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“Look at her,” my mother said, cutting her eyes to Grandma. “She’s going to Florida. I’m going to come back from mass someday and she’ll be gone. And who knows about this man. He could be a serial killer, a white slaver. He could be one of those men who steals Social Security from old women.”
“He has a good job working in a bar,” Grandma said. “He’s a family man. He can’t help if he looks hot. And my Social Security isn’t worth crap. I wouldn’t be living here if I got any kind of money from Social Security.”
“I want you to do a background check on him,” my mom said to me. “I know you have all those programs that you use to track down criminals. I want you to find out about this person.”
“That’s reasonable,” Lula said. “I always check up on the men I go out with. There’s some freaks out there.”
“I guess that’s okay,” Grandma said. “I’m sure he has nothing to hide.”
I took down all the information on Roger Murf, and promised I’d get right to it. Truth is, I agreed with my mom and Lula. It was a good idea. Hard to have a lot of trust in a guy who looks like George Hamilton.
Lula and I laid waste to the kielbasa, insincerely offered to help with cleanup, and left.
“I’m somewhat of an expert on sausage,” Lula said when we were in the car, “and that was about the best sausage ever. I wouldn’t mind knowing how to cook a sausage like that, but probably I’d need a stove.”
Lula had half a fridge, a Keurig, and a single-induction burner. At least she had an excuse for not cooking. I had zip.
I drove past all the real estate associated with Johnny Chucci and didn’t see the silver Honda. I called Morelli and asked about Slick. He said they’d searched the entire cemetery and its surroundings and didn’t find Slick or any of his body parts.
“I’m at a temporary dead end,” I said to Lula. “I’m going to drop you at the office and head home to research Grandma’s boyfriend. Do you want to stake out the gnome house with me tonight?”
“Wouldn’t miss it. With any luck, Chucci will show up, and he’ll still have his underpants on his head.”
SEVENTEEN
I LET MYSELF into my apartment and paused. No television sounds. No men’s shoes kicked off in the living room. No one singing in the shower.
“Hello?” I called.
Silence.
I hung my bag on a hook in the foyer and walked through the apartment. No Diesel. Good deal. I was happy to delay the confrontation. I sat at the dining room table, opened my laptop, and ran Roger Murf through a couple search programs. Nothing derogatory turned up. He had good credit. His work history checked out. He had two adult children living in New Jersey. And he had a wife in Key West. Whoops.
I ran the wife, Miriam Murf, through the search programs, and she showed the same residence and credit history as Roger. Files indicated that they’d been married for forty years, and that she was still alive.
I couldn’t find any photos, so I called Connie. She has more advanced search programs than I do, and she has Florida connections. I fed her my information, and she said she’d get back to me. I suppose I didn’t really need a photo, but I wanted to see if he actually looked like George Hamilton.
• • •
Morelli called at four o’clock.
“What’s new?” I asked.
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Is it bad?”
“I got the autopsy report back on the homeless victim.”
“The one with the hole in his head?”
“Yeah. He had blunt force trauma to the back of his head. It appears that he was knocked unconscious, and then had his brain removed. This is the first victim who seems to have been killed by the brain snatcher. All others were already deceased.”
“I don’t get it. How do the zombies remove the brain?”
“Big straw?”
“That’s not funny.”
