SIXTEEN

Grandma was waiting at the door when we got to the house.

"Mr. Coglin isn't here yet," she said.

Morelli let Bob off the leash, and Bob ran into the kitchen to say hello to my mother. I heard my mother shriek and then all was quiet.

"He must have eaten something/' Grandma said. "I hope it wasn't the cake."

The house smelled good, like Italian spices in marinara sauce and garlic bread in the oven. The dining room was set for six. Two bottles of red wine on the table, a bowl of grated ParmigianoReggiano. My father was asleep in front of the television, and I could hear my mother working in the kitchen, talking to Bob.

"Be a good boy, and I'll give you a little lasagna," she said to Bob.

I followed Grandma into the kitchen and looked around for Bob damage. "What did he eat?" I asked my mother. "It was almost the cake, but I caught him in time."

I went to the stove and stirred the extra sauce cooking in the pan. I love being in my mothers kitchen. It is always warm and steamy and filled with activity. In my mind, I have a kitchen like this. The cabinets are filled with dishes that actually get used. The pots sit out on the stove, waiting for the days sauces and soups and stews. The cookbook on the counter is dogeared and splattered with grease and gravy and icing smudges.

This is a fantasy kitchen, of course. My actual kitchen has dishes, but I eat standing over the sink, paper towel in hand. I have a single pot that is only used to boil water for tea when I have a cold. And I don't own a cookbook.

Sometimes, I wanted to marry Morelli so I'd have a kitchen like my mom's. Then, other times, I worried that I couldn't pull it off, and I'd have a husband and three kids, and we'd all be eating takeout standing over the sink. I guess there are worse things in the world than takeout, but in my mother's kitchen, takeout feels a little like failure.

The doorbell chimed and Grandma took off like a shot.

"I've got it!" she yelled. "I've got the door."

My mother had the hot lasagna resting on the counter. The bread was still in the oven. It was three minutes to six. If the food wasn't on the table in eight minutes, my mother would consider everything to be ruined. My mother operates on a tight schedule. There is a small window of opportunity for perfection in my mother's kitchen.

We all went into the living room to greet Carl Coglin.

"This here's Carl Coglin," Grandma announced. "He's a taxidermist, and he got the best of the cable company."

"Those fuckers," my father said.

"I brought you a present for being so nice and watching my house," Coglin said to Grandma. And he handed her a big box.

Grandma opened the box and hauled out a stuffed cat. It was standing on four stiff legs, and its tail looked like a bottlebrush. Like maybe the cat had been electrocuted while standing in the rain.

"Ain't that a pip!" Grandma said. "I always wanted a cat."

My mother turned white and clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Holy crap," my father said. "Is that son of a bitch dead?"

"His name is Blackie," Coglin said.

"He won't explode, will he?" Grandma asked.

"No," Coglin said. "He's a pet."

"Isn't this something," Grandma said. "This is about the best present I ever got."

Bob came in, took one look at Blackie, and ran off to hide under the dining room table.

"Goodness," my mother said, "look at the time. Lets eat. Everyone take a seat. Here, let me pour the wine." My mother poured herself a tumbler and chugged it down. It took a couple beats to hit her stomach, and then the color started to come back into her face.

Grandma dragged an extra chair to the table so Blackie could eat with us. Blackie had closeset eyes, one higher in his head than the other, giving him a pissedoff, slightly deranged expression. He peered over the edge of the table, one eye focused on Morelli and one eye on his water glass.

Morelli burst out laughing, I gave him an elbow, and he bowed his head and sunk his teeth into his lower lip to gain some selfcontrol. His face turned red, and he started to sweat with the effort.

Bob growled low in his throat and pressed himself against my leg.

"I'm not eating with a dead cat at the table," my father said.

Grandma put her hands over Blackie s ears. "You'll hurt his feelings," she said to my father.

"Just shoot me," my father said. "Morelli, give me your gun."

My mother was on her third glass of wine. "Honestly, Frank," she said. "You're such a drama queen."

Morelli s phone buzzed, and he excused himself to take the call.

I grabbed his shirt when he stood. "If you don't come back, I'll find you, and it won't be pretty."

Minutes later, he returned, leaning close to me. "That was Ranger. He has Dickie, and he's drugged but okay. He was being held in Dave's apartment. I don't know any more details. Ranger's taking Dickie to RangeMan. I said we'd be over when we were done here."

"Carl said he would teach me taxidermy," Grandma said.

"I was gonna take up bowling, but now I'm thinking taxidermy might be the way to go. Carl said I could do my taxidermy right here in the kitchen."

My mother s fork fell out of her hand and clattered onto her plate.

Dickie was in a holding cell at RangeMan. He was stretched out on a cot with an ice bag on his face. We were looking at him through a oneway window in the door.

"I didn't know you had holding cells," I said to Ranger.

"We like to think of them as private rooms," Ranger said.

