None of these meetings had ended in the bedroom. When you grow up in the Burg there are several mantras little girls learn at an early age. One of them is that men don't buy goods they can get for free. Those words of wisdom hadn't stopped me from giving my goods away to Morelli, but they did stop me from continuing to give them away. That plus a false pregnancy scare. Although I have to admit, I had mixed feelings about not being pregnant. There was a smidgen of regret mixed with the relief. And probably it was the regret more than the relief that made me take a more serious look at my life and my relationship with Morelli. That and the realization that Morelli and I don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. Not that we'd entirely given up on the relationship. It was more that we were in a holding pattern with each of us staking out territory . . . not unlike the Arab-Israeli conflict.
I tried Morelli's home phone, office number, and car phone. No luck. I left messages everywhere and left my cell phone number on his pager.
"Well, what did you find out?" Grandma wanted to know when I hung up.
"Not much. Fred left the house at one, and a little over an hour later he was at the bank and the cleaner. He must have done something in that time, but I don't know what."
My mother and my grandmother looked at each other.
"What?" I asked. "What?"
"He was probably taking care of some personal business," my mother said. "You don't want to bother yourself with it."
"What's the big secret?"
Another exchange of looks between my mother and grandmother.
"There's two kinds of secrets," Grandma said. "One kind is where nobody knows the secret. And the other kind is where everybody knows the secret, but pretends not to know the secret. This is the second kind of secret."
"So?"
"It's about his honeys," Grandma said.
"His honeys?"
"Fred always has a honey on the side," Grandma said. "Should have been a politician."
"You mean Fred has affairs? He's in his seventies!"
"Midlife crisis," Grandma said.
"Seventy isn't midlife," I said. "Forty is midlife."
Grandma slid her uppers around some. "Guess it depends how long you intend to live."
I turned to my mother. "You knew about this?"
My mother took a couple deli bags of cold cuts out of the refrigerator and emptied them on a plate. "The man's been a philanderer all his life. I don't know how Mabel's put up with it."
"Booze," Grandma said.
I made myself a liverwurst sandwich and took it to the table. "Do you think Uncle Fred might have run off with one of his girlfriends?"
"More likely one of their husbands picked Fred up and drove him to the landfill," Grandma said. "I can't see cheapskate Fred paying for the cleaning if he was going to run off with one of his floozies."
"You have any idea who he was seeing?"
"Hard to keep track," Grandma said. She looked over at my mother. "What do you think, Ellen? You think he's still seeing Loretta Walenowski?"
"I heard that was over," my mother said.
My cell phone rang in my shoulder bag.
"Hey, Cupcake," Morelli said. "What's the disaster?"
"How do you know it's a disaster?"
"You left messages on three different phones plus my pager. It's either a disaster or you want me bad, and my luck hasn't been that good today."
"I need to talk to you."
"Now?"
"It'll only take a minute."
* * * * *
THE SKILLET IS a sandwich shop next to the hospital and could be better named the Grease Pit. Morelli got there ahead of me. He was standing, soda in hand, looking like the day was already too long.
He smiled when he saw me . . . and it was the nice smile that included his eyes. He draped an arm around my neck, pulled me to him, and kissed me. "Just so my day isn't a complete waste," he said.
"We have a family problem."
"Uncle Fred?"
"Boy, you know everything. You should be a cop."
"Wiseass," Morelli said. "What do you need?"
I handed him the packet of pictures. "Mabel found these in Fred's desk this morning."
He shuffled through them. "Christ. What is this shit?"
"Looks like body parts."
He tapped me on the head with the stack of pictures. "Comedian."
"You have any ideas here?"
"They need to go to Arnie Mott," Morelli said. "He's in charge of the investigation."
"Arnie Mott has the initiative of a squash."
"Yeah. But he's still in charge. I can pass them on for you."
"What does this mean?"
Joe shook his head, still studying the top photo. "I don't know, but this looks real."
* * * * *
I MADE AN illegal U-turn on Hamilton and parked just short of Vinnie's office, docking the Buick behind a black Mercedes S600V, which I suspected belonged to Ranger. Ranger changed cars like other men changed socks. The only common denominator with Ranger's cars was that they were always expensive and they were always black.
Connie looked over at me when I swung through the front door. "Was Briggs really only three feet tall?"
"Three feet tall and uncooperative. I should have read the physical description on his application for appearance bond before I knocked on his door. Don't suppose anything else came in?"
"Sorry," Connie said. "Nothing."
"This is turning into a real bummer of a day. My uncle Fred is missing. He went out to run errands on Friday, and that was the last anyone's seen him. They found his car in the Grand Union parking lot." No need to mention the butchered body.
"I had an uncle do that once," Lula said. "He walked all the way to Perth Amboy before someone found him. It was one of them senior moments."
The door to the inner office was closed, and Ranger was nowhere to be seen, so I guessed he was talking to Vinnie. I cut my eyes in that direction. "Ranger in there?"
"Yeah," Connie said. "He did some work for Vinnie."
"Work?"
"Don't ask," Connie said.
"Not bounty hunter stuff."
"Not nearly."
I left the office and waited outside. Ranger appeared five minutes later. Ranger's Cuban-American. His features are Anglo, his eyes are Latino, his skin is the color of a mocha latte, and his body is as good as a body can get. He had his black hair pulled back into a ponytail. He was wearing a black T-shirt that fit him like a tattoo and black SWAT pants tucked into black high-top boots.
"Yo," I said.
Ranger looked at me over the top of his shades. "Yo yourself." I gazed longingly at his car. "Nice Mercedes."
"Transportation," Ranger said. "Nothing fancy."
Compared to what? The Batmobile? "Connie said you were talking to Vinnie."
"Transacting business, babe. I don't talk to Vinnie."
"That's sort of what I'd like to discuss with you . . . business. You know how you've kind of been my mentor with this bounty hunter stuff?"
"Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Do Trenton."
"Yeah. Well, the truth is, the bounty huntering isn't going all that good."
"No one's jumping bail."
"That too."
Ranger leaned against his car and crossed his arms over his chest. "And?"
"And I've been thinking maybe I should diversify."
"And?"
"And I thought you might help me."
"You talking about building a portfolio? Investing money?"
"No. I'm talking about making money."
Ranger tipped his head back and laughed softly. "Babe, you don't want to do that kind of diversifying."
I narrowed my eyes.