Plum Spooky (Stephanie Plum 14.50)

“No. You could walk away. Adios. Sayonara. Good night.”

I’d heard this before. Once Morelli got rolling, no one walked away. No one ever wanted to walk away. Morelli naked was a force of nature. Of course, I could have him keep his clothes on, but that might feel weird.

“What about your brother?”

“I’ll lock the doors.”

“Hasn’t he got a key?”

Morelli dropped the garbage bag onto the floor and stuffed his hands onto his hips. “Are you going to do this for me, or what?”

“Sure. Do you know her name?”

“All I know is she’s naked, and mean as a snake.”

I climbed the stairs, knocked on Morelli’s closed bedroom door, and pushed it open. There was a naked woman in his bed all right, and she was mad. She was sitting up with her arms crossed over her huge breasts and her eyes narrowed. She had a lot of overpro cessed blond hair in a teased-?up rat’s nest. She was early forties, with tanning-?bed skin one step away from a carcinoma epidemic. Her lips had been inflated by someone not especially good at it. And she had a spider tattooed on her arm.

“Now what?” she said.

“You’re in my boyfriends bed.”

“He said he wasn’t attached. Are you some crazy bitch jilted girlfriend?”

“Nope. I’m the current girlfriend. This house belongs to Joe Morelli, and you’re waiting for his worthless married brother, Anthony.”

“Are you kidding me? Anthony told me this was his house.”

“Anthony’s house is about a quarter mile away and his wife is living in it.”

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth? And what’s Anthony doing here anyway? He had a key and everything.”

“His wife kicked him out, and he’s stuck here until she decides to take him back.”

“So he sort of isn’t attached,” she said.

“He’s married! And he has five kids.”

“Yeah, but she kicked him out.”

I had the feeling this was going nowhere. Time to improvise.

“Truth is, his wife would be better off if you took him off her hands,” I told her. “He comes home drunk all the time and beats her and the kids with a gravy ladle.”

“Jeez,” she said. “That’s awful.”

“And he can’t keep a job, so his wife has to work nights at the button factory,” I said.

“I didn’t know they made buttons at night.”

“She cleans up. Washes floors and toilets and stuff.”

“Ick. That’s even worse than my job.”

“What do you do?”

“I work for a construction company. They’re all a bunch of assholes.”

“You didn’t give him any money did you?”