“That’s rotten,” Morelli said. “You were the one who told me to take the message.” He took a step toward me and pulled back. “I’d kiss you, but you smell like my gym bag.”

I locked the door when Morelli left, removed the rest of my clothes, and stuffed them into a black plastic garbage bag. I sprayed my sneakers with deodorizer and hoped for the best. I took a shower and washed my hair twice. I got dressed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts and called Ranger.

“Babe,” he said.

“Who were the two suits dumped behind Regal Diner tonight?”

“Victor Kulik and Walter Dunne. A couple lawyers who work in mergers and acquisitions for a venture capital company. It’s the same company that bought the bail bonds agency from Harry. Wellington.”

“Thanks.”

“You stole money from Chopper and Sunflower so you could give it back to Sunflower and bail Vinnie out, didn’t you?”

“Who me?”

“Anyone else would have just killed the alligator,” Ranger said.

“How do you know?”

“I know everything.”

“And you’re modest.”

“No,” Ranger said. “I’m not modest.”

And he disconnected.

NINETEEN

MOST MORNINGS, I’M rushed and my refrigerator is empty and I take breakfast where I find it. This morning, I was flush with food from my supermarket stop, so I had orange juice, coffee, and a bowl of Rice Krispies for breakfast. I gave Rex a chunk of apple, some hamster crunchies, and fresh water. I checked my e-mail. I lined my eyes with a very thin line of smoky black and brushed on a smidgen of mascara. My sneakers still smelled a little, but, fortunately, they were far from my nose.

I’d taken the lucky bottle out of my bag last night, and I had it sitting on my kitchen counter. If I was to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t all that great a bottle. And I wasn’t sure why Uncle Pip left it to me. I liked Uncle Pip, but I wasn’t any closer to him than a lot of other relatives. Why he singled me out to have his lucky bottle was a mystery. I held the bottle to the light, but I couldn’t see inside. I thought I heard something when I shook the bottle, but it was very faint. Hard to tell if it was bringing me luck. I didn’t get trampled by stampeding cows, eaten by an alligator, or shot while robbing a funeral home, so maybe the bottle was working.

I put my dishes in the sink, told Rex to be a good hamster, and I set off for my parents’ house with my garbage bag of stink-bomb clothes. There are washers and dryers in the basement of my building, but I’m pretty sure trolls live there.

My grandmother was sitting with her foot up on a kitchen chair when I walked in.

“How’s the foot?” I asked.

“It’s a pain in the keister. I’m tired of hearing clomp, clomp, clomp. And it takes me a half hour to go up the stairs. And it hurts if I walk on it too much, so I’m sitting around going nuts. I’m not used to sitting around.” She leaned forward and wrinkled her nose. “Holy cow, who let one go? What’s that smell?”

I held up the garbage bag. “My clothes were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They need washing.”

“Leave them on the back porch,” my mother said. “I’ll do them later.”

“We got coffee cake,” Grandma said to me. “And there’s some breakfast sausages in the refrigerator.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I just ate breakfast.”

My mother and grandmother looked at me.

“You ate breakfast?” my mother asked. “I thought you broke up with Joseph.”

Morelli isn’t Martha Stewart, but it’s a known fact he’s more organized than I am. Morelli almost always has food in his house. When we’re a couple, and I spend the night, I eat breakfast at his little wooden kitchen table. Sometimes it’s leftover pizza and sometimes it’s a frozen toaster waffle. And Morelli is always the one to start coffee brewing, because Morelli is always the first one up. His kitchen is almost identical to my mom’s, but it feels entirely different. He’s refinished the wood floor and put in new cabinets. The lighting is pleasant, and the counters are for the most part uncluttered in Morelli’s house. My mom’s kitchen hasn’t changed much since I was a kid. Some new appliances, and new curtains on the back window. The floor is vinyl tile. The counters are Formica. The cabinets are maple. And the kitchen smells like coffee, apple pie, and bacon even when my mother isn’t cooking.

“I ate breakfast at home,” I said.

“Are you pregnant?” Grandma asked. “Sometimes women do strange things when they’re pregnant.”

“I’m not pregnant! I went shopping and got orange juice and Rice Krispies, and I ate breakfast at home. Jeez. It’s not like I never eat at home.”

“You only got one pot,” Grandma said.

“I had more pots, but they got wrecked when my stove caught fire.” I put the garbage bag on the back porch and took a seat at the table with Grandma. “Maybe just one piece of coffee cake,” I said.

Two pieces of cake and two cups of coffee later, I pushed back and stood.

“I need Lula to help me decorate this big black boot,” Grandma said. “I think it needs some of that glitter, or some rhinestones. Lula has a real flare for fashion.”

TEN MINUTES LATER, I was looking for a parking place in front of the bonds office. Cars were lined up on the curb. Some were double-parked. Some were angled in nose first. Soccer mom vans, junkers, tricked-out Escalades, Civics, and F150s. Mooner’s RV was parked in front of the bookstore. A crowd of people was milling around on the sidewalk. Hard to tell what was going on from the road. And then I saw the sign as I drove past. SIDEWALK SALE.

I parked half a block away and walked back to where Lula was directing pedestrian traffic.

“You want genuine first-class handcuffs, you just go to table number three,” she called out. “You could have a lot of fun with these handcuffs. They fit just right around a bedpost. Handguns are table six. We got a nice selection. Kitchen appliances and jewelry’s inside.”

“What’s going on?” I asked her.

“Sale,” Lula said. “Sunflower wouldn’t negotiate, so we’re sellin’ everything. You want a lawnmower? It’s gonna go cheap.”

“I haven’t got a lawn.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

“Where’s Connie?”

“Inside. She’s doing credit card sales. I’m strictly cash out here.”

Lula was dressed in four-inch black micro-fiber heels decorated with multicolored glitter, a short purple Spandex skirt, a gold metallic tank top, and she was wearing a Tavor Assault Rifle as an accessory.

“What’s with the gun?” I asked her.

“It’s in case some of these people get unruly.”

A big bald guy in a wifebeater shirt and cami cargo pants came up to Lula.

“Hey, Lula,” he said.

“My man,” Lula said to him.

“I need a gun,” he said to Lula. “Are these legal?”

“Do you want them to be?” Lula asked.

“No. Shit, what would I want with a legal gun?”

“Don’t know,” Lula said, “but these suckers are whatever the hell you want them to be. Cash only.”

I snaked my way through the crowd to Connie. “What’s going on?” I asked her.

Connie stepped back, away from a woman checking out a waffle iron. “Sunflower won’t deal. He wants all the money, so Lula and I came up with the idea for the sidewalk sale. This stuff was all taken in exchange for bond and never reclaimed. It was just taking up space in the back room, so we figured we’d sell it.”

“Lula’s selling weapons out there!”

“That’s great,” Connie said. “They’re a high-ticket item.”

“I think it’s illegal to sell guns like this.”

Connie craned her neck and looked through the front window at Lula. “It’s okay,” Connie said. “That guy’s a cop.”

“How much are these dishes with the roses on them?” a woman wanted to know.

“Twenty dollars,” Connie said.

A second woman elbowed in. “Wait a minute. Those are my dishes. I gave them to you so my nephew could get out of jail.”