“Evidence of what?”
“Tampering with a dead body.”
“I don’t believe you. You’ll probably toss it into a Dumpster.”
“Actually, I was thinking of putting it in Goldstein’s locker.”
The cemetery was a mile and a half from Stiva’s. There were maybe seven or eight cars in front of me, crawling along in the somber procession. Outside, the air was mid-thirties and the sky was a wintery blue, and it felt more like I was in traffic to go to a football game than a funeral. We pulled through the cemetery gates and wound our way to the middle of the cemetery where the grave had been prepared and chairs set up. By the time I parked, Spiro had the widow Mayer already seated.
I sidled up to Spiro and leaned close. “I have George’s finger.”
No response.
“George’s finger,” I repeated in my mommy-to-three-year-old voice. “The real one. The one he’s missing. I’ve got it in my pocketbook.”
“What the hell is George’s finger doing in your pocketbook?”
“It’s sort of a long story. What we have to do now is get George put back together again.”
“What, are you crazy? I’m not going to open that casket to give George his finger back! No one gives a shit about George’s finger.”
“I do!”
“Why don’t you do something useful like find my damn caskets? Why are you wasting your time finding things I don’t want? You don’t expect to get paid for finding the finger, do you?”
“Jesus, Spiro, you’re such a slime sucker.”
“Yeah, so what’s your point?”
“My point is that you better figure out how to get old George his finger, or I’m going to make a scene.”
Spiro didn’t look convinced.
“I’ll tell Grandma Mazur,” I added.
“Shit, don’t do that.”
“What about the finger?”
“We don’t drop the casket until everyone’s in the cars with motors running. We can pitch the finger in then. Will that work for you?”
“Pitch the finger?”
“I’m not opening the casket. You’re gonna have to settle for having it buried in the same hole.”
“I feel a scream coming on.”
“Christ.” He pressed his lips together, but his lips weren’t ever able to entirely close over his overbite. “All right. I’ll open the casket. Anyone ever tell you you’re a pain in the ass?”
I moved away from Spiro to the edge of the gathering, where Morelli stood watching. “Everyone tells me I’m a pain in the ass.”
“Then it must be true,” Morelli said, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “Have any luck getting rid of the finger?”
“Spiro’s going to give it back to George after the ceremony, after the cars have cleared out.”
“Are you going to stay?”
“Yes. It’ll give me a chance to talk to Spiro.”
“I’m going to leave with the rest of the warm bodies. I’ll be in the area if you need me.”
I tilted my face to the sun and let my mind float through the short prayer. When the temperature dropped below fifty Stiva didn’t waste time at graveside. No widow in the burg ever wore sensible shoes to a funeral, and it was the funeral director’s responsibility to keep old feet warm. The entire service took less than ten minutes, not even enough time to turn Mrs. Mayer’s nose red. I watched the old folks beating their retreat over the blighted grass and hard ground. In a half-hour they’d all be at the Mayer house, eating pencil points and drinking highballs. And by one o’clock Mrs. Mayer would be alone, wondering what she was going to do rattling around in the family house all by herself for the rest of her life.
Car doors slammed closed and engines revved. The cars drove away.
Spiro stood hands on hips, a study of the long-suffering undertaker. “Well?” he said to me.
I pulled the bag out of my pocketbook and handed it over.
Two cemetery employees stood on either side of the casket. Spiro gave the baggie to one of them with instructions to open the casket and lay the bag inside.
Neither man blinked an eye. I guess when you make a living dropping lead-lined boxes into the ground you aren’t necessarily the inquisitive type.
“So,” Spiro said, turning to me. “How’d you get the finger?”
I gave him the rundown on Kenny in the shoe department and how I found the finger when I got home.
