Top Secret Twenty-One

  “That explains it,” Lula said. “You want a burger? We brought some burgers for you and your minions.”

  Forest disappeared inside the box, a door scraped open on the other side, and he crawled out. He unfolded a red and white checkered plastic tablecloth, laid it on the ground, and sat cross-legged on it. The dogs trotted over and sat beside him.

  “Will you ladies be joining us for dinner?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I thought you could feed your minions and then eat your burger while I drive you to the police station to reschedule.”

  “I can’t leave Daisy,” Forest said. “Daisy gets anxious when I leave. And Ronald and Scooter will go off and chew the corners off other people’s boxes. And then there’s Mitzy and Brownie and Puddles and Boomer …”

  “Boy,” Lula said. “You got a lot of minions.”

  “I started with two.”

  “You might want to think about minion birth control,” Lula said.

  “How do you feed all your minions?” I asked Forest. “How do you feed yourself?”

  “There’s a church truck that comes around and gives out sandwiches. If I get in line twice, there’s enough for all of us. The minions don’t eat a lot.”

  “Suppose I found good homes for the minions,” I said. “Would that work for you?”

  “It would be okay with me, but the minions have minds of their own, and they’re very attached to me.”

  “That’s on account of minions are loyal,” Lula said, “but that don’t mean deep down inside they wouldn’t rather go with the guy with the bag of bacon cheeseburgers.”

  I handed the bag of burgers to Forest. “I’ll be back,” I said. “I need to look into some options for the minions. They’re housebroken, right?”

  “Perfectly. They have never once piddled in my box.”

  Lula and I returned to the Buick and drove back to the office.

  “How are you going to find homes for those minions?” Lula asked. “Do you know anyone who wants a minion?”

  “I need to give it some thought.”

  “You need to start asking around,” Lula said. “There’s Morelli’s dog, Bob, who could use a minion. And there’s your granny. I could see her with a minion.”

  “How about you?”

  “It seems like a big responsibility,” Lula said. “I don’t know if I could take that on. I’d have to feed him and walk him and pick up minion poop. Of course, minion poop would be real small. I might have to get reading glasses just to see it. And reading glasses would ruin my image of perfection.”

  Connie had closed the office for the day, so Lula got into her Firebird and drove home, and I took a call from Morelli.

  “I need ice cream,” he said. “Lots of it.”

  “What flavor?”

  “Every flavor.”

  “Jeez, you must have had a really bad day.”

  “Some idiot found a judge and bonded out Jimmy Poletti, and some other idiot shot him dead. Do you have any idea the kind of paperwork this creates?”

  “Do you know who bonded him out?”

  “I imagine it was Vinnie, but I haven’t gotten that far in the investigation. This thing’s created a media storm. I had to attend the press conference. I had to brief the mayor. I had to stop for antacids and Excedrin. Poletti was shot an hour after he got out of jail. An hour!”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “If I knew who did it, I wouldn’t need the antacids, Excedrin, and ice cream.”

  “Are you done working? Are you home?”

  “I’m home, but I’m not done working. I came home to walk Bob and get something to eat, and then I’m going back to the station.”

  “And you need ice cream.”

  “It’s a temporary substitute for liquor,” he said.

  “I’m on my way.”

  I stopped at the deli next to the bakery and got tubs of chocolate, butter pecan, coffee, and chocolate chip, plus a large bag of dog food for the minions.

  Morelli was in the kitchen eating a ham and cheese sandwich when I walked in. He looked in the ice cream bag, then grabbed me and kissed me and fondled a breast.

  “Is this big display of affection and passion a result of the ice cream, or are you happy to see me?” I asked him.

  “I’m happy to see you, but the ice cream enhances the moment.”

  He finished his sandwich and dug into the chocolate.

  “Where was Poletti when he got shot?” I asked.

  “In Buster’s apartment.”

  “Get out!”

  “I swear to God. He was in Buster’s apartment. Buster phoned it in.”

  “Where was Buster when all this went down?”

  “He was at the eye doctor getting his eyes checked. Rock solid alibi. They dilated his eyes, so he had a friend take him and bring him home. They walked into Buster’s apartment and found Poletti sprawled out on the living room rug. A bullet in the head and two in the chest. The rug will never be the same.”

  “Buster needs to change his lock.”

  “Yeah. And then he needs to get a condo in Panama where the shooter can’t find him, since there are only two poker players left.”

  “Have you talked to Silvio Pepper?”

  “He’s on my list.”

  Morelli fed me a spoonful of chocolate ice cream, kissed me again, stepped away, and checked his phone for messages.

  “I have to go,” he said. “Hopefully this won’t take too long. Save me some butter pecan.”

  “You got it.”

  Grandma Mazur called at seven-thirty.

  “I’m at the funeral home,” she said. “I came with Marie Zajak, but she had to leave early on account of she had an irritable bowel attack. I was hoping you could give me a ride home.”

  “When do you want to get picked up?”

  “The viewing is over in a half hour. I thought it would be good if you waited for me on the side street like last time. I don’t see Bella here, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to sneak out the side door just in case. I heard a rumor that she was waiting at the front door with a pie.”

