14 Fearless Fourteen (13 page)

“Sure,” I said. “I'm at the bonds office. I'll be right
there.”

Morelli's house is minutes from the bonds office. It was close
to noon, and there was no traffic. No kids playing. No dogs
barking. Only Mooner sitting on the small porch, patiently waiting
for me.

I unlocked the door, and Bob galloped over to us. Bob stuck his
snoot into Mooner's crotch and took a sniff.

“Whoa,” Mooner said. “He remembers me. Cool.”

We pushed past Bob and found the computer exactly where Mooner
had left it, on the coffee table.

“When's the little dude get out of school?” Mooner
asked.

“Two-thirty.”

Mooner flopped onto the couch.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Waiting.”

I decided some time ago that Mooner fell into the pet category.
He was like a stray cat that showed up on your doorstep and stayed
for a few days and then wandered off. He was amusing in small
doses, fairly harmless, and for the most part,
housebroken.

I left Mooner on the couch and went to the kitchen to check out
the contents of Morelli's refrigerator. It was noon, and as long as
I was there, I figured I might as well eat. If I'd been in my
house, I would have made a peanut butter sandwich, but this was
Morelli's house and he was a meat guy, so I found deli-sliced ham
and roast beef and Swiss cheese. I made a sandwich for me and a
sandwich for Mooner, and I dragged a big bag of potato chips out of
the cupboard. I put it all on the small kitchen table and called
Mooner in.

“Thanks, Mom,” Mooner said, sitting down, dumping some chips
onto his plate.

“This is, like, excellent.”

I ate half a sandwich, and I realized Bob was at the table, and
he was holding a man's shoe in his mouth. It was a scuffed brown
lace-up shoe, and I didn't recognize it as Morelli's. I looked
under the table at Mooner's feet. Both of them were stuffed into
beat-up sneakers.

“Where'd Bob get the shoe?” I asked.

“He brought it up from the basement,” Mooner said. “The door's
open.”

I turned and looked behind me and, sure enough, the basement
door was open. I got up and cautiously peeked down the stairs.
“Hello?” I called. No one answered. I took the carving knife out of
the butcher-block knife caddy, switched the light on in the
basement, and carefully crept down the stairs and looked
around.

“What's down there?” Mooner wanted to know.

“Furnace, water heater, and a dead guy.”

“Bad juju,” Mooner said.

The dead guy was spread-eagle on his back, eyes wide open, hole
in the middle of his forehead, lots of blood pooling under him,
wearing only one shoe. I didn't recognize him. He looked like he
came out of central casting for a Sopranos episode.

I took a moment to decide if I was going to throw up or faint or
evacuate my bowels. None of those things seemed to be going on, so
I stumbled up to the kitchen, closed the basement door behind me,
and dialed Morelli.

“There's a d-d-dead guy in your b-b-basement,” I told
him.

Silence.

“Did you hear me?” I asked, working hard to control the shaking
in my voice.

“I know this is stupid, but it sounded like you said there was a
dead guy in my basement.”

“Shot in the f-f-forehead. Bob took his shoe and won't give it
b-b-back.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Just you.”

“You know what would be good?” Mooner said when I hung up.
“Coleslaw. I don't suppose you have any coleslaw?”

“No.”

“Just thought I'd ask.”

“Aren't you bothered by the fact that someone was killed in
Morelli's basement?” I asked Mooner.

“Do I know him?”

“I don't know. Do you want to take a look?”

Mooner stood and ambled down the stairs. Moments later, he
strolled back into the kitchen and took a handful of chips. “Don't
know him,” he said, finishing his sandwich, eating his
chips.

I wasn't nearly so calm. I don't like dead people, and I
especially hated that someone was killed in Morelli's house. It
felt unclean and scary and like the house had been
violated.

Mooner had taken a lawn chair from Morelli's backyard and set it
on the sidewalk in front of Morelli's house, so he could watch the
homicide show in comfort. He had a can of soda in one hand and the
potato chip bag in the other, and he was kicked back. There were
several squad cars parked at angles on the street, plus the medical
examiners meat wagon and a couple other assorted cop cars. A clump
of uniforms stood by the meat wagon, talking and laughing. Morelli
was on his porch, the front door to his house open behind him. He
was talking to Rich Spanner, another homicide cop. Spanner had
obviously caught the case. I knew him on a superficial level. He
was an okay guy. He was a couple years older than Morelli and built
like a barrel.

