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Morelli lives in a neighborhood that backs up to the Burg. The values and economics are the same in both neighborhoods. The houses are the same. The only difference is an imaginary line that someone drew seventy years ago. Morelli’s house is a lot like my parents’ house, with a shotgun-style living room, dining room, kitchen. There are three bedrooms upstairs, a powder room downstairs, and a full bath upstairs. Morelli shares the house with a big, orange, overly friendly dog named Bob. There’s a large flat-screen television in the living room, a billiard table in the dining room, and a king-sized bed in the upstairs master. I keep a few essentials at his house, and he has a few essentials in my apartment.
Bob rushed at me when I walked in the front door. I braced myself against the impact and did thegood boy, good boything, holding the bag of food over my head. Morelli sauntered over, took the bag, and gave me a friendly kiss.
“You look better,” I said. “Okay, so your eye is almost swollen closed, but you’re not wet anymore and the scratches on your face aren’t oozing blood.”
“I’m a fast healer,” he said. “It’s my Sicilian DNA. My relatives wouldn’t have survived if they’d been bleeders.”
I went to the kitchen, got Bob’s bowl, and brought it to theliving room. We emptied the bag of food onto Morelli’s big square coffee table, divided it up between Bob, Morelli, and me, and we all ate dinner in front of the television.
“Connie isn’t my only problem,” I said, adding extra red sauce to my meatball sandwich. “Your grandmother is FTA.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes!”
Morelli grinned. “Well at least you know where to find her.”
“It’s not funny. She’s scary. If I go after her, she’ll put the eye on me.”
He opened two bottles of beer and passed one to me. “Do you believe in the eye?”
“No, of course not. Maybe. Just a little. Even without the eye, she’s still scary.”
“And?”
“And I was hoping you’d bring her in for me.”
“No way,” Morelli said. “She’s my grandmother. I can’t arrest my own grandmother.”
“You’re afraid of her too, aren’t you!”
“I’m not afraid of my grandmother. I’m afraid of my mother. She’ll make my life a living hell, and she’ll cut me off from lasagna deliveries.”
I did a mental eye-roll. “Talk to your grandmother,please. Explain to her that she needs to make another court date.”
“We could cut a deal here,” Morelli said.
“What kind of deal?”
“It would involve you getting naked.”
“What about you?”
“I’d get naked too.”
“What about your injuries?” I asked. “Your eye is totally shut.”
“I can still see with my other eye. And my deal would involve body parts that are functioning perfectly.”
This seemed like an okay deal since I’d assumed we’d both get naked eventually anyway. It was one of the benefits of bringing Morelli dinner.
I looked over at the bedside clock. It was 1:00 a.m. Morelli was asleep beside me, and I was wide awake. My mind was running in circles, thinking about Connie. I was having gruesome thoughts of Connie kidnapped, locked in the trunk of someone’s car, held hostage in a basement cell, or even worse, left for dead alongside a road somewhere. I should have done a more thorough search of her car, and I should have done an inventory of the storeroom. My phone was on the nightstand next to me in case a call or a message came in from Connie.
She’ll show up in the morning and have a perfectly logical explanation, I told myself. After all, this is Connie. Connie isn’t the sort to be a victim. Connie is the office security. She’s the guard dog in front of Vinnie’s inner sanctum. She’s good with a gun, she’s always armed, and she’s street smart. It wouldn’t be easy to kidnap her. I told myself this in an effort to relax and fall asleep. Unfortunately, while I knew it all to be true, I also knew from my own experience that bad things could happen to good people no matter how careful or skilled they were.
CHAPTER FOUR
Istruggled out of sleep, sensing Morelli moving around in the dark room. He was an early riser, anxious to get on the job, solving mysteries and bringing order to chaos. He’d been a wild kid who’d managed to turn into a responsible adult. The transformation hadn’t been easy, but here he finally was, protecting the rights and dignity of Trenton residents both good and bad. Go figure.
