“Looks to me like he’s spreading his act all over your house.”

“This is nothing. You should see what I’ve got upstairs.”

“The naked woman?”

“Yeah. She won’t leave. She says she’s waiting for Anthony to come back with pizza.”

“So when he comes back she’ll leave, right?”

“He’s been gone for almost two hours. For all I know, he could be gone for two days. It’s happened.”

“Did you try telling her to leave?”

“Yeah. She told me to take a hike.”

“You’re a cop. You probably drag naked women out of bedrooms all the time.”

“Almost never. And this is my bedroom. And this woman was brought here by my married brother. I’m supposed to be keeping him in line. If this gets back to my sister-in-law and my mother, I’m in big trouble. And even worse, if I lay a hand on this bimbo, she could scream rape or police brutality or God knows what.”

“So you want me to get rid of her for you.”

“Yeah.” Morelli grinned at me again. “If you did that one thing for me, I’d be nice to you. Really nice.”

“And then what? Would I have to be really nice to you?”

“No. You could walk away. Adios. Sayonara. Good night.”

I’d heard this before. Once Morelli got rolling, no one walked away. No one ever wanted to walk away. Morelli naked was a force of nature. Of course, I could have him keep his clothes on, but that might feel weird.

“What about your brother?”

“I’ll lock the doors.”

“Hasn’t he got a key?”

Morelli dropped the garbage bag onto the floor and stuffed his hands onto his hips. “Are you going to do this for me, or what?”

“Sure. Do you know her name?”

“All I know is she’s naked, and mean as a snake.”

I climbed the stairs, knocked on Morelli’s closed bedroom door, and pushed it open. There was a naked woman in his bed all right, and she was mad. She was sitting up with her arms crossed over her huge breasts and her eyes narrowed. She had a lot of overpro cessed blond hair in a teased-up rat’s nest. She was early forties, with tanning-bed skin one step away from a carcinoma epidemic. Her lips had been inflated by someone not especially good at it. And she had a spider tattooed on her arm.

“Now what?” she said.

“You’re in my boyfriends bed.”

“He said he wasn’t attached. Are you some crazy bitch jilted girlfriend?”

“Nope. I’m the current girlfriend. This house belongs to Joe Morelli, and you’re waiting for his worthless married brother, Anthony.”

“Are you kidding me? Anthony told me this was his house.”

“Anthony’s house is about a quarter mile away and his wife is living in it.”

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth? And what’s Anthony doing here anyway? He had a key and everything.”

“His wife kicked him out, and he’s stuck here until she decides to take him back.”

“So he sort of isn’t attached,” she said.

“He’s married! And he has five kids.”

“Yeah, but she kicked him out.”

I had the feeling this was going nowhere. Time to improvise.

“Truth is, his wife would be better off if you took him off her hands,” I told her. “He comes home drunk all the time and beats her and the kids with a gravy ladle.”

“Jeez,” she said. “That’s awful.”

“And he can’t keep a job, so his wife has to work nights at the button factory,” I said.

“I didn’t know they made buttons at night.”

“She cleans up. Washes floors and toilets and stuff.”

“Ick. That’s even worse than my job.”

“What do you do?”

“I work for a construction company. They’re all a bunch of assholes.”

“You didn’t give him any money did you?”

“I gave him money for the pizza and more beer,” she said.

“Bad move. He probably bought a hooker with the money.”

“I don’t know. He didn’t look all that lively when I was done with him.”

“Yeah, but he’s a sex addict. Got a bunch of diseases. He wore a condom, right? I mean, you didn’t touch him or anything, did you?”

That got her out of bed, hunting for her clothes. “I do not need any more diseases,” she said. She yanked black stretch pants over her ass and tugged a sweater over her head. “That prick had a lot of nerve misrepresenting himself. The more I’m thinking about it, the more steamed I’m getting.” She rammed her feet into four-inch stilettos and grabbed her purse off the dresser. “He hasn’t heard the last of it from me, either.”

She stormed out of the bedroom, stomped down the stairs, swept past Morelli and out the front door.

“I’m impressed,” Morelli said to me. “How did you do it?”

“We just had a heart-to-heart. You know, girl talk.”

“Do I get to be nice to you now?”

“No. Now you put on a pair of rubber gloves and take all the sheets off your bed and throw them away.”

Morelli went upstairs with a new garbage bag, and I continued to pick up the downstairs.

“Where’s Bob?” I called up to Morelli.

“He’s tied out back. I had him at work with me, and I didn’t want him snarfing around in the living room until I cleaned up.”

Bob is Morelli’s dog. He’s mostly golden retriever, with a touch of Sasquatch. He’s big and goofy, entirely lovable, and he eats everything… chairs, table legs, whole hams stolen from the table.

I let Bob in, and Bob rushed through the house, excited to be home, jumping around me like a rabbit. I filled his bowl with fresh water, and another bowl with dog crunchies, and Bob dug in. I tied off my garbage bag and set it by the back door. I was starting up the stairs to help Morelli when Anthony walked in.

“Hey, beautiful,” Anthony said to me. “Haven’t seen you in too long.”

Anthony, for all his faults, can be charming and hideously likable. He was carry ing a large pizza box and had his fingers hooked around a six-pack of Bud.

“Charlene,” he yelled up the stairs. “Come get your pizza.”

“Jeez,” I said. “Bad news. Charlene took off.”

“No big deal,” Anthony said, not missing a beat. “More pizza for us, right? Where’s Joe?”

“Upstairs.”

The front door banged open, and Charlene stormed in and pointed a nail gun at Anthony. Anthony partially turned to look at her, and she shot him in the ass. Bang, bang, bang.

“That’s for the gravy ladle,” she said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.” And she left, slamming the door shut behind her.

Anthony and I were momentarily stunned, mouths open, bug-eyed.

“Fuck,” Anthony finally said. He dropped the pizza, and Bob galloped in and ate it.

Morelli appeared at the head of the stairs. “Were those gunshots?”

“Charlene came back and shot Anthony in the ass with a nail gun. She works for a construction company.”

“Where is she now?” Morelli asked.

“Gone.”

Morelli jogged down the stairs and looked at Anthony’s backside. Blood was seeping through his jeans.

“Shit,” Morelli said. “Why’d she shoot you?”

“I don’t know,” Anthony said. “Something about a gravy ladle.”

I ran to the kitchen and got a couple towels. By the time I got back to the living room, Morelli was dragging Anthony out the door to the car.

Morelli owns an SUV, so Bob has a safe, comfy place to ride, but he keeps a Ducati in his garage for times when he needs to take his wild side for a drive. We loaded Anthony into the back of Morelli’s SUV and Morelli drove the short distance to St. Francis Hospital. The pain was setting in when we off-loaded Anthony. He was white-faced and sweating, and he was swearing in two languages. Morelli dragged him into the emergency entrance, and I parked the car in the parking garage.

Okay, so I felt a little bad, but how was I to know Char-lene would shoot Anthony over the gravy ladle? I mean, who would even believe it? A gravy ladle, for crying out loud. I had no idea where gravy ladle had come from. Baseball bat and tennis racket had horrified me, and then gravy ladle popped into my head. Maybe I was hungry.