14 Fearless Fourteen (19 page)

Zook gave a howl of laughter.

“Dude,” Mooner said. “Awesome. Ratings fabuloso.”

The next shot was Brenda in the studio sitting opposite the
anchor.

“That was an interesting piece of film,” the anchor said to her.
“I understand you've been an insider on this
investigation.”

“Yes, I have,” Brenda said. “In fact-”

And at that instant, Gary crept up behind Brenda and tapped her
on the shoulder.

“I have to talk to you,” he said. “I had a headache, so I went
to my bedroom to lay down, and I had another one of those dreams.
You know, the big pizza dream. Only this time, the pizza was
pepperoni and black olives, and it was very disturbing because it
could fly! I saw it flying through the air.”

Brenda rolled her eyes. “Gary, how many times have I told you to
go home? Have you stopped your medication again?”

The anchor was on his feet. “How did he get in here? Who is
he?”

“I'm her cousin on our Grammy Mim's side,” Gary told
him.

The anchor had his hand waving in the air.
“Security!”

“You have to beware of the big pizza!” Gary said to Brenda.
“It's not an ordinary pizza, and it's out to get you. And it might
be when you're sitting on the toilet on Route 1.”

“I swear,” Brenda said. “You are such a nut.”

Two uniformed guards appeared on the set and the station went to
commercial.

“That was primo,” Mooner said. “The dude was, like, a real
celebrity stalker. And the white hair is a good look for him. Au
courant but raging retro. Like totally Warhol.”

Morelli cut his eyes to me. “The really scary part of all this
is I'm starting to understand Mooner.”

“Just think of it as learning a foreign language,” I said to
Morelli. “Pretend you're visiting the Republic of
Moon.”

We finished the subs, potato salad, and coleslaw, Mooner sang
happy birthday to Ken, and we dug into the cake.

We ate half a cake and the phone rang.

“I'm at the police station bonding out Gary-the-Stalker,” Connie
said.

“Someone needs to take him somewhere and get him to shut up
about the big pizza before he gets carted away and shot full of
Thorazine. And it's not me, because I'm late for JoAnn Garber's
baby shower.”

“I'll come get him. How do you want to do this?”

“I'll take him with me, and we'll make the switch at the
firehouse,” Connie said.

“I'm on it.”

I TOOK POSSESSION of Gary fifteen minutes later.

“How did you get to the television station?” I asked
him.

“I drove. I followed Brenda from her hotel. I tried to talk to
her before she got into the car, but she was moving too fast. And
then she parked in a special lot at the station, and I couldn't get
in. So I had to find a place on the street, and then it wasn't easy
getting into the building. I had to climb in through a window in
the back.”

“Most people would leave a message on Brenda's cell
phone.”

“I'm not most people.”

No kidding.

“And she keeps changing her number,” Gary said.

“Because she doesn't want you bothering her?”

“She's very brave. And she doesn't want to
impose.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that you might be
delusional?”

“That's what the psychiatrist said, but I think he's wrong.
There's an evil flying pizza out there, and it's got Brenda's name
on it.”

“I'm assuming your car is still parked on the
street.”

“Yes.”

“I'm going to take you to your car, and then you're going to go
home.”

“Yes.”

“Where is home?”

“Morelli's garage,” Gary said.

“Excuse me?”

“I have a little camper that I tow behind my car. I parked it in
Morelli's garage yesterday, and it's still there.”

“Does Morelli know this?”

“I don't think it ever came up.”

We located his car, he followed me to Morelli's house, and we
both parked at the curb. I got out and looked at his white
Taurus.

“I thought this was a rental,” I said to him. “No one buys a
white Taurus.”

“It matches my hair,” Gary said. “And it's my zodiac
sign.”

It made as much sense as anything else in my life. “Have you had
dinner?”

“No.”

“Prowl through the fridge and make yourself a sandwich. If
you're lucky, there's still some birthday cake
left.”

“Whose birthday?” he asked.

“Ken's.”

I brought him into the house, and he settled in with Zook and
Mooner, so he could lurk. Morelli was in the kitchen loading the
dishwasher.