"Why s he got the ice bag?"

"To keep the swelling down on his broken nose. Its not a bad break. We put a BandAid on it and gave him some Advil. Apparently, they had to encourage him to talk."

"Anything else wrong with him?"

"Yeah, lots of things," Ranger said, "but not from the time spent with Dave. They gave him something to keep him quiet. We won't get much information out of him until it works its way through his system. We can keep him here until he comes around, but we can't keep him against his will beyond that."

"You might as well unload him on me now," Morelli said. "I'm going to get stuck with him eventually anyway."

"I'll have him brought to your house. We'll bring him in through the back."

"What about Dave?" I asked Ranger. "Never saw Dave. Dickie was alone in the apartment. They had him chained up in the bathroom. We set an alarm off when we went in, so it's likely Dave won't return. I left a man in the area just in case. I did a fast search of the apartment, but didn't find anything that would tell us where Petiak is hiding. We didn't wait for the police."

Ranger walked us down to the parking garage.

'What do you want to do about Stephanie?" Ranger asked Morelli. "She can't go back to her apartment. Do you want to leave her here, or do you want her with you?"

"I don't see her living in the same house as Dickie," Morelli said to Ranger. "Can you be trusted with her?"

"No," Ranger said. "Not for a second."

"Good grief," I said. "I won't stay with either of you. I'll stay with Lula or my parents. I need to go after Diggery tonight anyway."

"So tell ME again what's going on," Lula said.

We were in her Firebird in front of RangeMan, and Binkie was at idle behind us.

'We're going after Diggery," I said. "Stanley Berg was buried this morning in a nice new suit and a diamond pinkie ring."

"I'll drive you to the cemetery, but I'm not walking around with you. I'm staying in my car. There's a full moon out tonight. That cemetery is probably full of werewolves and all kinds of shit."

I looked out the windshield. "I don't see a moon."

"Its behind the clouds. Just 'cause you can't see it don't mean it isn't there. The werewolves know it's there."

"Okay, fine. Wait in the car. Leave the window cracked so you can call the police if you hear me screaming."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Lula said. "I swear, you're a crazy person. You go around up to your eyeballs in snakes and dead people and exploding beavers. It's just not normal. Even when I was a 'ho, my life wasn't that freaky. Only thing normal about you is your hot boyfriend, and you don't know what the heck to do with him. To make matters worse, you got that spook Ranger sniffing after you. Not that anyone wouldn't want him sniffing after them. I mean, he is finer than fine. But he's not normal."

"Sometimes he seems normal."

"Girl, you aren't paying attention. He is way better than normal."

Lula pulled up to the gate leading in to the cemetery and stopped. "I can't go no further," Lula said. "This sucker's closed to traffic at night."

"I'll go the rest of the way on foot," I told her.

"You got a flashlight?"

"I can't use a flashlight. I can't take a chance on Diggery seeing me."

"This is nuts," Lula said. "I can't let you go out there by yourself. You don't even got a gun."

"Binkie will go with me."

"Binkie don't look like the sharpest tack on the corkboard. I can't turn you over to Binkie. Honest to goodness, we should all be at home watching television, working our way through a bag of chips, but no, we're out in a boneyard. The way things are going, we probably find Diggery, and he got his snake with him."

I got out of the Firebird and walked back to Binkie.

"I'm after an FTA who sidelines as a grave robber," I said to Binkie. "I have reason to believe he'll be here tonight."

Binkie looked at the pitchblack cemetery. "Oh jeez."

I understood Binkie s reluctance to traipse through the cemetery. At first glance, it was kind of creepy, but I'd chased Diggery through this cemetery before at night and lived to tell about it. What I've discovered with my job is that there's a difference between being brave and being stupid. In my mind, bungee jumping is stupid. Stalking an FTA in a cemetery at night doesn't seem to me to be all that stupid, but the creep factor is moderate to high, so it requires some bravery. And I've found I can sometimes force myself to be brave. Usually, the bravery is accompanied by nausea, but hell, it's not a perfect world, right?

"You can wait here," I said to Binkie.

Binkie opened his door and stepped out. "No way. Ranger'll kill me if anything happens to you. I'm not supposed to let you out of my sight."

Lula came over and checked Binkie out. He was in RangeMan SWAT black with a loaded utility belt, and he stood a full foot taller than Lula.

"You got silver bullets in that Glock you're carrying?" Lula asked.

"No, ma'am."

"Too bad, on account of this place is probably full of werewolves tonight, and you need silver bullets to get rid of those bad boys. And we should probably have garlic and crosses and shit. You got any of those?"

"No, ma'am."

"Hunh," Lula said.

I set out, walking down the private road that led into the cemetery. It was an old cemetery that sprawled over maybe fifty acres of low, rolling hills. It was laced with paths leading to family plots that held generations of hardworking people laid to rest. Some of the headstones were elaborately carved and worn by time and weather, and some were flat pieces of recently polished granite.

