Eleven on Top

  “Iced tea,” Mrs. Lubchek said. “I poured iced tea on you.”

  “I'll turn you into an artichoke.”

  “You need to take a pill,” Mrs. Lubchek said. “You're nutsy cuckoo.”

  Stiva hurried across the room with Joe's mother close on his heels.

  “We're out of iced tea,” Mrs. Lubchek said to Stiva.

  “I'm having a vision,” Grandma Bella said, her eyes rolling around in her head. “I see fire. A terrible fire. I see rats escaping, running from the fire. Big, ugly, sick rats. And one of the rats has come back.” Bella's eyes snapped open and focused on me. “He's come back to get you.”

  “Omigod,” Bitsy said. “Omigod. Omigod!”

  “I need to lay down now. I always get tired after I have a vision,” Bella said.

  “Wait,” I said to her. “What kind of a vision is that? A rat? Are you sure about this vision thing?”

  “Yeah, and what do you mean the rat's sick?” Grandma Mazur wanted to know.

  “Does it have rabies?”

  “That's all I'm going to say,” Bella said. “It's a vision. A vision is a vision. I'm going home.”

  Bella whirled on her heel and walked to the door with her back ramrod straight and Joe's mom behind her, scurrying to keep up.

  Grandma Mazur turned to the cookie tray and picked through the cookies, looking for a chocolate chip. “I tell you a person's gotta get here early or there's only leftovers.”

  We were both dripping iced tea. And Grandma Mazur's nose was red and swollen.

  “We should go home,” I said to Grandma Mazur. “I have to get out of this shirt.”

  “Yeah,” Grandma Mazur said. “I guess I could go. I paid my respects to the deceased and this cookie tray's a big disappointment.”

  “Did you hear anything about Michael Barroni?”

  Grandma dabbed at her shirt with a napkin. "Only that he's still missing. The boys are running the store, but Emma Wilson tells me they're not getting along.

  Emma works there part-time. She said the young one is a trial."

  “Anthony.”

  “That's the one. He was always a troublemaker. Remember there was that business with Mary Jane Roman.”

  “Date rape.”

  “Nothing ever came of that,” Grandma said. "But I never doubted Mary Jane.

  There was always something off about Anthony."

  We'd walked out of the funeral home and down the street to the car. I looked inside the car and saw a note on the drivers seat.

  “How'd that get in there?” Grandma wanted to know. “Don't you lock your car?”

  “I stopped locking it. I'm hoping someone will steal it.”

  Grandma took a good look at the car. “That makes sense.”

  We both got in and I read the note, your turn to burn, bitch.

  “Such language,” Grandma said. “I tell you the world's going to heck in a handbasket.”

  Grandma was upset about the language. I was upset about the threat. I wasn't exactly sure what it meant, but it didn't feel good. It was crazy and scary.

  Who was this person, anyway?

  I pulled away from the curb and headed for my parents' house.

  “I can't get that dumb note out of my head,” Grandma said when we were half

  a block from home. “I could swear I even smell smoke.”

  Now that she mentioned it...

  I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw flames licking up the backseat. I raced the half block to my parents' house, careened into the driveway, and jerked to a stop.

  “Get out,” I yelled. “The backseats on fire.”

  Grandma turned and looked. “Danged if it isn't.”

  I ran into the house, told my mother to call the fire department, grabbed the fire extinguisher that was kept in the kitchen under the sink, and ran back to the car. I broke the seal on the extinguisher and sprayed the flaming backseat. My father appeared with the garden hose and between the two of us we got the fire under control.

  A half hour later, the backseat of the Saturn was pronounced dead and flame free by the fire department. The fire truck rumbled away down the street, and the crowd of curious neighbors dispersed. The sun had set, but the Saturn could be seen in the ambient light from the house. Water dripped from the undercarriage and pooled on the cement driveway in grease-slicked puddles. The stench of cooked upholstery hung in the air.

  Morelli had arrived seconds behind the fire truck. He was now standing in my parents' front yard with his hands in his pockets, wearing his unreadable cop face.

  “So,” I said to him. “What's up?”

  “Where's the note?”

  “What note?”

  His eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

  “How do you know there was a note?” I asked.

  “Just another one of those feelings.”

  I took the note from my pocket and handed it over.

  “Do you think this has something to do with the rat?” Grandma asked me.

  “Remember how Bella had that vision about the fire and the rat? And she said the rat was gonna get you. Well, I bet it was the rat that wrote the note and started the fire.”

  “Rats can't write,” I said.

  “What about human rats?” Grandma wanted to know. “What about big mutant human rats?”

  Morelli cut his eyes to me. “Do I want to know about this vision?”

