High Five by Janet Evanovich Read Free Book Online Page B

day the bar was filled with cops unwinding after their shift. And at other times of the day the tables set aside for diners were filled with hungry Burg families. In between those times, Pino’s was home to a few regular drunks, and the kitchen was taken over by cockroaches as big as barn cats. I ate at Pino’s in spite of the roach rumor because Anthony Pino made the best pizza in Trenton. Maybe in all of Jersey.
    Morelli gave his order and tipped back in his chair. “How friendly are you feeling toward me?”
    â€œWhat’d you have in mind?”
    â€œA date.”
    â€œI thought
this
was a date.”
    â€œNo. This is dinner, so I can ask you about the date.”
    I sipped at my beer. “Must be some date.”
    â€œIt’s a wedding.”
    I sat up straighter in my chair. “It isn’t
my
wedding, is it?”
    â€œNot unless there’s something going on in your life that I don’t know about.”
    I blew out a sigh of relief. “Wow. For a minute there I was worried.”
    Morelli looked annoyed. “You mean if I asked you to marry me, that’s the reaction I’d get?”
    â€œWell, yeah.”
    â€œI thought you wanted to get married. I thought that was why we stopped sleeping together. . . because you didn’t want sex without marriage.”
    I leaned forward on the table and cocked a single eyebrow at him. “Do you want to get married?”
    â€œNo, I don’t want to get married. We’ve been all through this.”
    â€œThen my reaction doesn’t matter, does it?”
    â€œJesus,” Morelli said. “I need another beer.”
    â€œSo what’s with the wedding?”
    â€œMy cousin Julie’s getting married on Saturday, and I need a date.”
    â€œYou’re giving me four days’ notice to go to a wedding? I can’t be ready for a wedding in four days. I need a new dress and shoes. I need a beauty parlor appointment. How am I going to do all this with four days’ notice?”
    â€œOkay, fuck it, we won’t go,” Morelli said.
    â€œI guess I could do without the beauty parlor, but I definitely need new shoes.”
    â€œHeels,” Morelli said. “High and spiky.”
    I fiddled with my beer glass. “I wasn’t your last choice, was I?”
    â€œYou’re my only choice. If my mother hadn’t called this morning I wouldn’t have remembered the wedding at all. This case I’m on is getting to me.”
    â€œWant to talk about it?”
    â€œThat’s the last thing I want to do.”
    â€œHow about Uncle Fred, want to talk about him some more?”
    â€œThe playboy.”
    â€œYeah. I don’t understand how he could just disappear.”
    â€œPeople disappear all the time,” Morelli said. “They get on a bus and start life over. Or they jump off a bridge and float out with the tide. Sometimes people help them disappear.”
    â€œThis is a man in his seventies who was too cheap to buy a bus ticket and would have had to walk miles to find a bridge. He left his cleaning in the car. He disappeared in the middle of running errands.”
    We both momentarily fell silent while our pizza was placed on the table.
    â€œHe’d just come from the bank,” Morelli said when we were alone. “He was an old man. An easy mark. Someone could have driven up to him and forced him into their car.”
    â€™there were no signs of struggle.”
    â€œThat doesn’t mean one didn’t take place.”
    I chewed on that while I ate my pizza. I’d had the same thought, and I didn’t like it.
    I told Morelli about my conversation with Winnie Black.
    â€œShe know anything about the pictures?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOne other thing,” Morelli said. “I wanted to tell you about Benito Ramirez.”
    I looked up from the pizza. Benito Ramirez was a heavyweight professional boxer from Trenton. He liked to