Just minutes ago, they'd carried the victim out in a zippered
bag and stuffed him into the ME's truck. The crime lab guy was
still inside, working.

I was leaning against my car, not wanting to be in the middle of
all the police activity inside the house. Rich Spanner and Morelli
concluded their conversation. Spanner left, and Morelli walked over
to me.

“This is a frigging nightmare,” Morelli said.

“Did you know the dead guy?”

He shook his head. “Not personally. His name is Allen Gratelli.
The address on his license was Lawrenceville. Spanner ran him
through the system, and he has no priors. He worked for the cable
company.”

“So what's his connection to you?”

“Don't know. Was he the guy who ran out of the basement the
other night?”

“Could have been. Seemed like the right size, but I couldn't be
sure. I don't recognize the name. Did Spanner know
him?”

“No. No one knows him. He's nobody”

“Well, somebody knows him, because they killed him in your
basement.”

“Let's review my life,” Morelli said. “I have crazy Dom shooting
at me because he thinks I stole this house out from under him. I
have his nephew living with me. I'm not sure why, except that he
looks a little like me, and the kid's mother is missing. And in the
last three days, I've had my house broken into twice and a guy
killed in my basement. Did I miss anything?”

“Does Mooner count?”

“No.”

“Do you suppose there's a connection between all those people?”
I asked him.

“Yeah, I do. And I think it's all related to the bank job. We
know that four men participated in the robbery. Dom took the fall
and the other three men were never identified, and the money was
never recovered. I'm guessing when we dig around a little, we'll
find out Dom knew Allen Gratelli.”

“And maybe Gratelli was involved in the robbery.”

“It would explain the hole in his head,” Morelli
said.

“And maybe the money is hidden in your house!”

“It was a lot of money. They hauled it off in a van. More
likely, a key or a clue to the location is hidden in the
house.”

“We need to comb through the house.”

“Little by little, I've been making this house my own, and I've
gotten rid of a bunch of things that belonged to Rose. A lot of the
clutter has been tossed.”

“Yes, but a lot of it is still here. You never throw a key away.
You still have your locker key from high school. If you found a
key, you'd put it in one of your junk drawers.” I looked at my
watch. “I have to get Zook. When I come back we'll start
looking.”

ZOOK settled himself onto the passenger seat and stared down at
his shoes.

“Problems in school?” I asked him.

“No.”

“Well?”

He bit into his lower lip.

“Your mom hasn't turned up in any of the local hospitals,” I
told him. “That's a good sign.”

“Or the morgue.”

“Yeah, or the morgue,” I said.

“Maybe she took off.”

“She wouldn't take off without you. She loves
you.”

“Thanks,” Zook said. “Do you think she's okay?”

“Yes. I do.”

I ran into the deli on the way home and picked up lunch meat and
chips and ice cream sandwiches. Marion Fitz was working
checkout.

“I hear you found a dead guy in Morelli's basement,” she said.
“Is this Virginia baked ham or the low sodium?”

“Virginia baked.”

“I heard it was Allen Gratelli.”

“That's what I'm told.”

“Wasn't he dating Loretta Rizzi?”

Bang. Direct hit to my brain. “I don't know,” I said. “Was
he?”

“His trucks been in front of her house a lot. Maybe she just had
cable problems.”

I carried my bag out to my car, tossed it onto the backseat, and
got behind the wheel. Zook was hooked into his iPod, waiting for
me.

“Was your mom dating a guy named Allen Gratelli?” I asked
him.

“He's Uncle Dom's friend. He'd come over sometimes to see if we
were doing okay. I thought he was sort of a jerk. Sometimes it was
like he was trying to put moves on my mom, but she always made a
joke about it.”

“I ran into him today.”

“Lucky you.”

“He was in Morelli's basement. Someone shot him.”

Zook's eyes went wide. “Get out. Was he hurt
bad?”

“Yes.”

“How bad?”

“Real bad.”