  “No,” I told him. “And you also don't want to know about the fight in the funeral home between Bella and Grandma Mazur when Grandma tried to stop Bella from putting a curse on me for breaking your heart.”

  Morelli smiled. “I've always been her favorite.”

  “I didn't break your heart.”

  “Cupcake, you've been breaking my heart for as long as I've known you.”

  “How did you know about the fire?” I asked Morelli.

  “Dispatch called me. They always call me when your car explodes or goes up in flames.”

  “I'm surprised Ranger isn't here.”

  “He got me on my cell. I told him you were okay.”

  I moved closer to the Saturn and peered inside. Most of the water and fire damage was confined to the backseat.

  Morelli had his hand at the nape of my neck. “You're not thinking of driving this, are you?”

  “It doesn't look so bad. It probably runs fine.”

  “The backseat is completely gutted and there's a big hole in the floorboard.”

  “Yeah, but other than that it's okay, right?”

  Morelli looked at me for a couple beats. Probably trying to decide if this was worth a fight.

  “It's too dark to get a really good assessment of the damage,” he finally said. “Why don't we go home and come back in the morning and take another look. You don't want to drive it tonight anyway. You want to open the windows and let it air out.”

  He was right about the airing out part. The car reeked. And I knew he was also right about looking at the car when the light was better. Problem was, this was the only car I had. The only thing worse than driving this car would be borrowing the '53 Buick Grandma Mazur inherited from my Great Uncle Sandor.

  Been there, done that, don't want to do it again.

  And the danger involved in driving this car seemed to me to be hardly worth mentioning compared to the threat I was facing from the criminally insane stalker who set the fire.

  “I'm more worried about the arsonist than I am about the car,” I said to Morelli.

  “I haven't got a grip on the arsonist,” Morelli said. “I don't know what to do about him. The car I have some control over. Let me give you a ride home.”

  Five minutes later we were parked in front of Morelli's house.

  “Let me guess,” I said to Morelli. “Bob still misses me.”

  Morelli ran a finger along the line of my jaw. “Bob could care less. I'm the one who misses you. And I miss you bad.”

  “How bad?”

  Morelli kissed me. “Painfully bad.”

&
nbsp; At six-fifteen I dragged myself out of Morelli's bed and into the shower.

  I'd thrown my clothes in the washer and dryer the night before, and Morelli had them in the bathroom, waiting for me. I did a half-assed job of drying my hair, swiped some mascara on my lashes, and followed my nose to the kitchen, where Morelli had coffee brewing.

  Both of the men in my life looked great in the morning. They woke up clear-eyed and alert, ready to save the world. I was a befuddled mess in the morning, stumbling around until I got my caffeine fix.

  “We're running late,” Morelli said, handing me a travel mug of coffee and a toasted bagel. “I'll drop you off at the cleaner. You can check the car out after work.”

  “No. I have time. This will only take a minute. I'm sure the car is fine.”

  “I'm sure the car isn't fine,” Morelli said, nudging me out of the kitchen and down the hall to the front door. He locked the door behind us and beeped his SUV open with the remote.

  Minutes later we were at my parents' house, arguing on the front lawn.

  “You're not driving this car,” Morelli said.

  “Excuse me? Did I hear you give me an order?”

  “Cut me some slack here. You and I both know this car isn't drivable.”

  “I don't know any such thing. Okay, it's got some problems, but they're all cosmetic. I'm sure the engine is fine.” I slid behind the wheel and proved my point by rolling the engine over. “See?” I said.

  “Get out of this wreck and let me drive you to work.”

  “No.”

  “In twenty seconds I'm going to drag you out and reignite the fire until there's nothing left of this death trap but a smoking cinder.”

  “I hate when you do the macho-man thing.”

  “I hate when you're stubborn.”

  I hit the door locks and automatic windows, put the car into reverse, and screeched out of the driveway into the road. I changed gears and roared away, gagging on the odor of wet barbecued car. He was right, of course. The car was a death trap, and I was being stubborn. Problem was, I couldn't help myself.

  Morelli brought out the stubborn in me.

  Kan Klean was a small mom-and-pop dry cleaners that had been operating in the Burg for as long as I can remember. The Macaroni family owned Kan Klean.

  Mama Macaroni, Mario Macaroni, and Gina Macaroni were the principals, and a bunch of miscellaneous Macaronis helped out when needed.

  Mama Macaroni was a contemporary of Grandma Bella and Grandma Mazur. Mama Macaroni's fierce raptor eyes took the world in under drooping folds of parchment-thin skin. Her shrunken body, wrapped in layers of black, curved over her cane and conjured up images of mummified larvae. She had a boulder of a mole set into the roadmap of her face somewhere in the vicinity of Atlanta. Three hairs grew out of the mole. The mole was horrifying and compelling. It was the dermatological equivalent of a seven-car crash with blood and guts spread all over the highway.