“You see,” Spiro said, “this is the difference between Kenny and me. Kenny always has to grandstand. Likes to set things up and then see how they play. Everything’s a game to Kenny. When we were kids, I’d step on a bug and squash it dead, and Kenny’d stick it with a pin to see how long it’d take the bug to die. Guess Kenny likes to see things squirm, and I like to get the job done. If it was me I’d have gotten you in a dark, empty parking lot, and I’d have shoved the finger up your butt.”
I felt my head go light.
“Just talking theoretically, of course,” Spiro said. “I wouldn’t ever do that to you on account of you’re such a fox. Not unless you wanted me to.”
“I have to go now.”
“Maybe we could see each other later. Like for dinner or something. Just because you’re a pain in the ass, and I’m a slime sucker, doesn’t mean we can’t get together.”
“I’d rather stick a needle in my eye.”
“You’ll come around,” Spiro said. “I got what you want.”
I was afraid to ask. “Apparently you’ve got what Kenny wants, too.”
“Kenny’s a jerk.”
“He used to be your friend.”
“Things happen.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like nothing.”
“I got the impression Kenny thought we were partners in some sort of plot against him.”
“Kenny’s nuts. Next time you see him you should shoot him. You can do that, can’t you? You got a gun?”
“I really do have to go.”
“Later,” Spiro said, making a gun with his hand and pulling the trigger.
I practically ran back to the Buick. I slid behind the wheel, locked the door, and called Morelli.
“Maybe you’re right about my going into cosmetology.”
“You’d love it,” Morelli said. “You’d get to draw eyebrows on a bunch of old babes.”
“Spiro wouldn’t tell me anything. At least not anything I wanted to hear.”
“I picked up something interesting on the radio while I was waiting for you. There was a fire on Low Street last night. It was in one of the buildings belonging to the old pipe factory. Clearly arson. The pipe factory’s been boarded up for years, but it seems someone was using the building to store caskets.”
“Are you telling me someone torched my caskets?”
“Did Spiro put any contingencies on casket condition, or do you get paid dead or alive?”
“I’ll meet you over there.”
The pipe factory was on a mean piece of land caught between Low Street and the train tracks. It had been shut down in the seventies and left to decay. On either side were flat fields of no value. Beyond the fields were surviving industries: an auto graveyard, a plumbing supply house, Jackson Moving and Storage.
The gate leading to the pipe factory lot was rusted open, the blacktop cracked and pocked, littered with glass and weathered refuse. A leaden sky reflected in pools of sooty water. A fire truck idled in the lot. An official-type car had been parked next to the truck. A blue-and-white and a fire marshal’s car were angled closer to the loading dock, where the fire had obviously taken place.
Morelli and I parked side by side and walked toward a group of men who were talking and writing on clipboards.
They looked up when we approached and nodded acknowledgment to Morelli.
“What’s the story?” Morelli said.
I recognized the man who answered. John Petrucci. When my father worked in the post office Petrucci was his supervisor. Now Petrucci was the
fire marshal. Go figure.
“Arson,” Petrucci said. “Pretty much confined to the one bay. Somebody soaked a bunch of caskets in gasoline and set a fuse. The fire trail is clear.”
“Any suspects?” Morelli asked.
They looked at him like he was crazy.
Morelli grinned. “Just thought I’d ask. Mind if we look around?”
“Help yourself. We’re done here. The insurance investigator’s already gone through. There wasn’t much structural damage. Everything’s cement. Someone’s coming over to board things up.”
Morelli and I scrambled up to the loading dock. I pulled my flashlight out of my pocketbook and flicked it on a heap of charred, waterlogged trash sitting in the middle of the bay. Only at the far perimeter of the sodden mess were remains that could be recognized as a casket. An outer wood box and an inner wood box. Nothing fancy. Both blackened from fire. I reached out to touch a corner, and the casket and packaging collapsed in on itself, settling with a sigh.
“If you wanted to be real diligent about this, you could tell how many caskets were here by collecting the hardware,” Morelli said. “Then you could take the hardware back to Spiro and see if he could identify it.”
“How many caskets do you think were here?”
