Smokin' Seventeen (8 page)

“Cracker might not be friendly to us if he knows we shot the toe off his brother-in-law, so we need to be cool.”

“Sure. I can be cool. What do you want?”

“I want a hot dog. Any kind is fine.”

The deli was small. Take-out service only. Two gangly kids in homeboy clothes stood at the counter, waiting on their order. Two men in food-stained, sweaty T-shirts worked in the kitchen. Both cooks looked like they weighed in the vicinity of three hundred pounds. Hot dogs boiled on the stove and grease ran down the walls from the fryer.

I hung in the doorway, watching my car, and Lula stepped up to the counter. “I want a chili dog, a kraut dog, a barbecue dog, and curly fries with extra cheese. And my friend wants a chili dog. And which one of you guys is Lionel Cracker?”

One of the men scooped four dogs out of the water and looked at Lula. “Who wants to know?”

“I want to know,” Lula said. “Who the heck do you think?”

“Do I know you?”

“It’s that I know your brother-in-law Merlin. He said you work here.”

Cracker laid out four hot-dog rolls on his workstation and dropped the dogs into them. “What else did he say?”

“That’s it. I used to be friends with Merlin, and I haven’t seen him in a while, and I was wondering how he’s doing?”

“He owes you money, right? What are you, collection agency? Human services?”

“We just came in for a hot dog and I was wondering about Merlin.”

Cracker laid down a smear of yellow mustard on all the dogs. “I could tell you’re lying. I know body language, and you’re a big fat liar.”

“To begin with I’m about the best liar you ever saw. If I’m lyin’ you’re not gonna know. And on top of that, did you call me fat? ’Cause you better not have called me fat. ’Specially since you’re one big ugly tub of lard.”

“That’s mean,” Cracker said. “You can kiss these dogs goodbye. I don’t serve dogs to fat mean, ol’ trash.”

Lula leaned over the counter to get into his face. “Fine by me on account of I don’t want your nasty dogs, but I don’t put up with no one disrespecting me.”

“Oh yeah? Well kiss my behind.”

And Cracker mooned her.

Lula grabbed the mustard dispenser and blasted Cracker in the ass with a double shot of mustard. Cracker scooped up a handful of chili and threw it at Lula. And after that it was
hard to tell who was throwing what. Hot dogs, buns, coleslaw, pickles, ketchup, relish, sauerkraut were flying through the air. Lula was batting them away with her purse, and I was trying to pull her through the door.

“Let go,” Lula said to me. “I’m not done with him.”

Cracker dropped below the counter and popped up with a shotgun.

“Now I’m done,” Lula said.

We bolted through the door, jumped into the Escort, and I laid down rubber getting away from the curb.

I drove one block and turned off Stark. “You have to dial back on the fat thing,” I said to Lula. “You can’t go around shooting people because they say you’re fat.”

“I only shot one guy. The second was only mustard.” Lula swiped at some chili stuck to her shirt. “We didn’t get lunch. Where you want to go for lunch?”

“I’m going home for lunch, so I can take a shower and change my clothes. I feel like I’ve been rolled around in Giovichinni’s dumpster.”

Lula powered her window down. “One of us smells like sauerkraut. I think it’s you. You look like you got hit with a whole bowl of it. It’s stuck in your hair.”

Don’t for a moment think this is Bella’s work, I told myself. The pimple and the sauerkraut are coincidence. The
eye
is a bunch of baloney. Repeat after me.
The eye is a bunch of baloney
.

FOURTEEN

BY THE TIME
I left my apartment it was mid-afternoon. My hair was clean and smelled only faintly of sauerkraut. I was in my usual uniform of jeans and T-shirt. And my plan was to stop at Giovichinni’s and get a sandwich for lunch and a piece of lasagna to save for dinner.

I passed Mooner’s bus on my way to the store. The bus looked normal enough. No indication of a bear inside. The M.E.’s truck was missing from the curb. Morelli and some uniforms were standing in the middle of the lot, watching the backhoe work. I took all this to mean the body had been removed, and the grave was getting filled in and graded.

