandma said.

  “Honestly,” my mother said. “You make it sound like I don’t feed you. There’s always good food here for lunch.”

  “I like to eat out once in a while,” Grandma said. “Gives me a reason to put lipstick on. And there’s always a lot of drama at the hospital. I got the dirt on all the nurses. You just gotta sit by the right people and keep your ears open.”

  “We should put you on the case,” Lula said to Grandma. “We went to the hospital, and we couldn’t find out nothing.”

  “You tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll find it,” Grandma said. “I’m real nosy, and I’ve been thinking about turning professional.”

  “That would be an excellent plan,” Lula said. “We wouldn’t have to go back to Central if you were there. We could spend our time doing other important stuff that’s not in a hospital.”

  “It’s not an excellent plan,” my mother said. “It’s an awful plan. Isn’t it enough she causes havoc in every funeral home in a twenty-mile radius?”

  “Not always,” Grandma said. “I just don’t like when they have a closed casket. I think it’s a gyp. How do you know if there’s anyone in there?”

  My mother shook her fork at me. “I’m holding you responsible. If your grandmother gets arrested for disturbing the peace in that hospital you can kiss chocolate cake goodbye for the rest of your life. Pineapple upside-down cake too.”

  “Boy, that’s hardball,” Lula said.

  “I wouldn’t want you to do without pineapple upside-down cake,” Grandma said. “I guess I shouldn’t snoop for you. I gotta go to the hairdresser anyway. There’s going to be a big viewing tomorrow night for Stanley Kuberski, and I want to look good. The paper said the Elks will be holding a ceremony for him, and there’s a couple hot Elks I got my eye on.”

  “You should go with your grandmother,” my mother said. “Loretta Gross’s boy, Cameron, is an Elk. I bet he’ll be there, and he just got a divorce.”

  “Is he hot?” Grandma asked. “I might be interested in him.”

  “He’s too young for you,” my mother said.

  My father shoveled in potatoes. “Everyone is too young for her.”

  “I’m aiming for young,” Grandma said. “When I go out with someone old they die before I can reel them in. Besides, I’ve been told I don’t look my age.”

  It’s true that Grandma doesn’t look her age. She looks about ninety.

  It was a little after eight o’clock when Lula and I left my parents’ house. Lula drove off in her red Firebird, and I drove off in Big Blue. I had a bag of leftovers on the seat beside me, and I was at a crossroads. I could take the leftovers home, or I could drive the short distance to Morelli’s house and share. Sharing seemed like the way to go since I was going to beg off our Friday night date.

  Joe Morelli inherited a house from his Aunt Rose. It’s just outside the Burg boundary, on a quiet street in a blue-collar neighborhood much like the Burg. It’s a small two-story row house that is a comfortable mix of Morelli and his aunt. Her old-fashioned curtains still hang on the windows, but most of the furniture belongs to Morelli and his shaggy red-haired dog Bob. Bob is part Golden Retriever and part Wookiee. He eats everything, loves everyone, and mellows out Morelli.

  I parked in front of Morelli’s house, went to the door, and let myself in. “Hey!” I yelled. “I’ve got food. Anybody home?”

  Bob gave a woof from the kitchen at the back of the house and I heard him gallop toward me. He came at me full speed, put his front paws on my chest, and knocked me flat on my back. He ripped the food bag out of my hand and galloped off.

  Morelli sauntered over from the living room and helped me up. “Are you okay?”

  “I was bringing you fried chicken, but Bob knocked me down and took the bag of food.”

  “Damn,” Morelli said. “He can’t have chicken bones. He hacks them up in the middle of th
e night.”

  Morelli left me to track down Bob, there was a lot of yelling and growling from the vicinity of the kitchen, and Morelli returned to the living room with the bag of food, a fork, and two beers. He wrapped an arm around my neck, pulled me into him, and kissed me.

  “The Mets are up by two runs,” he said. “What’s going on with you?”

  I sat next to him on the couch and took a beer. “I had to borrow Big Blue, so I had dinner with my parents.”

  “Something wrong with your car?”

  “It accidentally got blown up.”

  Morelli turned and focused on me. “Car bomb?”

  “Hand-held rocket.”

