“Melvin,” Morelli yelled from the bedroom door, “we’re going to bed.”
“Okay,” Melvin said.
“If you come into the bedroom, I’ll shoot you.”
“Okay,” Melvin mumbled back.
I crawled into bed wearing panties and a T-shirt.
“I was hoping you’d be looking a little sexier than this,” Morelli said “What did you have in mind?”
“Nakedness, but it’s not a problem. I can work with the T-shirt.” He slipped in next to me and ran his hand over the shirt.
“I don’t think we should be doing this,” I said. “It’s uncomfortable.”
“Is it that time of the month?”
“No! Melvin is in the next room.”
“I can lock him out. He can wait in the hall.”
“He would know we were doing it.”
“And?”
“It’s awkward,” I said. “It’s like doing it with people watching.”
“And?”
“Wouldn’t that bother you?”
“It would depend on the people. If they were a couple hot women…”
“Omigod!”
Morelli grinned. “We could be quiet. He would never know.”
“Yes, but I know!”
“You do realize that for eons people have performed this activity with other people in close proximity. Sometimes those other people were in their very own family.”
“Melvin isn’t family. He’s Melvin.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Morelli said, “but it’s bad juju to screw with a fortune cookie.”
CHAPTER TEN
I woke up to rain on Sunday morning. “Do you think it’s the fortune cookie telling us something?” I asked Morelli.
“It’s not too late to set things right,” he said. “I’m ready to do whatever it takes.”
Morelli was always ready. He had testosterone oozing out of his pores.
I sat up in bed. “I hear Melvin. He’s stomping around in the living room.” I got out of bed, pulled on jeans, and went to see what Melvin was doing.
“My leg fell asleep,” he said. “I was sitting on it, and I fell asleep, and when I woke up my leg was dead.” He stomped from one side of the room to the other. “It’s feeling better. It’s pins and needles now. That’s a good sign.”
Morelli ambled out of the bedroom. “I’m going to let Bob check out some tires in the parking lot and then we’re heading home.” He gave me a friendly kiss. “I’ll pick you up at three o’clock for the disaster.”
I waved him and Bob away and I went into the kitchen for coffee.
“What disaster?” Melvin asked.
“Family birthday party,” I said. “Morelli’s Uncle Sergio.”
“Is he old?”
“Eighty.”
“I bet he’s cranky. The old people in my family are cranky.”
I ate a handful of cereal while I waited for my coffee. “How’s the hacking going?”
“Okay. It would be going faster if I had Clark to help me. We shared ideas.”
I passed the cereal box to him. “Help yourself to cereal. There’s milk in the fridge, and I just made coffee.”
“Good. My synapses need coffee.”
“I’m going to take a shower. I want to be at the hospital at eight o’clock to see Andy. You need to come with me. After Andy we’re going to stop at my parents’ house. They have an extra bedroom, and they might be willing to let you stay there.”
“I’m like a man without a country,” Melvin said.
“It’s temporary. As soon as we track down Oswald, you can go back to your loft.”
* * *
Andy was sitting up in bed eating breakfast when we walked into his room. He was hooked up to an IV, but he had color in his face, and he seemed happy to see us.
“I brought your Hemingway,” Melvin said, handing him the books in a plastic bag. “I was afraid they might disappear if I left them behind.”
“That’s a fact of life when you live in a park,” Andy said. “Things disappear all the time.”
“How are you feeling?” I asked him. “Was it food poisoning?”
“I’m feeling much better,” he said. “I’m getting fluids and some antibiotics. They think it was food poisoning, but it might not have been the rotisserie chicken. I tend to be lax about refrigeration. They thought it might have been the dead squirrel I found the day before. I had leftovers for breakfast.”