To the Nines

  “I don't need a lawyer,” I told him.

  “Too bad. I could use a high-​profile case. That's what really helps your practice to take off. You gotta win something big.”

  “What do you think of my hair?” Grandma asked Kloughn.

  “It's nice,” he said. “I like it. It's real natural looking.”

  “It's a wig,” Grandma said. “I got it at the mall.”

  “Maybe that's what I should get,” Kloughn said. “Maybe I'd get more cases if I had more hair. A lot of people don't like bald men. Not that I'm bald, but it's starting to get thin.” He smoothed his hand over his few remaining strands of hair. “You probably didn't notice that it was thin, but I can tell when the light hits it just right.”

  “You should try that chemical stuff you pour on your head,” Grandma said. “My friend Lois Grizen uses it and she grew some hair. Only problem was she used it at night and it rubbed off on her pillow and got on her face and now she has to shave twice a day.”

  My father looked up from his paper. “I always wondered what was wrong with her. I saw her in the deli last week and she looked like Wolf man. I thought she had a sex change.”

  “I have everything on the table,” my mother said. “Come now before it gets cold. The bread will go stale.”

  Valerie was already at the table with her plate filled. My mother had put out an antipasto platter, fresh bread from Peoples, and a pan of sausage-​and-​cheese lasagna. Nine-​year-​old Angie, the perfect child and an exact replica of Valerie at that age, sat hands folded, patiently waiting for food to be passed. Her seven-​year-​old sister, Mary Alice, thundered down the stairs and galloped into the room. Mary Alice has for some time now been convinced she's a horse. Outwardly she has all the characteristics of a little girl, but I'm beginning to wonder if there's more to the horse thing than meets the eye.

  “Blackie tinkled in my bedroom,” Mary Alice said. “And I had to clean it up. That's why I'm late. Blackie couldn't help it. He's just a baby horse and he doesn't know any better.”

  “Blackie's a new horse, isn't he?” Grandma asked.

  “Yep. He came to play with me just today,” Mary Alice said.

  “It was nice of you to clean it up,” Grandma said.

  “Next time you should put his nose in it,” Kloughn said. “I heard that works sometimes.”

  Valerie impatiently looked around the table. She folded her hands and bowed her head. “Thank God for this food,” Valerie said. And she dug in.

  We all crossed ourselves, mumbled thank God, and started passing dishes.

  There was a rap on the front door, the door opened, and Joe strolled in. “Is there room for me?” he asked. My mother beamed. “Of course,” she said. “There's always room for you. I set an extra plate just in case you could make it.”

  There was a time when my mother warned me about Joe. Stay away from the Morelli boys, my mother would say. They can't be trusted. They're all sex fiends. And no Morelli man will ever amount to anything. A while back my mother had decided Joe was the exception to the rule and that some-​how, in spite of genetic disadvantage, he'd actually managed to grow up. He was financially and professionally stable. And he could be trusted. Okay, so he was still a sex fiend, but at least he was a monogamous sex fiend. And most important, my mother had come to think that Joe was her best, and possibly only, shot at getting me off the streets and respectably married.

  Grandma shoveled a wedge of lasagna onto her plate. “I've got to get the facts straight on the shooting,” she said, “Mitchell Farber just got laid out and Mabel and me are going to his viewing at Stiva's funeral parlor right after dinner, and people are gonna be on me like white on rice.” “There's not much to tell,” I said. “Lula and I stopped for lunch and the man eating across from me was shot. No one knows why, but it's not a great neighborhood. It was probably just one of those things.”

  “One of those things!” my mother said. “Accidentally dinging your car door with a shopping cart is one of those things, Having someone shot right in front of you is not one of those things. Why were you in such a bad neighborhood? Can't you find a decent place to have lunch? What were you thinking?”

  “I bet there's more to it than that,” Grandma said. “I bet you were after a bad guy. Were you packin' heat?”

  “No. I wasn't armed. I was just having lunch.”

  “You aren't giving me a lot to work with here,” Grandma said.

  Kloughn turned to Morelli. “Were you there?”

  “Yep.”

  “Boy, it must be something to be a cop. You get to do all lands of cool stuff. And you're always in the middle of everything. Right there where the action is.”

  Joe forked off a piece of lasagna.

  “So what do you think about Stephanie being there? I mean, she was sitting right across from this guy, right? How far away? Two feet? Three feet?”

  Morelli sent me a sideways glance and then looked back at Kloughn. “Three feet.”

  “And you're not freaked? If it was me, I'd be freaked. But hey, I guess that's the way it is with cops and bounty hunters. Always in the middle of the shooting.”

  “I'm never in the middle of the shooting,” Joe said. “I'm plainclothes. I investigate. The only time my life is in danger is when I'm with Stephanie.”

