“Where are you now?”
“In the living room,” I told him.
“Anything else I need to know before I call this in?”
“Nope. That's the whole enchilada.”
I disconnected and noticed Lula had her keys in her hand.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked Lula.
“I figure you don't need me anymore, so I thought I'd go home. I got things to do. I gotta think about a honeymoon. And this place is gonna be swarming with cops, and I hate cops. Except for Morelli. Morelli is fine.”
“If you leave, I have no way to get home.”
“What about Morelli? What about Ranger? What about calling a cab?”
“What about waiting in your car in the parking lot?” I said to her.
“I guess I could do that.”
She hotfooted it out of the apartment, and I thought there was a twenty percent chance she'd be in the lot when I was ready to go home. Not that Lula was unreliable, more that her cop phobia overrode her best intentions.
I figured I had five to ten minutes before the first cop showed up, so I told myself to get over the dead guy and think about rescuing Loretta. I did a quick run through the kitchen, being careful not to leave prints. I found leftover fast-food chicken and expired milk in the refrigerator, and dots of blue mold on the bread that was sitting on the counter. Not enough mold to slow down a big, tough construction guy from Trenton. No scraps of paper lying around with a phone number or address.
I walked back into the bedroom, and as best I could, I avoided looking at the body. A pair of beat-up CAT boots had been kicked off beside the bed, and a framed photograph of a large
powerboat was propped on the dresser. I'd found the third partner's apartment. And probably the guy on the floor was the third partner, since he was in socks. I guess I could have seen if the boots fit, but I didn't want to know who he was that bad. Let the police figure it out.
There were clothes all over the place. Hard to tell if the apartment had been tossed, since Zero wasn't the world's best housekeeper. I went through all pockets, omitting the ones attached to the dead guy, and I looked through drawers. I did a fast bathroom check.
I looked out the bedroom window and saw the first police car angle to a stop in the lot. He'd come in without a siren, probably at Morelli's suggestion. A second squad car followed. Eddie Gazarra got out of the second squad car. That was a relief. We'd grown up together and he'd married my cousin, Shirley the Whiner. Eddie wouldn't come at me with a suspicious, hostile attitude, and that would make my life much more pleasant.
I stepped out of the apartment and waited in the hall. I got an eye roll from Gazarra when he walked out of the elevator, and then concern.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes. The door was open when I got here. He was dead on the floor in the bedroom. No one else was here. I assume it's Stanley Zero, but I don't know for sure.”
Gazarra went about securing the crime scene, and a couple minutes later, Rich Spanner showed up.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Spanner said to me. “People are gonna talk.” He entered the apartment, checked out the body, and returned to the hall. “What do you think?”
“I think he's got one too many holes in his forehead.”
“Yeah,” Spanner said. “I noticed that. I also noticed he reminds me a lot of the dead guy in Morelli's basement.”
“Because of the hole in his head?”
“Mmm. And because you found him.”
“It's getting old.”
“I bet,” Spanner said.
I repeated my mostly true story for Spanner. The ME slipped past us, followed by two paramedics and a forensic photographer.
“Do you have anything else you want to share?” Spanner asked.