Smokin’ Seventeen(42)

Lula poured wine for everyone and raised her glass. “Here’s a toast. When it rains it pours.”

We drank to that, and we dug in.

“This is delicious,” Connie said. “He’s a really good cook.”

Lula spooned out more casserole and looked over at me. “You should marry him. You could have perfectly good sex all by yourself, but you’ll never be able to cook this good.”

Connie agreed. “She has a point. If you don’t want to marry him, maybe I’ll marry him.”

“If I married Ranger I could have good sex and good food,” I said. “Ranger has Ella.”

Connie paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Does Ranger want to marry you?”

“No.”

“So that would be a problem,” Connie said.

I made a conscious effort not to sigh. I’d been doing a lot of sighing lately. “Sometimes Joe wants to marry me.”

Connie and Lula looked at me. Hopeful.

“Can he cook?” Connie asked.

“No,” I said. “Mostly he dials food. But he dials really good pizza and meatball subs.”

“I might go with Dave,” Lula said. “Someday you’ll be old, and you won’t want sex anymore, but you’ll always want food.”

“This is true,” Connie said. “I vote for Dave.”

“I love these little corn muffins,” Lula said. “These are outstanding muffins.”

By the time we were done we’d eaten the entire batch of muffins, and there wasn’t a lot of Tex-Mex Fiesta left either.

“What about dessert?” Lula wanted to know.

“That last muffin was my dessert,” Connie said. “I’m packing up and going home.”

Lula carted her plate to the kitchen. “I’m thinking I need ice cream.”

I looked in my freezer to see if ice cream had magically been deposited. Nope. No ice cream.

“I have to drive you back to your car,” I told Lula. “We can stop on the way for ice cream.”

“If we go to Cluck-in-a-Bucket I can get soft-serve. I like when they mix the vanilla and chocolate and put them chocolate sprinkles on top.”

We stacked everything in the sink, I gave Rex a chunk of muffin I’d set aside for him, and Lula and I locked up and headed out. I’m pretty good at walking in heels, but Lula is the champion. Lula can go all day in five-inch spikes. I think she must have no nerve endings in her feet.

“How do you walk in those shoes for hours on end?” I asked her.

“I can do it on account of I’m a balanced body type,” she said, hustling across the lot to my Escort. “I got perfect weight distribution between my boobs and my booty.”

I drove down Hamilton, past the construction site with Mooner’s bus parked curbside, and pulled into the Cluck-in-a-Bucket parking lot. Lula went inside to get her ice cream, and I stayed behind to take a call from Morelli.

“I just got rid of Terry,” he said. “I have some paperwork to clear out, and then I’m done. I thought I’d stop by.”

“How did it go with Terry?”

“It was a big zero,” Morelli said. “She didn’t recognize the killer. And she couldn’t find a connection between Juki Beck and Lou Dugan. But just so it wasn’t a complete waste of my time she wore a little skirt that had Roger Jackson falling out of his seat across the room.”

“And you?”

“I couldn’t get a really good look from where I was sitting. Not to change the subject, but I spoke to Jerry about Belmen. Jerry picked up on the gun, too. And turns out the gun belonged to the bartender. Jerry went out to talk to him, and the charges have been dropped. Connie should be getting the paperwork tomorrow.”

“Let me take a guess. The bartender shot himself.”

“Yeah, it was an accident, but he thought it wouldn’t play well with the ladies, so he pinned it on Belmen. He figured Belmen was so drunk he wouldn’t know what the hell happened.”

“So I’m off the hook with the bear.”

“Looks that way. Maybe you want to think about getting a different job. Something with better work conditions … like roach extermination or hazardous waste collection.”

“You sound like my mother.”

“After I talked to you earlier I did some checking, and found out that Jimmy Alpha’s brother just got out of prison on an early parole. Until last month he’d been locked away on racketeering charges. I’m told there’s a strong resemblance.”

“Do you think he’d have ties to Lou Dugan?”

“I’m on it.”

“I have to go. Lula’s here with her ice cream.”