Two for the Dough (6 page)

Spiro took an envelope from his jacket pocket. He removed a key from the envelope and held it up for my inspection. “This is the key to the locker. The address is inside the envelope. The caskets were wrapped in protective plastic for shipment and crated so they could be stacked. I’ve also included a photograph of one of the caskets. They were all the same. Very plain.”

“Have you reported this to the police?”

“I haven’t reported the theft to anyone. I want to get the caskets back and generate as little publicity as possible.”

“This is out of my league.”

“A thousand dollars.”

“Jesus, Spiro, these are caskets we’re talking about! What kind of a person would steal caskets? And where would I begin to look? You have clues or something?”

“I have a key and an empty locker.”

“Maybe you should cut your losses and collect the insurance.”

“I can’t file for insurance without a police report, and I don’t want to bring in the police.”

The thousand dollars was tempting, but the job was beyond bizarre. I honestly didn’t know where to start looking for twenty-four lost caskets. “Suppose I actually find the caskets … what then? How do you expect to get them back? Seems to me if a person’s low enough to steal a casket, he’s going to be mean enough to fight to keep it.”

“Let’s just go one step at a time,” Spiro said. “Your finder’s fee doesn’t involve retrieving. Retrieving will be my problem.”

“I suppose I could ask around.”

“We need to keep this confidential.”

No sweat. As if I’d want people to know I was looking for caskets. Get real. “My lips are sealed.” I took the envelope and stuffed it into my pocketbook. “One other thing,” I said. “These caskets are empty, right?”

“Right.”

I went back to look for Grandma, and I was thinking maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Spiro had lost a shitload of caskets. They wouldn’t be that easy to hide. It wasn’t as if you could pack them into the trunk of your car and drive away. Someone had come in with a flatbed or a semi and taken those caskets. Maybe it was an internal job. Maybe someone from the locker company had ripped Spiro off. Then what? The market for caskets is pretty limited. You could hardly use them as planters or lamp stands. The caskets would have to be sold to other mortuaries. These thieves had to be on the cutting edge of crime. Black-market caskets.

I found Grandma sipping tea with Joe Morelli. I’d never seen Morelli with a teacup in his hand, and the sight was unnerving. As a teenager Morelli had been feral. Two years in the navy and twelve more on the police force had taught him control, but I was convinced nothing short of removing his gonads would ever completely domesticate him. There was always a barbarous part of Morelli that hummed beneath the surface. I found myself helplessly sucked in by it, and at the same time it scared the hell out of me.

“Well, here she is,” Grandma said when she saw me. “Speak of the devil.”

Morelli grinned. “We’ve been talking about you.”

“Oh, goody.”

“I hear you had a secretive meeting with Spiro.”

“Business,” I said.

“This business have anything to do with the fact that Spiro and Kenny and Moogey were friends in high school?”

I gave him an eyebrow raise to signify surprise. “They were friends in high school?”

He held three fingers up. “Like this.”

“Hmmm,” I said.

His grin widened. “I guess you’re still in war mode.”

“Are you laughing at me?”

“Not exactly laughing.”

“Well then, what?”

He rocked back on his heels, hands rammed into his pockets. “I think you’re cute.”

“Jesus.”

“Too bad we’re not working together,” Morelli said. “If we were working together I could tell you about my cousin’s car.”

“What about his car?”

“They found it late this afternoon. Abandoned. No bodies in the trunk. No bloodstains. No Kenny.”

“Where?”

“The parking lot at the mall.”

“Maybe Kenny was shopping.”

“Unlikely. Mall security remembers seeing the car parked overnight.”

“Were the doors locked?”

“All but the driver’s door.”

I considered that for a moment. “If I was abandoning my cousin’s car, I’d make sure all the doors were locked.”

Morelli and I stared into each other’s eyes and let the next thought go unsaid. Maybe Kenny was dead. There was no real basis in fact to draw such a conclusion, but the premonition skittered through my mind, and I wondered how this related to the letter I’d just received.