  I parked on the street a couple minutes early, cut the engine, and looked around, on high alert for Vlatko. The sun was setting, and the side yard of the funeral home was in deep shade. People were walking to cars that were parked in the small lot to the front of the building and at the curb on Hamilton Avenue.

  I heard a heart-stopping shriek that levitated me off the car seat. The shriek was followed by a lot of yelling and cussing, and then Grandma Mazur stomped into view. She was soaked from head to toe, and water dripped from the tip of her nose. She wrenched the passenger side door open, got in, and slammed the door shut.

  “Take me home,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  “Devil woman turned a hose on me.”

  I cranked the engine over and put the car in gear. “Are you sure it was her?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I guess the rumor about the pie was wrong.”

  “She tricked me. I tell you, she’s evil.”

  I watched to make sure Grandma got into my parents’ house without anything else going wrong, and then I went back to Morelli’s.

  A half hour later Morelli came home.

  “What’s new?” I asked him.

  “An early ballistics report indicates the same weapon was used on Scootch, Ritt, and Poletti.”

  “So all you have to do is find the gun.”

  “Yeah, that’s all I have to do.”

  I followed him into the kitchen. “Do you think these could be contract killings?”

  “You’re thinking Buster hired someone to kill Scootch and Poletti when he was away from his apartment.”

  “He could have called Scootch and Poletti and told them to come to his apartment, and when Scootch and Poletti got there the shooter was waiting for them.”

  “Motive?”

  “Get rid of everyone who could implicate him in the slav
e trade.”

  “So you think Pepper is next?”

  “Unless they’re working together.”

  Morelli pulled the butter pecan ice cream out of the freezer and got a spoon out of the silverware drawer. “What about Briggs?”

  “From what I can see, everyone hates him. Poletti tried to run him over, and Buster tried to kill him with a car bomb.”

  “What about the rockets?”

  “Wild card.”

  “That’s as good as anything I’ve got,” Morelli said.

  I got my own spoon and went to work on the chocolate chip ice cream. “I had an interesting night. I picked Grandma up at the funeral home after your grandmother turned a hose on her.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “It’s going to take days for the Buick to dry out. She was soaked.”

  “At least they aren’t shooting at each other like the Hatfields and McCoys.”

  “Not yet.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  IT WAS SUNDAY, and Morelli and Bob had breakfast and took off to help Morelli’s brother, Anthony, put a swing set together for his kids. I waved them off, had a second cup of coffee, and called Lula.

  “I’m going to visit Forest,” I said. “Want to ride along?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Nothing much doing here.”

  I took my big bag of dog food out to the car and drove to Lula’s apartment. I hadn’t heard from Ranger, so I had no idea what was happening with Vlatko. The possibilities sent a wave of nausea through my stomach, and I watched my rearview mirror, making sure I wasn’t being tailed by a guy with one eye and a sharp knife.

  I picked Lula up and drove to Stark Street, slowing when we got to Buster’s building. The CSI van was parked curbside, and a single strip of yellow crime scene tape fluttered at the apartment’s front door.

  “Did you hear about Jimmy Poletti?” I asked Lula.

  “Hard not to hear. It was on every news station. They even interviewed his wife, who didn’t seem that broken up. Maybe she’s the one shooting all these guys. Maybe she has a bad hair day and she pops someone. And she could specialize in poker players. She might have been traumatized by a poker player when she was a kid.”

  Considering how congested Trudy Poletti’s schedule had to be with the Pilates classes and the boinking every man she could get her hands on, it was hard to believe she had time to murder poker players.

  I turned at the corner of Geneva and parked. I left Lula with the Buick, grabbed the dog food, and walked it to Forest’s box. It was a nice sunny morning, and Forest was sitting outside, leaning against his dumpster. The Chihuahua pack was snoozing at his feet. All heads came up when I approached.

  “I brought food for the minions,” I said to Forest.

  “Do you hear that, my teensy minions? The nice lady brought us food.”

  Some of the minions started to vibrate.

  “Why are they shaking?” I asked Forest.

  “Minions do that. They’re very excitable.”

  I put the bag on the ground and kept my distance. I didn’t want the minions to feel threatened by a big advancing human.

  “Now that the little critters have lots of food,” I said to Forest, “I thought you might be willing to let me bring you in.”

  “I can’t leave my minions unprotected. Starman will barbecue them.”

  Crap. I had two alternatives. The first was to stun-gun Forest and drag him to the car. I went with the second.

  “I’ll take care of the minions,” I said. “I’ll get you booked in at the police station, and I’ll babysit the minions until you can secure a bond.”

  Forest turned to the minions. “What do you think? Would you like to go with the nice lady for just a little while so Forest can get arrested?”

  “Lula is waiting at the cross street,” I said. “Do you have something we can put the minions in?”

  “The minions run free.”

  Great. Free-running minions.

  I walked Forest to the Firebird with the minions goose-stepping around us.

  “What the heck’s this?” Lula asked.

  “We’re taking Forest to the police station, and then I’m taking the minions home with me. I’ll stash them in my apartment until someone springs Forest. They haven’t put the carpet down yet, and Briggs is there to babysit.”

