Top Secret Twenty-One: A Stephanie Plum Novel(34)

“Maybe. But he could still be listening.”

Morelli was inching my panties down.

“Don’t you care if he’s listening?” I asked him.

“No.” He kissed my bare shoulder and did some exploration under the T-shirt.

“I can’t stop thinking about him,” I said.

Although, I had to admit, Morelli had wonderful hands. And he was an amazing kisser. And I was liking what his hands were doing.

“Do you like this?” Morelli asked, and he ran a finger across my nipple.

“Mmmm,” I said.

And then a vision of Briggs, listening to us on the other side of the door, popped into my head.

“I’m having a hard time focusing,” I told Morelli.

“As you can tell, I’m not having that problem.”

“I noticed. And there’s a part of me that really would like to do this. And I mean really would like to do this. But I can’t shake the feeling that Briggs is out there. I mean, what if the game suddenly ends?”

“There were two innings left.”

“That’s true,” I said. “So maybe if we’re super fast we can get it done before the game ends.”

“There’s no problem on my end,” Morelli said.

There might be a problem on my end. “What if everyone gets struck out and the innings are over in record time? In fact, for all we know, they could be on the last inning now. It could be the bottom of the last inning!”

“Okay,” Morelli said. “I was saving this for a special occasion, but maybe this is a good time to try it out.”

He fumbled around in the nightstand drawer and brought out a neon blue and silver box. “I busted Ziggy Shestok last week. He was selling stuff out of the trunk of his Cadillac again, and I got this baby for two bucks. If you bought it on one of those shopping channels, you’d pay twenty dollars for it.”

“Wait. You arrested Ziggy for selling hot appliances and then you bought one?”

“No. I arrested him for selling drugs. The appliances were just a sideline for him. He had toasters too, but I already have one of those.” Morelli peeled the cellophane wrapper off the box, took the gizmo out, and held it up for inspection. “Batteries included,” he said.

“Holy Toledo. What are all those nubby little things on it?”

“It says on the box that they’re pleasure stimulators.”

“Pleasure is good,” I said.

“Damn straight.”

Morelli turned it on. BZZZZZZZZZZZ!

“Whoa. It sounds … powerful.”

“It’s called the One-Second Wonder Tool.”

He hit the go button again, the thing bzzzzed in his hand, and I felt the vibration run through his body and into the mattress.

I jumped to the other side of the bed. “That sounds like too much pleasure.”

Morelli pulled me back to his side, threw a leg over me, and kissed me. “Be brave,” he said. “It’s got a money-back guarantee.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my teeth. “Do it!”

BZZZZZZZZZZ! BZZZZZZZZZ!

“Yow!” I yelled.

Morelli rolled off me. “What? Are you okay?”

“Better than okay,” I gasped. “That might have been the best second of my life.”

BAM, BAM, BAM! “Hey,” Briggs shouted from the other side of the door, “are you all right in there? I heard this weird buzzing. It sounded like a bunch of angry bees.”

“Power surge,” Morelli said. “It happens all the time. Go back to the game.”





FIFTEEN


I WAS IN the kitchen enjoying my second cup of coffee when Briggs shuffled in.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I kept waiting for a firebomb to come through the window.”

“A firebomb isn’t going to come through the window. No one knows you’re here.”

“He’ll find me. It’s just a matter of time.” He helped himself to coffee. “Where’s Morelli?”

“Early meeting. He’s already out of the house.”

“What’s with the black suit on you? You look like you’re going to a funeral.”

“I am. Jimmy Poletti’s mother is getting buried today.”

“I forgot. Do you think I should go?”

“Yes. We need to leave for the service in twenty minutes.”

Briggs returned to the kitchen in fifteen minutes. He was showered and dressed in clothes that were wrinkled but clean and smelling only slightly of smoke. He scarfed down his coffee and a bowl of cereal, complained about the quality of the orange juice, and we were out the door and on our way to get Grandma.

Grandma was wearing a royal blue pantsuit and black patent leather pumps, and she was carrying her large black patent leather purse. I strongly suspected she had her .45 long barrel in the purse.

I pulled the Buick into the funeral line at the church and had a funeral flag attached to my car. Lula slid in line behind me in her red Firebird. We all got out of our cars and gathered on the sidewalk. Lula was wearing five-inch heels and a stretchy black skirt and wrap top. Her hair had been toned down for the occasion from hot pink to magenta.

“So what’s the plan?” Lula wanted to know. “We gonna hang the little guy out and hope someone takes a potshot at him?”