“I brought Gary back here,” I told him. “He's helping out with
the wood elves.”

“That's a comfort.”

“Yeah, I knew you'd be excited. I had Ranger run a check on
Stanley Zero. I have the printout upstairs. One of us should take a
look at him.”

The phone rang at two in the morning. Morelli came awake first,
a bare arm reaching across me to get at the bedside phone. Not the
first time he'd gotten a call in the middle of the
night.

“Yeah?” he said.

There was a short conversation, and Morelli hung up and flopped
back onto his side of the bed.

“You're not going to believe this,” he said. “On second thought,
it makes perfect sense. That was your friend and mine, supercop
Carl Costanza. He's working a shift with Big Dog, and they got a
report that there were lights in the cemetery. Turns out it was a
bunch of people who all got the idea to dig up Rose. One of them
was your Grandma Mazur.”

“Is she in jail?”

“No. Everyone ran away when Carl and Big Dog drove up, but your
grandmother recognized Carl and told him she needed a ride
home.”

“Omigod.”

“Yeah. Carl said they're bringing her here. She didn't want to
get dropped off at your parents' house in a police car because
people would talk.”

I rolled out of bed, scuffed through the clothes on the floor,
and found what I needed.

Zook was in the hall when I opened Morelli's bedroom door. “I
heard the call,” he said. “Was it about my mom?”

“No. It was about my grandmother. She's having a friend drop her
off here, and then I'm going to give her a ride
home.”

Zook smiled. “I bet she did something bad and she's afraid your
mother will ground her.”

“Close enough,” I said.

I padded downstairs in the dark and looked out the front window.
No police car yet. I walked through the house to the kitchen to get
a bottle of water and checked on the yard. No one digging, but
there was a bar of light under Morelli's garage door. Gary was
still up. Or maybe Gary was afraid of the dark. Lucky for Gary
there was electric in the garage. Unfortunate for Morelli, since he
was paying the bill.

I returned to the living room, and Morelli joined
me.

“You didn't have to get up,” I said to him.

“No way was I going to miss this.”

We saw headlights glide to a stop in front of the house, and we
went out to say hello to Carl and Big Dog.

“Here she is,” Big Dog said to me, opening the door for Grandma.
“Maybe your mother should put a bell around her
neck.”

He looked at Grandma and shook his finger. “No more sneaking out
at night. It's dangerous.”

“Thanks for the ride,” Grandma said. She looked in the car at
Carl. “My regards to your mother.”

Carl smiled and nodded.

“Thanks,” I said to Carl and Big Dog. “I really appreciate
this.”

“We would have hauled her in, but it was too embarrassing,” Big
Dog said. “She was the only one we could catch.”

Morelli waved them off, and I buckled Grandma into the
SUV.

“Where's your shovel?” I asked her.

“I didn't have one. I was just supervising. I went to Elmer
Rhiner's viewing and Marion Barker was there with Bitty Kuleza. And
Marion said she heard Rose was always saying how she was gonna take
her fortune to the grave. And one thing led to another, and it
ended up that we thought it would be a good idea to dig Rose up and
take a look. So Bitty gave me a ride, and we met Marion and her two
grandsons at the cemetery. Her grandsons are real big guys, and
they were doing the digging.”

“That's crazy!”

“Yeah. I don't know what it is about that money, but it's just
got ahold of me. It's a beaut of a mystery.”

Morelli drove the short distance and parked in front of my
parents' house. We watched Grandma sneak in, and we waited a couple
minutes to make sure she didn't sneak back out.

“You should snap me up,” Morelli said. “Not many men would marry
you after meeting your grandmother. You're lucky to have
me.”

I looked over at him. “Is that a proposal?”

There was total silence for a couple beats. “I'm not sure. It
just popped out.”

“Let me know when you're sure.”

“Would you say yes?” Morelli asked.

“I'm not sure.”

“I bet I could convince you it would be a good thing,” Morelli
said. “How about taking a look at my assets?”

Oh good grief.

It took us about twenty minutes in the alley behind the bonds
office to appreciate his assets. When we finally returned to his
house, all the lights were blazing and two squad cars were
angle-parked at his curb. Morelli slid to a stop, and we hit the
sidewalk at a run.

