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“Maybe.”
“As long as it isn’t Ranger,” Morelli said.
“I don’t think Ranger dates.”
The idea of Ranger dating was pretty strange. I’ve seen him in bars, stalking skips. And I’ve had dinner with him on occasion, but I couldn’t imagine him calling a woman up for a date. I suspected he had a small list of nonthreatening, cooperative women who he visited late at night when the mood struck.
“Whatever it is Ranger does, I don’t want him doing it with you,” Morelli said. “He’s a nut. And he’s dangerous.”
“He’s mellow now,” I told Morelli. “He’s a businessman.”
Morelli looked out at the black Mercedes. “Do you know where he gets these cars?”
“No. Do you?”
“No, but I doubt it’s a legal source.”
I wasn’t even sure it was a human source. It was like the cars were beamed in from space.
“Are we fighting?” I asked Morelli.
“No. We’re discussing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Am I yelling?” Morelli asked. “Is my face purple? Are the cords in my neck standing out? Am I waving my arms around?”
“No.”
“Then we’re not fighting.”
I kicked my shoes off in the kitchen and peeled my socks off. “Were you working tonight?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know about Mr. Jingles and the funeral home?”
I went out to get a pizza and ran into Eddie coming off his shift. He got to help wrangle Mr. Jingles into the animal control van.”
Eddie Gazarra is a uniformed cop who’s married to my cousin Shirley-the-Whiner. He’s a nice guy with a white-blond buzz cut and a big mouth.
I unzipped my jeans. “I need to get out of these contaminated clothes. I don’t want them in my bedroom. Are you going to stand here and watch me get undressed?”
His brown eyes almost completely dilated to black. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m going to watch you get undressed. And I’m going to watch you take a shower. And then I’m personally going to towel you down.”
Oh boy. Oh boy!
I dropped my jeans, stepped out of them, and Morelli’s phone rang. Morelli didn’t take his eyes off me. He didn’t answer his phone. He didn’t check the readout. The phone kept ringing.
“Your phone,” I said.
“It’ll stop.”
There was a moment’s pause while the phone disconnected. And then the phone buzzed with a text message and buzzed a second time.
“You might as well read it,” I said. “It’s not going away.”
Morelli glanced at his phone. “I’ve got a text message from dispatch and a text message from my boss.” He punched a number in and waited.
