I slipped into Spiro's office and used his phone to call home.
“Is Grandma Mazur there?” I asked my mother.
“Oh my God,” my mother said. “You've lost your grandmother. Where are you?”
“I'm at the funeral parlor. I'm sure Grandma is here somewhere. It's just that there's a crush of people, and I'm having a hard time finding her.”
“She isn't here.”
“If she shows up, call me at Stiva's.”
I dialed Ranger next and told him my problem, and that I might need help.
I went back to Spiro and told him if he didn't give me a tour of the embalming room I'd zing some electricity into his worthless hide. He thought about it for a moment, whirled on his heel, and stalked past the viewing rooms. He threw the hall door open with a crash and snapped back at me to make it fast.
As if I'd want to dawdle over Fred Dagusto.
“She isn't here,” I said, returning to Spiro, who was straddling the doorjamb, keeping an eagle eye out for unusual bulges in overcoats that might indicate a mourner was absconding with a stolen roll of toilet paper.
“Yeah, right,” he said. “Big surprise.”
“The only place I haven't looked is the basement.”
“She isn't in the basement. The door is locked. Just like this one was locked.”
“I want to see.”
“Listen,” Spiro said. “She's probably gone off with some other old broad. She's probably at some diner, driving some poor waitress nuts.”
“Let me into the cellar, and I swear I won't bother you anymore.”
“That's a cheery thought.”
An old man clapped a hand on Spiro's shoulder. “How's Con doing? He outta the hospital yet?”
“Yeah,” Spiro said, brushing past. “He's out of the hospital. He'll be back to work next week. Monday.”
“Bet you'll be happy to see him come back.”
“Yeah, I'm jumping for joy just thinking about it.”
Spiro crossed to the other side of the lobby, slithering between knots of people, ignoring some, toadying up to others. I followed him to the cellar door and waited impatiently while he fumbled with keys. My heart was skittering in my chest, fearful of what I might find at the foot of the stairs.
I wanted Spiro to be right. I wanted Grandma to be at a diner somewhere with one of her croonies, but I didn't think it was likely.
If she'd been forcibly removed from the house, Morelli or Roche would have acted. Unless she'd been taken out the back door. The back door was their blind spot. Still, they'd compensated for that by planting a bug. And if the bugs were working, Morelli and Roche would have heard me looking for Grandma and would be doing their thing . . . whatever that was.
I flipped the stairwell light switch and called out. “Grandma?”
The furnace roared in some far-off place, and there was the murmur of voices in the rooms behind me. A small circle of light brightened the cellar floor at the bottom of the stairs. I squinted to see beyond the light, strained to hear whatever small sound the cellar might offer up.
My stomach clenched at the silence. Someone was down there. I could feel it, just as surely as I could feel Spiro's breath on my neck.
The truth is, I'm not the heroic type. I'm afraid of spiders and extraterrestrials and sometimes feel the need to check under my bed for drooly guys with claws. If I ever found one I'd run screaming out of my apartment and never come back.
“The meter's running,” Spiro said. “You going down there, or what?”
I rummaged through my pocketbook for my .38 and descended the stairs with gun drawn. Stephanie Plum, chickenshit bounty hunter, takes stairs one at a time, practically blinded because her heart is beating in her throat so hard it's knocking her head back and forth, blurring her vision.
I steadied myself on the last step, reached left, and flipped the light switch. Nothing happened.
“Hey, Spiro,” I called. “The lights won't go on.”
He hunkered down at the top of the stairs. “Must be the circuit breaker.”
“Where's the box?”
“To your right, behind the furnace.”
Damn. Everything was black to my right. I reached for my flashlight, and before I could withdraw my hand from my pocketbook, Kenny sprang out of the shadows. He hit me from the side, and we both crashed to the floor, the impact knocking me breathless, the jolt sending my .38 skittering off into the dark, beyond my grasp. I scrambled to my feet and was slammed flat onto my chest. A knee jammed between my shoulderblades, and there was the prick of something very sharp pressed against the side of my neck.
“Don't fucking move,” Kenny said. “You move an inch, and I'll shove this knife into your throat.”
I heard the door close at the top of the stairs, heard Spiro hurry down. “Kenny? What the hell are you doing down here? How'd you get in?”
“I got in through the cellar door. I used the key you gave me. How the hell else would I get in.”
“I didn't know you were coming back. I thought you got all the stuff stashed last night.”
“Came back to check on things. Wanted to make sure everything was still here.”
“What the hell's that supposed to mean?”
“It means you make me nervous,” Kenny said.
“I make you nervous? That's good. You're the one who's fucking squirrelly, and I make you nervous.”
“Better watch who you're calling fucking squirrelly.”
