Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?. Stevi Mittman

as Jesse hits the white ball into the red one, causing it to hit the yellow one into the pocket.

      “Combination shot,” Don says. “Boy’s good. How long has he been playing?”

      Jesse looks at his watch.

      “No,” Don says. “Really.”

      Jesse looks guiltily at me. “Dad and I have played a few times,” he says.

      This, of course, is news to me. All I’ve heard is how much he hates his father.

      “How much would a pool table for the house cost?” I ask Don. If Jesse is going to play pool, I figure it’s better if I know where and with whom. Jesse’s eyes light up like it’s Christmas and immediately I regret asking in front of him.

      Don tells me that I can get “junk” for under a thousand, or a good one for a little over that.

      “Just sold a gorgeous antique one for seventeen big ones,” he tells me. “But the guy froze to death before the deal was done. How’s that for rotten luck? Almost sixty degrees out and a guy freezes to death.”

      “Seventeen thousand?” Rio asks, and his voice cracks. He’s standing on a ladder with a bunch of wires in his hands and I’m hoping he knows what to do with half of them. “You can get that much for a pool table?”

      “Nope,” Don says, “for a billiards table.”

      “What’s the difference?” Jesse asks him.

      “About ten grand,” Don says with a laugh.

      “The man who froze to death,” I say, wondering out loud. “His name didn’t happen to be Joey, did it?”

      Don looks at me and nods. “It sure did.”

      CHAPTER 6

      It only takes one piece to upgrade the look of an entire room if that piece is the focal point. Rather than evenly allotting a strained budget, concentrate the bulk of your spending on the area that is going to have the greatest impact—a fabulous rug, a fireplace mantel, an impressive painting. Make sure, though, that you love it, since it’s what your eye will be drawn to.

      —TipsFromTeddi.com

      “You tell me how a deli-counter man could buy a pool table for seventeen thousand dollars,” I ask Drew when I finally reach him by phone after I’ve gone home to change.

      “You tell me how you wiggled into that skirt,” he says. “There are still some mysteries left in the universe, I guess.”

      Does the word irritating mean anything to you? I hold a biscuit up for Maggie and tell her she’s got to promise to bite Drew the next time she sees him if she wants her treat.

      I swear she nods, but she’s a slut for biscuits and I’ve found that sometimes she’ll lie.

      “All I’m saying,” I tell Drew, “is that you need to check into what else Joey Ingraham was buying and where the money was coming from.”

      “And all I’m saying,” he parrots back, “is that even if this case wasn’t closed, it wasn’t my case to begin with. I can’t just go investigate some other cop’s case.”

      When I ask why not, he tells me it would imply that the cop wasn’t doing his job.