I heaved a sigh. “We did park the car here.”
“It isn't here anymore.”
It sure as hell wasn't. The car was gone, gone, gone. I pulled my phone out of my pocketbook and called Morelli. There was no answer at his home number, so I tried his car phone.
There was a short crackle of static and Morelli came on.
“It's Stephanie,” I said. “I'm at The House of Eternal Slumber on Stark Street and my car's been stolen.”
There was no immediate response, but I thought I heard some muffled laughter. “Have you called it in?” he finally asked.
“I'm calling it in to you.”
“I'm honored.”
“Grandma Mazur is with me, and her feet hurt.”
“Ten-four, Keemo Sabe.”
I dropped my phone back into my pocketbook. “Morelli's on his way.”
“Nice of him to come get us.”
At the risk of sounding cynical, I suspected Morelli had been camped out in my parking lot, waiting for me to come home so he could get briefed on Perry Sandeman.
Grandma Mazur and I huddled close to the door, ever on the alert should my car cruise by. It was an uneventful, tedious wait, and Grandma seemed disappointed not to have been approached by drug dealers or pimps looking for fresh blood.
“Don't know what all the to-do is about,” she said. “Here it is a perfectly good night, and we haven't seen any crime. Stark Street isn't what it's cracked up to be.”
“Some slimeball stole my car!”
“That's true. I guess this evening wasn't a complete bust. Still, I didn't see it happen. It just isn't the same if you don't see it happen.”
Morelli's truck turned at the corner and made its way up Stark Street. He double-parked, set his flasher, and sauntered around to us. “What happened?”
“The Jeep was parked and locked in this empty space here. We were in the funeral home for less than ten minutes. When we came out, the Jeep was gone.”
“Any witnesses?”
“None that I know of. I didn't canvass the neighborhood.” If there was one thing I'd learned in my short career as a bounty hunter, it was that no one saw anything on Stark Street. Asking questions was an exercise in futility.
“I had the dispatcher notify all cars as soon as I got your call,” Morelli said. “You should come down to the station tomorrow and fill out a report.”
“Any chance I'll get my car back?”
“There's always a chance.”
“I saw a TV show about stolen cars,” Grandma Mazur said. “It was on these chop shops that take cars apart. Probably by now there's nothing left of that Jeep but a grease spot on some garage floor.”
Morelli opened the passenger-side door to his pickup and hoisted Grandma onto the seat. I scootched up beside her and told myself to think positive. Not all stolen cars ended up as spare parts, right? My car was so cute that probably someone couldn't resist taking it for a short joyride. Think positive, Stephanie. Think positive.
Morelli made a U-turn and retraced back to the burg. We made a perfunctory stop at my parents' house, only staying long enough to deposit Grandma Mazur in the Lay-Z-Boy rocker and reasure my mother that nothing terrible had happened to us on Stark Street . . . aside from having my car grand-thefted.
On the way out my mother handed me the traditional bag of food. “A little something for a snack,” she said. “Some spice cake.”
“I love spice cake,” Morelli told me when we were back in his truck, heading for my apartment.
“Forget it. You're not getting any.”