Morelli acknowledged the possibility with a grim set to his mouth. “Yeah,” he said.

Stiva had formed a lobby by removing the walls between what had originally been the foyer and the dining room of the large Victorian. Wall-to-wall carpet unified the room and silenced footsteps. Tea was served on a maple library table just outside the kitchen door. Lights were subdued, Queen Anne period chairs and end tables were grouped for conversation, and small floral arrangements were scattered throughout. It would have been a pleasant room if it wasn’t for the certain knowledge that Uncle Harry or Aunt Minnie or Morty the mailman was naked in another part of the house, dead as a doorknob, getting pumped full of formaldehyde.

“You want some tea?” Grandma asked me.

I shook my head no. Tea held no appeal. I wanted fresh air and chocolate pudding. And I wanted to get out of my panty hose. “I’m ready to leave,” I said to Grandma. “How about you?”

Grandma looked around. “It’s still kind of early, but I guess I haven’t got anybody left to see.” She set her teacup on the table and settled her pocketbook into the crook of her arm. “I could use some chocolate pudding anyway.”

She turned to Morelli. “We had chocolate pudding for dessert tonight, and there’s still some left. We always make a double batch.”

“Been a long time since I’ve had homemade chocolate pudding,” Morelli said.

Grandma snapped to attention. “Is that so? Well, you’re welcome to join us. We’ve got plenty.”

A small strangled sound escaped from the back of my throat, and I glared
no, no, no
at Morelli.

Morelli gave me one of those ultranaive
what?
looks. “Chocolate pudding sounds great,” he said. “I’d love some chocolate pudding.”

“Then it’s settled,” Grandma announced. “You know where we live?”

Morelli assured us he could find the house with his eyes closed, but just to make sure we’d be safe in the night, he’d follow us home.

“Don’t that beat all,” Grandma said when we were alone in the car. “Imagine him worrying about our safety. And have you ever met a more polite young man? He’s a real looker too. And he’s a cop. I bet he has a gun under that jacket.”

He was going to need a gun when my mother saw him standing on her doorstep. My mother would look out the storm door, and she wouldn’t see Joe Morelli, a man in search of pudding. She wouldn’t see Joe Morelli who had graduated from high school and joined the navy. She wouldn’t see Morelli the cop. My mother would see Joe Morelli the fast-fingered, horny little eight-year-old who had taken me to his father’s garage to play choo-choo when I was six.

“This here’s a good opportunity for you,” Grandma said as we pulled up to the curb. “You could use a man.”

“Not this one.”

“What’s wrong with this one?”

“He’s not my type.”

“You’ve got no taste when it comes to men,” Grandma said. “Your ex-husband is a cow’s tail. We all knew he was a cow’s tail when you married him, but you wouldn’t listen.”

Morelli pulled up behind me and got out of his truck. My mother opened the storm door and even from a distance I could see the stern set to her mouth and a stiffening of her spine.

“We all came back for pudding,” Grandma said to my mother when we reached the porch. “We brought Officer Morelli with us on account of he hasn’t had any homemade pudding in an awful long time.”

My mother’s lips pinched tight.

“I hope I’m not intruding,” Morelli said. “I know you weren’t expecting company.”

This is the opening statement that will get you into any burg house. No housewife worth her salt will ever admit to having her house not up to company twenty-four hours a day. Jack the Ripper would have easy access if he used this line.

My mother gave a curt nod and grudgingly stepped aside while the three of us slid past.

For fear of mayhem, my father had never been informed of the choo-choo incident. This meant he regarded Morelli with no more and no less contempt and apprehension than any of the other potential suitors my mother and grandmother dragged in off the street. He gave Joe a cursory inspection, engaged in the minimum necessary small talk and returned his attention to the TV, studiously ignoring my grandmother as she passed out pudding.

