“What message are you talking about?”

“I left a message for you in your jacket pocket. It’s for you and your new buddy, Spiro.”

“Where are you?”

The disconnect clicked in my ear.

Shit.

I plunged my hand into my jacket pocket and started pulling stuff outused Kleenex, lipstick, a quarter, a Snickers wrapper, a dead finger. “YOW!”

I dropped everything on the floor and ran out of the room. “Shit, damn, shit!” I stumbled into the bathroom and stuck my head into the toilet to throw up. After a few minutes I decided I wasn’t going to throw up (which was kind of too bad since it’d be good to get rid of the hot fudge sundae I’d had with Mary Lou).

I washed my hands with a lot of soap and hot water and crept back to the kitchen. The finger was lying in the middle of the floor. It looked very embalmed. I snatched at the phone, staying as far away from the finger as was humanly possible, and dialed Morelli.

“Get over here,” I said.

“Something wrong?”

“JUST GET OVER HERE!”

Ten minutes later the elevator doors opened and Morelli stepped out.

“Uh-oh,” he said, “the fact that you’re waiting for me in the hall is probably not a good sign.” He looked at my apartment door. “You don’t have a dead body in there, do you?”

“Not entirely.”

“You want to enlarge on that?”

“I have a dead finger on my kitchen floor.”

“Is the finger attached to anything? Like a hand or an arm?”

“It’s just a finger. I think it belongs to George Mayer.”

“You recognized it?”

“No. It’s just that I know George is missing one. You see, Mrs. Mayer was going on about George’s lodge, and how he wanted to be buried with his ring, and so Grandma had to check the ring out, and in the process broke off one of George’s fingers. Turns out the finger was wax. Somehow Kenny got into the mortuary this morning, left Spiro a note, and chopped off George’s finger. And then while I was at the mall tonight with Mary Lou, Kenny threatened me in the shoe department. That must have been when he put the finger in my pocket.”

“Have you been drinking?”

I gave him a don’t-be-stupid look and pointed to my kitchen.

Morelli moved past me and stood hands on hips, staring down at the finger on the floor. “You’re right. It’s a finger.”

“When I came in tonight the phone was ringing. It was Kenny, telling me he left a message in my jacket pocket.”

“And the message was the finger.”

“Yeah.”

“How did it get on the floor?”

“It sort of dropped there when I went to the bathroom to throw up.”

Morelli helped himself to a paper towel and used it to pick up the finger. I gave him a plastic bag, he dropped the finger in, sealed the bag, and slipped the bag into his jacket pocket. He leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed his arms over his chest. “Let’s start from the beginning.”