Morelli absorbed this for a beat. “There was a time when I’d freak over that, but now it seems sort of normal. The car in your lot... did you set it on fire?”
“Nope.”
“Do I need to know any gory details?”
“No. Everything’s under control. Diesel taped a garbage bag over the broken window, and the firebomb only singed the carpet a little.”
“Great,” Morelli said. And he disconnected.
“He take that okay?” Diesel asked.
“I could hear him chewing Rolaids.”
Stephanie Plum 13.5 - Plum Lucky
Chapter 11
The smoke stopped rolling past my windows and the unintelligible chatter and squawk of the police band was intermittent. One fire truck and one squad car remained. A tow truck was standing by to haul the remains of Delvina’s car off to the auto graveyard. Most of my neighbors were back in their apartments, finding television to be more entertaining than the dismal charred carcass left in the lot.
Diesel and I were in the kitchen eating peanut butter sandwiches. Diesel stopped with a s
andwich in hand and listened. “Now what?” he said. He went to the door, and the doorbell rang.
Diesel opened the door to Mickey.
“This is awkward,” Mickey said.
Diesel and I looked past Mickey, down the hall.
Mickey shook the rain off his umbrella and propped it up against the wall. “I’m alone. Can I come in?”
“Do you have a bomb?” I asked.
“No. What I got is a headache.”
“What’s up?”
“I’m looking for Mr. Delvina, and I couldn’t help noticing you have a freshly cooked car in your lot that might be the same size as Mr. Delvina’s car.”
I spread peanut butter on a slice of bread and added some potato chips and olives. “It is, in fact, Mr. Delvina’s car,” I told Mickey.
“Was Mr. Delvina in it when it got cooked?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Mr. Delvina isn’t a well man,” Mickey said.
“No kidding.”
“He isn’t himself these days. Between you and me, he doesn’t have a rash no more, but he likes the medicine. He’s been taking more and more of it, and I think it’s making him funny in the head.”
I finished constructing the sandwich and offered it to Mickey.
“Thank you. I didn’t get no lunch. Mr. Delvina was anxious to get to the multiplex. He needs the money to get the missus back, but personally I think he’s spending the money on his medicine. Now he’s got this idea that Diesel is an alien. It’s crazy. It’s just crazy.”
Mickey took a bite of the sandwich and chewed. “This is delicious,” he said. “I don’t usually like peanut butter, but this sandwich got everything in it.”
“You don’t think Diesel is an alien?”