Seven Up - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,6

That was it. Nothing more.

MoonMan has been known to experiment with pharmaceuticals and for the better part of his life has made no sense at all. Usually it's best to ignore MoonMan.

I stuck my head in my refrigerator and found a jar of olives, some slimy brown lettuce, a lone bottle of beer, and an orange with blue fuzz growing on it. No pineapple upside-down cake.

There was a pineapple upside-down cake a couple miles away at my parents' house. I checked out the waistband on my Levi's. No room to spare. Probably I didn't need the cake.

I drank the beer and ate some olives. Not bad, but not cake. I blew out a sigh of resignation. I was going to cave. I wanted the cake.

MY MOTHER AND my grandmother were at the door when I pulled to the curb in front of their house. My Grandmother Mazur moved in with my parents shortly after my Grandfather Mazur took his bucket of quarters to the big poker slot machine in the sky. Last month Grandma finally passed her driver's test and bought herself a red Corvette. It took her exactly five days to acquire enough speeding tickets to lose her license.

"The chicken's on the table," my mother said. "We were just about to sit."

"Lucky for you the dinner got late," Grandma said, "on account of the phone wouldn't stop ringing. Loretta Ricci is big news." She took her seat and shook out her napkin. "Not that I was surprised. I said to myself a while ago that Loretta was looking for trouble. She was real hot to trot, that one. Went wild after Dominic died. Man-crazy."

My father was at the head of the table and he looked like he wanted to shoot himself.

"She'd just jump from one man to the next at the seniors' meeting," Grandma said. "And I heard she was real loosey-goosey."

The meat was always placed in front of my father so he got first pick. I guess my mother figured if my father got right down to the task of eating he wouldn't be so inclined to jump up and strangle my grandmother.

"How's the chicken?" my another wanted to know. "Do you think it's too dry?"

No, everyone said, the chicken wasn't dry. The chicken was just right.

"I saw a television show the other week about a woman like that," Grandma said. "This woman was real sexy, and it turned out one of the men she was flirting with was an alien from outer space. And the alien took the woman up to his spaceship and did all kinds of things to her."

My father hunkered lower over his plateful of food and mumbled something indiscernible except for the words . . . crazy old bat.

"What about Loretta and Eddie DeChooch?" I asked. "Do you suppose they were seeing each other?"

"Not that I know of," Grandma said. "From what I know, Loretta liked her men hot, and Eddie DeChooch couldn't get it up. I went out with him a couple times, and that thing of his was dead as a doorknob. No matter what I did I couldn't get nothing to happen."

My father looked up at Grandma, and a piece of meat fell out of his mouth.

My mother was red-faced at the other end of the table. She sucked in some air and made the sign of the cross. "Mother of God," she said.

I fiddled with my fork. "If I left now I probably wouldn't get any pineapple upside-down cake, right?"

"Not for the rest of your life," my mother said.

"So how did she look?" Grandma wanted to know. "What was Loretta wearing? And how was her hair done? Doris Szuch said she saw Loretta at the food store yesterday afternoon, so I'm guessing Loretta wasn't all rotted and wormy yet."

My father reached for the carving knife, and my mother cut him down with a steel-eyed look that said don't even think about it.

My father's retired from the post office. He drives a cab part-time, only buys American cars, and smokes cigars out behind the garage: when my mother isn't home. I don't think my dad would actually stab Grandma Mazur with the carving knife. Still, if she choked on a chicken bone I'm not sure he'd be all that unhappy.

"I'm looking for Eddie DeChooch," I said to Grandma. "He's FTA. Do you have any ideas about where he might be hiding?"

"He's friends with Ziggy Garvey and Benny Colucci. And there's his nephew Ronald."

"Do you think he'd leave the country?"

"You mean