"So there's going to be a wedding?"

"I thought you bought a dress."

I scooped out some shrimp stuff. "It's on hold."

"What's the problem?"

"I don't want a big wedding. It feels dopey. But my grandmother and my mother keep dragging me into one. All of a sudden I've got this dress on. And then next thing we've got a hall reserved. It's like someone sucked my mind out of my head."

"Maybe we should just go get married."

"When?"

"Can't be tonight. The Rangers are playing. Tomorrow? Wednesday?"

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. Are you going to eat that last egg roll?"

My heart stopped dead in my chest. When it started back up again it was skipping beats. Married. s.h.i.t s.h.i.t! I was excited, right? That's why I felt like I might throw up. It was the excitement. "Don't we need blood tests and licenses and stuff?"

Morelli turned his attention to my T-shirt. "Pretty."

"The shirt?"

He traced a line with his fingertip along the lace edge of my bra. "That, too." His hands slid under the cotton fabric and the shirt was suddenly over my head and discarded. "Maybe you should show me your stuff," he said. "Convince me you're worth marrying."

I raised a single eyebrow. "Maybe you're the one who should be doing the convincing."

Morelli slid the zipper on my jeans. "Cupcake, before the night's over you're going to be begging me to marry you."

I knew from past experience that this was true. Morelli knew how to make a girl wake up smiling. Tomorrow morning walking might be difficult, but smiling would be easy.

MORELLI'S PAGER WENT off at 5:30 A.M. Morelli looked at the readout and sighed. "Informer."

I squinted into the darkness as he moved around the room. "Do you have to go?"

"No. I just have to make a phone call."

He walked into the living room. There was a moment of silence. And then he reappeared in the bedroom doorway. "Did you get up in the middle of the night and put the food away?"

"No."

"There's no food on the coffee table."

Bob.

I dragged myself out of bed, shoved my arms into my robe, and shuffled out to see the carnage.

"I found a couple little wire handles," Morelli said. "Looks like Bob ate the food and and the cartons." the cartons."

Bob was pacing at the door. His stomach was distended, and he was drooling.

Perfect. "You make your phone call and I'll walk Bob," I told Morelli.

I ran back to the bedroom, pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, and rammed my feet into boots. I clipped the leash onto Bob and grabbed my car keys.

"Car keys?" Morelli asked.

"In case I need a doughnut."

Doughnut my foot. Bob was going to do a great big Chinese-food p.o.o.p. And he was going to do it on Joyce's lawn. Maybe I could even get him to hurl.

We took the elevator because I didn't want Bob moving around any more than was necessary. We rushed to the car and roared out of the lot.

Bob had his nose pressed to the window. He was panting and belching. His stomach was swollen to bursting.

I had the gas pedal almost to the floor. "Hold on, big fella," I said. "We're almost there. Not long now."

I screeched to a stop in front of Joyce's house. I ran around to the pa.s.senger side, opened the door, and Bob flew out. He rocketed to Joyce's lawn, hunched over, and p.o.o.ped what appeared to be twice his body weight. He paused for a second and horked up a mixture of cardboard box and shrimp chow mein.

"Good boy!" I whispered.

Bob gave himself a shake and bolted back to the car. I slammed the door after him, jumped in on my side, and we took off before the stench could catch up with us. Another job well done.

Morelli was at the coffeemaker when I came in. "No doughnuts?" he asked.

"I forgot."

"I've never known you to forget doughnuts."

"I had other things on my mind."

"Like marriage?"

"That, too."

Morelli poured out two mugs of coffee and handed one to me. "Ever notice how marriage seems a lot more urgent at night than it does in the morning?"

"Does that mean you no longer want to get married?"

Morelli leaned against the counter and sipped his coffee. "You're not getting off the hook that easy."

"There are lots of things we've never talked about."

"Such as?"

"Children. Suppose we have children and it turns out we don't like then?"

"If we can like Bob, we can like anything," Morelli said.

Bob was in the living room licking lint off the carpet.

EDDIE DECHOOCH CALLED ten minutes after Morelli and Bob left for work.

"What's it gonna be?" he asked. "Do you want to make a deal?"

"I want Mooner."

"How many times do I have to tell you, I haven't got him. And I don't know where he is. n.o.body I know has him, either. Maybe he got scared and ran away."

I didn't know what to say because it was a possibility.

"You're keeping it cold, right?" DeChooch said. "I need to get it in good shape. My a.s.s is on the line for this."

"Yep. It's cold, all right. You're not going to believe what good shape it's in. Just find Mooner and you can see for yourself." And I hung up.

What the heck was he talking about?

I called Connie, but she wasn't in the office yet. I left a message for her to get back to me and I took a shower. While I was in the shower I summarized my life. I was after a depressed senior citizen who was making me look like a dunce. Two of my friends were missing without a trace. I looked like I'd just gone a round with George Foreman. I had a wedding gown I didn't want to wear and a hall I didn't want to use. Morelli wanted to marry me. And Ranger wanted to . . . h.e.l.l, I didn't want to think about what Ranger wanted to do to me. Oh yeah, and there was Melvin Baylor, who, for all I knew, was still on my parents' couch.

I got out of the shower, got dressed, put in minimum effort on my hair, and Connie called.

"Have you heard any more from Aunt Flo or Uncle Bingo?" I asked Connie. "I need to know what went wrong in Richmond. I need to know what everyone's looking for. It's something that needs to be kept cold. Pharmaceuticals, maybe."

"How do you know it needs to be kept cold?"

"DeChooch."

"You talked to DeChooch?"

"He calls me." Sometimes I can't believe my own life. I have an FTA who calls me. How weird is that?

"I'll see what I can find out," Connie said.

I called Grandma next.

"I need some information about Eddie DeChooch," I said. "I thought you might ask around."

"What do you want to know?"

"He had a problem in Richmond, and now he's looking for something. I want to know what he's looking for."

"Leave it to me!"

"Is Melvin Baylor still there?"

"Nope. He went home."

I said good-bye to Grandma, and there was a knock on my door. I opened the door a crack and looked out. It was Valerie. She was dressed in a tailored black suit jacket and slacks with a white starched shirt and a man's black-and-red striped tie. The Meg Ryan s.h.a.g was plastered back behind her ears.

"New look," I said. "What's the occasion?"

"It's my first day as a lesbian."

"Yeah, right."

"I'm serious. I said to myself, why wait? I'm making a fresh start here. I decided I should just jump right in. I'm going to get a job. And I'm going to get a girlfriend. No reason to sit home sulking over a failed relationship."

"I didn't think you were serious the other night. Have you had any . . . um, experience as a lesbian?"

"No, but how hard can it be?"

"I don't know if I like this," I said. "I'm used to being the black sheep of the family. This could change my standing."

"Don't be silly," Valerie said. "No one will care that I'm a lesbian."

Valerie was in California way way too long. too long.

"Anyhoo," she said, "I've got a job interview. Do I look okay? I want to be honest about my new s.e.xual orientation, but I don't want to be overly butch."

"You don't want the d.y.k.es-on-bikes look."

"Exactly. I want the lesbian-chic look."

Having had limited lesbian experience I wasn't sure what lesbian chic looked like. Mostly I knew television lesbians.

"I'm not certain about the shoes," she said. "Shoes are always so difficult."

She was wearing delicate black patent sandals with a little heel. Her toes were painted bright red.

"I guess it depends if you want men's shoes or women's shoes," I said. "Are you a girl lesbian or a boy lesbian?"

"There are two kinds of lesbians?"

"I don't know. Didn't you research this?"

"No. I just a.s.sumed lesbians were unis.e.x."