"Where are we going?" Lula wanted to know. "I can't hardly see anything."

"The Bergs are just ahead on the left. They're halfway up the hill."How far on the left? It all looks the same."

"They're behind the Kellners. Myra Kellner has an angel carved at the top of her marker."

"I don't know how you remember these things," Lula said. "Half the time, you get lost in

Quakerbridge parking lot, but you know where the Kellners and Bergs live in this graveyard."

"When I was little, I used to come here with my mother and grandmother. My relatives are buried here."

I used to love the cemetery excursions. The family plot, like my mother's kitchen, is tended by women.

"This is your GreatAunt Ethel," Grandma Mazur would say to my sister, Valerie, and me. "Ethel was ninetyeight years old when she died. She was a pip. She loved a good cigar after dinner. And Ethel played the accordion. She could play 'Lady of Spain' by heart. Her sister Baby Jane is buried next to her. Baby Jane died young. She was only seventysix when she died. She choked on a kielbasa. She didn't have no teeth. Used to gum all her food, but I guess you can't gum kielbasa so good. They didn't know the Heimlich in those days. And here's your Uncle Andy. He was the smart one. He could have gone to college, but there was no money for it. He died a bachelor. His brother Christian is next to him. Nobody really knows how Christian died. He just woke up dead one day. Probably, it was his heart."

Valerie and I had every square inch of our plot committed to memory, but it was part of the experience to have Grandma point out GreatAunt Ethel. Just as it was part of the experience to go exploring in the tombstone forest while my mother and grandmother planted the flowers. Val and I visited the Hansens and the Krizinskis and the Andersons on the top of the hill. We knew them almost as well as GreatAunt Ethel and Baby Jane. We planted lilies for Easter and geraniums for the Fourth of July. In the fall, we'd visit just to clean things up and make sure all was right with the family.

I stopped going to the cemetery when I was in junior high. Now I only go for a funeral or to chase down Simon Diggery. My mother and grandmother still go to plant the lilies and geraniums. And now that my sister has moved back to the Burg with her three girls, I'm sure they'll help plant the lilies this year and listen to Grandma talk about Ethel.

"Here s an angel," Lula said, stepping off the path, heading uphill. "Excuse me," she said, walking on graves. "Sorry. Excuse me."

Binkie was silent behind me. I turned and looked at him, and he had his hand on his gun. I wasn't sure what he thought he might have to shoot.

"Simon Diggery isn't usually armed with anything other than a shovel," I told Binkie. "Lula and I have done this before. We'll get to the grave site and find a place to hide. Then we'll let Simon dig himself into a hole. It makes the apprehension easier."

"Yes, ma'am," Binkie said.

"I hate being ma'am," I told him. "Call me Stephanie."

"Yes, ma'am, Stephanie."

"I'm at the top of the hill, and I don't see no freshdug grave," Lula said.

"Are you sure you turned at Kellner?"

"I turned at the angel. I don't know about Kellner."

I squinted into the darkness. Nothing looked familiar.

"Is that rain I feel?" Lula asked. "It wasn't supposed to rain, was it?"

"Chance of showers," I told her.

"That's it," she said. "I'm going home. I'm not being out here in the rain. I'm wearing suede." Lula looked around. "Which way's home?"

I didn't know. It was pitch black, and I was all turned around.

"We can't go wrong if we go downhill," Lula said, taking off. "Oops, excuse me. So sorry. Excuse me."

It was raining harder and the ground was getting slick underfoot.

"Slow down," I said to Lula. "You can't see where you're going."

"I got Xray vision. I'm like a cat. Don't worry about me. I just gotta get this coat out of the rain. I can see there's a tent ahead."

A tent? And then I saw it. The grounds crew had erected a tarp over a hole dug for a morning burial.

"I'm just waiting under this tent until the rain lets up," Lula said, rushing forward.

"No!"

Too late.

"Whoops," Lula said, disappearing from view, landing with a loud whump.

"Help!" she yelled. "The mummy got me."

I looked down at her. "Are you okay?"

"I think I broke my ass."

She was about six feet down in a coffinsized hole. The sides were steep and the surrounding dirt was fast turning into mud.

"We have to get her out of here," I said to Binkie.

"Yes, ma'am. How?"

"Do you have anything in the car? Rope?"

Binkie looked around. "Where's the car?"

I had no idea.

I flipped my cell phone open and called Ranger.

"We're in the cemetery and we're lost," I said to him. "Its raining and its dark and I'm cramping. I've got the transmitter thingy in my pocket. Can you get a bead on us?" There were a couple beats of silence. "Are you laughing?" I asked him. "You'd better not be laughing."

"I'll be right there," Ranger said.

"Bring a ladder."

We were a ragtag group, standing in the rain at the cemetery gates. Ranger and two of his men fading into the night in their black rain gear, Lula headtotoe mud, and Binkie and me soaked to the skin.

