Authors: Janet Evanovich
Spiro had watched his father at work and would know the same techniques. So it wasn't shocking that the mole had been made from mortician's putty. The pieces of plastic that were lying on the table were more disturbing. They reminded me of Spiro's scars, and I realized Spiro would have the ability to change his appearance. A perfectly healthy Spiro could make himself horribly disfigured. He wouldn't fool anyone up close, but I'd only seen him at a distance, in a car. And Chester Rhinehart had seen him at night. If I was, in fact, looking at a disguise, it was pretty darn creepy.
I heard movement behind me, and I turned to find Con standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing? How'd you get in here?” he asked. “The doors to the house were closed and locked.”
“The back door was open.” When in a jam always go with a fib. “Is the service done?”
“No. I came back here because you tripped my alarm.”
“I didn't hear it.”
“It rings in my office. It monitors the cellar door, among others.”
“You're hiding Spiro,” I said. “I recognize the coat and hat on the chair. I'm sorry. This must be awful for you.”
Con looked at me, his face composed, as always, his eyes completely devoid of emotion. “You're perfect,” he said. “Stupid to the end. You haven't figured it out, have you? There's no Spiro. Spiro is dead. He died in the fire. There was nothing left of him but ashes and his school ring.”
“I thought he was never found. There was never a service.”
“He wasn't found. There wasn't anything left of him. Just the ring. I stumbled across it and never said anything. I didn't want a service. I wanted to move on, to rebuild my business. If he'd lived he would have ruined me, anyway. He was a moron.”
This was the first I'd ever heard Con speak badly of the dead. And it was of his son. I didn't know what to say. It was true. Spiro was a moron, but it was chilling to hear it from Con. And if Spiro was dead then who was tormenting me? Who blew up Mama Macaroni? I suspected the answer was standing two feet away, but I couldn't put it together. I couldn't imagine solicitous Constantine Stiva, Mr. No Personality, offing Mama Mac.
“So it wasn't Spiro who was leaving me notes and blowing up cars?” No.
“It was you.”
“Hard to believe, isn't it?”
“Why? Why were you stalking me?”
“Why doesn't matter,” Con said. “Let's just say you're serving a purpose. I guess it's just as well that you're here. I don't have to hunt you down.”
I put my hand to the gun at my hip, but it was an unfamiliar act, and I was slow. Con was much faster with his weapon. He lunged forward, and I saw the glint of metal in his hand, and I barely registered stun gun before I went out.
I was in absolute blackness when I came around. My mind was working, but my body was slow to respond, and I couldn't see. I was cuffed and shackled, and I was blindfolded. No, I thought. Back up. I wasn't blindfolded. I could open and close my eyes. It was just very, very dark. And silent. And stuffy. I was disoriented in the dark, and I was having a hard time focusing. I rocked side to side. Not much room. I tried to sit but couldn't raise my head more than a couple inches. The space around me was minimal. The realization of confinement sent a shock of panic into my chest and burned in my throat. I was in a silk-lined container. God help me. Constantine Stiva had put me in one of his caskets. My heart was pounding and my mind was in free fall. This couldn't be real. Con was the heart and soul of the Burg. No one would ever suspect Con of bad things.
My hands ached from the cuffs, and I couldn't breathe. I was suffocating. I was buried alive. Hysteria came in waves and receded. Tears slid down my cheeks and soaked into the satin lining. I had no idea of time, but I didn't think much time had passed. Maybe a half hour. An hour at most. I had a moment of calm and realized I was breathing easier. Maybe I wasn't suffocating. Maybe I was just suffering a panic attack. I didn't smell dirt. I wasn't cold. Maybe I wasn't buried. Okay, hold that thought. Did I hear a siren far off in the distance? A dog barking?
My confinement stretched on with nothing to break the monotony. My muscles were cramping and my hands were numb. I no longer knew if it was day or night.
What I knew with certainty was that Ranger would be looking for me. He'd return from Florida, and he'd do what he does best... he'd go into tracking mode. Ranger would find me. I just hoped he'd get to me in time.
I heard a door slam and an engine catch. The casket shifted. I was pretty sure I was being driven somewhere. I hoped it wasn't the cemetery. I strained to hear voices. If I heard voices I'd make noise. I seemed to have air, but I didn't want to chance depleting the oxygen if I didn't hear voices. We were stopping and starting and turning corners.
