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“Have you looked at the group of homeless under the bridge?”
“Yeah, no Marcus,” Nutsy said. “I went to all the shelters and the soup kitchen. No Marcus. It’s like he’s vanished.”
“Are you sure Marcus and Stump were homeless? Some of the professional panhandlers make decent money.”
“I don’t know. I never talked to them when they were on the corner. They looked homeless.”
I capped my coffee and stood. “Let’s drive around and see if you spot him. Sunday isn’t prime time for begging, but we’ll cruise the hotspots.”
I gave up the hunt at four o’clock. I dropped Nutsy off at the Kia and handed Bob over to him.
“Take Bob for a walk before you take him up to the apartment,” I told Nutsy. “I need to stop at the market.”
A half hour later I rolled the loaded shopping cart to the Explorer. Bread, beer, peanut butter, deli meat, sliced cheese, frozen enchiladas, a couple bags of cookies, milk, OJ, boxes of assorted cereals, several bottles of white wine, bags of chips, salsa, hot dogs, rolls, a couple boxes of Kraft mac and cheese, and a bunch of other stuff. It was more food than I’d bought in the last six months. Was I a good hostess, or what?
I loaded the bags of food in my building’s elevator and called upstairs for help. I knew Lula and Nutsy were there. I’d parked behind their cars.
“I got food coming at six o’clock,” Lula said after we got all the bags into the kitchen. “I went with sushi and pad thai for our first celebration dinner. We can cut up the frozen enchiladas for hors d’oeuvres.”
In clown mode, Nutsy pantomimed eating hors d’oeuvres and drinking wine.
“You’re freaking me out,” Lula said to Nutsy. “Get a real beer for cripes’ sake.”
Nutsy mooned her, and then Lula mooned Nutsy.
I cracked open the wine, poured myself a large glass, and took my wine into my bedroom.
Lula’s shoes were lined up against one wall. Her newly purchased clothes were hanging in my closet and her undies were in a plastic bin on top of my dresser. Two blond wigs on Styrofoam heads were also on the dresser, and one of the pillows on my bedwas sporting a neon magenta silk pillowcase. A fluffy white rabbit with floppy ears was propped against the magenta pillow.
I chugged half the wine and called Morelli. “Tell me you’re at the airport and on your way home,” I said. “The trial is over, right? Today was the end of it?”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s a weekend. Nothing happens on a weekend.”
“Then why aren’t you here? Why didn’t you come home for the weekend?”
“The department doesn’t pay me to come home for the weekend.”
“So, you couldn’t buy your own ticket? What do I hear in the background? Is that music?”
“I’m at a bar.”
“Omigod, you’re at a bar. I’m here with two morons mooning each other in my kitchen and you’re at a bar.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Yes!Everythingis wrong. I can’t find the homeless man, I’ve got men’s underwear and socks in my laundry basket, I just spent five hundred thirty-seven dollars and forty-seven cents on food, and I don’t like sushi.”
“I’m having a hard time hearing you,” Morelli said. “The music just amped up.”
“What kind of music is that? Are you at a titty bar? Here’s the thing, I might need to move into your house for a couple days.”
“My house? Anthony is living there.”
“Your brother is living in your house?”
“It just happened. His wife kicked him out again. It never lasts long. In a couple days they’ll get together, and she’ll be pregnant.”
“I’m dying here,” I said to Morelli. “You’re at a titty bar and I’m facing another night of sleeping with Lula.”