"I feel funky," Lula said. "I got graveyard mud on me." She had her car keys in her hand. "Do you need a ride somewhere?" she asked me.

"I'm good," I said to her.

Lula got into her car and drove off. Binkie left and Rangers men got into their SUV and left.

"Just you and me," Ranger said. "What's the plan?"

"I want to go to Morelli s house. I want to be there when Dickie starts talking."

Thirty minutes later, Ranger walked me to Morelli s back door and handed me over.

"Good luck," Ranger said to Morelli. "You might want to hide your gun."

And Ranger left.

Morelli brought me into the kitchen. "Diggery?" he asked.

"Never saw him. We got lost in the cemetery and had to get Ranger to track us down. I need a shower."

I slogged upstairs to the bathroom, locked myself in, and stripped. I stood in the shower until I was all warmed up and squeaky clean. I ran a comb through my hair, wrapped a towel around myself, and shuffled into Morelli s bedroom.

Morelli was in the middle of the room looking like he wanted to do something but wasn't sure where to begin. Bed linens and clothes were in a crumpled mess on the floor, and there were empty beer bottles, plates, and silverware on all surfaces.

"This isn't good," I said to him.

"You have no idea what this has been like. I hate this guy. I hide in my room. I'd like to hit him, but it isn't allowed. He eats all my food. He controls the television. And he's always talking, talking, talking. He's everywhere. If I don't lock my door, he just walks in."

"Is he still drugged?"

"Yeah. I'd like to keep him that way."

"Do I have any clothes here?"

"Some underwear. I think it's mixed in with mine."

I found the underwear and borrowed a Tshirt. I located some clean sheets and made the bed.

"This is nice," Morelli said. "I knew the room needed something, but I couldn't figure out what. It was sheets."

"Stick a fork in me," I said, crawling into bed.

Seventeen

I woke up to someone banging on the bedroom door and Morelli in bed next to me with the pillow over his face. I took the pillow off Morelli. 'What's going on?"

"If I go out there, I'll kill him," Morelli said.

I crawled out of bed, toed through the clothes on the floor, and located a pair of sweatpants that looked fairly clean. I stepped into the sweats and rolled them at the waist. I was still in Morelli s Tshirt. Didn't bother to brush my hair. I opened the door and looked out at Dickie. He had two black eyes and a BandAid on his nose.

"Yeah?" I said.

"Jesus," he said. '"What are you doing here? The nightmare never ends."

Good thing for him I didn't have a staple gun.

'How did I get here? Last thing I remember I was kidnapped," Dickie said.

"Go downstairs and look for breakfast. We'll be right down."

I turned and bumped into Morelli, who was standing behind me, naked. What is it with men that they can walk around like that? I could barely get naked to take a shower.

"No clothes?" I asked him.

"You're wearing my last almostclean sweats."

"Underwear?"

"None. I need to do laundry. Dickie's been wearing my clothes."

"I'm not going downstairs with you naked."

Morelli kicked through the clothes and came up with a pair of jeans. I watched him put the jeans on commando, and my nipples got hard.

"I could have these pants off in record time," Morelli said, eyes on my Tshirt.

"No way. Dickie might hear."

"We could be quiet."

"I couldn't concentrate. I'd be imagining Dickie with his ear to the door."

"You have to concentrate?" Morelli asked.

"Hey!" Dickie yelled from the foot of the stairs. "There's no milk."

I followed Morelli down the stairs to the kitchen, where Dickie was eating cereal out of the box.

"There's no milk," Dickie said. "And there's no more orange juice."

"There was orange juice last night," Morelli said.

"Yeah, but I drank it."

Morelli fed Bob and got the coffee going. I looked for something to eat that might not be contaminated with Dickie cooties. I didn't mind sharing a cereal box with Morelli, but I wasn't going to eat from something Dickie had just stuck his hand in. God knows where that hand was last.

"Tell me about the key," I said to Dickie.

"What key?"

I glanced at Morelli. "I'm going to hit him."

"I'll close my eyes," Morelli said. "Tell me when it's over."

"You can't do that," Dickie said. "You're supposed to protect me. Especially from her. You do one little thing wrong with her and the Italian temper comes out. And God forbid you come home late for dinner/'

"Four hours!" I said. "You'd come home four hours late for dinner, and you'd have grass stains on your knees and your shirt caught in your zipper."

"I don't remember that part," Dickie said. "Did I used to do that?"

"Yes."

Dickie started laughing. "I wasn't making a lot of money back then. I couldn't afford a hotel room."

"It's not funny!" I said.

"Sure it is. Grass stains and rug burns are always funny." He looked over at Morelli. "She didn't like to do doggy."

Morelli slid a look at me and smiled. There wasn't much I didn't like to do with Morelli. Okay, a few things, but they involved animals and other women and body parts that weren't designed for fun.

