“Yeah?” he said.
There was a short conversation, and Morelli hung up and flopped back onto his side of the bed.
“You're not going to believe this,” he said. “On second thought, it makes perfect sense. That was your friend and mine, supercop Carl Costanza. He's working a shift with Big Dog, and they got a report that there were lights in the cemetery. Turns out it was a bunch of people who all got the idea to dig up Rose. One of them was your Grandma Mazur.”
“Is she in jail?”
“No. Everyone ran away when Carl and Big Dog drove up, but your grandmother recognized Carl and told him she needed a ride home.”
“Omigod.”
“Yeah. Carl said they're bringing her here. She didn't want to get dropped off at your parents' house in a police car because people would talk.”
I rolled out of bed, scuffed through the clothes on the floor, and found what I needed.
Zook was in the hall when I opened Morelli's bedroom door. “I heard the call,” he said. “Was it about my mom?”
“No. It was about my grandmother. She's having a friend drop her off here, and then I'm going to give her a ride home.”
Zook smiled. “I bet she did something bad and she's afraid your mother will ground her.”
“Close enough,” I said.
I padded downstairs in the dark and looked out the front window. No police car yet. I walked through the house to the kitchen to get a bottle of water and checked on the yard. No one digging, but there was a bar of light under Morelli's garage door. Gary was still up. Or maybe Gary was afraid of the dark. Lucky for Gary there was electric in the garage. Unfortunate for Morelli, since he was paying the bill.
I returned to the living room, and Morelli joined me.
“You didn't have to get up,” I said to him.
“No way was I going to miss this.”
We saw headlights glide to a stop in front of the house, and we went out to say hello to Carl and Big Dog.
“Here she is,” Big Dog said to me, opening the door for Grandma. “Maybe your mother should put a bell around her neck.”
He looked at Grandma and shook his finger. “No more sneaking out at night. It's dangerous.”
“Thanks for the ride,” Grandma said. She looked in the car at Carl. “My regards to your mother.”
Carl smiled and nodded.
“Thanks,” I said to Carl and Big Dog. “I really appreciate this.”
“We would have hauled her in, but it was too embarrassing,” Big Dog said. “She was the only one we could catch.”
Morelli waved them off, and I buckled Grandma into the SUV.
“Where's your shovel?” I asked her.
“I didn't have one. I was just supervising. I went to Elmer Rhiner's viewing and Marion Barker was there with Bitty Kuleza. And Marion said she heard Rose was always saying how she was gonna take her fortune to the grave. And one thing led to another, and it ended up that we thought it would be a good idea to dig Rose up and take a look. So Bitty gave me a ride, and we met Marion and her two grandsons at the cemetery. Her grandsons are real big guys, and they were doing the digging.”
“That's crazy!”
“Yeah. I don't know what it is about that money, but it's just got ahold of me. It's a beaut of a mystery.”
Morelli drove the short distance and parked in front of my parents' house. We watched Grandma sneak in, and we waited a couple minutes to make sure she didn't sneak back out.
“You should snap me up,” Morelli said. “Not many men would marry you after meeting your grandmother. You're lucky to have me.”