“They had a closed casket all right for Moogey Bues,” my grandmother said to my mother. “I got to see him anyway on account of the accident.”

My mother’s eyes opened wide in alarm. “Accident?”

I shrugged out of my jacket. “Grandma caught her sleeve on the lid, and the lid accidentally flew open.”

My mother raised her arms in appalled supplication. “All day I’ve had people calling and telling me about the gladioli. Now tomorrow I’ll have to hear about the lid.”

“He didn’t look so hot,” Grandma Mazur said. “I told Spiro that he did a good job, but it was pretty much a fib.”

Morelli was wearing a blazer over a black knit shirt. He took a seat, and his jacket swung wide, exposing the gun at his hip.

“Nice piece!” Grandma said. “What is it? Is that a forty-five?”

“It’s a nine-millimeter.”

“Don’t suppose you’d let me see it,” Grandma said. “I’d sure like to get the feel of a gun like that.”

“NO!” everyone shouted in unison.

“I shot a chicken once,” Grandma explained to Morelli. “It was an accident.”

I could see Morelli searching for a reply. “Where did you shoot it?” he finally asked.

“In the gumpy,” Grandma said. “Shot it clear off.”

Two puddings and three beers later, Morelli peeled himself away from the TV. We left together and lingered to talk privately at the curb. The sky was starless and moonless and most of the houses were dark. The street was empty of traffic. In other parts of Trenton the night might feel dangerous. In the burg the night felt soft and secure.

Morelli turned my suit collar up against the chill air. His knuckles brushed my neck, and his gaze lingered on my mouth. “You have a nice family,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes. “If you kiss me I’ll scream, and then my father will come out and punch you in the nose.” And before any of those things happened, I’d probably wet my pants.

“I could take your father.”

“But you wouldn’t.”

Morelli still had his hands on my collar. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Tell me about the car again. There was no sign of struggle?”

“No sign of struggle. The keys were in the ignition and the driver’s door was closed but unlocked.”

“Any blood on the pavement?”

“I haven’t been out to the scene, but the crime lab checked around and didn’t come up with any physical evidence.”

“Prints?”

“They’re in the system.”

“Personal possessions?”

“None found.”

“Then he wasn’t living out of the car,” I reasoned.

“You’re getting better at this apprehension agent stuff,” Morelli said. “You’re asking all the right questions.”

“I watch a lot of television.”

“Let’s talk about Spiro.”

“Spiro hired me to look into a mortuarial problem.”

Morelli’s face creased in laughter. “Mortuarial problem?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Doesn’t have anything to do with Kenny?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

The upstairs window opened and my mother stuck her head out. “Stephanie,” she stage-whispered, “what are you doing out there? What will the neighbors think?”

“Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Plum,” Morelli called. “I was just leaving.”

Rex was running in his wheel when I got home. I switched the light on, and he stopped dead in his tracks, black eyes wide, whiskers twitching in indignation that night had suddenly disappeared.

I kicked my shoes off en route to the kitchen, dropped my pocketbook onto the counter, and punched PLAY on my answering machine.

There was only one message. Gazarra had called at the end of his shift to tell me no one knew much about Morelli. Only that he was working on something big, and that it tied in to the Mancuso-Bues investigation.

I hit the off button and dialed Morelli.

He answered slightly out of breath on the sixth ring. Probably had just gotten into his apartment.

There didn’t seem to be much need for small talk. “Creep,” I said, cutting to the heart of the matter.

“Gosh, I wonder who this could be.”

“You lied to me. I knew it, too. I knew it right from the beginning, you jerk.”

Silence stretched taut between us, and I realized my accusation covered a lot of territory, so I narrowed the field. “I want to know about this big secret case you’re working on, and I want to know how it ties in to Kenny Mancuso and Moogey Bues.”

“Oh,” Morelli said. “
That
lie.”

“Well?”

“I can’t tell you anything about that lie.”