"What?" Dickie said. "What's that smile? Oh man, are you telling me she does doggy with you?"

"Leave it alone," Morelli said.

"Is it good? Does she bark? Do you make her bark like a dog?"

"You need to stop," Morelli said. "If you don't stop, I'm going to make you stop."

"Arf, arf, arf!" Dickie said.

Morelli gave his head a small shake, like he didn't fucking believe he had Dickie in his kitchen. And then he grabbed Dickie by his Tshirt and threw him halfway across the room. Dickie hit the wall spreadeagle like Wile E. Coyote in a Road Runner cartoon, and the cereal flew out of the box. Bob came running from the living room and snarfed up the cereal.

"What's that about?" Dickie asked, struggling to get to his feet.

"Trying to get your attention."

I handed Morelli a cup of coffee. "Ask him about the key."

"I'm telling you I don't know anything about a key," Dickie said.

"Let me refresh your memory," I said to him. "You left the safety of this house and went straight to my apartment, where you were caught on camera breaking in and searching for something. Later that day, I got a call from a guy who wanted the key."

"So?"

"So I know there's forty million dollars out there. I know everyone wants it. And I know someone thinks I have the key. And unless I can figure this out, I'm going to get barbecued like Smullen and Gorvich."

"Let's start from the beginning and build up to the key," Morelli said. "How did you meet Smullen and Gorvich and Petiak?"

"I met Petiak at a financialplanning conference. We got to be friends, and he introduced me to Smullen and Gorvich. I'd just been passed over for partnership, and I could see the handwriting on the wall. Office politics weren't in my favor. So I was looking at options. Petiak had money and clients but no ability to litigate if the need should arise. He suggested we go into business together, and I agreed. I knew his client list was questionable, but I thought I could live with it."

"Smullen and Gorvich?"

"We needed more money to buy the building, and Petiak knew Smullen and Gorvich from a previous life, and he knew they were looking for a place to practice. It was all a con, of course. They were always the unholy triad. At some level, I suspected this, but I had no idea how unholy they actually were. I was desperate to be a partner somewhere and get my own business established, so I didn't look at anything too closely."

Dickie shook the cereal box and turned it upside down. Empty. "I'm hungry," he said. "This was the last of the cereal. And I want coffee."

"Help yourself to the coffee," Morelli said.

"I need cream. I can't drink black coffee."

Morelli looked like he was going to throw him against the wall again.

"I'll go to the store," I said.

Not so much as a favor to Dickie. More because I needed cream for my coffee too.

"I want to go with you," Dickie said. "I'm tired of being cooped up in this house."

"I can't take a chance on having you recognized," Morelli said. "If Petiak or one of his idiots spots you in my car, we'll blow our cover."

"I can wear a hat," Dickie said.

"Put him in a hooded sweatshirt," I told Morelli. "He can put the hood up and slouch down. I need food."

Morelli got a hooded sweatshirt off the living room floor and tossed it to Dickie. "I'm going with you," Morelli said. "Give me a minute to find clothes."

My socks had dried, but my shoes were still wet. I grabbed a jacket from Morelli's hall closet and put a ball cap on my head.

We all skulked out to the SUV parked in the back of the house. Dickie rode shotgun, and I got in behind him. Morelli walked Bob down the alley until Bob did everything he had to do, and then Morelli ran Bob back and put him in the cargo area.

Morelli went south to Liberty Street and pulled into a strip mall that was anchored by a 7Eleven. I took everyone's order, Morelli gave me a wad of cash, and I went shopping. I was on my way out with a bag of food when I spotted Diggery at the other end of the mall, doing taxes out of the back of a beatup Pontiac Bonneville. He had the trunk lid up, and he had a little folding table and two stools set out. There were seven people in line. I handed the bag over to Morelli and walked down to Diggery.

"Oh jeez," he said when he saw me.

"You're up early," I said to him, checking out his fingernails for signs of fresh dirt.

"This here's convenience taxes," Diggery said. "You can pull your pickup in and get your fresh coffee and then come get your taxes done and go off to work."

"I was next," a woman said to me. "You gotta get to the rear of the line."

"Chill," I told her. "I'm wanted for murder, and I'm not in a good mood."

"Here's the thing," Diggery said to me. "I know it's not a big deal to go get bonded out again, but it's gonna cost me more money, and I don't have it. I had to buy winter coats for the kids and rats for the snake. If you let me finish my tax business, I'll come with you. I'll have money from the taxes. Tell you what, you cut me some slack here, and I'll do your taxes. No charge."

"How much longer do you need?"

"Two weeks."

"I really could use some help with my taxes."

"Just put your pertinent information in a shoe box and bring it all to me. I'll be able to fit you in next Monday. I'll be at CluckinaBucket on Hamilton Avenue between ten and twelve at night."

"What was that about?" Morelli asked when I got back to the SUV.

