I thought about Morelli’s dog, Bob. I was pretty sure Bob didn’t understand a damn thing.
“Go ahead,” Snuggy said to Doug. “Give her a sign that you understand.”
Doug blinked.
“See,” Snuggy said. “Impressive, hunh?”
“That was it? A blink?”
“Oh man,” Diesel said. “We are so fucked.”
Doug moved to the side and stepped on Diesel’s foot. Diesel gave him a shot to the shoulder and Doug moved over, off Diesel’s foot.
“Okay,” I said, “now that each of you has marked your territory on the fire hydrant, can we get on with it?”
“We brought the RV instead of your car because it has a tow hitch, but they didn’t leave the horse trailer,” Snuggy said. “I borrowed a horse trailer from a friend, and they took it when they took Doug, and it’s not here.”
“Maybe you can ride him back,” Diesel said.
“I can’t ride him back on the highway!” Snuggy said. “And anyway, he has a bad leg. It hurts when he walks on it too much.”
We all looked down at Doug’s leg. It had a bandage wrapped around it.
“Put him in the RV,” Diesel said.
Snuggy and I did an openmouthed What?
Diesel was looking a quart down on patience. “Do you have any better ideas?”
Snuggy and I shook our heads. We didn’t have any ideas.
“We’re wasting time,” Diesel said.
Snuggy took Doug’s halter and led him over to the door of the RV. There were three steps going up, and the door opening looked maybe a half-inch wider than Doug’s ass.
Doug planted his feet firm on the ground and gave Snuggy a look that I swear said Are you insane?
“Up you go,” Snuggy said. “Into the RV.”
Doug didn’t budge.
Snuggy went into telepathic mode, nodding his head, looking sympathetic.
“I understand your concern,” Snuggy said to Doug, “but you have nothing to worry about. You have to make a tight turn when you first get in, but then you’ll have plenty of room.”
More telepathy.
“I’m driving,” Snuggy said to Doug.
Doug still didn’t move.
“What are you talking about?” Snuggy said. “I’m a good driver. I brought you around the track to win at Freehold.”
Doug rolled his eyes.
“I fell off after we won,” Snuggy said. “And it had nothing to do with my driving. It was one of those freak things.”
“How about this,” Diesel said to Doug. “You get into the RV, or we leave you in the parking lot and don’t come back.”
Snuggy went in first, pulling on Doug’s halter, and Diesel put his shoulder to Doug’s butt. After a lot of swearing on Diesel’s part, and a lot of nervous foot stamping on Doug’s part, Doug got himself into the RV.
“Jeez,” Snuggy said to Doug. “Quit your complaining. Look at Diesel. He doesn’t fit in here, either, but he’s making the best of it.”
Doug turned his horse eye on Diesel, and I didn’t think it looked friendly.
“Maybe you want to give Doug some room,” I said to Diesel. “Maybe you want to go up front and hang with Snuggy.”
8
It was four o’clock when we cruised into the lot to my building and parked the RV in the back, next to the Dumpster.
“We should get Doug out of the RV for a couple minutes,” Snuggy said. “Let him stretch his legs and go potty.”
The possibility that Doug might have to go potty got us all on our feet. We maneuvered Doug into the back bedroom, turned him around, and managed to get him out the door and down the steps. Snuggy walked Doug around in the lot, but apparently Doug didn’t feel the need to do anything. I wasn’t all that unhappy, because I didn’t know how I was going to explain a load of horseshit in the parking lot.
“Ask him about Grandma,” I said to Snuggy. “Does he know where she is?”
Here’s the thing. I didn’t entirely buy into the whole horse talk business, but a part of me wanted to believe. Not only did I want to believe for Grandma’s sake, but I liked the idea that communication was possible between species. I also liked the idea that reindeer could fly, there was such a thing as the birthday cake diet, and, most of all, I wanted to go to heaven.
“What about it?” Snuggy said to Doug. “Un-hunh, un-hunh, un-hunh.”
