“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.”