  The line of his mouth tightened a little, and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “It was an accident?”

  “I was on Stark Street.”

  “That explains it,” Morelli said, his attention back to the bag of food.

  He ate the chocolate cake first. He gave some potatoes to Bob. And he put the rest in the fridge for later.

  “This is a nice surprise,” he said, settling back into the couch. “Do you want to take your clothes off?”

  “Whatever happened to romance? What about foreplay?”

  “Foreplay goes faster without clothes.”

  “Fast is important?”

  Morelli flicked his eyes back to the television. “They’re changing the pitcher. We probably have ten minutes.”

  “I need more than ten minutes.”

  Morelli grinned at me, and his eyes got soft and dark. “I know.”

  “And I get distracted by television.”

  He remoted the television off. “Yeah, I know that too.”

  “What happens after ten minutes and the new pitcher’s ready to go?”

  “Fireworks. And then you tell me I’m amazing.”

  “Suppose there aren’t fireworks after ten minutes?”

  “I’m no quitter,” Morelli said.

  I knew this to be true. “I think I’m getting in the mood,” I said to him. “And I can see you’re already a couple steps ahead of me.”

  “You noticed.”

  “Hard not to.”

  He nuzzled my neck, popped the snap at the top of my jeans, and slid the zipper down. “Let me help you catch up.”

  FOUR

  MORELLI IS ALWAYS fully awake at the crack of dawn, ready to go out and enforce the law or, if I’m in his bed, to grab a quickie while I’m still half asleep. I opened an eye and saw that he was moving around in the dimly lit room. He was clean-shaven, his hair was still damp from his shower, and he was dressed in slacks and a blue dress shirt.

  “Is this dress-up Friday?” I asked him.

  “I have court.” He took his watch off the nightstand and slipped it on. “I’ll probably be there most of the morning.”

  I looked under the covers. I was naked. “Did we have sex this morning?”

  “Yeah. You thanked me after and said it was great.”

  “You’re fibbing. I never thank you.”

  I got out of bed and dropped one of Morelli’s T-shirts over my head. I shuffled after him, down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  Morelli’s kitchen is small but cozy. He’s laid new tile on the floor, put in a new countertop, and repainted the cabinets and walls. His appliances aren’t new but they’re newer than mine. His refrigerator is usually filled with food. His cereal doesn’t have bugs in it. And he has a toaster. This all puts him light-years ahead of me in the domestic goddess race.

  A door opens off the kitchen onto Morelli’s narrow backyard. He’s had it fenced in for Bob, and Bob was impatiently waiting to get let out to tinkle. Morelli opened the door, and Bob bolted out into the darkness.

  “You never get up this early,” Morelli said, closing the door, pushing the BREW button on the coffeemaker. “What’s going on?”

  “I was hoping you knew something about Geoffrey Cubbin.”

  “The guy who disappeared from Central Hospital? I don’t know much. It’s not my case.”

  “How could someone just walk away in the middle of the night without anyone seeing him?”

  “I’m told it happens,” Morelli said. “And he had good reason to want to walk away. He didn’t have a promising future.”

  “Who has the case?”

  “Lenny Schmidt.”

  “Did he check to see if Cubbin called a cab?”

  Morelli did a palms-up. He didn’t know. “I assume you’re looking for Cubbin because Vinnie wrote the bond.”

  I dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. “It’s a high bond, and I could use the money. I need a new car.”

  “You always need a new car. What you really need is a new job.”

  I got two mugs out of his over-the-counter cabinet and put them on the little kitchen dining table. “Which brings me to the other issue. I’m going to have to cancel our date tonight. I told Ranger I’d do security for him at a party. He needed a woman.”

  “I bet,” Morelli said.

  “It’s security at a party.”

  “I don’t like you working with him. He’s not normal. And he looks at you like you’re lunch.”

  “You look at me like that too.”

  “Cupcake, you are my lunch.” Morelli filled the mugs with coffee and spread strawberry jelly on his piece of toast. “Call me if you get done with the party early. If I run into Schmidt I’ll ask about the cab, but I doubt Schmidt’s done much to find Cubbin. Schmidt’s got a full caseload, and at this point Cubbin is more your problem than his.” He looked at the black T-shirt I was wearing. It hung about six inches below my doo-dah. “Do you have anything under that shirt?”