  “How about last week?” Grandma asked. “I heard from Loretta Beeber that you were almost killed in some big shoot-​out. Loretta said you had to jump out of Terry Gilman s second-​story bedroom window.”

  I swiveled in my seat and faced Joe and he froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. There'd been rumors about Joe and Terry Gilman all through high school. Not that a rumor linking Morelli to a woman was unusual. But Gilman was different. She was a cool blonde with ties to the Mob and an ongoing relationship with Morelli. Morelli swore the relationship was professional and I believed him. That isn't to say that I liked it. It bore a disturbing parallel to my relationship with Ranger. And I knew that as hard as I tried to ignore the chemistry between Ranger and me, it still simmered below the surface.

  I narrowed my eyes just a tiny bit and leaned forward, invading Morelli's space. “You jumped out of Terry Gilman's window?”

  “I told you.”

  “You didn't tell me. I would have remembered.”

  “It was the day you wanted to go out for pizza and I said I had to work.”

  “And?”

  “And that was it. I told you I had to work. Can we discuss this later?”

  “I wouldn't put up with that,” Valerie said, working the lasagna around in her mouth, grabbing a meat-​and-​cheese roll-​up from the antipasto tray. “I ever get married again, I want full disclosure. I don't want any of this 'I have to work, honey' baloney. I want all the answers up front, in detail. You don't keep your eyes open and next thing your husband s in the coat closet with the baby-​sitter.”

  Unfortunately, Valerie was speaking from firsthand experience.

  “I've never jumped out of a window,” Kloughn said. “I thought people just did that in the movies. You're the first person I've ever met who jumped out of a window,” he said to Morelli. “And a bedroom window, too. Did you have your clothes on?”

  “Yeah,” Morelli said. “I had my clothes on.”

  “How about your shoes? Did you have your shoes on?”

  “Yes. I had my shoes on.”

  I almost felt sorry for Morelli. He was making a major effort not to lose his temper. A younger Morelli would have broken a chair over Kloughn's head.

  “I heard Terry didn't hardly have anything on,” Grandma said. “Loretta's sister lives right across from Terry Gilman and she said she saw the whole thing and Terry was wearing a flimsy little nightie. Loretta's sister said even from across the street you could see right through the nightie and she thinks Terry got a boob job because Terry's boobs were perfect. Loretta's sister said there was a big to-​do with the police showing up on account of all the shooting.”

  I tried to contr
ol my eyebrows from jumping halfway up my forehead. “Nightie? Shooting?”

  “Loretta's sister was the one who called the police,” Joe said. “And there wasn't a lot of shooting. A gun accidentally discharged.”

  “And the nightie?”

  The anger disappeared and Morelli tried unsuccessfully to stifle a smile. “It wasn't exactly a nightie. She was wearing one of those camisole tops and a thong.”

  “No kidding!” Kloughn said. “And you could see through it, right? I bet you could see through it.”

  “That does it,” I said, standing at my seat, throwing my napkin onto the table. “I'm out of here.” I stomped out of the dining room into the foyer and stopped with my hand on the door. “What did you make for dessert?” I yelled to my mother.

  “Chocolate cake.”

  I wheeled around and flounced off to the kitchen. I cut a good-​size wedge from the cake, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and swept out of the house. Okay, so I was acting like an idiot. At least I was an idiot with cake.

  I took to the road and drove off, spewing indignation and self-​righteous fury. I was still fuming when I reached Joe's house. I sat there for a couple beats, considering my predicament. My clothes and my hamster were in the house. Not to mention my safety and great sex. Problem was, there was all this . . . emotion. I know emotion covers a lot of ground, but I couldn't hang a better name on my feelings. Wounded might be in the ballpark. I was stung that Morelli couldn't keep from smiling when he thought back to Gilman in her thong and camisole. Gilman and her perfect boobs. Unh. Mental head slap.

  I opened the aluminum foil and ate the chocolate cake with my fingers. When in doubt, eat some cake. Halfway through the cake I started to feel better. Okay, I said to myself, now that we have some calm, let's take a look at what happened here.

  To begin with, I was a big fat hypocrite. I was all bent out of shape over Morelli and Gilman when I had the exact same situation going on between Ranger and me. These are working relationships, I told myself. Get over it. Grow up. Have some trust here.

  Okay, so now I've yelled at myself. Anything else going on? Jealousy? Jealousy didn't feel like a fit. Insecurity? Bingo. Insecurity was a match. I didn't have a lot of insecurity. Just enough insecurity to surface at times of mental health breakdown. And I was definitely having a mental health breakdown. The denial thing wasn't working for me.

