22 Caliber - A Stephanie Plum-inspired Story

Chapter Sixteen

Morelli brought a large pizza with black olives, green peppers, onions, pepperoni and sausage home for dinner. He broke off a piece of crust and put it in Rex's cage. We took the rest into the living room with a roll of paper towels and three plates. We broke up two pieces of pizza and put it out on a plate to cool for Bob and dug into the remainder.

I asked Joe about my apartment and whether anyone had anything to report. He said the uniforms had talked to most of my neighbors. No one had seen anything, although two people thought they may have heard glass breaking. They weren't sure, but the times corresponded with each other. The window had been broken sometime between midnight and twelve thirty in the morning. "I'm really glad now you weren't there, Cupcake. I've been taking Rolaids all afternoon thinking about what could have happened if you had been there. I'm glad you are staying here tonight. Have you been back to the apartment at all? Could you ascertain whether anything was taken?"

"I went back this morning. I cleaned up the food – I wanted to get that up before it made the apartment smell. And I sorted through my clothes, and threw out all the clothes that were unsalvageable and took the rest over to my mom's. She washed and ironed them for me today. But I didn't have much of a chance to look to see if anything was missing. Nothing stuck out at me, though." I stretched across Morelli to put the plate of cooled pizza on the floor for Bob and winced slightly at the pull of the stitches.

"What's wrong? Why are you making that face?" Joe asked.

I sighed and turned red. "Well, it's nothing really."

Joe's eyes turned hard and assessing. "I think I would like to hear a little bit of nothing..."

"Damn. Okay. Lula and I were out at The Pines bringing in Caden Kenchiro. Kenchiro sort of got away from us and Lula sort of shot at him. Although out of the two shots that she took, one hit Ranger's car and the other winged my arm. It's not a big deal. It just needed a couple of stitches."

"You were shot. And you thought it was nothing." Morelli sounded dazed. He got off the couch and got the bottle of Rolaids. He shook out two, stared at his hand for a moment and then shook out two more. He threw them in his mouth and chewed for a moment. He looked at me, shook his head and took out two more. He put the bottle back on the dining room table and came back to the couch. "Did I see pineapple upside-down cake in the fridge?" he asked.

I woke up the next day with a burning pain in my arm, a body wrapped around me, a throat that was almost better and a dog panting in my face. "Joe", I said, "the dog needs out."

"Remember when Bob used to be your dog?" Joe replied. It was true. I was the one who originally took Bob as a favor to another cop, but Bob decided he liked Morelli's house – and backyard – better. It worked out well for both Bob and me. While I loved Bob very much, I thought I was a better hamster owner.

Joe groaned and got out of bed. "Come on, Bob." He threw on a pair of jeans and left the room, and called out that he would put the coffee on when he was downstairs. From experience I knew I had exactly twenty-seven more minutes to sleep until Joe was finished both with taking care of Bob and having a shower. I cuddled further down in the bed and took advantage of every one of those minutes.

Saturday was technically a half day in the office. But while it officially was a half day, my hours were more flexible. It sounded great, but in actuality this meant that I ended up working all the time, constantly on the lookout for skips wherever I went. Plans for my day included earning some car money and going back to my apartment to clean up some of the mess.

After breakfast, Joe and I went our separate ways to work, Joe to coordinate the surveillance efforts with his team for the money drop for the next day and me to catch more skips. I was on my own today, as Lula was out car shopping. I decided to go after Benjamin Williams, the purse snatcher. It was a crapshoot as to whether this was a good idea to do without Lula backing me up. Judging from his file he didn't seem particularly smart or lucky; however, from experience I have found purse snatchers can usually run pretty fast. I didn't feel like I had much run in my feet – but I needed the money.