  “You could peek and find out.”

  “Tempting, but I’m late for my morning meeting.”

  “Then I guess you’ll never know.”

  Morelli lifted the hem of the shirt, looked under, and smiled. “I’m in love.”

  “What about your meeting?”

  “I might make some of it if I use my flashers and run the lights.”

  Connie and Lula were already at the office when I rolled in. The door to Vinnie’s lair was open, and I could smell cigar smoke.

  “Is that her?” Vinnie yelled.

  There was the sound of a chair scraping back, and Vinnie charged out, the cigar clamped between his teeth. Vinnie is slightly taller than me and looks like a weasel. His dark hair is slicked back, his eyes are crafty, his pants are too tight, and his shoes are too pointy. He has an affinity for pain inflicted by women wielding cuffs and paddles, and he’s been rumored to enjoy intimate relationships with barnyard animals. He’s married to a perfectly nice woman named Lucille, who for reasons I’ll never understand has chosen to endure the marriage. And last but not least, probably because he’s such a loser himself, Vincent Plum has a good understanding of the criminal mind, and that makes him an excellent bail bondsman.

  “Where is he?” Vinnie asked me.

  “Where’s who?”

  “That asshole Cubbin. Who else? You got him nailed down, right?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Vinnie had his hands in the air. “What not exactly? What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t know where he is.”

  “You’re killing me,” Vinnie said. “If this agency tanks, it’s all your fault. It’s on your head. Fatso over there will have to go back to the streets. And Connie’ll be doing wet work.”

  “Excuse me?” Lula said. “Fatso? Did I hear you call me Fatso? Because you better tell me I heard wrong on account of I might have to beat the crap out of you if I heard right.”

  Vinnie clamped down tighter on his cigar and growled. “Just find him,” he said to me. And he retreated into his office and slammed the door shut.

  “Get a grip,” I yelled at him. “He’s not even officially FTA until Monday.”

  “We’ve got donuts,” Connie said, pointing to a box on her desk. “Help yourself.”

  “I’m going to talk to Cubbin’s wife,” I
said to Connie. “And then I’m going to take a look at the nursing home. Maybe you could make some phone calls for me and find out if he took a cab somewhere when he checked out of the hospital.”

  Lula was on her feet, her head swiveled around trying to check out her ass. “That’s the second person told me I was fat this week. I don’t feel fat. I just feel like I got a lot of all the good stuff. What do you think?” she asked Connie and me. “Do you think I’m fat?”

  “Well, you’re not thin,” Connie said.

  “Some of me’s thin,” Lula said. “I got thin legs. I got Angelina Jolie ankles.”

  Connie and I looked at her ankles. Not fat. Possibly Angelina quality.

  “It’s just between my armpits and my hoo-ha that I’m better than most ladies,” Lula said. “I got stuff a man could hang on to. That’s one of the reasons I was so good as a ’ho.”

  “As long as you’re healthy,” I said to her. “You’re healthy, right?”

  “Yeah, I feel great. And one of these days I’m gonna go get myself checked out to take a look at my cholesterol, my sugar, and my blood pressure.”

  Connie took the box of donuts off her desk and threw it into her wastebasket.

  “So now what?” Lula asked. “We going to see Mrs. Cubbin?”

  I had Cubbin’s file open to his bond sheet. He looked worried in the photo, or maybe he was squinting in the sun.

  “He lives in Hamilton Township, by the high school,” I said.

  “We could sneak around and look in his windows and see if he’s hanging out in his undies, watching television and popping painkillers,” Lula said.

  Twenty minutes later Lula and I pulled up to Cubbin’s house. It was a modest white ranch with black shutters and a forest green front door. A white Camry was parked in the driveway leading to the attached garage. Very Middle America.

  “Which one of us is going to do the sneaking around, and which one the doorbell ringing?” Lula asked.

  “I’m ringing the doorbell,” I told her. “You can do whatever you want.”

  I walked to the small front porch, rang the bell, and Lula skirted the side of the house. The front door opened, and a woman looked out at me.

  “What?” she said.