  I put the car in gear and drove to my apartment building. I wouldn't stay long, I decided. I'd just go in and retrieve a few things . . . like my dignity, maybe.

  I parked in the lot, shoved the door open, and swung from behind the wheel. I beeped the car locked with the remote and headed for the back door to my building. I was halfway across the lot when I heard a sound behind me. Phunf. I felt something sting my right shoulder blade and heat swept through my upper body. The world went gray, then black. I put my hand out to steady myself and felt myself slide away.

  I was swimming in suffocating blackness, unable to surface. Voices only partially penetrated. Words were garbled. I ordered myself to open my eyes. Open them. Open them!

  Suddenly there was daylight. The images were blurred, but the voices snapped into focus. The voices were calling my name.

  “Stephanie?”

  I blinked a couple times, clearing my vision, recognizing Morelli. My first words were, “What the fuck?”

  “How do you feel?” Morelli asked.

  “Like I've been hit by a truck.”

  A guy I didn't know was bending over me, opposite Joe. A paramedic. I had a blood pressure cuff on and the paramedic was listening.

  “She's looking better,” he said.

  I was on the ground in the parking lot and Joe and the paramedic brought me up to sitting. An EMS truck idled not far off. There was a lot of equipment beside me. Oxygen, stretcher, medical emergency kit. A couple Trenton cops stood hands on hips. A small crowd was gathered behind the cops.

  “We should take her to St. Francis to have her checked by a doctor,” the medic said. “They might want to keep her overnight.”

  “What happened?” I asked Morelli.

  “Someone shot you in the back with a tranquilizer dart. The impact was partially absorbed by your jacket, but you got enough tranq to knock you out.”

  “Am I okay?”

  “Yeah,” Morelli said. “I think you're okay. More than I can say for me. I just had three heart attacks.”

  “I don't want to go to St. Francis. I want to go home . . . wherever that is.”

  The medic looked over at Morelli. “Your call.”

  “I'll take responsibility,” Morelli said. “Help me get her to her feet.”

  I walked around for a couple minutes on shaky legs. I was feeling really crappy, but I didn't want to broadcast it. I didn't want to overnight in the hospital. They take your clothes away and hide them and make you sleep in one of those cotton gowns that your ass hangs out of. “Jeez,” I said. “What was I shot with, an elephant gun?”

  Morelli had the dart in a plastic evidence bag in his pocket. He held the bag out for me to see. “Looks to me to be more large dog size.”

  “Oh great. I was shot with a dog dart. That doesn't even make good bar conversation.”

  Morelli eased me into his truck. “We'll leave your car here. I don't think we want to put you behind the wheel yet.”

  I wasn't going to argue. I was developing a monster headache.

  There was a single red rose on the dash. A square white card in a plastic evidence bag had been placed beside the rose.

  Morelli gestured at the rose. “That was left on your windshield.” He reached across and took the card and turned it so I could read the message. You should be more careful. If you make it too easy, the fun will be gone.

  “This is creepy,” I said. “This is definitely psycho.”

  “It started right after you became involved with Singh,” Morelli said.

  “Do you think it's Bart Cone?”

  “He'd be on the list, but I'm not convinced he's the one. I can't see him leaving roses. Bart Cone doesn't strike me as a man who has a flare for the dramatic.”

  I wanted it to be Bart Cone. He was an easy mark. I had a fantasy scenario going in my head. Stephanie and Lula break into Bart's home, find the tranquilizer gun stashed beside the gun that killed Howie, and call the police. The police immediately arrest Bart. And Stephanie lives happily ever after. Needless to say, the fantasy scenario didn't include Stephanie doing time for illegal entry. “This has moved way beyond my comfort zone,” I said to Morelli. “If I wasn't shot full of tranquilizer you'd be seeing some first-​rate hysteria.”

  Morelli left-​turned out of the lot. “What were you doing here, anyway?”

  “I was returning to my apartment because you liked looking at Gilman in her thong.”

  “Shit,” Morelli said. “You're such a girl.”

  I closed my eyes and rested my head on the seat back. “You're lucky I'm drugged.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual when you parked? A strange car? A paranoid schizophrenic lurking in the shadows?”

  “Nothing. I wasn't looking. I was making the most of my indignation.”

  By the time we reached Morelli's house the sun was low in the sky and the night insects were singing. I looked down the street, more from comfort than fear. Hard to believe anything bad could happen on Morelli's street. Mrs. Brodsky was sitting on her porch and Aunt Rose's second-​story curtains, filmy behind the glass, floated like a protective charm. Morelli's neighborhood felt benign. Of course, none of that stopped Morelli from doing his cop thing. He'd been checking his tail all the way over, making sure we weren't followed. He parked and helped me out of the truck, hustling me into the house, partially shielding me with his body.