"Simon Diggery doing taxes. He said he needed the money to buy rats for the snake, so I let him go."

"That's my girl," Morelli said. He flipped a bagel back to Bob and took us home.

I'd gotten bagels, doughnuts, cream cheese, milk, orange juice, bread, and a jar of peanut butter. Dickie chose a bagel and loaded it up with cream cheese. Morelli and I ate doughnuts.

"Talk while you eat," Morelli said to Dickie. "You went into business with Smullen, Gorvich, and Petiak. Then what?"

"It was all looking good. We bought the building, and then we were doing well, so we made some other real estate investments. Petiak and Gorvich both had home offices and I only saw them at the offsite Monday meetings. Fine by me. I always thought Petiak was a little creepy. He has this quiet way of talking, choosing his words as if English is his second language. And there's something about his eyes. Like light goes in but doesn't come out. And Smullen had ties to South America, so I saw him sporadically. It was a little like having my own firm. I had my own clients and my own staff. There were four names on the stationery, but I was usually the only partner in the building."

Morelli refilled his coffee and topped off my coffee and Dickie s. "What went wrong?"

"It was Ziggy Zabar, the accountant. He figured out what was really going on, and he wanted to get paid off."

"And what was really going on?" Morelli asked.

"It s actually very clever," Dickie said. "They were using the law firm to launder money. Petiak was a military guy until he got booted out for something probably insanity. Anyway, he was a supply officer. Worked in a depot and had access to all the munitions. And he saw a way to tap into these depots all across the country and move munitions out of the depots into his private warehouse."

"The warehouse on Stark Street?"

"Yes. Next comes Peter Smullen. Smullen is married to a woman from a cartel family. Smullen has contacts all over South America. These contacts have dope but need guns, so Smullen takes the dope, and Petiak delivers the guns. The last piece to the puzzle is Gorvich. Gorvich is the drug dealer. He gets the stuff from Smullen and packages it up and distributes it. Now comes the good part. The money Gorvich takes in for drug sales is recorded as payment for legal services. It gets deposited in the firm s account and is sanitized."

Morelli took another doughnut. "So Petiak smuggles guns off government property, stores them in your warehouse, and then ships them off to South America. The cartel pays for the guns with drugs. The drugs gets shipped to Trenton, probably to the warehouse, where they're packaged and sold to local dealers. And the dealers pay for the dope in billable hours."

"Yep," Dickie said. "Genius, right?"

"Not exactly. Zabar figured it out."

"Well, it was good in theory," Dickie said. "It would make a good movie."

'Where do you fit in all this?"

"I was the token real lawyer in the firm. I was supposed to give them some legitimacy. The only reason I know anything is because Smullen made a phone call from his office and I happened to be in the hall. He was on speakerphone talking to Petiak, and they were making plans to pull all the money out of the firm and disappear. Petiak said there was no rush. He said Zabar was taken care of and wasn't going to make any more problems. This was Tuesday morning, after the Monday partners' meeting that Zabar was supposed to attend. Smullen said if Zabar could figure it out, there were others in the accounting firm that could do the same thing. Petiak agreed but said they had to give Gorvich two weeks to transact business."

Bob came in and sat at Morelli s feet.

"You ate your bagel in the car," Morelli said to Bob. "You'll get fat if you eat another bagel."

Bob heaved himself to his feet and padded back to the living room.

"Was this when you cleaned out the Smith Barney account?" Morelli asked.

"Not right away. I didn't know what to make of it. My worst fear had always been that one of Gorvich's drug dealers would walk in and shoot up the office. I knew our client list was scary. A conspiracy never occurred to me."

"You must have known they were all from Sheepshead."

"Everyone has a circle of professionals they tap into when the need arises."

"They bought their degrees on the Internet," I said to Dickie.

"At the time, I didn't care. I didn't have the resources to make a success on my own, so I was willing to do some denial to get a partnership."

"Why didn't you go to the police when they killed Ziggy Zabar?"

"I didn't know they killed Zabar. Petiak said he took care of him. That could have meant anything. Later in the week, the police came asking if Zabar had attended the meeting, but even then I still thought he was just missing. Petiak could have paid him off, and Zabar could have gone to Rio. Anyway, have you seen Petiak? He's not a guy you could walk up to and ask if he killed your accountant." Dickie pushed back in his chair. "You need a television in here. How can you have a kitchen without a television?"

"I manage," Morelli said. "So what I'm supposed to believe is that you heard a phone conversation suggesting your partners were going to take your money and run and you didn't do anything?"