  I'd never been to Kan Klean that Mama Macaroni wasn't sitting on a stool behind the counter. Mama nodded to customers but seldom spoke. Mama only spoke when there was a problem. Mama Macaroni was the problem solver. Her son Mario supervised the day-to-day operation. Her daughter-in-law, Gina, kept the books and ran day care for the hordes of grandchildren produced by her four daughters and two sons.

  “It's not difficult,” Gina said to me. “You'll be working the register. You take the clothes from the customer and you do a count. Then you fill out the order form and give a copy to the customer. You put a copy in the bag with the clothes and you put the third copy in the box by the register. Then you put the bag in one of the rolling bins. One bin is laundry and one bin is dry cleaning. That's the way we do it. When a customer comes in to pick up his cleaned clothes you search for the clothes by the number on the top of his receipt. Make sure you always take a count so the customer gets all his clothes.”

  Mama Macaroni mumbled something in Italian and slid her dentures around in her mouth.

  “Mama says you should be careful. She says she's keeping her eye on you,” Gina said.

  I smiled at Mama Macaroni and gave her a thumbs-up. Mama Macaroni responded with a death glare.

  “When you have time between customers you can tag the clothes,” Gina said.

  “Every single garment must get tagged. We have a machine that you use, and you have to make sure that the number on the tag is the same as the number on the customer's receipt.”

  By noon I'd completely lost the use of my right thumb from using the tagging machine.

  “You got to go faster,” Mama Macaroni said to me from her stool. “I see you slow down. You think we pay for nothing?”

  A man hurried through the front door and approached the counter. He was mid-forties and dressed in a suit and tie. “I picked my dry cleaning up yesterday,” he said, “and all the buttons are broken off my shirt.”

  Mama Macaroni got off her stool and caned her way to the counter. “What?” she said.

  “The buttons are broken.”

  She shook her head. “I no understand.”

  He showed her the shirt. “The buttons are all broken.”

  “Yes,” Mama Macaroni said.

  “You broke them.”

  “No,” Mama said. “Impossible.”

  “The buttons were fine when I brought the shirt in. I picked the shirt up and the buttons were all broken.”

  “I no understand.”

  “What don't you understand?”

  “English. My English no good.”

  The man looked at me. “Do you speak English?”

  “What?” I said.

  The man whipped the shirt off the counter and left the store.

  “Maybe you not so slow,” Mama Macaroni said to me. “But don't get any ideas about taking it easy. We don't pay you good money to stand around doing nothing.”

  I started watching the clock at one o'clock. By three o'clock I was sure I'd been tagging clothes for at least five days without a break. My thumb was throbbing, my feet ached from standing for eight hours, and I had a nervous twitch in my eye from Mama Macaroni's constant scrutiny.

  I took my bag from under the counter and I looked over at Mama Macaroni.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  “What you mean, see you tomorrow? Where you think you going?” “Home. It's three o'clock. My shift is over.”

  “Look at little miss clock watcher here. Three o'clock on the dot. Bing. The bell rings and you out the door.” She threw her parchment hands into the air.

  "Go! Go home. Who needs you? And don't be late tomorrow. Sunday is big day.

  We the only cleaner open on Sunday."

  “Okay,” I said. “And have a nice mole.” Shit! Did I just say that? “Have a nice day!” I yelled. Crap.

  I'd parked the Saturn in the small lot adjacent to Kan Klean. I left the building and circled the car. I didn't see any notes. I didn't smell anything burning.

  No one shot at me. Guess my stalker was taking a day off.

  I got into the car, turned my cell phone on, and scrolled to messages.

  First message. “Stephanie.” That was the whole message. It was from Morelli at seven-ten this morning. It sounded like it had been said through clenched teeth.

  Second message. Morelli breathing at seven-thirty.

  Third message. “Call me when you turn your phone on.” Morelli again.

  Fourth message. “It's two-thirty and we just found Barroni's car. Call me.”

  Barroni's car! I dialed in Joe's cell number.

  “It's me,” I said. “I just got off work. I had to turn my phone off because Mama Macaroni said it was giving her brain cancer. Not that it would matter.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I'm on the road. I'm going home to take a nap. I'm all done in.”

  The car . . .

  “The car is okay,” I told Morelli.

  “The car is not okay.”

  “Give up on the car. What about Barroni?”

  ??
?I lied about Barroni. I figured that was the only way you'd call.”

  I put my finger to my eye to stop the twitching, disconnected Morelli, and cruised into my lot.