“Do you want me to have him brought in?”
“No. I couldn't positively ID him.”
Morelli's face broke into a smile. “Your mother really ran the rabbit over?”
“She saw him chasing me. And she ran him over. Threw him about ten feet into the air.”
“She likes you.”
I nodded yes. And my eyes filled.
A car drove by. Two men.
“That could be them,” I said
. “Two of Abruzzi's guys. I try to be vigilant, but the cars are always different. And I only know Abruzzi and Darrow. The others have always had their faces covered. I have no good way of knowing when I'm being stalked. And it's worse at night when all I can see are lights coming and going.”
“We're working overtime, trying to find Evelyn, canvassing the neighborhoods for witnesses, but so far there hasn't been a break. Abruzzi's got himself well protected.”
“Do you need to talk to my mom about the rabbit thing?”
“Were there any witnesses?”
“Only the two guys in the car.”
“We don't usually write up accidents involving rabbits. This was a rabbit, right?”
MORELLI DECLINED DINNER. I couldn't blame him. Valerie had Kloughn home with her, and the table was standing room only.
“Isn't he the cute one,” Grandma whispered to me in the kitchen. “Just like the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
After dinner I got my dad to drive me home.
“What do you think of this clown?” he asked on the way. “He seems to be sweet on Valerie. Do you think there's any chance this could turn into something?”
“He didn't get up and leave when Grandma asked him if he was a virgin. I thought that was a good sign.”
“Yeah, he hung in there. He must really be desperate if he's willing to get involved with this family. Has anyone told him the horse kid belongs to Valerie?”
I figured there wasn't a problem with Mary Alice. Kloughn probably had empathy for a kid who was different. What Kloughn might not understand was Valerie in the fluffy pink slippers. Probably we should make sure he never sees the slippers.
It was almost nine when my dad dropped me off. The parking lot was filled and lights were on in all the apartment windows. The seniors were settled in for the night, victims of failing night vision and television addiction. By nine o'clock they were happy campers, having self-medicated with tumblers of booze and Diagnosis Murder. At 10:00 they'd pop a little white pill and hurl themselves into hours of sleep apnea.
I approached my front door and decided I'd been hasty in rejecting Ranger's security system. It would be nice to know if someone was waiting for me inside. I had my gun shoved into the waistband of my jeans. And I had a plan outlined in my head. My plan was to open the door, take the gun in hand, flip all the lights on, and do another embarrassing imitation of a television cop.
The kitchen was easy to cover. Nothing there. The living room and dining room were next. Again, easy to take in. The bathroom was more tense. I had the shower curtain to contend with. I needed to remember not to close the shower curtain. I ripped the shower curtain open and let out a whoosh of air. No one dead in my tub.
At first glance, my bedroom was fine. Unfortunately, I knew from past experience that the bedroom was filled with hiding places for all sorts of nasty things, like snakes. I looked under the bed and in all my drawers. I opened my closet door and let out another whoosh of air. Nobody here. I'd gone through the entire apartment and not found anyone, dead or alive. I could lock myself in and feel perfectly safe.
I was leaving the bedroom when it hit me. A visual memory of something odd. Something out of place. I returned to my closet and opened the door. And there it was, hanging with the rest of my clothes, smashed between my suede jacket and a denim shirt. The rabbit suit.
I snapped on rubber gloves, removed the rabbit suit from my closet, and deposited it in the elevator. I didn't want another full-scale crime-scene investigation assault on my apartment. I used the pay phone in the lobby to put in an anonymous call to the police about the suit in the elevator. And then I returned to my apartment and slid Ghostbusters into the DVD player.
Halfway through Ghostbusters I got a call from Morelli. “You wouldn't happen to know anything about the rabbit suit in your elevator, would you?”
“Who me?”
“Off the record, out of morbid curiosity, where did you find it?”