"I didn't confront them, if that's what you mean. These are guys who have professional hit men on their client list. I represent Norman Wolecky. I backed out of the hall without making a sound, and when the building emptied out for the night, I went through all the financial records, and I found out how much money we had at Smith Barney. I knew from the phone conversation that something illegal had gone down, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I thought it was probably something like tax evasion. If it was tax evasion, I knew I was fucked. I signed the returns just like everybody else. What was pissing me off was that they were going to take the money and leave me behind to take the fall. I was sitting on this information, waiting for someone to come to me, and no one did. So Friday afternoon, I went to Joyce's house so no one would hear me, and I cleaned out the Smith Barney account. It was easy. All four of us have our own password to access the account. My plan was to wait for the Monday meeting. If they didn't say anything to me at the Monday meeting, I was going to leave the country and enjoy my forty million. Screw Smullen, Gorvich, and Petiak. My mistake was that I didn't leave soon enough. Smullen found out about the withdrawal and sent the goon patrol to my house Monday night."

"You still could have fled," I said to him. "Why did you hang around?"

"To begin with, I didn't have a passport. It was in my house, and my house was filled with cops. And then when I went back to my house, my passport was missing. I know there are ways to get a fake passport, but I'm not James Bond. I don't know how to go about getting a fake passport, and the thought of using one scares the crap out of me. I get nervous when I have to take my shoes off at the airport. I'm innocent and I feel guilty. What am I going to do when I'm actually guilty?

"So I put myself in a cheap motel in Bordentown until I could come up with a plan. I'm not talking to anyone. Not even Joyce. Okay, maybe phone sex, but that was it. And then I'm watching television, and the local news comes on, and they're talking about how Zabar, the accountant, washed up on the banks of the Delaware. Now I know Petiak killed Zabar. This is serious shit. This isn't just income tax evasion, this is also murder.

"Time to get out of Dodge, I tell myself. If I can't go to an island and lose myself, I can at least go to Scottsdale. Unfortunately, it turns out I can't get to the money. Now I'm really in a bind. I have no more cash in my pocket, and I'm afraid to use a credit card and have it traced. I get to thinking about the warehouse and the apartment building the firm owns, and I wonder if I can hang out there for just a couple days until I can locate the money. I go to the apartment building, and it's in use. Full. No empty apartments. Then I go to the warehouse, and I see Gorvich in the parking lot talking to Eddie Aurelib. Two of Aurelio's soldiers are standing watch at parade rest by Aurelio's Lincoln. It's like a scene out of The Godfather. I don't know a whole lot about the Trenton drug scene, but I know Aurelio is bigtime mob.

"I drove past the warehouse and got on Route One and kept going until Princeton. I stopped at a Starbucks and tried to get my heart rate down over a latte. Decaf. I didn't know what the hell was going on, but I was running out of options until I could get the money. So I called the police and told them about Gorvich and Aurelio and Gorvich's client list, and about Smullen and Petiak taking care of Zabar the accountant. I told them I'd testify to all this, but they had to put me someplace safe. And I told them I only trusted Morelli. So here I am."

"Why Morelli?"

"Because you have the key," Morelli said to me. "He needed to be close to the key. He knew we were seeing each other, and he thought he might catch some stray information. He's been sitting here waiting for another opportunity to retrieve the key. What he didn't realize was that Petiak was staking out your apartment for entirely different reasons."

"Petiak is doing cleanup," Dickie said. "He's getting rid of anyone who looks like a threat. At least, that's the way he tells it. After spending some very scary time with him, my feeling is he's gone gonzo. I think Stephanie popped up on his radar screen and he just wanted to enjoy the experience of taking his flamethrower to her."

"And you gave him more reason, didn't you?" Morelli said.

"He hit me! First that RangeMan gorilla attacked me in the apartment, and then I got kidnapped on the way out of the building. It was traumatic. I was handcuffed, and they rammed me down onto the floor of the car so I couldn't see anything. And then when they dragged me out, I still didn't know where we were. I only knew I was in a twocar garage. No windows. No other cars. There was just the light from the garagedoor opener.

"Petiak was there with his spooky eyes. He didn't say anything to me. I still had my hands locked behind my back, and he hit me in the face. Just like that bam! 'What the fuck was that?' I said to him. That was to let you know I'm serious,' he said. Then he asked me where the forty million was and I said I didn't know. So he hit me again, except that time it wasn't in the face, and I decided to tell him whatever he wanted to know."

"You told him Stephanie had the key."

"I told you. He to me!"

I saw Morelli's eyes turn black, and I felt the air pressure change in the room. I stepped between Morelli and Dickie and put a hand to Morelli's chest.

"You don't want to kill him," I said to Morelli.

"Get out of my way."

"This is complicated enough. And we might need him for something. And you'd have to go before a review board if you kill him."

"I don't get it," Dickie said to Morelli. "What's the big deal here? He already wanted to kill her. It's not like he could kill her twice. Man, you two are a pair. You have angermanagement issues. I hope you're not planning on reproducing. Hate to see a kid with her hair anyway."

I turned to Dickie. 'What's wrong with my hair?"

"It's always a mess. You should get Joyce to help you with it. She has great hair. If you'd been more like Joyce, things might have worked out differently."

