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“How about you? Did you ever date Julie Barkalowski?”
“I dated every girl in that school. I was a horn dog back then.”
“And now?”
Morelli put his plate down and wrapped his arms around me. “And now I’m your horn dog.”
“Lucky me.”
He clicked the television off, slipped his hands under my T-shirt, and kissed me. Minutes later we were in bed, we were naked, and Morelli was doing a demo for me on the various ways I was lucky. He found the way I was most lucky and just as I was moments away from scoring a home run, a vision of Dave Brewer in an apron popped into my head and broke my concentration.
“Damn!” I said through clenched teeth.
Morelli picked his head up and looked at me. “Is there an issue?”
“I lost it.”
“No problemo. I’ll start over. I have to work off the chocolate cake, anyway.”
SIXTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING I dragged myself into the coffee shop and ordered a grande with extra caffeine. Connie and Lula were already hard at work, settled into the window seating area. Lula was doing the day’s Jumble, and Connie was tweeting on her laptop.
Lula stared up at me. “You look like you been run over by a truck.”
I eased myself down to the couch. “Long night. I couldn’t get Dave Brewer out of my head. It was like he was haunting me.”
“You’re just all clogged up with men,” Lula said. “You got confused hormones.”
“I don’t feel confused. Mostly I feel tired.”
“Hope you’re not too tired,” Connie said. “Ziggy violated his bond last night, and you need to bring him in.”
“What did he do?”
“He attacked Myra Milner at bingo. He said he just wanted to get cozy, but he had his teeth in, and he gave her a couple punctures. I guess he has a thing for the ladies. Anyway, she pressed charges. He was long gone by the time the police got to the bingo hall.”
“Myra Milner is eighty-two years old,” I said to Connie. “What the heck was he thinking?”
Connie gave me the RIGHT TO APPREHEND papers. “Probably he was thinking she was easy. Myra told the police the batteries conked out on her hearing aid, and she didn’t hear him sneaking up on her.”
“I don’t like this,” Lula said. “I had a close call last time, and I still don’t know if I’m outta the woods here. I had a real craving for a Bloody Mary and a rare hamburger last night.”
“There’s no blood in a Bloody Mary,” I told her.
“Yeah, but it’s the idea.”
Mooner’s bus pulled up at the curb, and Mooner and Vinnie got out and came into the coffee shop.
“We got a problem,” Vinnie said. “Genius here was walking Bruce, and Bruce wandered away.”
“He looked like he had to poop,” Mooner said, “but he was having a problem, like finding the right spot, and I thought maybe he needed privacy. I mean, not everyone can poop with an audience, right? So I turned my back for a minute. But then when I looked around he was gone.”
We all went dead still, absorbing the fact that a large bear was loose in the Burg.
“We’ve been riding around, but we can’t find him,” Vinnie said. “You need to help us look.”
A man sitting at a table in the other window area leaned toward us. “I couldn’t help overhearing. I saw a bear walking down Hamilton when I was on my way here. I thought I was seeing things. A white Camry pulled alongside the bear, the driver whistled, and the bear got into the backseat. And then the car drove away.”
