I leaned palms on the table and got into his face. “Are you listening?”
Zook looked up at me. “What?”
“I'm yelling at you.”
“I didn't notice. It sounded like dinner at my grandma's house.”
Okay, I could relate to that. “Did you paint anything other than Bob?”
“I sort of painted the garage.”
I went to the back door and stared out at the garage. It looked a lot like Bob. Zook in bright pink and green, outlined in black. Magical designs swirled around the name. It was glowing in the semi-dark.
“Has Morelli seen this?”
“I don't think so. He didn't say anything.”
“You need to lose the paint before he gets home.”
“But it represents the power of Zook! It's my portal.”
“What do you mean it's your portal?”
“Okay, so it's not a portal, but it could be someday.”
“You're not serious.”
“That's the way it happens in the game.”
“This isn't the game.”
“Yeah, but Zook likes to keep in the zone.”
I squelched a major mental head slap. It could be worse, I told myself. He could be spending his day surfing porn sites.
I was still at the back door, and it occurred to me that I wasn't seeing any sign of forced entry from last night. I went to the front door and checked out the lock and the doorjamb. No forced entry there, either. I went window to window. All locked and intact. Hard to believe Morelli hadn't locked the back door. That meant either someone let the intruder in, the intruder was good with locks, or he had a key.
“Did you let anyone into the house yesterday?” I asked Zook.
“The pizza delivery guy.”
“He didn't go into the cellar and stay there, did he?”
“No. He left in his pizza car.”
I sat at the little kitchen table with Zook and ate a bowl of cereal and drank my coffee. I had a bad feeling about the guy in the cellar. And I didn't know what to do about Zook. He was pushing his cereal around in his bowl, letting it get sogged up with milk. He was frowning and chewing on his lip.
“What?” I asked him.
“Nothing.”
“It's something. What is it?”
“It's my stupid mother, sitting in that stupid jail.”
“You're worried about her,” I said.
“It's all her own stupid fault. She robbed a stupid liquor store. I mean, it wasn't even a bank. A bank, I could see. That could be lots of money. My uncle robbed a bank and they never found the money, and now he's out and he's gonna be on easy street. But my dumb mother robbed a liquor store, and all she took was a bottle of gin! And now my stupid relatives won't even bail her out.”