Thoughts of Kenny Mancuso and Joe Morelli had kept me thrashing around most of the night. At seven I rolled myself out of bed, feeling cranky and bedraggled. I showered, dressed in jeans and T-shirt, and made a pot of coffee.

My basic problem was that I had plenty of ideas about Joe Morelli and hardly any about Kenny Mancuso.

I poured out a bowl of cereal, filled my Daffy Duck mug with coffee, and picked through the contents of the envelope Spiro had given me. The storage facility was just off Route 1 in an area of strip-mall-type light-industrial complexes. The photo of the missing casket had been cut from some sort of flyer or brochure and showed a casket that was clearly at the bottom of the funeral food chain. It was little more than a plain pine box, devoid of the carvings and beveled edges usually found on burg caskets. Why Spiro would buy twenty-four of these crates was beyond my comprehension. People spent money on funerals and weddings in the burg. Being buried in one of these caskets would be lower than ring around the collar. Even Mrs. Ciak next door, who was on Social Security and turned her lights off each night at nine to save money, had thousands set aside for her burial.

I finished my cereal, rinsed the bowl and spoon, poured a second cup of coffee, and filled Rex’s little ceramic food dish with Cheerios and blueberries. Rex popped out of his soup can with his nose twitching in excitement. He rushed to the dish, crammed everything into his cheeks, and rushed back to his soup can, where he hunkered in butt side out, vibrating with happiness and good fortune. That’s the neat part about a hamster. It doesn’t take much to make a hamster happy.

I grabbed my jacket and the large black leather pocketbook that held all my bounty-hunter paraphernalia and headed for the stairs. Mr. Wolesky’s TV droned through his closed door and the aroma of bacon frying hung in the hallway just in front of Mrs. Karwatt’s apartment. I exited the building in solitude and paused for a moment to enjoy the crisp morning air. A few leaves still tenaciously clung to trees, but for the most part limbs were bare and spidery against the bright sky. A dog barked in the neighborhood behind my apartment building and a car door slammed. Mr. Suburbia was going to work. And Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter extraordinaire, was off to find twenty-four cheap coffins.

Trenton traffic looked insignificant compared to the Holland Tunnel outbound on a Friday afternoon, but it was a pain in the ass all the same. I decided to preserve what little sanity had surfaced this morning and forgo safe, scenic, car-clogged Hamilton. I turned onto Linnert after two blocks of stop-and-go tedium and threaded my way through the blighted neighborhoods that surround center city. I skirted the area around the train station, cut through town, and picked up Route 1 for a quarter mile, getting off at Oatland Avenue.

R and J Storage occupied about a half acre of land on Oatland Avenue. Ten years ago, Oatland Avenue had been a hardscrabble patch of throwaway property. Its spiky grass had been littered with broken bottles and bottle caps, filter tips, condoms, and tumbleweed trash. Industry had recently found Oatland, and now the hardscrabble land supported Gant Printing, Knoblock Plumbing Supply House, and R and J Storage. The spiky grass had given way to blacktop parking lots, but the shards of glass, bottle caps, and assorted urban flotsam had endured, collecting in unattended corners and gutters.

Sturdy chain-link fencing surrounded the self-storage facility, and two drives, designated IN and OUT, led to the honeycomb of garage-sized warehouses. A small sign fixed to the fence stated business hours as 7:00 to 10:00 daily. The gates to the entrance and exit were open, and a small OPEN sign had been hung in the glass-paned office door. The buildings were all painted white with bright blue trim. Very crisp and efficient looking. Just the place to snug away hot caskets.

I pulled into the entrance and crept along, counting off numbers until I reached 16. I parked on the apron in front of the unit, inserted the key in the lock, and pressed the button that triggered the hydraulic door. The door rolled up along the ceiling and, sure enough, the warehouse was empty. Not a coffin or clue in sight.

