Smokin' Seventeen (6 page)

“There’s something different about you,” Grandma said to me. “You’ve got bangs.”

My mother looked up from the potatoes. “You’ve never had bangs.” She studied me for a beat. “I like them. They bring out your eyes.”

The doorbell rang and my mother and grandmother snapped to attention.

“Someone get the door,” my father yelled.

My father took the trash out, washed the car, and did anything associated with plumbing, but he didn’t get the door. It wasn’t on his side of the division of labor.

“I got my hands full with the meatloaf,” Grandma said.

I blew out a sigh. “I’ll get it.”

If Dave Brewer was too awful I could let him in and just keep right on going, out to my car. The heck with the pudding.

I opened the door and took a step back. Brewer was a pleasant-looking guy with a lot less hair than I remembered. The athletic body he’d had in high school had turned soft around the middle; in direct contrast to Morelli and Ranger who seemed to come into sharper focus as they aged. He was half a head taller than me. His blue eyes had some squint lines at the corners. What was left of his sandy blond hair was trimmed short. He was dressed in black slacks and a blue dress shirt that was open at the neck.

“Stephanie?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“This is awkward.”

“For the record, this wasn’t my idea. I have a boyfriend.”

“Morelli.”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t want to tangle with him,” Brewer said.

I felt my eyebrows go up every so slightly. “But you’re here?”

“I’m temporarily living with my mother,” he said. “She made me come.”

Good grief, I thought, the poor dumb schmuck was worse off than I was.

At one minute to six the food was set on the table, and my father pushed himself out of his chair and headed for the dining room. My father took early retirement from his job at the post office and now drives a cab part-time. He has a couple steady fares that he takes to the train station five days a week, and then he picks his friends up and drives them to the Sons of Italy lodge where they play cards. He’s 5′10″ and stocky. He’s got a lot of forehead and beyond that a fringe of curly black hair. He doesn’t own a pair of jeans, preferring pleated slacks and collared knit shirts from the Tony Soprano collection at JCPenney. He endures my grandmother with what seems like grim resignation and selective deafness, though I suspect he harbors murderous fantasies.

I was seated next to Dave with Grandma across from us. “Isn’t this nice,” Grandma said. “It isn’t every day we get to have a handsome young man at the table.”

My father shoveled in food and murmured something that sounded a little like
just shoot me
. Hard to tell with the meatloaf rolling around in his mouth.

“So what are you doing here in Trenton?” Grandma asked.

“I’m working for my Uncle Harry.”

Harry Brewer owned a moving and storage company. When I moved out of my house after the divorce, I used Brewer Movers.

“Are you moving furniture?” Grandma asked.

“No. I’m doing job estimating and general office work. My cousin Francie use to do it, but she had some words with my uncle, left work, and never came back. So I stepped in to help out.”

Grandma made a sucking sound with her dentures. “Has anyone heard from her?”

“Not that I know.”

“Just like Lou Dugan,” Grandma said.

I knew about Francie, and it wasn’t exactly like Lou Dugan. Francie’s boyfriend was also missing, and when Francie stormed out of the office she took almost $5,000 in petty cash with her. The theory going around is that Francie and her boyfriend were in Vegas.

“Who wants wine?” my mother asked. “We have a nice bottle of red on the table.”

Grandma helped herself to the wine and passed it across the table to Dave. “I bet you and Stephanie have a lot in common being that you went to school together.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nada.”

Dave stopped his fork halfway to his mouth. “There must be something.”

“What?” I asked him.

“A mutual friend.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You played football, and she was a twirler,” Grandma said. “You must have been on the field together.”

“Nope,” I said. “We were on at halftime, and they were in the locker room.”

He turned and looked at me. “Now I remember you. You flipped your baton into the trombone section during ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”

“It wasn’t my fault,” I said. “It was cold and my fingers were frozen. And if you so much as crack a smile over this I’ll stab you with my fork.”

“She’s pretty tough,” Grandma said to Dave. “She’s a bounty hunter, and she shoots people.”

“I don’t shoot people,” I said. “Almost never.”

“Show him your gun,” Grandma said.

I spooned mashed potatoes onto my plate. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to see my gun. Anyway, I don’t have it with me.”

