Four to Score (Stephanie Plum 4)

“Put Sally in a safe house,” I said. “I'll help with surveillance.”

“No way,” Sally said. “I'm not being left out on all the fun.”

“Neither of you does surveillance,” Morelli said. “And it's not open to debate. It's my way or it's no way.”

“What safe house did you have in mind?”

Morelli thought about it a minute. “I could probably put you with one of my relatives.”

“Oh no! Your grandmother would find me and give me the eye.”

“What's the eye?” Sally wanted to know.

“It's a curse,” I said. “It's one of those Italian things.”

Sally shivered. “I don't like that curse stuff. One time I was down in the islands, and I accidentally ran over this voodoo person's chicken, and the voodoo person said she was gonna make my dick fall off.”

“Well?” Morelli asked. “Did it fall off?”

“Not yet, but I think it might be getting smaller.”

Morelli grimaced. “I don't want to hear this.”

“I'll go home to my parents,” I said. “And Sally can come with me.”

We both looked at Sally in the skirt.

“You have any jeans in the car?” I asked.

“I don't know what I have. I was in a real rush. I didn't want to be there when Sugar got back with more gasoline.”

Morelli put in a call to have Sugar picked up, and then we dragged Sally's clothes in from his car. We left the Porsche parked at the curb, behind the Buick, and we pulled the shades on the front downstairs windows. Then Morelli called his cousin, Mooch, to come get Sally and me at nine in the alley behind his house.

Thirty minutes later Morelli got a call from Dispatch. Two uniforms had gone over to check on Sally's apartment and had found it on fire. The building had been evacuated without injury. And Dispatch said the fire was under control.

“He must have come back right away,” Sally said. “I didn't think he'd set fire to everything if I was gone. It must have just about killed him to torch all of those cakes and pies.”

“I'm really sorry,” I said. “Do you want me to go over there with you? Do you want to see it?”

“I'm not going anywhere near that place until Sugar's strapped to a bed in the loony bin. Besides, it wasn't even my place. I was renting from Sugar. All the furniture was his.”

* * * * *

“YOU SEE, this is much better,” my mother said, opening the door for me. “I have your bedroom all ready. As soon as you called we put on new sheets.”

“That's nice,” I said. “If it's okay with you, I'll let Sally sleep in my room, and I'll bunk with Grandma Mazur. It'll only be for a day or two.”

“Sally?”

“He's just behind me. He had to get his bags out of the car.”

My mother looked over my shoulder and froze as Sally ambled into the foyer.

“Yo, dudes,” Sally said.

“What's happening?” Grandma chimed back.

“Jesus H. Christ,” my father said, from his chair in the living room.