“Take me home,” she said.
“What happened?”
“Devil woman turned a hose on me.”
I cranked the engine over and put the car in gear. “Are you sure it was her?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I guess the rumor about the pie was wrong.”
“She tricked me. I tell you, she’s evil.”
I watched to make sure Grandma got into my parents’ house without anything else going wrong, and then I went back to Morelli’s.
A half hour later Morelli came home.
“What’s new?” I asked him.
“An early ballistics report indicates the same weapon was used on Scootch, Ritt, and Poletti.”
“So all you have to do is find the gun.”
“Yeah, that’s all I have to do.”
I followed him into the kitchen. “Do you think these could be contract killings?”
“You’re thinking Buster hired someone to kill Scootch and Poletti when he was away from his apartment.”
“He could have called Scootch and Poletti and told them to come to his apartment, and when Scootch and Poletti got there the shooter was waiting for them.”
“Motive?”
“Get rid of everyone who could implicate him in the slave trade.”
“So you think Pepper is next?”
“Unless they’re working together.”
Morelli pulled the butter pecan ice cream out of the freezer and got a spoon out of the silverware drawer. “What about Briggs?”
“From what I can see, everyone hates him. Poletti tried to run him over, and Buster tried to kill him with a car bomb.”
“What about the rockets?”
“Wild card.”
“That’s as good as anything I’ve got,” Morelli said.
I got my own spoon and went to work on the chocolate chip ice cream. “I had an interesting night. I picked Grandma up at the funeral home after your grandmother turned a hose on her.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“It’s going to take days for the Buick to dry out. She was soaked.”
“At least they aren’t shooting at each other like the Hatfields and McCoys.”
“Not yet.”