“She’s got just a little one,” Grandma said. “Mine’s bigger. Do you want to see
my
gun?”

My mother poured herself a second glass of wine, and my father gripped his knife so hard his knuckles turned white.

“Maybe later,” Dave said.

“You are
not
supposed to have a gun,” my mother said to my grandmother.

“Oh yeah. I forgot. Okay, I gave the gun away,” Grandma said to Dave. “But it’s a beaut.”

“What about you?” my father asked Dave. “Do you have a gun?”

Dave shook his head. “No. I don’t need a gun.”

“I don’t trust a man who doesn’t own a gun,” my father said, slitty-eyed at Dave, forkful of meatloaf halfway to his mouth.

“I don’t usually agree with my son-in-law,” Grandma said, “but he’s got a point.”

“Do you have a gun?” Dave asked my dad.

“I used to,” my dad said. “I had to get rid of it when Edna moved in. Too much temptation.”

My mother drained her wineglass. “Anyone want more potatoes?” she asked.

“I’ll have another piece of meatloaf,” Dave said.

“The way to good meatloaf is to use lots of ketchup when you’re mixing it up,” Grandma said. “It’s our secret ingredient.”

“I’ll remember that,” Dave said. “I like to cook. I’d like to go to culinary school, but I can’t afford it right now.”

My father stopped chewing for a beat and gave his head an
almost imperceptible shake, as if this sealed the deal on his assessment of Dave Brewer.

“How about you?” Dave asked me. “Do you like to cook?”

Interesting question. He didn’t ask me if I
could
cook. The answer to that was easy. No. I for sure couldn’t cook. Anything beyond a sandwich and I was a mess. The thing is, he asked me if I
liked
to cook. And that was a more complicated question. I didn’t know if I liked to cook. Someone was always cooking for me. My mom, Morelli’s mom, Ranger’s housekeeper, and a bunch of professionals at delis, pizza places, supermarkets, sandwich shops, and fast-food joints.

“I don’t know if I like to cook,” I told him. “I’ve never had reason to try. I wasn’t married long enough to get the stickers off the bottoms of the pots.”

“And then her apartment got firebombed and her cook-book got burned up,” Grandma said. “That was a pip of a fire.”

“That’s too bad,” Dave said. “Cooking can be fun. And you get to eat what you make.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat anything I made.

“We got to get a move on with this dinner,” Grandma said. “Mildred Brimmer is laid out at Stiva’s, and I don’t want to miss anything. Everyone’s going to be talking about Lou Dugan, and I’m going to be the star on account of Stephanie was right on the spot.”

Dave turned to me. “Is that true? I heard they found him buried on the bonds office property.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The backhoe guy uncovered a hand and part of the arm. I wasn’t there when they exhumed the rest of him.”

“I heard they recognized him by his ring,” Dave said.

I nodded. “Morelli spotted it. I’m sure they’ll do more forensic work to be certain.”

“That’s the good part about living in the Burg,” Grandma said. “There’s always something interesting going on.”

We made our way through the dinner in record time, so Grandma could get to her viewing. No one spilled the wine or set the tablecloth on fire by knocking over a candlestick. The conversation was mildly embarrassing, since it was full of not-so-subtle references about Dave and me becoming a couple, but I’d been through far worse.

“Sorry about the matchmaking,” I said to Dave as I showed him to the door after dinner was over.

“By the end of the meal I was almost convinced we were engaged.” He stared down at my cleavage. “I was starting to warm to the idea.” He gave me a polite kiss on the cheek. “Maybe we can be friends. I can give you a cooking lesson.”

“Sure,” I said. “Cooking would be good.”

TEN

FIVE MINUTES LATER
I was in my own car. I had a bag of leftovers on the backseat and Grandma next to me in the passenger seat as I wound my way through the Burg to Stiva’s Funeral Home.

“Dave wasn’t so bad,” Grandma said. “He wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the losers your mother’s dragged home for you. Remember the butcher?”

An involuntary shiver ran down my spine at the thought.

“And I think it’s real nice that Dave knows how to cook,” Grandma said. “It could come in handy for some lucky girl.”

