"Such language," Mrs. Apusenja said. "Just as I would expect from sluts."

"Hey, watch who you're calling a slut," Lula said. "You're starting to get on my nerves."

"Get off my porch," Mrs. Apusenja said. And she shoved Lula.

"Hunh," Lula said. And she gave Mrs. Apusenja a shot to the shoulder that rocked her back on her heels.

"Disrespectful whore," Mrs. Apusenja said to Lula. And she slapped her.

This was where I took two steps back.

Lula grabbed Mrs. Apusenja by the hair and the two of them stumbled off the porch to the small front yard. There was a lot of bitch slapping and name calling and hair pulling. Nonnie was shouting for them to stop and I had my stun gun in my hand just in case it looked like Lula was going to lose.

An old lady tottered out of the house next door and turned her garden hose on Lula and Mrs. Apusenja. Lula and Mrs. Apusenja broke apart sputtering. Mrs. Apusenja turned tail and scuttled into her house, her soaked sari leaving a trail of water behind her that looked like slug slime.

The old lady shut the water off at the spigot on her front porch. "That was fun," she said. And she disappeared into her house.

Lula squished to the car and climbed in. "I could have taken her if I'd had more time," Lula said.

I dropped Lula off at the office and drove on autopilot to Hamilton and eased into the stream of traffic. Hamilton is full of lights and small businesses. It's a road that leads to everything and everywhere and at this time of the day it was clogged with cars going nowhere. I turned from Hamilton, cut through a couple side streets, and swung into my apartment building lot. I parked and looked up at my building and realized I'd driven myself to the wrong place. I wasn't living here these days. I was living with Morelli. I thunked my head on the steering wheel. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."

I was on the third thunk when the passenger side door swung open and Ranger took the seat next to me. "You should be careful," Ranger said. "You'll shake something loose in there."

"I didn't see you in the lot when I pulled in," I said. "Were you waiting for me to come home?"

"I followed you, babe. I picked you up a block from the office. You should check your mirrors once in a while. Could have been a bad guy on your tail."

"And you're a good guy?"

Ranger smiled. "Are you parked here for any special reason? I thought you moved in with Morelli."

"Navigation error. My mind wasn't on my driving."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

"The shooting?"

"Yeah," Ranger said. "And anything else I should know about."

I told him about the shooting and then I told him about the flowers and the photos.

"I could keep you safer than Morelli," Ranger said.

I believed him. But I would also be more restricted. Ranger would lock me up in a safe house and keep a guard with me 24-7. Ranger had a small army of guys working for him who made Marine commandos look like a bunch of sissies.

"I'm okay for now. Is there any word on the street about Bart Cone? Like does he rape and murder women?"

"The street doesn't talk about Bart Cone. The street doesn't even know Bart Cone. The Cone brothers run a tight factory and pay their bills on time. I had Tank ask around. The only interesting thing he turned up was the murder inquiry. Two months after the police dropped Bart as a suspect, Bart's wife left him. He's the nuts-and-bolts guy at the factory. Has an engineering degree from MIT. Smart. Serious. Private. The direct opposite of Clyde, who spends most of his day reading comic books and gets together several times a week with his friends to play Magic."

"Magic?"

"It's one of those role-playing card games."

"Like Dungeons and Dragons?"

"Similar. Andrew is the people person. Manages the human resources side of the business. He's been married for ten years. Has two kids, ages seven and nine." Rangers pager went off and he checked the readout. "Do you have any candidates for the flowers and photos?"

"I've made my share of enemies since I've had this job. No one stands out. Bart Cone crossed my mind. The business with the murder is hard to ignore even though the charge didn't stick. And the break-in occurred right after I was at the factory. Sort of a strange set of coincidences. If he's the nuts-and-bolts guy maybe he knows how to open locks."

"Don't go walking in the woods with him," Ranger said. And he was gone.

Chapter Six

I OPENED THE front door to Morelli's house and Bob exploded out at me. He knocked me to one side, took the concrete and brick stairs in a single bound, and ran up the street. He stopped and turned and ran back full speed. He got to Morelli's property line, applied the brakes, hunched, and pooped.

Lesson number one when cohabitating with a man and a dog: Never be the first to arrive home.

I went to the backyard, got the snow shovel from the shed, and used the shovel to flip the poop into the street. Then I sat on the stoop and waited for a car to run over the poop. Two cars drove by, but both of them avoided the poop. I gave a sigh of resignation, went into the kitchen, got a plastic baggie, scooped the poop up off the street, and threw it into the garbage. Sometimes you just can't catch a break.

Bob looked like he still had lots of energy, so I snapped the leash on him and we took off. The sun was warm on my back and Joe's neighborhood felt comfortable. I knew a lot of the people who lived here. It was an older population consisting of parents and grandparents of kids who went to school with me. From time to time a house would turn over to the new generation and a stroller or baby swing would appear on the porch. Sometimes I'd look at the strollers and my biological clock would tick so loud in my head and my heart it would blur my vision, but more often than not there were days like today when I came home to a load of fresh poop and babies didn't seem all that alluring.