I looked up at Diesel. “Are you getting anything?”
“Yeah, a real strong desire to quit my job and go to bartending school.”
“Doug says before they drove him to the warehouse, they had him outside, in a yard, and he was tied to a thing in the ground, like a dog. He said it was humiliating. He doesn’t know exactly where it was, but he might be able to spot it if you drive him around.”
“That’s a little vague,” Diesel said.
“Doug thinks they might have Grandma there because he heard a lot of yelling, and then they pulled the shades down, so he couldn’t see in the window. And he thinks he might have heard a gunshot.”
“No!” I had my hand to my heart. “When?”
“Just before they loaded him into the horse trailer.”
I whipped my phone out and dialed Delvina.
“What?” Delvina said.
“Is my grandmother all right?”
“Was she ever all right?”
“I want to talk to her,” I told him.
“No way. We got her locked in the crapper, and I’m not opening that door until I get a cattle prod. Do you have the rest of my money?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”
Delvina disconnected.
“Doug says he’s hungry,” Snuggy said. “He said he had to eat grass, and there wasn’t hardly any. He says he thinks he could be more helpful if he wasn’t hungry.”
Diesel dialed Flash. “I need horse food,” he said to Flash. He listened a minute and studied his shoe. “I don’t know what horses eat. Just go to a horse food store and let them figure it out. And bring some beer and pizza with the horse food.”
“What are you going to do with Doug?” I asked Snuggy. “He needs a barn or a stable or something.”
“I have him scheduled for surgery next week, and after that, I have a place for him to live in Hunterdon County. I just don’t have anything for him right now. And I guess I’m in a bind with the surgery. I lost the money I was going to use.”
I called my mother.
“Do you know anything about Lou Delvina?”
“You aren’t involved with him, are you? He’s a terrible person. If your cousin gave Delvina to you to find, you give him back. Let someone else look for him.”
“He’s not one of my cases. This is something else.”
“Well, I hear he’s sick. And something happened with him and his wife, because he’s not living at the Cranbury house anymore.”
“Do you know where he is living?”
“No, but I ran into Louise Kulach at church last week, and she said twice she saw Delvina getting cold cuts at the deli on Cherry Street. She said he looked terrible. She said you wouldn’t recognize him, except the butcher told her who it was. Where’s your grandmother?”
“She’s in the bathroom.”
“What should I do about supper? I have a pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove.”
“Grandma wants to eat at the mall.”
“I guess that’s okay, but don’t let her eat from that Chinese place. It always gives her the runs.”
I put my phone back into my pocket. “North Trenton,” I said to Diesel. “Delvina’s been seen at the deli on Cherry Street.”
“Never underestimate the value of gossip,” Diesel said. “Let’s roll before it gets dark.”
“What about the horse food?” Snuggy asked.
“We’ll stop at Cluck-in-a-Bucket,” Diesel said.
“Doug doesn’t eat burgers,” Snuggy said. “Horses are vegetarians.”
“Whatever,” Diesel said. “We’ll stop at a supe
rmarket and get him a head of lettuce. Just get him into the RV.”
Snuggy rolled the RV slowly down Cherry Street. Doug was in the aisle between the dinette table and the couch, looking out the big front window, eating an apple. It was his fourth apple, and half the apple fell out of his mouth while he chewed. Turns out it’s hard to eat an apple efficiently without opposable thumbs. We’d been driving a grid pattern through north Trenton, and this was our second pass down Cherry.
Diesel was perched on the seat next to Snuggy. “You’d better not be blowing smoke up my skirt with this horse,” Diesel said to Snuggy.
Doug reached forward and bit Diesel on the shoulder. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to leave a dent and apple slobber on Diesel’s shirt.
“This is the reason I don’t carry a gun,” Diesel said. “It’d be satisfying to shoot him, but I’d probably regret it . . . eventually.”
Snuggy turned off Cherry, drove a couple blocks, and stopped in the middle of the road. “Doug says the neighborhood didn’t look like this. He said the house was by itself.”
