Janet Evanovich: Smokin Seventeen

“So what are you doing here in Trenton?” Grandma asked.

“I’m working for my Uncle Harry.”

Harry Brewer owned a moving and storage company. When I moved out of my house after the divorce, I used Brewer Movers.

“Are you moving furniture?” Grandma asked.

“No. I’m doing job estimating and general office work. My cousin Francie use to do it, but she had some words with my uncle, left work, and never came back. So I stepped in to help out.”

Grandma made a sucking sound with her dentures. “Has anyone heard from her?”

“Not that I know.”

“Just like Lou Dugan,” Grandma said.

I knew about Francie, and it wasn’t exactly like Lou Dugan. Francie’s boyfriend was also missing, and when Francie stormed out of the office she took almost $5,000 in petty cash with her. The theory going around is that Francie and her boyfriend were in Vegas.

“Who wants wine?” my mother asked. “We have a nice bottle of red on the table.”

Grandma helped herself to the wine and passed it across the table to Dave. “I bet you and Stephanie have a lot in common being that you went to school together.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nada.”

Dave stopped his fork halfway to his mouth. “There must be something.”

“What?” I asked him.

“A mutual friend.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You played football, and she was a twirler,” Grandma said. “You must have been on the field together.”

“Nope,” I said. “We were on at halftime, and they were in the locker room.”

He turned and looked at me. “Now I remember you. You flipped your baton into the trombone section during ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”

“It wasn’t my fault,” I said. “It was cold and my fingers were frozen. And if you so much as crack a smile over this I’ll stab you with my fork.”

“She’s pretty tough,” Grandma said to Dave. “She’s a bounty hunter, and she shoots people.”

“I don’t shoot people,” I said. “Almost never.”

“Show him your gun,” Grandma said.

I spooned mashed potatoes onto my plate. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to see my gun. Anyway, I don’t have it with me.”

“She’s got just a little one,” Grandma said. “Mine’s bigger. Do you want to see my gun?”

My mother poured herself a second glass of wine, and my father gripped his knife so hard his knuckles turned white.

“Maybe later,” Dave said.

“You are not supposed to have a gun,” my mother said to my grandmother.

“Oh yeah. I forgot. Okay, I gave the gun away,” Grandma said to Dave. “But it’s a beaut.”

“What about you?” my father asked Dave. “Do you have a gun?”

Dave shook his head. “No. I don’t need a gun.”

“I don’t trust a man who doesn’t own a gun,” my father said, slitty-eyed at Dave, forkful of meatloaf halfway to his mouth.

“I don’t usually agree with my son-in-law,” Grandma said, “but he’s got a point.”

“Do you have a gun?” Dave asked my dad.

“I used to,” my dad said. “I had to get rid of it when Edna moved in. Too much temptation.”

My mother drained her wineglass. “Anyone want more potatoes?” she asked.

“I’ll have another piece of meatloaf,” Dave said.

“The way to good meatloaf is to use lots of ketchup when you’re mixing it up,” Grandma said. “It’s our secret ingredient.”

“I’ll remember that,” Dave said. “I like to cook. I’d like to go to culinary school, but I can’t afford it right now.”

My father stopped chewing for a beat and gave his head an almost imperceptible shake, as if this sealed the deal on his assessment of Dave Brewer.

“How about you?” Dave asked me. “Do you like to cook?”

Interesting question. He didn’t ask me if I could cook. The answer to that was easy. No. I for sure couldn’t cook. Anything beyond a sandwich and I was a mess. The thing is, he asked me if I liked to cook. And that was a more complicated question. I didn’t know if I liked to cook. Someone was always cooking for me. My mom, Morelli’s mom, Ranger’s housekeeper, and a bunch of professionals at delis, pizza places, supermarkets, sandwich shops, and fast-food joints.

“I don’t know if I like to cook,” I told him. “I’ve never had reason to try. I wasn’t married long enough to get the stickers off the bottoms of the pots.”

“And then her apartment got firebombed and her cook-book got burned up,” Grandma said. “That was a pip of a fire.”

“That’s too bad,” Dave said. “Cooking can be fun. And you get to eat what you make.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat anything I made.

“We got to get a move on with this dinner,” Grandma said. “Mildred Brimmer is laid out at Stiva’s, and I don’t want to miss anything. Everyone’s going to be talking about Lou Dugan, and I’m going to be the star on account of Stephanie was right on the spot.”

Dave turned to me. “Is that true? I heard they found him buried on the bonds office property.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The backhoe guy uncovered a hand and part of the arm. I wasn’t there when they exhumed the rest of him.”

“I heard they recognized him by his ring,” Dave said.

I nodded. “Morelli spotted it. I’m sure they’ll do more forensic work to be certain.”

“That’s the good part about living in the Burg,” Grandma said. “There’s always something interesting going on.”

We made our way through the dinner in record time, so Grandma could get to her viewing. No one spilled the wine or set the tablecloth on fire by knocking over a candlestick. The conversation was mildly embarrassing, since it was full of not-so-subtle references about Dave and me becoming a couple, but I’d been through far worse.

“Sorry about the matchmaking,” I said to Dave as I showed him to the door after dinner was over.

“By the end of the meal I was almost convinced we were engaged.” He stared down at my cleavage. “I was starting to warm to the idea.” He gave me a polite kiss on the cheek. “Maybe we can be friends. I can give you a cooking lesson.”

“Sure,” I said. “Cooking would be good.”

FIVE MINUTES LATERI was in my own car. I had a bag of leftovers on the backseat and Grandma next to me in the passenger seat as I wound my way through the Burg to Stiva’s Funeral Home.

“Dave wasn’t so bad,” Grandma said. “He wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the losers your mother’s dragged home for you. Remember the butcher?”

An involuntary shiver ran down my spine at the thought.

“And I think it’s real nice that Dave knows how to cook,” Grandma said. “It could come in handy for some lucky girl.”

I looked sideways at Grandma.

“Well you could do worse,” she said. “I don’t see you making much progress marrying what you already got on the string.”

“I’m not sure I want to get married.”

“Don’t be a ninny,” Grandma said. “Of course you want to get married. You want to take out your own garbage for the rest of your life? And what about babies?”

“Babies?”

“Sure. Don’t you want babies?”

Truth is, I was pretty happy with a hamster. “Maybe someday,” I said.

I dropped Grandma off at the funeral home and drove back to my apartment. I spotted Morelli’s green SUV parked in my lot, and I pulled up next to him. His truck was empty, and the lights were on in my living room. He’d let himself in. He had a key.

I took the elevator, walked the length of the hall, and Morelli and his dog, Bob, met me at my door. Bob adopted Morelli a while back. Bob’s big and shaggy and red, and he eats everything .