Bob and I went for a nice long walk and we were on our way home. Two people, Mrs. Herrel and Mrs. Gudge, popped out of their houses to ask if it was true that I shot someone today. Word travels fast in the Burg and its surrounding neighborhoods. Story accuracy isn't always a top priority.

I crossed the street and saw a car pull to the curb in front of Joe's house half a block away. There were two women in the car. Joe's mother and grandmother. Damn. I'd rather face Howie's killer. I had a moment of indecision, wondering if I was spotted, if it was too late to sneak off. Joe s mother got out of the car, our eyes caught, and my fate was sealed.

By the time Bob and I got to Joe's house, Grandma Bella was out of the car and on the sidewalk beside Joe s mother.

"I had a vision," Grandma Bella said.

"I didn't shoot anyone," I told her.

"You were dead in my vision," Grandma Bella said. "Cold as stone. The blood drained from your lifeless body. I saw you go into the ground."

My jaw went slack and the world lost focus for a moment.

"Don't pay attention to her," Joe's mother said. "She has these visions all the time." Mrs. Morelli gave me a loaf of bread in its white paper bakery bag. "I came over to give Joe this bread. Its fresh baked from Italian Peoples. Joe likes it in the morning with his coffee."

"I saw you in the box," Grandma Bella said. "I saw them close the lid and put you in the ground." Bella was doing a bang-up job of creeping me out. This wasn't a good time to tell me I was going to die. I was working hard not to get overwhelmed by the shooting, the photos, and flowers.

"Stop that," Joe's mother said to Bella. "You're scaring her." "Mark my words," Bella said, shaking her finger at me. The two women got back into the car and drove off. I took Bob and the bread into the house. I gave Bob fresh water and a bowl filled with dog crunchies. I sliced the end off the bread and ate it with strawberry jam.

A tear slid out of my eye and rolled down my cheek. I didn't want to give in to the tear, so I wiped it away and looked in at Rex. Rex was sleeping, of course. "Hey!" I said real loud into the cage. Still no movement. I dropped a chunk of the bread and jam a couple inches away from the soup can. The soup can vibrated a little and Rex backed out. He stood blinking in the light for a moment, whiskers whirring, nose twitching. He scurried over to the bread, ate all the jam, shoved the remaining bread into his cheek pouch, and scuttled back into his soup can.

I checked the phone machine. No messages. I opened my iBook, went online, and my screen filled with more of the penis enlargement, hot chicks with horses, get out of debt ads.

"We can send a man to the moon, but we can't find a way to stop junk mail!" I yelled at the computer.

I calmed myself and deleted the garbage. I was left with one piece of mail. No subject in the subject line. The body of the letter was short: Did you like my flowers? Were you impressed with my marksmanship this afternoon?

My stomach went hot and sick and my vision got cobwebby. I put my head between my legs until the ringing stopped in my ears and I was able to breathe again.

This was from Howie s killer. He knew my email address. Not that my email address was a secret. It was printed on my business cards. Still, the message was chilling and eerily invasive. It tied the flowers and the photos to the shooting. It was a message from a madman.

I typed back to him. Who are you?

Seconds later, my message was returned as undeliverable.

I saved the email to show to Morelli and I shut down.

"My day is in the toilet," I told Bob. "I'm taking a shower. Don't let any maniacs in the house." I stood up as tall as I could and I made sure my voice was steady. The bravado was partly for Bob and partly for me. Sometimes if I acted brave, I almost became a little brave. And just in case Bob fell asleep on the job, I went to the closet in Morelli s room, helped myself to his spare gun, and took it into the bathroom with me.

Grandma Mazur was waiting at the door when I pulled up. "What do you think of my new hair?" she asked.

It was punk rock star red and stuck out in little spikes. "I think it's fun," I told Grandma.

"It brings out the color of my eyes."

"And it's flattering to your skin tone." Definitely drags attention away from the liver spots.

"It's a wig," she said. "I got it at the mall today. Me and Mabel Burlew went shopping. I just got home. I missed all the excitement when everybody thought you shot someone again."

Albert Kloughn came in behind me. "What about shooting someone? Do you need a lawyer? I'd give you a real good rate. Business has been a little slow. I don't know why. It's not like I'm not a good lawyer. I went to school and everything."

"I don't need a lawyer," I told him.

"Too bad. I could use a high-profile case. That's what really helps your practice to take off. You gotta win something big."

"What do you think of my hair?" Grandma asked Kloughn.

"It's nice," he said. "I like it. It's real natural looking."

"It's a wig," Grandma said. "I got it at the mall."