“Was it in the woods? In the middle of a field?” I asked.
“No. It was just by itself,” Snuggy said. “And it was noisy. He could hear cars all night long.”
“Route 1,” I said to Diesel. “The house was at the end of a street that backed up to Route 1.”
The sun was setting, and I could see a rosy glow in the sky in front of us.
“Pretty sunset,” I said.
“That’s not a sunset,” Diesel said. “The sun is behind us. That’s a fire.”
A cop car raced past us, and I heard sirens in the distance. Snuggy moved to the side of the road to allow a fire truck to get through.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Diesel said. “Follow the truck.”
Snuggy eased the RV down the street and parked a block from the fire. Cop cars and fire trucks were angled in front of the burning house. The house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. The lot was large. There was a two-car garage attached to the house. The garage doors were open and whatever was in the garage was on fire. Firemen were running hoses and shouting instructions to each other. There were large trees to the side and behind the house. The rumble of the fire trucks drowned out all other noise, but I knew on a quieter night you could hear the Route 1 traffic from here.
Diesel was on his feet. “Stay here,” he said. “I’m going to look around.”
“No way,” I said. “I’m coming with you.”
“Every cop and fireman in the county knows you,” Diesel said. “Morelli will get a phone call, and we’ll have the police involved in this.”
“Maybe the police should be involved.”
“Let me scope it out before we jump to conclusions. I’ll be right back.”
I sat on the couch and dialed Delvina. My hands were shaking, and I had to dial twice to get the right number. Delvina didn’t answer.
My next call was to Connie. “Are you at the office or has this been forwarded?” I asked her.
“I’m still here. I’m trying to clear out some backed-up paperwork.”
“I need you to run an address for me.”
Moments later, she was back on the line. “The house is owned by Mickey Wallens, Delvina’s wheelman.”
I disconnected and clamped my teeth down into my lower lip. Snuggy and Doug were silent, watching out the front window with me. The three of us barely breathing. Diesel appeared from behind a fire truck and jogged back to the RV.
“It looks like the fire was started in a second-floor bathroom. The firefighters haven’t determined if anyone was in the house, but I think the house was empty. One of the garage bays was empty. There was a horse trailer in the other. The horse trailer is toast.”
“Now what?” Snuggy asked.
“Take us back to Stephanie’s apartment,” Diesel said.
“Drive by the car wash on the way,” I told him. “I want to get my car.”
Snuggy parked the RV in his spot by the Dumpster, and I parked one row up, making sure I could drive straight out. I got out of my car and tried Delvina one more time. The phone rang twice and he answered.
“Sonovabitch,” he said.
“I want to talk to my grandmother.”
“She’s in the trunk. Don’t worry about her. She’s got a quilt and a pillow, and she’s curled up next to the spare tire. It’s a big trunk.”
“She’s old. That’s awful!”
“I’ll tell you what’s awful. She burned Mickey’s house down. She said it smelled like poop in the bathroom, so Mickey slid some matches to her under the door.”
I could hear Mickey next to Delvina. “I was trying to be helpful.”
“How many times I have to tell you,” Delvina said to Mickey. “No guns, sharp objects, or matches to hostages.”
“We never had a old lady hostage before,” Mickey said. “I didn’t know the rules was the same.”
Delvina came back on the line to me. “So Sir Walter Raleigh here gives your grandma matches and she uses them to set off the smoke detector. Then somehow the curtains got caught on fire. We’re lucky we didn’t die, for crissake. Now we’re riding around like some homeless people. I gotta go. I think we’re lost.”
Delvina disconnected.
“Well?” Diesel said.
“They’re lost.”
“I know the feeling,” Diesel said. “I’m going upstairs, where I hope there’s some pizza and beer waiting for me.”
We all walked over to the back door, and when I reached it, I realized Doug had followed us.
“What are we going to do with Doug?” I said.