“Let me tell you the difference between you and me,” Spiro said. "This is all business for me. I act like a professional. Somebody stole the caskets, so I hired an expert to find them. I didn't go around shooting my partner in the knee because I was pissed. And I wasn't so stupid that I used a fucking stolen gun to shoot him with and then got myself caught by an off-duty cop. I wasn't so fucking nuts that I thought my partners were plotting against me. I didn't think this was some fucking coup.
“And I didn't go wacko over sweetie pie here. You know what your problem is, Kenny? You get on an idea, and you can't get off. You get obsessed with shit, and then you can't see anything else. And you always have to be the fucking show-off. You could have gotten rid of Sandeman nice and quiet, but no, you had to hack off his fucking foot.”
Kenny chuckled. “And I'll tell you what your problem is, Spiro. You don't know how to have fun. Always the serious undertaker. You should try sticking that big-bore needle into something alive for a change.”
“You're sick.”
“Yeah, you're not so healthy yourself. You've spent enough time watching me work my magic.”
I could hear Spiro shift behind me. “You're talking too much.”
“Doesn't matter. Sweetie pie isn't going to tell anyone. She and her granny are going to disappear.”
“Fine by me. Just don't do it here. I don't want to be involved.” Spiro crossed the room, flipped the circuit breaker, and the lights flashed on.
Five crated caskets lined one wall, the furnace and water heater sat in the middle of the room, and a jumble of crates and boxes had been stacked next to the back door. It didn't take a genius to guess the contents of the crates and boxes.
“I don't get it,” I said. “Why did you bring the stuff here? Con is coming back to work on Monday. How will you keep this from him?”
“It'll be gone by Monday,” Spiro said. “We brought everything in yesterday, so we could take inventory. Sandeman was carrying the whole shitload around in his pickup, doing fucking tailgate sales. Lucky for us you saw the furniture truck in Delio's. Another couple of weeks with Sandeman running loose and nothing would have been left.”
“I don't know how you got it in, but you'll never get it out,” I said. “Morelli is watching the house.”
Kenny snorted. “It goes out the same way it came in. In the meat wagon.”
“For Christ's sake,” Spiro said. “It's not a meat wagon.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot. It's a slumber coach.” Kenny stood up and yanked me to my feet
. “The cops watch Spiro, and they watch the house. They don't watch the slumber coach and Louie Moon. Or at least who they think is Louie Moon. You could put a hat on Bonzo the chimp and put him behind those tinted windows, and the cops would think it was Louie Moon. And good old Louie is real cooperative. You just give Louie a hose and tell him to clean things up, and Louie is busy for hours. He don't know who's driving around in his goddamn slumber coach.”
Not bad. They dressed Kenny up to look like Louie Moon, brought the guns and ammo to the funeral home in the hearse, parked the hearse in the garage, and then all they had to do was run the boxes between the garage and the back door to the cellar. And Morelli and Roche couldn't see the back door to the cellar. They probably couldn't hear anything in the cellar either. I didn't think it likely Roche would have bugged the cellar.
“So what's with the old lady?” Spiro asked Kenny.
“She was in the kitchen looking for a teabag, and she saw me cutting across the lawn.”
Spiro's face tightened. “Did she tell anybody?”
“No. She came barreling out of the house, yelling at me for stabbing her in the hand. Telling me I needed to learn respect for old people.”
So far as I could see, Grandma wasn't in the cellar. I hoped it meant Kenny had her locked in the garage. If she was in the garage she might still be alive, and she might be unhurt. If she was tucked away somewhere in the cellar, beyond my view, she was much too quiet.
I didn't want to consider the reasons for too quiet, preferring to squash the panic clawing at my stomach and replace it with some more constructive emotion. How about cool reasoning? Nope. I didn't have any of that available. How about cunning? Sorry, low on cunning. How about anger. Did I have any anger? Fucking A. I had so much anger my skin could hardly contain it all. Anger for Grandma, anger for all the women Mancuso'd abused, anger for the cops who were killed with the stolen ammo. I pulled the anger in until it was hard and razor sharp.
“Now what?” I said to Kenny. “Where do we go from here?”
“Now we put you on ice for a while. Until the house empties out. Then I'll see what kind of a mood I'm in. We have a bunch of options being that we're in a funeral parlor. Hell, we could strap you to the table and embalm you while you're still alive. That would be fun.” He pressed the tip of the knife blade to the back of my neck. “Walk.”
“Where?”
He jerked his head. “Over to the corner.”
The crated caskets were stacked in the corner. “To the caskets?”
He smiled and prodded me forward. “The caskets come later.”
I squinted into the corner shadows and realized the caskets weren't flush to the wall. Tucked behind the caskets was a refrigeration unit with two body drawers. The drawers were closed, the metal trays locked behind heavy metal doors.
“Gonna be nice and dark in there,” Kenny said. “Give you time to think.”
