Explosive Eighteen(35)

Morelli and I retreated into my apartment and closed and locked the door.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. “Do you have the photograph?”

I smacked the heel of my hand against my forehead so hard I almost knocked myself out. “Unh!”

“Does that mean no or yes?” Morelli asked.

“It means NO! No, no, no, no, no.”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m not exactly in the loop here.”

“You’re too busy to be in the loop.”

“No one could stay in the loop with you. You’re a disaster magnet. You suck it in. I used to think it was because of your job. But that’s too simple an explanation. You can’t even go on vacation without attracting killers. Not just one killer, either. You have a whole gaggle of killers after you. Is Berger any help with this?”

“They’ve had budget cuts.”

He went to my brown bear cookie jar, removed the lid, and took my gun out.

“It’s not loaded,” he said.

“You don’t really want me going around with a loaded gun, do you?”

He returned the gun to the cookie jar. “Good point. I can’t believe I’m asking this, but is Ranger watching your back?”

“He monitors my car. Beyond that, it’s hard to tell what Ranger’s doing.”

Morelli’s phone buzzed with a text message. He read the message and gave up a sigh. “I have to go. I’d like to help you, but I have no idea, short of handcuffing you to my furnace and locking the cellar door, how to keep you safe. It’s not like you’re good at accepting advice.”

“Jeez, it’s not that bad.”

“Cupcake, you gotta be careful.” He pulled me to him and kissed me. He broke from the kiss and cut his eyes to the pizza box. “Are you going to want that last piece of pizza?”

“It’s yours.”

He dropped a piece of crust into Rex’s cage and took the pizza, box and all. “Lock your door when I leave and don’t let anyone in.”

I watched Morelli walk down the hall and disappear into the elevator. This is unsettling, I thought. I had no clue where I actually stood with him. In some ways, he’d traded places with Ranger as the man of mystery.

I closed and locked my door and slouched in front of the television. After an hour, I was restless. There’s a limit to how many sitcom reruns you can watch, and I was tired of Cupcake Wars on the Food Network. I was sleeping through a documentary on fire ants when my cell phone rang. It was nine o’clock, and I assumed it was Morelli.

Turned out it was Joyce Barnhardt.

“I need help,” Joyce said.

“There’s a rumor going around that you’re dead.”

“Not yet.”

This was only marginally better than the fire ants. “What’s going on?” I asked her. “Why the big disappearance?”

“People are looking for me.”

“And?”

“And I figure you can help me. If you help me out, I let you bring me in. You get your capture money. Vinnie’s happy. It’s all good.”

“What do I have to do?”

“For starters, I need something from my town house.”

“Your town house is locked, and you have an alarm system.”

“I’m sure you can get around it.”

“Only if you give me a key and your code.”

“There’s a house key hidden in a fake rock to the right of the front door. The code is 6213.”

“What do you need?”

“I need a key. It looks like a little padlock key. It should be in my top dresser drawer in my bedroom.”

“What do I do with this key if I get it?”

“Hang on to it, and call me. You’ve got my number in your cell now.”

“Where are you?”

She disconnected.

Here was a problem. I was dying to go out this very second and get the key. I’d totally had it with the fire ants, and I could use the money Joyce’s capture would bring me. Problem was getting back into my apartment. I’d already played my Morelli card, and he’d be drinking Pepto by the gallon if I asked him to help me again, much less told him I was in league with Barnhardt. If I asked Ranger for help, I’d end up naked. It had some appeal, but truth is, I was beginning to not like myself so much. The honest confusion of loving two men was giving way to something that felt a little like unhealthy self-indulgence.

I’m not an especially introspective person. Mostly, I go day by day putting one foot in front of the other, hoping I’m moving forward. If I think weighty thoughts about life, death, and cellulite, it’s usually in the shower. And these thoughts are usually cut short by lack of hot water in my decrepit apartment building. Anyway, like it or not, I was presently caught in the throes of self-examination, and I was coming up short. And there was a voice, sounding a lot like Lula’s, in the back of my head, telling me I’d been loosey-goosey with my morals in Hawaii, and that’s what had messed up my juju.