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“Yeah, that’s all I have to do.”
I followed him into the kitchen. “Do you think these could be contract killings?”
“You’re thinking Buster hired someone to kill Scootch and Poletti when he was away from his apartment.”
“He could have called Scootch and Poletti and told them to come to his apartment, and when Scootch and Poletti got there the shooter was waiting for them.”
“Motive?”
“Get rid of everyone who could implicate him in the slav
e trade.”
“So you think Pepper is next?”
“Unless they’re working together.”
Morelli pulled the butter pecan ice cream out of the freezer and got a spoon out of the silverware drawer. “What about Briggs?”
“From what I can see, everyone hates him. Poletti tried to run him over, and Buster tried to kill him with a car bomb.”
“What about the rockets?”
“Wild card.”
“That’s as good as anything I’ve got,” Morelli said.
I got my own spoon and went to work on the chocolate chip ice cream. “I had an interesting night. I picked Grandma up at the funeral home after your grandmother turned a hose on her.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“It’s going to take days for the Buick to dry out. She was soaked.”
“At least they aren’t shooting at each other like the Hatfields and McCoys.”
“Not yet.”
TWENTY-THREE
IT WAS SUNDAY, and Morelli and Bob had breakfast and took off to help Morelli’s brother, Anthony, put a swing set together for his kids. I waved them off, had a second cup of coffee, and called Lula.
“I’m going to visit Forest,” I said. “Want to ride along?”
“Sure,” she said. “Nothing much doing here.”
I took my big bag of dog food out to the car and drove to Lula’s apartment. I hadn’t heard from Ranger, so I had no idea what was happening with Vlatko. The possibilities sent a wave of nausea through my stomach, and I watched my rearview mirror, making sure I wasn’t being tailed by a guy with one eye and a sharp knife.
I picked Lula up and drove to Stark Street, slowing when we got to Buster’s building. The CSI van was parked curbside, and a single strip of yellow crime scene tape fluttered at the apartment’s front door.
“Did you hear about Jimmy Poletti?” I asked Lula.
“Hard not to hear. It was on every news station. They even interviewed his wife, who didn’t seem that broken up. Maybe she’s the one shooting all these guys. Maybe she has a bad hair day and she pops someone. And she could specialize in poker players. She might have been traumatized by a poker player when she was a kid.”
Considering how congested Trudy Poletti’s schedule had to be with the Pilates classes and the boinking every man she could get her hands on, it was hard to believe she had time to murder poker players.
I turned at the corner of Geneva and parked. I left Lula with the Buick, grabbed the dog food, and walked it to Forest’s box. It was a nice sunny morning, and Forest was sitting outside, leaning against his dumpster. The Chihuahua pack was snoozing at his feet. All heads came up when I approached.
“I brought food for the minions,” I said to Forest.