I suspect if I was relaying this information to a
fourteen-year-old girl, she would be sad at this point. She'd be
remembering pets and relatives and stuffed animals that had been
injured, and the tragedies would be commingled in the frontal lobe
of her brain. Zook, being a boy, thought it was
cool.

“Oh man,” Zook said. “Is he dead?”

“Yes.”

Zook was leaning forward, straining against his seatbelt. “Who
shot him?”

“I don't know. He was dead when I found him.”

“What did he look like?”

“He looked dead. Bullet hole in the middle of his
forehead.”

“Whoa. That's amazing. Is he still there?”

“No. They moved him out.”

Zook slumped back. “Darn. I miss all the good
stuff.”

“Did your Uncle Dom ever say anything about the money? Like
where it was hidden?”

“No. He just kept saying he was going to be living the high
life.”

“Did he have other friends besides Allen
Gratelli?”

“I guess, but I don't know any. Allen was the only one who came
around after Uncle Dom went to prison. And Allen just started to
come around a couple months ago.”

The police were gone when I returned to Morelli's house. Only
Mooner in the lawn chair and a single van from an emergency
cleaning service suggested something unusual had just
occurred.

“Zookamundo,” Mooner said. “Been waiting for you, man. We gotta
convene with the wood elves.”

“Did you see the dead guy?” Zook asked.

“Yeah. He was real dead,” Mooner said. “Pooped in his pants and
everything.”

“Awesome,” Zook said.

I left Mooner and Zook in the living room with the ice cream
sandwiches and the wood elves, and I went to the kitchen to help
Morelli. He was methodically going through drawers, extracting keys
and odd scraps of paper. The basement door was open, and the smell
of bleach and pine-scented detergent drifted up the
stairs.

“Zook tells me Allen Gratelli was friends with Dom,” I said to
Morelli.

“Shazam.”

Morelli grinned and wrapped an arm around me. “I'm going to get
you naked tonight and make you say shazam again.”

I knew that wasn't an empty promise. “Having any luck here?” I
asked him.

“I've got a pile of renegade keys, and I now know the problem
with our plan. It's not enough to find a key. You have to know
where it goes.”

My cell phone rang, and I answered to Connie.

“I have Brenda back with the film crew,” Connie said. “They want
more footage.”

“Are you kidding me? They want more monkey?”

“No. They want a different takedown.”

“We screwed up a simple domestic disturbance. Where do we go
from there?”

“How about Loretta? She's disappeared, right? That's a violation
of her bond agreement.”

“I can't find Loretta. I have no place to look. I have no
clue.”

“Just lead them around. Make something up. At least no one will
shoot at you. And there won't be any monkeys,” Connie
said.

I hung up and looked at Morelli. “Connie wants me to find
Loretta.”

“Good,” Morelli said. “I want you to find Loretta, too. Loretta
probably knows what's going on. She might even know where the money
is located.”

“I don't know where to begin.”

“There were four men involved in the robbery. Go on the
assumption that Allen Gratelli was one of the men and find the
other two. I'm guessing one of them has Loretta.”

“Why aren't you looking for Loretta?”

“I'm baby-sitting her kid. And it seems to me it's more
dangerous to stay in this house than to be on the streets. So I'm
staying here, and you're hitting the streets.”

“Okay, fine, terrific, I'll go find Loretta, but you're going to
owe me.”

“Shazam,” Morelli said.

The bonds office looked like it was holding a casting call for
'Ho Bounty Hunters. Lula and Brenda were there, dressed in their
leathers, plus Nancy, Mark Bird, and his producer and the camera
crew.

“I can't drag everyone around with me,” I told them. “I need to
talk to people, and the camera crew is intimidating. They're going
to have to stay in the van.”

“Okay,” Mark said, “we'll wire you for sound and we'll do
re-creations.”

“What's this Loretta like?” Brenda wanted to know. “What did she
do?”

“She robbed a liquor store,” I told her.

“Was she armed?”

“Yeah. She had a lightsaber.”

“A what?”

“She had her kid's Star Wars lightsaber from Disney
World.”

“But she got a lot of money, right?” Brenda said.

“Actually, she got a bottle of gin. She needed a Tom
Collins.”