I stood there for a moment, visualizing the pine boxes stacked chocablock. Here one day, gone the next. I turned to leave and almost crashed into Morelli.

“Jesus,” I exclaimed, hand on heart, after squelching a yelp of surprise. “I hate when you creep up behind me like that. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Following you.”

“I don’t want to be followed. Isn’t that some sort of an infringement of my rights? Police harassment?”

“Most women would be happy to have me follow them.”

“I’m not most women.”

“Tell me about it.” He gestured at the empty bay. “What’s the deal?”

“If you must know … I’m looking for caskets.”

This drew a smile.

“I’m serious! Spiro had twenty-four caskets stored here, and they’ve disappeared.”

“Disappeared? As in stolen? Has he reported the theft to the police?”

I shook my head. “He didn’t want to bring the police in. Didn’t want word to get out that he’d bulk-bought a bunch of caskets and then lost them.”

“I hate to rain on your parade, but I think this smells bad. People who lose things worth lots of money file police reports so they can collect their insurance.”

I closed the door and dropped the key into my pocketbook. “I’m getting paid one thousand dollars to find lost caskets. I’m not going to try to identify the odor. I have no reason to believe there’s anything bogus going on.”

“What about Kenny? I thought you were looking for Kenny.”

“Kenny’s a dead end right now.”

“Giving up?”

“Dropping back.”

I opened the door to the Jeep, slid behind the wheel, and shoved the key into the ignition. By the time the engine cranked over, Morelli had seated himself next to me.

“Where are we going?” Morelli asked.

“
I’m
going to the office to talk to the manager.”

Morelli was smiling again. “This could be the start of a whole new career. You do good on this one and maybe you can advance to catching grave robbers and headstone vandals.”

“Very funny. Get out of my car.”

“I thought we were partners.”

Yeah, right. I put the Jeep into reverse and K-turned. I parked at the office and swung out of the Jeep, with Morelli following close on my heels.

I stopped and turned, facing him, hand to his chest to keep him at arm’s length. “Halt. This is not a group project.”

“I could be helpful,” Morelli said. “I could lend authority and credibility to your questions.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I’m a nice guy.”

I felt my fingers begin to clutch at his shirt and made an effort to relax. “Try again.”

“Kenny, Moogey, and Spiro were practically joined at the hip in high school. Moogey’s dead. I’ve got a feeling Julia, the girlfriend, is out of the picture. Maybe Kenny’s turned to Spiro.”

“And I’m working for Spiro, and you’re not sure you believe the coffin story.”

“I don’t know what to think of the coffin story. You have any more information on these coffins? Where they were originally purchased? What they look like?”

“They’re made of wood. About six foot long …”

“If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a wise-ass bounty hunter.”

I showed him the picture.

“You’re right,” he said. “They’re made of wood, and they’re about six foot long.”

“And they’re ugly.”

“Yeah.”

“And very plain,” I added.

“Grandma Mazur wouldn’t be caught dead in one of these,” Morelli said.

“Not everyone is as discerning as Grandma Mazur. I’m sure Stiva keeps a wide range of caskets on hand.”

“You should let me question the manager,” Morelli said. “I’m better at this than you are.”

“That does it. Go sit in the car.”

In spite of all the sparring that went on between us, I sort of liked Morelli. Good judgment told me to stand clear of him, but then I’ve never been a slave to good judgment. I liked his dedication to the job, and the way he’d risen above his wild teen years. He’d been a street-smart kid, and now he was a street-smart cop. True, he was sort of a chauvinist, but it wasn’t entirely his fault. After all, he was from New Jersey, and on top of that he was a Morelli. All things considered, I thought he was coping pretty well.

The office consisted of a small room divided in half by a service counter. A woman wearing a white T-shirt sporting a blue R and J Storage logo stood behind the counter. She was in her late forties—early fifties, with a pleasant face and a body that had comfortably gone to plump. She gave me a perfunctory nod before focusing on Morelli, who had paid no attention to my order and was standing close behind me.