"Maybe that's what I should get," Kloughn said. "Maybe I'd get more cases if I had more hair. A lot of people don't like bald men. Not that I'm bald, but it's starting to get thin." He smoothed his hand over his few remaining strands of hair. "You probably didn't notice that it was thin, but I can tell when the light hits it just right."

"You should try that chemical stuff you pour on your head," Grandma said. "My friend Lois Grizen uses it and she grew some hair. Only problem was she used it at night and it rubbed off on her pillow and got on her face and now she has to shave twice a day."

My father looked up from his paper. "I always wondered what was wrong with her. I saw her in the deli last week and she looked like Wolf man. I thought she had a sex change."

"I have everything on the table," my mother said. "Come now before it gets cold. The bread will go stale."

Valerie was already at the table with her plate filled. My mother had put out an antipasto platter, fresh bread from Peoples, and a pan of sausage-and-cheese lasagna. Nine-year-old Angie, the perfect child and an exact replica of Valerie at that age, sat hands folded, patiently waiting for food to be passed. Her seven-year-old sister, Mary Alice, thundered down the stairs and galloped into the room. Mary Alice has for some time now been convinced she's a horse. Outwardly she has all the characteristics of a little girl, but I'm beginning to wonder if there's more to the horse thing than meets the eye.

"Blackie tinkled in my bedroom," Mary Alice said. "And I had to clean it up. That's why I'm late. Blackie couldn't help it. He's just a baby horse and he doesn't know any better."

"Blackie's a new horse, isn't he?" Grandma asked.

"Yep. He came to play with me just today," Mary Alice said.

"It was nice of you to clean it up," Grandma said.

"Next time you should put his nose in it," Kloughn said. "I heard that works sometimes."

Valerie impatiently looked around the table. She folded her hands and bowed her head. "Thank God for this food," Valerie said. And she dug in.

We all crossed ourselves, mumbled thank God, and started passing dishes.

There was a rap on the front door, the door opened, and Joe strolled in. "Is there room for me?" he asked. My mother beamed. "Of course," she said. "There's always room for you. I set an extra plate just in case you could make it."

There was a time when my mother warned me about Joe. Stay away from the Morelli boys, my mother would say. They can't be trusted. They're all sex fiends. And no Morelli man will ever amount to anything. A while back my mother had decided Joe was the exception to the rule and that some-how, in spite of genetic disadvantage, he'd actually managed to grow up. He was financially and professionally stable. And he could be trusted. Okay, so he was still a sex fiend, but at least he was a monogamous sex fiend. And most important, my mother had come to think that Joe was her best, and possibly only, shot at getting me off the streets and respectably married.

Grandma shoveled a wedge of lasagna onto her plate. "I've got to get the facts straight on the shooting," she said, "Mitchell Farber just got laid out and Mabel and me are going to his viewing at Stiva's funeral parlor right after dinner, and people are gonna be on me like white on rice." "There's not much to tell," I said. "Lula and I stopped for lunch and the man eating across from me was shot. No one knows why, but it's not a great neighborhood. It was probably just one of those things."

"One of those things!" my mother said. "Accidentally dinging your car door with a shopping cart is one of those things, Having someone shot right in front of you is not one of those things. Why were you in such a bad neighborhood? Can't you find a decent place to have lunch? What were you thinking?"

"I bet there's more to it than that," Grandma said. "I bet you were after a bad guy. Were you packin' heat?"

"No. I wasn't armed. I was just having lunch."

"You aren't giving me a lot to work with here," Grandma said.

Kloughn turned to Morelli. "Were you there?"

"Yep."

"Boy, it must be something to be a cop. You get to do all lands of cool stuff. And you're always in the middle of everything. Right there where the action is."

Joe forked off a piece of lasagna.

"So what do you think about Stephanie being there? I mean, she was sitting right across from this guy, right? How far away? Two feet? Three feet?"

Morelli sent me a sideways glance and then looked back at Kloughn. "Three feet."

"And you're not freaked? If it was me, I'd be freaked. But hey, I guess that's the way it is with cops and bounty hunters. Always in the middle of the shooting."

"I'm never in the middle of the shooting," Joe said. "I'm plainclothes. I investigate. The only time my life is in danger is when I'm with Stephanie."

"How about last week?" Grandma asked. "I heard from Loretta Beeber that you were almost killed in some big shoot-out. Loretta said you had to jump out of Terry Gilman s second-story bedroom window."

I swiveled in my seat and faced Joe and he froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. There'd been rumors about Joe and Terry Gilman all through high school. Not that a rumor linking Morelli to a woman was unusual. But Gilman was different. She was a cool blonde with ties to the Mob and an ongoing relationship with Morelli. Morelli swore the relationship was professional and I believed him. That isn't to say that I liked it. It bore a disturbing parallel to my relationship with Ranger. And I knew that as hard as I tried to ignore the chemistry between Ranger and me, it still simmered below the surface.