“What's that?” Grandma Mazur wanted to know. “Looks like a picture of a casket.” She took a closer look. “You aren't thinking of buying that for me, are you? I want one with some carving. I don't want one of them military caskets.”
Morelli's head came up. “Military?”
“Only place they got caskets this ugly is the military. I saw on TV about how they got all these caskets left over from Desert Storm. Not enough Americans died over there and now they have acres of caskets to get rid of, so the army's been auctioning them off. They're—what do you call it—surplus.”
Morelli and I looked at each other. Duh.
Morelli put his napkin on the table and slid his chair back. “I need to make a phone call,” he said to my mother. “Is it okay if I use your phone?”
It seemed pretty far-fetched to think Kenny had smuggled the guns and ammo off the base in caskets. Still, crazier things have been known to happen. And it would explain Spiro's casket anxiety.
“How'd it go?” I asked when Morelli returned to the table.
“Marie's checking for me.”
Grandma Mazur paused with a spoonful of soup halfway to her mouth. “Is this police business? Are we working on a case?”
“Trying to get a dental appointment,” Morelli said. “I've got a loose filling.”
“You need teeth like mine,” Grandma told him. “I can mail them to the dentist.”
I was having second thoughts about dragging Grandma off to Stiva's. I figured she could hold her own with a disgusting undertaker. I didn't want her involved with a dangerous one.
I finished my soup and bread and helped myself to a handful of cookies from the cookie jar, glancing at Morelli, wondering at his lean body. He'd eaten two bowls of soup, half a loaf of bread slathered in butter, and seven cookies. I'd counted.
He saw me staring and raised his eyebrows in silent question.
“I suppose you work out,” I said, more statement than question.
“I run when I can. Do some weights.” He grinned. “Morelli men have good metabolism.”
Life was a bitch.
Morelli's beeper went off, and he returned the call from the kitchen phone. When he came back to the table he looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. “My dentist,” he said. “Good news.”
I stacked all the soup bowls and plates and hustled them into the kitchen. “Got to go,” I said to my mother. “Got work to do.”
“Work,” my mother said. “Hah! Some work.”
“It was wonderful,” Morelli said to my mother. “The soup was terrific.”
“You should come again,” she told him. “We're having pot roast tomorrow. Stephanie, why don't you bring him back tomorrow?”
“No.”
“That's not polite,” my mother said. “How is that to treat a boyfriend?”
When my mother was willing to accept a Morelli as a boyfriend, this only went to show how desperate my mother was to get me married, or at least for me to have a social life. “He's not my boyfriend.”
My mother gave me a bag of cookies. “I'll make cream puffs tomorrow. I haven't made cream puffs in a long time.”
When we got outside I stood straight and tall and looked Morelli square in the eye. “You are not coming to dinner.”
“Sure,” Morelli said.
“What about the phone call?”
“Braddock had a shitload of surplus caskets. The DRMO conducted a sale six months ago. That was two months before Kenny was discharged. Stiva's Mortuary bought twenty-four. The caskets were stored in the same general area as the munitions, but we're talking about a lot of ground. A couple warehouses and an acre or two of open yard, all behind fence.”