Twisted Twenty-Six (Stephanie Plum 26)

“Once in a while you laugh. And I’m pretty sure you just smiled.”

“Why did you leave your escort at your parents’ house?”

“Someone broke into their house when we were at the funeral. It was searched and trashed just like mine. I decided my family needed the Rangeman protection more than I did.”

“Some people might consider that to be sneaky. Not me, but some people.”

“Would you have agreed to have your men watch Grandma?”

“No.”

“There you have it,” I said. “I have a favor to ask. I’d like to have a home security system installed in their house.”

“Done.”

And he disconnected.

Morelli’s car wasn’t parked at the curb, and he didn’t answer when I knocked, so I retrieved the key from under the doormat and let myself in. Bob came galloping at me from the kitchen. I braced for impact, and he threw himself against me, delirious with happiness.

I gave Bob some hugs, told him he was a good boy, and called Morelli.

“I’m on my way home,” he said. “I had an interesting talk with Benny, and then I stopped at my mom’s house to pick up a tray of lasagna.”

Morelli’s batshit crazy Grandma Bella lived with his mom. Bella was a small, sharp-eyed woman who dressed in old-country black, put the

hex on people, and scuttled around like a spider on the hunt. His mom was the movie version of an Italian mother. She’d endured her drunken, philandering, abusive husband and prayed for him when he passed. Her windows were clean. Her house was spotless. She kept her only unmarried son’s refrigerator filled with lasagna, red sauce, good hard cheese, ricotta cake, meatballs, and prosciutto. She knew his girlfriend wasn’t up to the task. And sad to say, she was right.

A couple years ago, Morelli inherited the house from his Aunt Rose, and little by little he was making it his own. He’d done a partial renovation on the kitchen, and he’d added a downstairs powder room. Rose’s curtains still hung in two of the upstairs bedrooms, but the master had a new bed and sleek motorized shades. Downstairs, there were some leftover end tables and lamps. He’d kept Rose’s toaster and pots and pans, but he’d traded her dainty couch for a big comfy leather job and added a flat-screen television.

The best lasagna on the planet was on its way to Morelli’s house, so Bob and I moseyed into the kitchen. I gave Bob a doggy treat, and I set the small kitchen table for dinner. Morelli always ate in the kitchen or in front of the television in the living room. He didn’t eat in the dining room because he’d swapped out Rose’s dining room table for a pool table. Just because a man owns a toaster doesn’t mean he’s entirely domesticated.

The front door opened and closed, and Bob took off at top speed. Seconds later he was dancing around Morelli while Morelli attempted to get the lasagna onto the kitchen counter without Bob slobbering on it.

“It’s still hot,” Morelli said. “My mom just took it out of the oven. I know it’s early, but I didn’t get anything to eat at the wake and I’m starving.”

“I figured. I have the table set. How did it go with Benny? Is he going to back off?”

Morelli got beer out of the fridge. He gave one to me and chugged half of his.

“Benny swears on his mother’s grave that they weren’t responsible for either of the break-ins,” Morelli said.

I cut and plated the lasagna. “Do you believe him?”

Morelli took his seat at the table and shrugged. “I don’t know. There’ve been whispers all along that someone else is interested in the keys.”

I dumped a chunk of lasagna into Bob’s food bowl, set it on the floor by his water bowl, and joined Morelli. “Do you have any idea who this other person could be?”

“The suspects would range from Jimmy’s sisters to his ex-wives to the rest of the world. It was no secret that Jimmy was Keeper of the Keys, and that the keys were essential to unlocking the Boys’ fortunes.”

“The sisters and ex-wives were at the funeral when the break-in was going down.”

“They weren’t all at the wake. And they have nephews and old family friends who would do a job for them.”

We polished off half of the lasagna, hooked Bob up to his leash, and took him to the dog park as a special treat. He sniffed out a bunch of dogs, ran around for about three minutes, and went to the gate, signaling that he was ready to go. We let him stick his head out of the window on the way home, and he was all about it.

“I’m not so sure he’s a dog-park kind of dog,” I said to Morelli.

“It’s all about the journey,” Morelli said. “He likes to go, and he likes to come home.”