up and ran away to get more gas. I decided I wasn't going to wait around to get turned into a briquette, so I stuffed a bunch of clothes into a couple of garbage bags and took off."
Morelli had a grim expression on his face. "And you came here."
"Yeah. I thought with the way you handled him in the club, and with you being a cop and all, this was a safe place to stay." He held up his hands. "Just for a couple days! I don't want to impose."
"Shit," Morelli said. "What does this look like, a halfway house for potential victims of homicidal maniacs?"
"It might not be such a bad idea," I said. "If Sally let it be known he was living here, we might draw Sugar in."
Truth is, I was enormously relieved to know the identity of the firebomber. And I was sort of relieved to find it was Sugar. Better than the mob. And better than the guy who cuts off fingers.
"Two things wrong with that," Morelli said. "Number one, I can't get excited about my house being turned into an inferno. Number two, grabbing Sugar won't do much good if we can't convict him of a crime."
"No problem there," Sally said. "He told me about how he firebombed Stephanie's apartment and how he tried to burn down this house, too."
"You willing to testify to that?"
"I can do better than testify. I've got his diary out in the car. It's filled with juicy details."
Morelli leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. "The only way I'll agree to this is if neither of you actually stays here. You put the word out that you're living with me, and twice a day you go in and out the front door, so it looks real. Then I put you in a safe house for the night."
"Put Sally in a safe house," I said. "I'll help with surveillance."
"No way," Sally said. "I'm not being left out on all the fun."
"Neither of you does surveillance," Morelli said. "And it's not open to debate. It's my way or it's no way."
"What safe house did you have in mind?"
Morelli thought about it a minute. "I could probably put you with one of my relatives."
"Oh no! Your grandmother would find me and give me the eye."
"What's the eye?" Sally wanted to know.
"It's a curse," I said. "It's one of those Italian things."
Sally shivered. "I don't like that curse stuff. One time I was down in the islands, and I accidentally ran over this voodoo person's chicken, and the voodoo person said she was gonna make my dick fall off."
"Well?" Morelli asked. "Did it fall off?"
"Not yet, but I think it might be getting smaller."
Morelli grimaced. "I don't want to hear this."
"I'll go home to my parents," I said. "And Sally can come with me."
We both looked at Sally in the skirt.
"You have any jeans in the car?" I asked.
"I don't know what I have. I was in a real rush. I didn't want to be there when Sugar got back with more gasoline."
Morelli put in a call to have Sugar picked up, and then we dragged Sally's clothes in from his car. We left the Porsche parked at the curb, behind the Buick, and we pulled the shades on the front downstairs windows. Then Morelli called his cousin, Mooch, to come get Sally and me at nine in the alley behind his house.
Thirty minutes later Morelli got a call from Dispatch. Two uniforms had gone over to check on Sally's apartment and had found it on fire. The building had been evacuated without injury. And Dispatch said the fire was under control.
"He must have come back right away," Sally said. "I didn't think he'd set fire to everything if I was gone. It must have just about killed him to torch all of those cakes and pies."
"I'm really sorry," I said. "Do you want me to go over there with you? Do you want to see it?"
"I'm not going anywhere near that place until Sugar's strapped to a bed in the loony bin. Besides, it wasn't even my place. I was renting from Sugar. All the furniture was his."
"YOU SEE, this is much better," my mother said, opening the door for me. "I have your bedroom all ready. As soon as you called we put on new sheets."
"That's nice," I said. "If it's okay with you, I'll let Sally sleep in my room, and I'll bunk with Grandma Mazur. It'll only be