We stopped, and a door opened and slammed shut, and then I was sliding and bumping along. I'd been to a lot of funerals with Grandma Mazur. I knew what this was. I was moving on the casket gurney. I was out of the hearse or the truck or whatever, and I was being taken somewhere. I was wheeled around corners, and then the motion stopped. Nothing happened for what seemed like years, and finally the lid was raised, and I blinked up at Con.
“Good,” he said, “you're still alive. Didn't die of fright, eh?” He looked in at me. “Undertaker humor.”
My first thought was that I wouldn't cry. I'd try to stay smart. I'd keep him talking. I'd look for an opportunity to escape. I'd stall for time. Time was my friend. If I had enough time, Ranger would find me.
“I need to get out of this casket,” I said.
“I don't think that's a good idea.”
“I need to use the bathroom... bad.”
Con was fastidious to a fault, and he looked genuinely horrified at the possibility of a woman peeing in one of his silk-lined caskets. He cranked the gurney down to floor level and helped me wriggle myself out of the box.
“This is the way it will work,” he said. “I don't want you making a mess all over everything, so I'm going to let you use the bathroom. I'm going to release one cuff, but I'll stun-gun you if you do anything dumb.”
It took a moment to get my balance, and then I very carefully shuffled into the bathroom. When I shuffled out I felt a lot better. My hands were no longer numb and the cramps in my legs had subsided. We were in a house that looked like a small '70s ranch. It was sparsely furnished with mix-and-match hand-me-downs.
The kitchen linoleum was old and the paint was faded. The counters were red Formica dotted with cigarette burns. The white ceramic sink was rust stained. Some of the over-the-counter kitchen cabinets were open and I could see they were empty. The casket was in the kitchen, and I was guessing it had been wheeled in from an attached garage.
“Is this in retaliation for Spiro's death or the fire in the funeral home?” I asked Con.
“Only tangentially. It's a bonus. Although it's a very nice bonus. There've been a couple nice bonuses to this charade. I got to kill Mama Macaroni. Who wouldn't love to do that? And then I got to bury her! Life doesn't get much better. The Macaronis bought the top-of-the-line slumber bed.”
I cut my eyes to my slumber bed.
“Sorry,” Con said. “Molded plastic. Not one of my better caskets. Lined with acetate. Still, it's good quality for people who haven't set aside funeral expenses. I'd like to put your grandmother in one of these. Her death should be declared a national holiday. What is this morbid obsession she has with the dead? I have to nail the lid down when there's a closed casket. And she's never happy with the cookies. Always wanting the kind with the icing in the middle. What does she think, cookies grow on trees?” Con smiled. “Maybe I'll nail your lid down just to annoy her. That would be fun.”
“So, I guess that means you're not going to bury me alive?”
“No. If I buried you alive I'd have to put you back in the casket. And I have plans for the casket. Mary Aleski is on a table back at the mortuary, and she'll be on view in that casket tomorrow. And besides, do you have any idea how much digging is involved in burying someone in a casket? I have a better plan. I'm going to hack you up and leave you here on the kitchen floor. It's important to my plan that you're found in this house.”
“Why?”
“This house belongs to Spiro. It's tied up in probate because he hasn't been pronounced dead. If Spiro killed you it would be in this house, don't you think?”
“You still haven't told me why you want to kill me.”
“It's a long story.”
“Are we in a rush?”
Con looked at his watch. “No. As a matter of fact, I'm ahead of schedule. I'm coordinating this with the last of the Spiro sightings. Spiro will be seen in his car around midnight, and then I'll come back here and kill you, and Spiro will disappear forever.”
“I don't get the Spiro tie-in. I don't get anything.”
“This is about a crime that happened a long time ago. Thirty-six years to be exact. I was stationed at Fort Dix, and I masterminded a hijacking. I had four friends who helped me. Michael Barroni, Louis Lazar, Ben Gorman, and Jim Runion.”
“The four men who were found shot to death behind the farmer's market.”
“Yes. An unfortunate necessity.”
“I wouldn't have pegged you for a criminal mastermind.”