“What's going on?” he said to the cop at the
door.

“Your houseguest heard someone break in and called
911.”

Zook was standing in the hall, hanging on to Bob's collar.
“Right after you left, I heard someone at the back door,” Zook
said. “Bob heard them, too, and he started barking, and he never
barks if it's someone he knows, so I grabbed Bob and brought him
into my room, and then I locked my door and called 911. I put all
my lights off and looked out the window at the backyard, and just
before the first police car showed up, I saw two men run out of the
house and across the yard.”

“What did they look like?” Morelli asked.

“I don't know. Just average. I couldn't see. It was real dark.
But one of them had a shovel.”

“You have forced entry on the back door,” one of the cops said
to Morelli.

“And the basement door was open. Other than that, everything
seems okay.”

After everyone left, Morelli walked through the house, checking
windows and doors. He searched the basement, the closets, all nooks
and crannies and under the beds.

“Tomorrow we get the alarm system up and running,” he
said.

Morelli took his cereal bowl and coffee mug to the sink. “I'm
going to take a look at Stanley Zero this morning. Do you have any
plans?”

“I'm doing laundry.”

“That's pretty exciting.”

“I'm washing sheets,” I told him.

Morelli slid an arm around me and kissed my neck. “I love when
you talk about sheets.”

Now, here's the thing I like about Morelli. There's a lot of
variety to his sexiness. He can be hot, he can be funny, he can be
loving, he can be short on time and hungry. This morning, he was
playful.

“Would you like to know what I'm going to do to you tonight when
you slide between those sheets?” I asked him.

The depth of his eyes instantly changed, and he left playful
behind. “Yeah,” he said. “I'd like to know.”

“You have to wait.”

“I'm not good at waiting.”

“No kidding!”

Morelli broke out in a wide grin. “Have I just been
insulted?”

“Only a little. Did you get the background report on Zero? I
left it on your desk.”

“Got it. Thanks. Keep your eyes open here.”

“You betcha.”

Ten minutes after Morelli left, Zook shuffled down the stairs
and into the kitchen. He helped himself to a bagel and took it into
the living room.

Moments later, Gary was at the back door. “I thought I smelled
coffee.”

I pointed to the coffeepot. “Help yourself.”

He looked at the bag of bagels sitting on the
counter.

“Would you like a bagel?” I asked him.

“Yeah! That would be great.”

Morelli was going to have to find the nine million and take a
cut just to pay his electric and food bills.

Sunday mornings are quiet in the Burg and surrounding
communities. The women go to church, and the men take the Sunday
paper and sit on the can. I've never understood the attraction of
sitting on a toilet, pants at your ankles, newspaper in hand. I
could think of a million better places to read the
paper.

And yet this is a firmly adhered-to Sunday ritual for Burg
husbands. My father couldn't imagine a Sunday morning without this
quality bathroom experience.

Unmarried men seem to be exempt.

After Morelli's car left his neighborhood, there was no more
street traffic.

No dogs were walked. No kids on skateboards. Just Sunday morning
quiet. And that's why it was twice as startling when the brick
sailed through Morelli's living room window.

Zook and Gary were on the couch, deep into the world of
Minionfire, I was walking through the living room, on my way to
collect the laundry, and the glass shattered. We all jumped and
there was a collective gasp of surprise.

Jelly's apartment explosion and fire were still fresh in my
mind. I looked at the brick, which had a small box attached, and my
first thought was bomb. I rushed over, picked the brick up, and
threw it back outside via the broken window.

Gary and Zook were frozen on the couch, eyes huge, mouths open.
I went to the front door and looked out. The brick was just sitting
there on Morelli's postage-stamp lawn. The box attached to the
brick looked small to be a bomb, but heck, what do I know? I
watched it for a couple minutes and cautiously crept out to take a
closer look. I was standing there, looking at the brick, when
Mooner strolled up and stood next to me.

“Whoa,” Mooner said. “That's a brick.”

“Yep.”

He bent down to see it better. “It's got a box attached to
it.”