“Doug can stay in the RV,” Diesel said.
“Doug doesn’t want to stay in the RV,” Snuggy said. “He’s freaked out from the fire. Doug wants to stay with us.”
“Yeah, but this is an apartment building for people,” I said.
“Doesn’t it allow pets?”
“Not horses!”
“How do you know? Does it say that in your rental agreement? And anyway, you let Diesel stay here.”
“Diesel is housebroken.”
“So is Doug,” Snuggy said.
Doug was standing with his head down, looking pathetic, not putting any weight on his bad leg.
“Oh, for goodness sakes,” I said.
Snuggy, Diesel, Doug, and I got into the elevator, and I looked at the posted weight limit.
“How much does Doug weigh?” I asked Snuggy.
“About thirteen hundred pounds,” Snuggy said. “Don’t anyone breathe. I’m going to push the button. We only have to go up one floor.”
The elevator paused when it got to the second floor, and I prayed that the doors would open. I didn’t want to get caught in an elevator with a horse. The doors opened after a long moment, and we all paraded down the hall to my apartment. Flash had left a sack of grain, two buckets, two six-packs of beer, three pizzas, and a duffel bag with Diesel’s and Snuggy’s clothes in front of my door.
We carried everything inside and closed and locked the door. Snuggy poured some grain into a bucket for Doug and filled the second bucket with water. Diesel took one of the pizza boxes and a beer and settled himself in front of the television.
Some people can’t eat when they’re under stress. I get hungry when I’m nervous. I eat to fill the hollow feeling in my stomach. I sat next to Diesel and wolfed down pizza. I looked at the box and saw that it was empty.
“Are you going to eat the cardboard, too?” Diesel asked.
“Did I eat pizza?”
“Four pieces.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Take a deep breath,” Diesel said. He put his hands on my shoulders and kneaded. “Keep breathing,” he told me. “Try to relax. Your grandma’s going to be okay. We’re going to find her.”
I was warming under Diesel’s touch. The heat was working its way up my neck and down my spine. It wasn’t sexual. It was sensual and soothing. I could feel myself go
ing soft inside. I could feel my heartbeat slowing.
“You have terrific hands,” I said to Diesel. “I always get warm when you touch me.”
“I’ve been told it has something to do with sympathetic body chemistry and shared electrical energy. The person who told me that was full of mushrooms, but I thought it sounded cool. The other explanation is that my body temperature runs higher than normal, and I like touching you.”
I didn’t know I’d fallen asleep until I woke up. I was snuggled against Diesel, and he was watching a basketball game. Snuggy was watching, too. He was in his new clothes, which looked exactly like his old clothes, except the wrinkles and knee bags and ketchup stains were missing. Doug was in the kitchen with the light off. Guess Doug wasn’t a Knicks fan.
It was nine o’clock and my mother was probably pacing the floor, waiting for me to bring Grandma home. I tapped her number into my phone and imagined her jumping at the first ring.
“Where are you?”
“I’m home.”
“Where’s your grandmother?”
“I sort of lost her.”
“What?”
“Remember how, in the beginning, she took off on a road trip? It’s a little like that. But I don’t think she’s gone too far this time.”
“How could this happen?”
“She’s very wily.”
“I don’t understand. She has a nice home here. Why would she do this?”
“I think she needs to have an adventure once in a while. And she’s overly curious.”
“You get that from her,” my mother said. “You’re a lot like your grandmother.”
Sort of a scary thought, but I knew it was true. Even at this moment, I had a horse in my kitchen.
“Don’t worry,” I said to my mother. “She’s fine. I’ll find her and bring her home tomorrow.”
Diesel pulled himself away from the game when I disconnected. “How did that go?”
“As well as could be expected. I would have gotten grounded if she didn’t need me to find my grandmother.”
“I bet you got grounded a lot when you were a kid.”
I laughed out loud, remembering. “I used to climb out the bathroom window.”
“Was Morelli waiting for you at the bottom?”
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