I parked and joined Morelli.

“Was it the lawyer?”

“Probably, but we couldn’t make a positive ID.”

“No recognizable jewelry?”

“An expensive watch. No wedding band. No wallet.” Morelli leaned closer. “You smell like sauerkraut.”

“Does it make me undesirable?”

“No. It makes me hungry for a hot dog.”

“Do you think this is the last of the bodies buried here?”

“The CSI guys worked their way through the entire lot and found only this one.”

“Why do you suppose the two bodies had different burial spots?”

“They were probably buried at different times. We’re guessing he used the backhoe that was here doing debris removal, and he dug wherever the backhoe was parked.”

“Still no tie-in to the bail bonds office?”

Morelli shook his head. “No. But I’m going over some correspondence and financial records with Terry tonight. Something might turn up.”

Terry again.
Unh
. Mental head slap.

Morelli grinned down at me. “You’re such a cupcake.”

“Now what?”

“Every time I mention Terry your eyes cross.” He wrapped an arm around me and kissed me just above my ear. “Good thing I like sauerkraut,” he said.

• • •

I bypassed Mooner’s bus completely and went directly to Giovichinni’s. I ordered a turkey club and was in the middle of a critical dinner decision when Grandma Mazur called.

“We’re making lasagna tonight,” she said. “It’s a special recipe. And we’re having chocolate cake for dessert. Your mother wanted to know if you wanted some.”

I stared at the slab of lasagna in Giovichinni’s deli case and found it lacking. “Sure,” I said. “Set a plate for me.”

I carted my turkey club to the coffee shop and sat in the window area with Lula and Connie.

“They found another body on bonds office property,” I said. “Morelli thinks it might be Bobby Lucarelli, Dugan’s lawyer.”

“I knew he was missing,” Connie said. “He was Vinnie’s lawyer, too. Vinnie was using him for some real estate transactions.”

My phone buzzed with a text message from Dave. I HAVE A SURPRISE FOR YOU.

He probably meant well, but I had enough surprises in my life. I was sitting with my back to the window, and I felt a shadow pass over me. I turned to see what had caused the shadow, and I caught Bella standing outside, looking in. She put her finger to her eye and nodded and smiled at me.

“Holy mother,” Connie whispered.

Lula made a
go away
gesture at Bella. “Shoo!”

Bella glared at Lula, turned, and walked down the street.

“Do you feel any different?” Connie asked me. “Did you just get a hemorrhoid? Are you breaking out in hives?”

“I don’t believe in the eye,” I told her.

“That’s good,” Lula said. “You keep tellin’ yourself that. You’re gonna be fine. You don’t think she took offense that I shooed her, do you? Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. I already got a vampire hickey. I don’t need no more weird juju shit.”

Connie looked at her cell phone. “Vinnie just texted me that the bear’s hungry. Someone has to make a chicken nugget run.”

“I guess I could do that,” Lula said, “but I don’t get the whole bear thing.”

Connie gave Lula a wad of cash. “It was a high bond and apparently the bear’s worth a lot of money. He’s part of some Russian circus act booked into Vegas. I guess the owner got a little drunk and shot a bartender because he wouldn’t serve him. Anyway Vinnie took the bear because the case is scheduled to go to court on Friday. Fast cash turnaround.”

“So how many buckets of nuggets does the bear want?” Lula asked.

“Get him four extra big buckets,” Connie said. “No coleslaw, but he might like biscuits.”

I went with Lula because I didn’t have anything better to do, and I wanted to snitch a biscuit. Lula cruised down Hamilton, pulled into the Cluck-in-a-Bucket lot, and parked.

“I’m not getting all this at the drive-thru,” Lula said. “They always short you chicken at the drive-thru. And they don’t
give you the fresh, hot biscuits. They give you the nasty ass old ones.”

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.