Fear slid down my spine and sickened my stomach. “Grandma Mazur . . .”
“Turning into a Popsicle, even as we speak.”
“NO! Let her out! Open the drawer, I'll do whatever you want!”
“You'll do whatever I want anyway,” Kenny said. “You're not going to be moving too fast after an hour in there.”
Tears were pouring down my cheeks and sweat prickled under my arms. “She's old. She's no threat to you. Let her go.”
“No threat? Are you kidding? That old lady is criminally insane. You know what it took to get her in that drawer?”
“She's probably dead by now, anyway,” Spiro said.
Kenny looked at him. “You think so?”
“How long she been in there?”
Kenny checked his watch. “Maybe ten minutes.”
Spiro stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You lower the temperature?”
“No,” Kenny said. “I just shoved her in.”
“We don't keep the drawers cold if they're unoccupied,” Spiro explained. “Saves on electricity. Probably it's only around room temperature.”
“Yeah, but she could have died from fright. What do you think?” Kenny asked me. “You think she's dead?”
A sob stuck in my chest.
“Sweetie pie is speechless,” Kenny said. “Maybe we should open the drawer and see if the old bag's breathing?”
Spiro released the latch and yanked the door open. He grabbed the end of the stainless steel tray and slowly rolled it toward him, so that the first thing I saw was Grandma Mazur's shoes pointing toes up, then Grandma's bony shin, her big blue coat, arms rigidly at her sides, hands hidden under the folds of the coat.
I felt myself sway under a wave of grief. I forced air into my lungs and blinked to clear my vision.
The tray reached its full extension and clicked into place. Grandma stared unflinching at the ceiling, eyes open, mouth set, still as stone.
We all gaped at her in silence for several moments.
Kenny was the first to speak. “She looks dead all right,” he said. “Roll her back in.”
The whisper of a sound stuck in the corner. A hiss. We all pricked our ears and concentrated. I saw the very slightest tightening around Grandma's eye. The hiss again. Louder this time. Grandma sucking air through her dentures!
“Hmmm,” Kenny said. “Maybe she's not dead yet.”
“You should have cranked the unit down,” Spiro offered. “This baby'll go down to zero. She wouldn't have lasted ten minutes if you'd had it at zero.”
Grandma made some feeble movements on the tray.
“What's she doing?” Spiro asked.
“She's trying to sit up,” Kenny said. “But she's too old. Can't get those old bones to cooperate, huh, Granny?”
“Old,” she whispered. “I'll show you old.”
“Shove the drawer back in,” Kenny said to Spiro. “And fix the freezer setting.”
Spiro started to roll the tray in, but Grandma kicked out with her feet, stopping the slide. She had her knees bent, and she was pounding against the steel with her feet, clawing and knocking inside the drawer.
Spiro grunted and rammed the tray home, but the tray was inches short of clicking into place, and the door wouldn't close.
“Something's stuck,” Spiro said. “This won't go in all the way.”
“Open it up,” Kenny said, “and see what's wrong.”
Spiro eased the tray back.
Grandma's chin appeared, her nose, her eyes. Her arms were extended over her head.
“You making problems, Granny?” Kenny asked. “You jamming the drawer with something?”
Grandma didn't say anything, but I could see her mouth working, her dentures grinding against each other.
“Get your arms down at your sides,” Kenny told her. “Stop fucking with me. I'm gonna lose my patience.”
Grandma struggled to get her arms out, and finally her bandaged hand popped free. The other hand followed, and in that hand was the .45 long-barrel. She swung her arm straight from the shoulder and squeezed off a round.
We all hit the floor, and she fired again.
Silence followed the second shot. No one moved but Grandma. She elbowed herself to a sitting position, and took a moment to settle.
“I know what you're thinking,” Grandma said into the silence. “Do I have any more bullets in this here gun? Well, with all the confusion, what with being locked up in a refrigerator, I plum forgot what was in here to start with. But being that this is a forty-five magnum, the most powerful handgun in existence, and it could blow your head clean off, you just got to ask yourself one question. Do you feel lucky today? Well, do you, punk?”
“Christ,” Spiro whispered. “She thinks she's fucking Clint Eastwood.”
BAM! Grandma fired and knocked out a light.
“Dang,” she said, “must be something wrong with this sight.”
Kenny scrambled to the ammo cases to get a gun, Spiro ran for the stairs, and I inched toward Grandma on my belly.
BAM! She got another shot off. It missed Kenny,
but it tore into one of the cases. There was an instant explosion, and a fireball rose to the basement ceiling.
I jumped to my feet and dragged Grandma off the tray.
Another case exploded. Fire crackled across the floor and traced along the wooden casket casings. I didn't know what was exploding, but I thought we were lucky not to have been hit by flying fragments. Smoke roiled from the burning boxes, cutting into the light, stinging my eyes.