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it.”
    â€œWhat’s the big secret?”
    Another exchange of looks between my mother and grandmother.
    â€œThere’s two kinds of secrets,” Grandma said. “One kind is where nobody knows the secret. And the other kind is where everybody knows the secret, but
pretends
not to know the secret. This is the second kind of secret.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œIt’s about his honeys,” Grandma said.
    â€œHis honeys?”
    â€œFred always has a honey on the side,” Grandma said. “Should have been a politician.”
    â€œYou mean Fred has affairs? He’s in his seventies!”
    â€œMidlife crisis,” Grandma said.
    â€œSeventy isn’t midlife,” I said. “Forty is midlife.”
    Grandma slid her uppers around some. “Guess it depends how long you intend to live.”
    I turned to my mother. “You knew about this?”
    My mother took a couple deli bags of cold cuts out of the refrigerator and emptied them on a plate. “The man’s been a philanderer all his life. I don’t know how Mabel’s put up with it.”
    â€œBooze,” Grandma said.
    I made myself a liverwurst sandwich and took it to the table. “Do you think Uncle Fred might have run off with one of his girlfriends?”
    â€œMore likely one of their husbands picked Fred up and drove him to the landfill,” Grandma said. “I can’t see cheapskate Fred paying for the cleaning if he was going to run off with one of his floozies.”
    â€œYou have any idea who he was seeing?”
    â€œHard to keep track,” Grandma said. She looked over at my mother. “What do you think, Ellen? You think he’s still seeing Loretta Walenowski?”
    â€œI heard that was over,” my mother said.
    My cell phone rang in my shoulder bag.
    â€œHey, Cupcake,” Morelli said. “What’s the disaster?”
    â€œHow do you know it’s a disaster?”
    â€œYou left messages on three different phones plus my pager.
    It’s either a disaster or you want me bad, and my luck hasn’t been that good today.”
    â€œI need to talk to you,”
    â€œNow?”
    â€œIt’ll only take a minute.”
    T HE S KILLET IS a sandwich shop next to the hospital and could be better named the Grease Pit. Morelli got there ahead of me. He was standing, soda in hand, looking like the day was already too long.
    He smiled when he saw me .. . and it was the nice smile that included his eyes. He draped an arm around my neck, pulled me to him, and kissed me. “Just so my day isn’t a complete waste,” he said.
    â€œWe have a family problem.”
    â€œUncle Fred?”
    â€œBoy, you know everything. You should be a cop.”
    â€œWiseass,” Morelli said. “What do you need?”
    I handed him the packet of pictures. “Mabel found these in Fred’s desk this morning.”
    He shuffled through them. “Christ. What is this shit?”
    â€œLooks like body parts.”
    He tapped me on the head with the stack of pictures. “Comedian.”
    â€œYou have any ideas here?”
    â€œThey need to go to Arnie Mott,” Morelli said. “He’s in charge of the investigation.”
    â€œArnie Mott has the initiative of a squash.”
    â€œYeah. But he’s still in charge. I can pass them on for you.”
    â€œWhat does this mean?”
    Joe shook his head, still studying the top photo. “I don’t know, but this looks real.”
    I MADE AN illegal U-turn on Hamilton and parked just short of Vinnie’s office, docking the Buick behind a black Mercedes S600V, which I suspected belonged to Ranger. Ranger changed cars like other men changed socks. The only common denominator with Ranger’s cars was that they were always expensive and they were always black.
    Connie looked over at me when I swung through the front door. “Was Briggs really only three feet