“A bunch.”
“Good enough for me.” I selected a clasp, wrapped it in Kleenex, and slid it into my jacket pocket. “Why would someone steal caskets and then burn them?”
“A lark? A grudge? Maybe ripping off caskets seemed like a good idea at the time, but whoever took them couldn’t get rid of them.”
“Spiro isn’t going to be happy.”
“Yeah,” Morelli said. “Kind of warms your heart, doesn’t it?”
“I needed that money.”
“What were you going to do with it?”
“Pay off my Jeep.”
“Honey, you don’t have a Jeep.”
The casket clasp felt heavy in my pocket. Not in terms of ounces and pounds, but in measurements of dread. I didn’t want to go knocking on Spiro’s door. When in dread, my rule was always to procrastinate.
“I thought maybe I’d go home for lunch,” I said to Morelli. “And then I could bring Grandma Mazur back to Stiva’s with me. There’ll be someone new in George Mayer’s room, and Grandma really likes to get out to afternoon viewings.”
“Very thoughtful of you,” Morelli said. “Am I invited for lunch?”
“No. You already had pudding. If I bring you home for a meal they’ll never let up. Two meals are as good as engaged.”
I stopped for gas on the way to my parents’ and was relieved not to see Morelli anywhere. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, I thought. I probably wouldn’t get the finder’s fee, but at least I’d be done with Spiro. I turned at Hamilton and drove past Delio’s Exxon.
My heart dropped when I hit High Street and saw Morelli’s Fairlane parked in front of my parents’ house. I attempted to park behind him, misjudged, and took out his right taillight.
Morelli got out of his car and examined the damage. “You did that on purpose,” he said.
“I didn’t! It’s this Buick. You can’t tell where it ends.” I gave him the evil eye. “What are you doing here? I told you no lunch.”
“I’m protecting you. I’ll wait in the car.”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” Morelli said.
“Stephanie,” my mother called from the door. “What are you doing standing out there with your boyfriend?”
“You see?” I said to Morelli. “What did I tell you? Now you’re my boyfriend.”
“Lucky you.”
My mother was waving us forward. “Come in. What a nice surprise. Good thing I have extra soup. And we have some fresh bread your father just got from the bakery.”
“I like soup,” Morelli said.
“No. No soup,” I told him.
Grandma Mazur appeared at the door. “What are you doing with him?” she asked. “I thought you said he wasn’t your type.”
“He followed me home.”
“If I’d known I’d have put on some lipstick.”
“He’s not coming in.”
“Of course he’s coming in,” my mother said. “I have plenty of soup. What would people think if he didn’t come in?”
“Yeah,” Morelli said to me. “What would people think?”
My father was in the kitchen putting a new washer in the kitchen faucet. He looked relieved to see Morelli standing in the hallway. He’d probably prefer I bring home someone useful, like a butcher or a car mechanic, but I guess cops are a step up from undertakers.
“Sit at the table,” my mother said. “Have some bread with cheese. Have some cold cuts. I got the cold cuts at Giovichinni’s. He’s always got the best cold cuts.”
While everyone was ladling out soup and scarfing up cold cuts I pulled the paper with the casket photo out of my pocketbook. The detail in the photo wasn’t especially good, but the hardware looked similar to what I’d seen at the fire site.
“What’s that?” Grandma Mazur wanted to know. “Looks like a picture of a casket.” She took a closer look. “You aren’t thinking of buying that for me, are you? I want one with some carving. I don’t want one of them military caskets.”
Morelli’s head came up. “Military?”
“Only place they got caskets this ugly is the military. I saw on TV about how they got all these caskets left over from Desert Storm. Not enough Americans died over there and now they have acres of caskets to get rid of, so the army’s been auctioning them off. They’re—what do you call it—surplus.”
Morelli and I looked at each other. Duh.
Morelli put his napkin on the table and slid his chair back. “I need to make a phone call,” he said to my mother. “Is it okay if I use your phone?”