  Forest loaded the Chihuahuas into the Buick. “Be good minions. No dookey or peepee in the nice lady’s box.”

  I cuffed Forest, buckled him into the backseat with the Chihuahuas, and drove to the police station. I left Lula with the dogs and walked Forest into the building. I collected my body receipt and returned to Lula.

  “Remember I got a big date with Stanley Kulicky tonight,” Lula said to me. “We’re going to see that movie about the end of the world coming and then just in time the world’s saved by one of them Transformers.”

  “What time will it be over?”

  “We’re going to the eight o’clock movie, so it’ll be over around ten. I’ll call you when we’re walking out.”

  I dropped Lula off at her apartment, and as soon as I got behind the wheel of the Buick, the dogs started yapping. As I drove through town, they yapped louder. They scrambled over the seat and jumped at the dashboard. They were on my lap, on the back of my seat, gnawing on my ponytail. They snarled at one another, snapped at passing cars, and looked at me bug-eyed.

  I whipped into the drive-thru at Cluck-in-a-Bucket, got a bagful of bacon cheeseburgers, and stuffed the bag into the glove compartment. I gritted my teeth, hunched over the steering wheel, and headed for my apartment.

  I lured the dogs out of the car and into the building with the bag of burgers. We took the stairs, hurried the short distance down the hall, and I shoved my key in the lock with one hand and held the burger bag over my head with the other. For small dogs they could jump impressively high when they smelled burgers.

  I held the door open with my foot, threw a burger into the kitchen, and the dogs rushed in and pounced on the burger.

  Briggs ran in from the bedroom. “What the heck’s going on?”

  “Roommates,” I said. “I need to leave them with you.”

  “They look vicious.”

  I handed him the bag of burgers. “Just give them a burger once in a while and you’ll be fine.”

  “They’re dogs, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t want dogs in my apartment.”

  “It’s not your apartment,” I told him. “It’s my apartment.”

  “It’s sort of mine.”

  “Wrong, wrong, wrong. There’s no part of this apartment that’s yours.”

  “Yeah, but I got rights. I’m living here.”

  “You have no rights. And if you want to keep living here, you’ll take very good care of the dogs. And anyway, it’s only for a short time.”

  Easy to understand why everyone wanted to kill him.

  I drove to Walmart and went straight to the pet department. I got ten lightweight leashes, ten Chihuahua-size harnesses, a box of plastic poop bags, ten little chew toys, and a giant bag of dog food.

  I hauled everything back to my apartment and let myself in. All ten dogs rushed at me, yapping and snarling. I opened the bag of dog food, threw some nuggets at them, and they snapped them up.

  “Jeez,” Briggs said, “I thought you’d never show up. These dogs are creeping me out. They keep shivering and looking at me with big bugged-out eyes.”

  “It’s a Chihuahua thing,” I told him. “They’re excitable.”

  “Yeah, me too. I’m excited you’re here to take them away.”

  “Turns out they’re not going away today. I can’t get their owner bailed out until Monday.” Maybe never.

  “Are you shitting me? What am I supposed to do with them?”

  I dumped the dog stuff on my kitchen counter. “First thing we have to do is take them for a walk, so help me hook them up.”

  So much for the free-running minion experience.
br />   By the time we got the dogs out of the elevator they were hopelessly tangled. I had three leashes in each hand, and Briggs had two in each hand.

  “These are the dumbest dogs ever,” Briggs said. “It’s like they never walked on a leash before.”

  “You might want to walk them two at a time after this,” I said.

  “It’ll take me all day. And I’ll be a sitting duck out here.”

  “I’ll give you a break on the rent.”

  “I’m not paying any rent.”

  “Exactly.”

  We walked them around the block, and they all peed and two out of ten pooped.

  “How often do I have to do this?” Briggs asked.

  “Four times a day. They don’t have to always go for long walks. They just need a chance to piddle.”

  We dragged the dogs up the stairs, and I set out bowls of water for them and gave them a quilt to use as a bed.

  “I need a television,” Briggs said. “There’s nothing to do here.”

  “You could look for a job.”

  “I don’t have a car. How am I going to get around?”

  “Taxi. Skateboard. Drone pickup. Figure it out!”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I DROVE AWAY feeling agitated. I hated that Forest was locked up in jail. I didn’t like leaving the dogs with Briggs. I was terrified that something horrible was going to happen to Ranger. And I had a sick feeling in my stomach that I was going to get disemboweled by Vlatko.

  All morning I’d been fighting the urge to call Ranger. I wanted reassurance that he was okay, but I didn’t want to overstep the boundaries of our relationship. Ranger wasn’t a chatty person, and we didn’t make casual phone calls. Truth is, if I made a phone call every time I was worried Ranger’s life was in danger, I’d spend half my life on the phone. Still, this felt different. This was bigger and crazier and scarier.

  Morelli’s green SUV wasn’t in front of his house when I pulled to the curb. He was still helping Anthony. I let myself in and realized there was no Bob. Bob was usually the first to greet me. I went to the kitchen in search of lunch, knowing there were good things waiting for me in Morelli’s refrigerator.