“I have many unappreciated talents. For instance, I'm quite good as an actor. I play the role of the perfect undertaker each night. And as you know I'm a genius with makeup. All I needed was a hat and a jacket, some colored contacts and handmade scars, and I was able to fool you and that pizza delivery boy.”
“You always seemed like you enjoyed being a funeral director.”
“It has its moments. And I hold a certain prominence in the community. I like that.”
Constantine Stiva has an ego, go figure. “So you masterminded a hijacking.”
"I saw the trucks come through once a week, and I knew how easy it would be to take one of them down on that isolated back station. Lazar was a munitions expert. I learned everything I know about bombs from Lazar. Gorman had been stealing cars since he was nine. Gorman stole the tow truck we used to drag the armored truck away. Barroni had all kinds of connections to launder the money. Runion was the dumb muscle.
“Do you want to know how we did it? It was so simple. I was on guard duty with two other men. The armored truck pulled up. Runion and Lazar were directly behind it in a car. Lazar had already planted the bomb when the truck stopped for lunch. Kaboom, the bomb went off and disabled the truck. Runion killed the other two guards on duty and shot me in the leg. Then Gorman hooked the truck up to the tow truck and hauled it off about a quarter mile down the road into an abandoned barn. I wasn't there, of course, but they told me Lazar set a charge that opened the truck like he'd used a can opener. They killed the truck guards and in a matter of minutes were miles away and seven million dollars richer.”
“And no one ever solved the crime.”
“No. The army expended so much energy hushing it all up that there wasn't a lot of energy left to investigate. They didn't want anyone to know the extent of the loss. That was very big money back then.”
“What happened to the money?”
“There were five of us. We each took two hundred thousand as seed money for start-up businesses when we got out. And we agreed that every ten years we'd take another two hundred thousand apiece until we hit the forty-year mark and then we'd divide up what was left.” Sor
"We had a vault in the mortuary basement. We had a system that each of us had a number, and it took all of us to open the vault. No one knew, but over the years I'd figured out the numbers. So I borrowed from the vault from time to time. Then you and your grandmother burned my business down. The vault survived, but I didn't. I was underinsured. So I took what was left in the vault and used it to rebuild. Two months ago, Barroni found out he had colon cancer and asked for his share of the money. He wanted to make sure it went to his family. We set the meeting up in the field behind the farmers market so we could take a vote. I knew they were going to give Barroni the money. And they were going to want their share early, too. We were all at that age. Colon cancer.
Heart disease. Irritable bowel. Everyone wants to take a cruise. Live the good life. Buy a new car. They were going to go down to my basement, open the vault, find out I'd stolen the money, and then they would have killed me."
“So you killed them.”
“Yes. Death isn't such a big deal when it's happening to someone else.”
“How do I fit in?”
"You're my insurance policy.
“Just in case one of my comrades shared the secret with a wife and she came looking for me, maybe with the police, I would confess to telling Spiro about the crime. Of course, it would be my version of the crime and I'd be non-culpable. Easy to believe Spiro would return to extort money and then resort to mass murder. And easy to believe Spiro would be a little goofy and take to stalking you. And I'd be the poor grieving father of the little bastard.”
“That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
“You fell for it,” Con said. “Actually my original plan was just to leave you a few notes. Then I realized you'd made so many enemies you might not consider Spiro as the stalker, so I had to get more elaborate. Probably I could have stopped after you identified me at Cluck-in-a-Bucket, but by that time I was addicted to the rush of the game. It's too bad I have to kill you. It would have been fun to blow up more cars. I really like blowing up cars. And it turns out I'm good at it.”
He was crazy. He'd inhaled too much embalming fluid. “You won't get away with it,” I told him.
“I think I will. Everyone loves me. Look at me. I'm above suspicion. I'm the social director of the Burg.”
“You're insane. You blew up Mama Macaroni.”
“I couldn't resist. Did you like my present to you? The mole? I thought that was a good touch.”
“What about Joe? Why did you run him over?”
“It was an accident. I was trying to get home, and I couldn't get rid of you and your idiot grandmother. I hit the curb and lost control of the car. Too bad I didn't kill him. That was a slow week.”
Shades were drawn in the house. I looked around for a clock.