I looked sideways at Grandma.

“Well you could do worse,” she said. “I don’t see you making much progress marrying what you already got on the string.”

“I’m not sure I want to get married.”

“Don’t be a ninny,” Grandma said. “Of course you want to get married. You want to take out your own garbage for the rest of your life? And what about babies?”

“Babies?”

“Sure. Don’t you want babies?”

Truth is, I was pretty happy with a hamster. “Maybe someday,” I said.

I dropped Grandma off at the funeral home and drove back to my apartment. I spotted Morelli’s green SUV parked in my lot, and I pulled up next to him. His truck was empty, and the lights were on in my living room. He’d let himself in. He had a key.

I took the elevator, walked the length of the hall, and Morelli and his dog, Bob, met me at my door. Bob adopted Morelli a while back. Bob’s big and shaggy and red, and he eats
everything
.

“I saw you pull into the lot,” he said. “Nice view from up here.”

Hard to tell if he was referring to me or the bag of leftovers I was holding.

“How did you escape from Uncle Rocco’s party this early?”

“I faked a call from dispatch.” He took the bag, set it on the kitchen counter, and reached out to me. “You’re looking really sexy tonight. I almost fell out the window watching you walk across the parking lot.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t because I was carrying dessert? I could share my pudding with you.”

He wrapped his arms around me and cuddled me into him. “Later.”

“A drink?”

He brushed a kiss across my lips. “Later.”

“So, then what would you like to do?”

“For starters, I’d like to peel this shirt off you. And then I want to see you shimmy out of this little skirt.”

“And the heels?” I asked.

“Leave the heels on.”

Oh boy. “That’s naughty.”

Morelli slid his hands inside my sweater. His eyes were dilated black, and his mouth was soft with just a hint of a smile. “Cupcake, I’m feeling way beyond naughty. We’re going to have to lock Bob out of the bedroom so we don’t corrupt his impressionable mind.”

Five minutes later I was down to the heels, and Morelli was wearing even less. Morelli tends to be playful during foreplay. When the foreplay gives way to more serious action Morelli makes love with a passion not easily forgotten. I was on my back on the bed, and Morelli was finger walking up the inside of my thigh. I had a grip on the sheet, and I think my eyes might have been rolled back into my head in anticipation of what was ahead.

“Do you like this?” he asked.

“Yeessss,” I said, breathless, every muscle in my body clenched.

Morelli kissed me a couple inches below my navel. “It’s about to get better.”

ELEVEN

IT WAS TUESDAY MORNING,
and Lula was giving me her full attention. “Okay, let me figure this out,” she said. “From the goofy smile you got on your face, and the fact you’re not walkin’ all that good, I’d say you spent the night with Morelli.”

The bail bonds bus was still parked on Hamilton, and Lula and Connie were in residence. Vinnie and Mooner were absent. I was on the couch with my hand wrapped around a monster Starbucks.

“He’s the one,” I said. “No doubt about it.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t give no one else a chance yet. There could be something better. You’re already judging the bake off, and you haven’t tasted everyone’s cake.”

“I don’t think I could survive anything better.”

“I’m kind of disappointed,” Lula said. “I was looking forward to hearing about the comparisons.”

Not that I would
give
her comparisons, but I understood wanting to hear them.

“How was your date last night?” I asked her.

“It was a big dud. We went to a movie, and he fell sound asleep, and people were yellin’ at him for snoring. And then the manager came and asked us to leave. And he wouldn’t leave without getting his money back, although I don’t see where it mattered on account of he was sleepin’ through the movie and it wasn’t like he cared about seeing the ending. So the manager called the police, and that was when I left. I don’t want to get involved with no man snores like that anyway. It was like sitting next to a freight train. And it was a pity ’cause I was all set with my boa.”

I looked out the bus window and saw that the crime scene tape was still up and two men in khakis and CSI windbreakers were in the middle of the lot. “What’s going on out there?” I asked Connie.

“I don’t know. They’ve marked off grids and they’re poking around. I guess they want to make sure there aren’t any more bodies. Or maybe they’re collecting evidence. Morelli was here when I came to work and then he left.”

“Did he look happy?” I asked.