Seven Up - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,49

Spotty up in her arms and held him close. "Nothing like the Star Trek party."

I explained to Mrs. Belski that someone had broken into Dougie's house.

"No!" she said. "How terrible." She gave a worried glance at Dougie's back door. "Dougie and his friend Walter get a little wild sometimes, but they're really nice young people at heart. They're always nice to Spotty."

"Have you seen anyone suspicious hanging around the house?"

"There were two women," Mrs. Belski said. "One was my age. Maybe a little older. In her sixties. The other was a couple years younger. I was coming back from walking Spotty and these women parked their car and let themselves into Dougie's house. They had a key. I assumed they were relatives. Do you suppose they were thieves?"

"Do you remember the car?"

"Not really. All cars look alike to me."

"Was it a white Cadillac? Was it a sports car?"

"No. It wasn't either of those. I would have remembered a white Cadillac or a fancy sports car."

"Anyone else?"

"An older man has been stopping by. Thin. In his seventies. Now that I think about it, he might have been driving a white Cadillac. Dougie gets lots of visitors. I don't always pay attention. I haven't noticed anyone looking suspicious, except for the women who had a key. I remember them because the older one looked at me and there was something about her eyes. Her eyes were scary. Angry and crazy."

I thanked Mrs. Belski and gave her my card.

When I was alone in the car with Ranger I got to thinking about the face Mooner saw in the window the night he got shot. It had seemed so improbable we hadn't given it a lot of attention. He hadn't been able to identify the face or even give it much detail . . . with the exception of the scary eyes. And now here was Mrs. Belski telling me about a sixty-something woman with scary eyes. There was also the woman who'd called Mooner and accused him of having something that belonged to her. Maybe this was the woman with the key. And how did she get a key? From Dougie, maybe.

"Now what?" I said to Ranger.

"Now we wait."

"I've never been very good at waiting. I have another idea. How about if we use me as bait? How about if I call Mary Maggie and tell her I have the thing and I'm willing to trade it for Mooner. And then I ask her to pass it on to Eddie DeChooch."

"You think Mary Maggie's the contact?"

"It's a shot in the dark."

MORELLI CALLED A half hour after Ranger dropped me off. "You're what?" Morelli yelled.

"Bait."

"Jesus."

"It's a good idea," I said. "We're going to let people think I have whatever it is that they're after . . ."

"We?"

"Ranger and me."

"Ranger."

I had a mental picture of Morelli clenching his teeth.

"I don't want you working with Ranger."

"It's my job. We're bounty hunters."

"I don't want you doing that job, either."

"Well, guess what? I'm not crazy about you being a cop."

"At least my job is legitimate," Morelli said.

"My job is just as legitimate as yours."

"Not when you work with Ranger," Morelli said. "He's a nut case. And I don't like the way he looks at you."

"How does he look at me?"

"The same way I do."

I could feel myself hyperventilating. Breathe slow, I told myself. Don't panic.

I got rid of Morelli, made myself a peanut butter and olive sandwich, and called my sister.

"I'm worried about this marriage thing," I said. "If you couldn't stay married, what are my chances?"

"Men don't think right," Valerie said. "I did everything I was supposed to do and it was wrong. How can that be?"

"Do you still love him?"

"I don't think so. Mostly I'd like to punch him in the face."

"Okay," I said. "I have to go now." And I hung up.

Next, I paged through the phone book, but there was no Mary Maggie Mason listed. No surprise there. I called Connie and asked her to get me the number. Connie had sources for unlisted phones.

"While you're on the line, I've got a quickie for you," Connie said. "Melvin Baylor. He didn't show up for court this morning."

Melvin Baylor lives two blocks from my parents. He's a perfectly nice forty-year-old guy who got taken to the cleaners in a divorce settlement that stripped him of everything but his underwear. To add insult to injury, two weeks after the settlement his ex-wife Lois announced her engagement to their unemployed next-door neighbor.

Last week the ex and the