After that, things happened pretty fast, and when Morelli pulled me off Dickie, his nose was bleeding again. Someone had knocked Dickie off his chair and gone after him like Wild Woman. I guess that was me. Morelli had me at the waist with my feet two inches off the floor.

"I don't know why I always feel like I have to take care of you," Morelli said to me. "You do such a good job of it all by yourself/'

There was blood splattered across the floor, soaking into Dickie s shirt.

"Crap," I said. "Am I responsible for all that blood?"

"No, he cracked his nose on the table when he panicked and tried to get away from you. If I put you down, do you promise not to go after him again?"

"Forever?"

"No. Just in the next ten minutes."

"Sure."

Morelli got some ice out of the freezer, wrapped it in a towel, and handed it to Dickie. "Do you suppose you could try being a little less obnoxious?" he asked him.

"What'd I do? I'm sitting here minding my own business, trying to be cooperative. Talk to Bitchzilla over there."

I looked at my watch. "Nine minutes," I said to Morelli.

"I've got blood all over my shirt," Dickie said.

Morelli mopped the blood up off the floor with some wadded paper towels. "First of all, it's my shirt. And second, it's still the cleanest shirt we've got until we do laundry."

"Well, for cripes sakes, do the laundry," Dickie said.

"I don't have a washer or dryer, and I can't leave you in the house alone."

"I can take the laundry to my mom's house," I said. "Gather it up for me."

"I want to know the rest of the story first," Morelli said.

Dickie had his head tipped back with the ice pack over his nose. "I'm not talking anymore. I have a headache."

Morelli went to the powder room and got a bottle of Advil. "From what I've heard so far, you didn't know a whole lot about the drugsforarms business. How did you find out about all that?"

"Petiak told me after he hit me. He's on a big nutso ego trip. Had to tell me all the details of his master plan. Even demonstrated his flamethrower. Almost burned the fucking garage down. I gotta admit, the flamethrower is pretty cool. He says he sells a lot of them to the South American drug lords. Apparently scares the bejeezus out of the locals. And I have to tell you, I almost messed myself at the thought of getting it turned on me."

"Why didn't he turn it on you?"

"I imagine he wanted to make sure I was telling the truth about the key. I got stungunned, and I guess injected with something, and next thing I knew, I was back here."

"And the key?" Morelli asked.

"It s actually a key card. It allows the cardholder to access a highsecurity account in Holland from a satellite location here in the States. I have the account numbers memorized and a second set in a safety deposit box, but they aren't any good without the card. Without the card, I have to go to Holland to appear in person and pass a retinal and fingerprint scan. Not an option without a passport."

"Stephanie seems like an odd choice for the key keeper."

"I didn't choose her. She took the key with her when she left my office. The key's in the clock. I wasn't too worried about it because I knew she'd take care of the clock. I figured in some ways it was probably safer than if I'd left it at the office."

"What clock?" Morelli asked.

"Her Aunt Tootsie gave us a desk clock as a wedding present. I was using it in my office, and Sticky Fingers took it on her way out. I went to her apartment twice to look for it and couldn't find it. It's not here either, so I'm assuming it's at her parents' house."

I'd entirely forgotten about the clock. I was mentally scrambling, tracing backward. When did I last see the clock? It was in my bag. Then I stopped at the food store. Put the bags in the back of the car. Put the clock with the bags. Took the bags into the house. Could I have left the clock in the car? I couldn't remember bringing the clock into my apartment.

"You're looking pale," Morelli said. "Like all the blood just drained out of your face. You're not going to faint, are you?"

"I think I left the clock in the car."

"What car?"

"The Crown Vic."

"Where is it now?" Morelli asked.

"I don't know. It broke down on Route one and Ranger had one of his men take care of it."

Dickie took the ice pack off his face. "You lost Aunt Tootsies clock?"

"Its not your money anyway," Morelli said to Dickie. "Its drug money. It belongs to the government. It'll be confiscated."

I called Ranger and asked him about the Crown Vic. He called back three minutes later.

"Binkie had it towed to the salvage yard," Ranger said.

"Which one?"

"Rosollis off Stark."

"How's Tank?"

"Tanks good. He was discharged this morning. Anything I need to know?"

"Yes, but its too complicated to tell you on the phone. I'll be around later. Did you feed Rex breakfast and give him fresh water?"

"That's part of Ella's job description."

I flipped my phone closed. "It's at Rosolli s."

Dickie s eyes got wide. "The junkyard? My God, they'll compress it to the size of a lunchbox."

"I'll call it in," Morelli said. "They'll send someone out to locate the car."

"What about me?" Dickie said. "Do I stay here?"

"Your status hasn't changed," Morelli said. "Until I hear otherwise, you're in protective custody."

"Get me your laundry basket," I said to Morelli. "I need clean clothes. I think I'm starting to mold."