It seemed pretty far-fetched to think Kenny had smuggled the guns and ammo off the base in caskets. Still, crazier things have been known to happen. And it would explain Spiro’s casket anxiety.
“How’d it go?” I asked when Morelli returned to the table.
“Marie’s checking for me.”
Grandma Mazur paused with a spoonful of soup halfway to her mouth. “Is this police business? Are we working on a case?”
“Trying to get a dental appointment,” Morelli said. “I’ve got a loose filling.”
“You need teeth like mine,” Grandma told him. “I can mail them to the dentist.”
I was having second thoughts about dragging Grandma off to Stiva’s. I figured she could hold her own with a disgusting undertaker. I didn’t want her involved with a dangerous one.
I finished my soup and bread and helped myself to a handful of cookies from the cookie jar, glancing at Morelli, wondering at his lean body. He’d eaten two bowls of soup, half a loaf of bread slathered in butter, and seven cookies. I’d counted.
He saw me staring and raised his eyebrows in silent question.
“I suppose you work out,” I said, more statement than question.
“I run when I can. Do some weights.” He grinned. “Morelli men have good metabolism.”
Life was a bitch.
Morelli’s beeper went off, and he returned the call from the kitchen phone. When he came back to the table he looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. “My dentist,” he said. “Good news.”
I stacked all the soup bowls and plates and hustled them into the kitchen. “Got to go,” I said to my mother. “Got work to do.”
“Work,” my mother said. “Hah! Some work.”
“It was wonderful,” Morelli said to my mother. “The soup was terrific.”
“You should come again,” she told him. “We’re having pot roast tomorrow. Stephanie, why don’t you bring him back tomorrow?”
“No.”
“That’s not polite,” my mother said. “How is that to treat a boyfriend?”
When my mother was willing to accept a Morelli as a boyfriend, this only went to show how desperate my mother was to
get me married, or at least for me to have a social life. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
My mother gave me a bag of cookies. “I’ll make cream puffs tomorrow. I haven’t made cream puffs in a long time.”
When we got outside I stood straight and tall and looked Morelli square in the eye. “You are not coming to dinner.”
“Sure,” Morelli said.
“What about the phone call?”
“Braddock had a shitload of surplus caskets. The DRMO conducted a sale six months ago. That was two months before Kenny was discharged. Stiva’s Mortuary bought twenty-four. The caskets were stored in the same general area as the munitions, but we’re talking about a lot of ground. A couple warehouses and an acre or two of open yard, all behind fence.”
“Of course the fence was no problem for Kenny, because he worked in the compound.”
“Yep. And when bids were accepted the caskets were marked for pickup. So Kenny knew which caskets were assigned to Spiro.” Morelli snitched a cookie from my bag. “My uncle Vito would have been proud.”
“Vito stole a few caskets in his day?”
“Mostly Vito filled caskets. Hijacking was a sideline.”
“So you think it’s possible Kenny used the caskets to smuggle the guns off the base?”
“Seems risky and unnecessarily melodramatic, but yeah, I think it’s possible.”
“Okay, so Spiro, Kenny, and probably Moogey maybe stole all this stuff from Braddock, and stored it at R and J. Then all of a sudden the stuff is missing. Someone pulled a double cross, and we know it wasn’t Spiro because Spiro hired me to find the caskets.”
“Doesn’t seem like it was Kenny either,” Morelli said. “When he said Spiro had something that belonged to him, my guess is he was talking about the stolen guns.”
“So who does that leave? Moogey?”
“Dead men don’t set up late-night sales meetings with the Long brothers.”
I didn’t want to run over the jagged remnants of Morelli’s taillight, so I picked the major pieces out of the gutter, and for lack of something better to do with them, handed the chunks of plastic to Morelli. “Probably you’re insured for this,” I said.
Morelli looked pained.
“Are you still following me?” I asked.
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