“You’re kidding!”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Why didn’t you tell her not to come? Why didn’t you tell her I wasn’t home?” All right, maybe I sounded a little whiney, but this was Grandma Bella we were expecting. And whiney was better than flat-out hysteria, right?

“She’s coming with a dish of my mother’s manicotti. Have you ever tasted my mother’s manicotti?”

“You sold me out for manicotti!”

Morelli grinned and kissed me on the forehead. “You can have some, too. And by the way, your hair is cute.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I wasn’t feeling cute. In fact, I’d decided I didn’t like cute. Cute wasn’t a word anyone would use to describe Morelli or Ranger. Cute implied a degree of helplessness. Kittens were cute.

A car stopped in front of the house and I took a deep breath. Calm down, I thought. Don’t want to be rude. Don’t want to let them sense fear. There was a knock at the door and Joe reached for the handle.

“Touch that handle and you die,” I said. “She’s coming here to see me. I’ll let her in.”

The grin returned. “Woman in charge,” Morelli said.

I opened the door and smiled at the two women. “How nice to see you again,” I said. “Come in.”

“We can’t stay,” Joe’s mother said. “We’re on our way to church. We just wanted to drop this manicotti off.”

I took the casserole and Grandma Bella fixed her scary eye on me.

“I had a vision,” Bella said.

I looked down at her and screwed my face into an expression that I hoped conveyed mild interest. “Really?”

“It was you. You were dead. Just like the last time. You went into the ground.”

“Uh-hunh.”

“I saw you in the box.”

“Mahogany? The model with the scroll work?”

“Top of the line,” Bella said.

I turned to Joe. “Nice to know.”

“A comfort,” Joe said.

“So was there anything different about the vision this time?” I asked Bella.

“It was the same vision. But last time I forgot to tell you . . .you were old.”

“How old?”

“Real old.”

“We have to go now,” Joe’s mother said. “It wouldn’t hurt you to come to church once in a while, Joseph.”

Joe smiled and gave her and Bella a kiss on the cheek. “Be careful.” He closed the door after them and took the manicotti from me. “Way to go. That was impressive.”

“I’m fearless.”

“Cupcake, you are not fearless. But you can bluff with the best of them.”

“What gave me away?”

“You had a death grip on the manicotti. Your knuckles were turning white.”

Bob and I followed Morelli into the kitchen.

“I was old in Bella’s vision,” I said to Morelli. “I guess I can stop worrying about the carnation killer now. And I definitely don’t need a bodyguard.”

“I can hardly wait for you to explain this to Ranger,” Morelli said.

I WOKE UP to sun streaming in through Morelli’s bedroom window. Morelli was long gone and Bob was asleep in his place, head on the pillow, one eye open and watching me.