“No.”
“Well?”
He bit into his lower lip.
“Your mom hasn't turned up in any of the local hospitals,” I told him. “That's a good sign.”
“Or the morgue.”
“Yeah, or the morgue,” I said.
“Maybe she took off.”
“She wouldn't take off without you. She loves you.”
“Thanks,” Zook said. “Do you think she's okay?”
“Yes. I do.”
I ran into the deli on the way home and picked up lunch meat and chips and ice cream sandwiches. Marion Fitz was working checkout.
“I hear you found a dead guy in Morelli's basement,” she said. “Is this Virginia baked ham or the low sodium?”
“Virginia baked.”
“I heard it was Allen Gratelli.”
“That's what I'm told.”
“Wasn't he dating Loretta Rizzi?”
Bang. Direct hit to my brain. “I don't know,” I said. “Was he?”
“His trucks been in front of her house a lot. Maybe she just had cable problems.”
I carried my bag out to my car, tossed it onto the backseat, and got behind the wheel. Zook was hooked into his iPod, waiting for me.
“Was your mom dating a guy named Allen Gratelli?” I asked him.
“He's Uncle Dom's friend. He'd come over sometimes to see if we were doing okay. I thought he was sort of a jerk. Sometimes it was like he was trying to put moves on my mom, but she always made a joke about it.”
“I ran into him today.”
“Lucky you.”
“He was in Morelli's basement. Someone shot him.”
Zook's eyes went wide. “Get out. Was he hurt bad?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
“Real bad.”
I suspect if I was relaying this information to a fourteen-year-old girl, she would be sad at this point. She'd be remembering pets and relatives and stuffed animals that had been injured, and the tragedies would be commingled in the frontal lobe of her brain. Zook, being a boy, thought it was cool.
“Oh man,” Zook said. “Is he dead?”