Two for the Dough (14 page)

“I’m in your parking lot.”

I dragged myself out of bed, pulled the curtain aside, and looked down into the lot. Sure enough, the tan Fairlane was parked next to Uncle Sandor’s Buick. I could see the bumper still in Morelli’s backseat, and someone had spray-painted PIG on his driver’s-side door. I opened my bedroom window and stuck my head out. “Go away.”

“I have a staff meeting in fifteen minutes,” Morelli yelled up. “Shouldn’t take more than an hour, and then I’ll be free for the rest of the day. I want you to wait for me to get back before you go to Stiva’s.”

“No problem.”

By the time Morelli got back to me it was nine-thirty, and I was feeling restless. I was watching at the window when he pulled into the lot, and I was out of the building like a flash with the finger rolling around in my pocketbook. I was wearing my Doc Martens in case I had to kick someone, and I’d attached the pepper spray to my belt for instant access. I had my stun gun fully charged and stuffed into my jacket pocket.

“In a hurry?” Morelli asked.

“George Mayer’s finger is making me nervous. I’ll feel a lot better when it’s back home with George.”

“If you need to talk to me just give me a call,” Morelli said. “You have my car phone number?”

“Committed to memory.”

“My pager?”

“Yes.”

I powered up the Buick and rumbled out of the lot. I could see Morelli keeping a respectable distance behind me. Half a block from Stiva’s I caught sight of the flashing lights of a motorcycle escort. Great. A funeral. I pulled to the side and watched the hearse roll by, followed by the flower car, followed by the limo with the immediate family. I glanced in the limo window and recognized Mrs. Mayer.

I checked my rearview mirror and saw Morelli parked directly behind me, shaking his head as if to say
don’t even think about it
.

I punched his number into my phone. “They’re burying George without his finger!”

“Trust me. George doesn’t care about his finger. You can give it back to me. I’ll save it for evidence.”

“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.”