“What am I signing?”

“Preliminary report.”

“How did Kenny get the foot into my refrigerator?”

“Broken bedroom window. You need an alarm system.”

One of the uniforms left, carrying a large Styrofoam cooler.

I swallowed down a wave of revulsion. “Is that it?” I asked.

Morelli nodded. “I did a fast cleanup of your refrigerator. You’ll probably want to do a more thorough job when you have time.”

“Thanks. I appreciate the help.”

“We went through the rest of the apartment,” he said. “Didn’t find anything.”

The second uniform left, followed by the suits and the crime scene men.

“Now what?” I asked Morelli. “Not much point in staking out Sandeman’s place.”

“Now we watch Spiro.”

“What about Roche?”

“Roche will stay with the funeral home. We’ll tag after Spiro.”

We taped a big plastic garbage bag over the broken window, shut the lights off, and locked the apartment. There was a small crowd in the hall.

“Well?” Mr. Wolesky asked. “What was this about? Nobody’ll tell us nothing.”

“It was just a broken window,” I said. “I thought it might have been something more serious, so I called the police.”

“Were you robbed?”

I shook my head no. “Nothing was taken.” So far as I knew, that was the truth.

Mrs. Boyd didn’t look like she was buying any of it. “What about the ice chest? I saw a policeman carry an ice chest out to his car.”

“Beer,” Morelli said. “They were friends of mine. We’re going to a party later.”

We ducked down the stairs and trotted to the van. Morelli opened the driver’s side door, and sick-dog odor poured out, forcing us to retreat.

“Should have left the windows open,” I said to Morelli.

“We’ll let it sit for a minute,” he said. “It’ll be fine.”

After a few minutes we crept closer.

“It still smells bad,” I said.

Morelli stood fists on hips. “I don’t have time to scrub it down. We’ll try riding around with the windows open. Maybe we can blow it out.”

Five minutes later, the smell hadn’t faded.

“That’s it for me,” Morelli said. “I can’t take this smell anymore. I’m trading up.”

“You going home for your truck?”

He made a left onto Skinner Street. “Can’t. The guy I borrowed the van from has my truck.”

“The undercover pig car?”

“Being fixed.” He hooked onto Greenwood. “We’ll use the Buick.”

Suddenly I had a new appreciation for the Buick.

Morelli pulled up behind Big Blue, and I had the door open and my foot to the pavement while the van was still rolling. I stood outside in the crisp air, breathing deep, flapping my arms and shaking my head to rid myself of any residual stench.

We got into the Buick together and sat there for a moment appreciating the lack of odor.

I rolled the engine over. “It’s eleven o’clock. You want to go straight to Spiro’s apartment, or do you want to try the funeral home?”

“Funeral home. I spoke to Roche just before you got out of the shower, and Spiro was still in his office.”