Morelli was wearing washed-out jeans that had suggestively molded to an impressive package in front and the state’s best buns in back. His brown leather jacket hid only his gun. The R and J lady swallowed visibly and dragged her eyes upward from Morelli’s crotch.

I told her I was checking on some stored items for a friend of mine and that I was concerned with security.

“Who was this friend?” she asked.

“Spiro Stiva.”

“No offense,” she said, fighting back a grimace, “but he’s got that locker filled with coffins. He said they were empty, but I don’t care. I wouldn’t come within fifty feet of that place. And I don’t think you have to worry about security. Who on earth would steal a coffin?”

“How do you know he has coffins in there?”

“Saw them come in. He had so many they had to come in a semi and get off loaded with a forklift.”

“Do you work here full-time?” I asked.

“I work here
all
the time,” she said. “My husband and I own it. I’m the R in the R and J. Roberta.”

“You have any other big trucks come in here in the last couple of months?”

“A few real big U-Hauls. Is there a problem?”

Spiro had sworn me to secrecy, but I didn’t see any way I could get the information I needed without bringing Roberta into the investigation. Besides, she undoubtedly had a master key, and coffins or not, she’d probably check on Spiro’s locker when we left and discover it was empty.

“Stiva’s coffins are missing,” I said. “The locker is empty.”

“That’s impossible! A person can’t just make off with a locker full of caskets. That’s a lot of caskets. They filled the locker from one end to the other!

“We have trucks coming and going all the time, but I would have known if they were loading caskets!”

“Locker sixteen is in the back,” I said. “You can’t see it from here. And maybe they didn’t take them all at once.”

“How did they get in?” she wanted to know. “Was the lock broken?”

I didn’t know how they got in. The lock wasn’t broken, and Spiro had been emphatic that the key had never left his possession. Of course, that could be a lie.

“I’d like to see a list of your other renters,” I said. “And it would be helpful if you could think back to trucks in the vicinity of Spiro’s locker. Trucks big enough to haul those caskets.”

“He’s insured,” she said. “We make everybody take insurance.”

“He can’t collect on insurance without filing a police report, and at this preliminary stage Mr. Stiva would prefer to keep things quiet.”

“Tell you the truth I’m not anxious for this to get around, either. Don’t want people thinking our lockers aren’t safe.” She punched up her computer and produced a printout of renters. “These are renters that are on the books right now. When someone vacates we keep them in file for three months and then the computer drops them.”

Morelli and I scanned the list, but we didn’t recognize any of the names.

“Do you require identification?” Morelli asked.

“Driver’s license,” she said. “The insurance company makes us get a photo ID.”

I folded the printout, tucked it into my pocketbook, and gave Roberta one of my cards with instructions to call should something turn up. As an afterthought I asked her to use her set of master keys and check each locker on the odd possibility that the caskets weren’t taken off the premises.

When we got back to the Jeep, Morelli and I looked the list over one more time and drew a big zero.

Roberta hustled out of her office with keys in hand and the portable phone stuffed into her pocket.

“The great coffin search,” Morelli said, watching her disappear around the end of the first row of lockers. He slouched in his seat. “Doesn’t compute to me. Why would someone choose to steal caskets? They’re big and heavy, and the resale market is limited to nonexistent. People probably have all kinds of things stored here that would be easier to fence. Why steal caskets?”

“Maybe that’s what they needed. Maybe some down-on-his-luck undertaker took them. Like Mosel. Ever since Stiva opened up his new addition, Mosel has been on a downslide. Maybe Mosel knew Spiro had caskets stashed here, and he tippy-toed in one dark night and swiped them.”

Morelli looked at me like I was from Mars.

“Hey, it’s possible,” I said. “Stranger things have happened. I think we should go around to a bunch of viewings and see if anyone’s laid out in one of Spiro’s caskets.”