Notorious Nineteen

“Don’t know. Right now we can’t confirm that he’s dead.”

  “What did Nurse Kruger and Craig Fish have to say?”

  “Kruger was found on the floor in her apartment, foaming at the mouth from an overdose. She’s locked down at St. Francis. She’s expected to live, but we haven’t been able to question her yet. Craig Fish is in custody but he isn’t saying anything on advice of his lawyer.”

  “How’s your leg?”

  “It hurts like a bitch.”

  “I’ll kiss it and make it better tonight.”

  “It’s going to take more than a kiss, Cupcake.”

  Lula and Connie were watching me as I disconnected.

  “So?” Lula said.

  “Kruger and the doctor aren’t talking. That means they can’t confirm that Cubbin is dead. That means we don’t get our bond back.”

  “I was counting on a bonus from that bond,” Lula said. “I need new tires on the Firebird.”

  “Good thing Vinnie isn’t here,” Connie said. “He’ll be doubling up on his blood pressure medication. That was a huge bond.”

  I sliced off a piece of the birthday cake and sat down to eat it. “Let’s think about this. We’re pretty sure they had Cubbin. We saw the Yeti push something out in the laundry hamper. And the Yeti said he was looking for Cubbin’s money, so obviously Cubbin talked to him. If Cubbin escaped he would have gone to the police. At the very least he would have tried to access some of his money. If he didn’t escape, he’s dead. He wasn’t in the freezer. And he wasn’t in the rest of The Clinic. So he must be . . .”

  Lula and Connie stared at me.

  “In the cemetery,” I said. “That’s where they disposed of the bodies.”

  “Uh-oh,” Lula said. “I’m not liking this turn of events. I like cemeteries even less than I like hospitals.”

  I finished my cake and thought about taking a second piece. Not a good idea, I told myself. I’d go into a sugar-and-lard-induced coma.

  “I’m going to the cemetery to take a look around,” I said. “Anyone want to come with me?”

  “I guess I need to make sure you don’t get into more trouble,” Lula said. “The one day I’m not with you all hell breaks loose what with crazy people getting exploded in your foyer.”

  A half hour later I turned off Route 1 into Sunshine Memorial Park. It looked a lot less sinister during the day, but it would never win any awards for beauty. The first couple acres were flat. No trees. No shrubs. No flowers. Just small headstones sunk into the ground. I followed the road to the part of the park that was undeveloped. There were some hills there and an occasional tree. The grass was scrubby. I drove past the large excavated pit that Sunshine and the Yeti had tried to bury me in. The grass around it was trampled from police and emergency vehicles. The pit was still open. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered on stakes in the ground.

  I parked and Lula and I got out and walked to the hole in the ground.

  “This had to be scary as snot,” Lula said. “It’s creepin’ me out and it’s not even nighttime.”

  “I was okay until I got pushed into the hole.” I left the grave site and returned to the road. “Cubbin hasn’t been missing all that long. If they buried him here the ground would still be freshly disturbed. You look on one side and I’ll look on the other.”

  After a couple minutes Lula called out that she’d found some freshly dug dirt.

  “Me too,” I said. “I have two potential grave sites here.”

  “How’re we going to know which one of these is Cubbin?” Lula asked.

  “I guess we have to dig them all up.”

  “Nuh-uh. Lula doesn’t dig up dead people. You get cooties like that. And they don’t like being disturbed. They get pissy and put the whammy on you. You don’t want to do it either. You get in enough trouble all on your own. You can’t afford to have the whammy.”

  “If I go to the police it’ll take forever. They’ll have to get special permission and court orders and grave diggers. And I need the money. I just ran my credit card over my limit sending Tiki back to Hawaii.”

  “What we need is our own grave digger,” Lula said.

  “And I know just such a person.”

  “You’re thinking about Simon Diggery,” Lula said. “I’d rather dig the grave myself than have dealings with Diggery. Last time we went to his crap-ass trailer you opened a closet door and a twenty-foot snake fell out.”

  Simon Diggery was a wiry little guy in his fifties. His brown hair was shot with gray and usually tied back in a ponytail. His skin was like old cracked leather and he had arms like Popeye’s. He lived in a raggedy double-wide in Bordentown with his wife, his six kids, his brother Melvin, Melvin’s pet python, and their Uncle Bill. They were like a bunch of feral cats living in the woods, and Simon Diggery was Trenton’s premier grave robber.

  “I have a shovel in the trunk,” I said. “We could start digging.”

  “Okay,” Lula said. “I was bluffing. Let’s go talk to Diggery.”

  I was bluffing too. I didn’t have a shovel in the trunk.

  It took almost forty minutes to find Diggery’s trailer. It was off Route 206, down a winding two-lane road filled with potholes. The rusted-out cankerous trailer was up on cinderblocks and held together with duct tape.

  I knocked on the door and Lula stayed about ten feet behind me with her gun drawn.

  “Put the gun away,” I said. “You’ll scare him.”

  “What if the snake attacks us? That snake could eat you in one gulp. I saw it with my own eyes. It’s the King Kong of snakes.”

  Diggery opened the door and squinted out at me. “I didn’t do it,” he said.

  “What didn’t you do?” I asked him.

  “Whatever it is you’re gonna arrest me for.”

  “I’m not going to arrest you. I want to hire you.”

  “You mean a job?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t need a job. I get food stamps.”

  “What about the snake? Can you get snake food with food stamps?”

  “We just let him loose under the trailer to catch rats. We got enough rats to feed a whole pack of pythons.”

  “I’m outta here,” Lula said. “I heard that and I’m not staying around with no snakes and rats. I got peep-toed shoes on and my big toe could look like a snack.”

  “It could be fun,” I said to Diggery. “I know where there are some unrecorded graves.”

  “Unrecorded graves? It’s hard to find them these days. Mostly you have to go to the landfill in Camden. I might be interested in some unrecorded graves.”

  “Terrific. Grab a shovel and let’s go.”

  “Hey, Melvin,” Simon Diggery yelled into the dark trailer. “We got some unrecorded graves to dig. Put your pants on and let’s go.”

  Simon and Melvin followed us in a pickup that was in worse shape than their trailer. It was eaten up with cancerous rot, spewing black smoke, its tailgate held on with clothesline.

  “It’s never gonna make Route 1,” Lula said. “I think I just saw the muffler fall off.”

  I was praying that the truck would hold together long enough to get to the cemetery because I really didn’t want to put Melvin and Simon in the Buick.

  We turned in to Sunshine Memorial Park and the truck was down to fifteen miles per hour, lurching and belching fire from the undercarriage. We made it to the unmarked graves, the truck gasped to a shuddering stop, and Simon and Melvin jumped out and got shovels. All excited. Ready to go.

  “Jeez,” I said. “Sorry about your truck.”

  “What about it?” Simon said.

  “It sounded like there might be a mechanical problem.”

  “It’s just tempermental,” Simon said. “It gets ornery when we go a distance. Where’s these graves you were talking about?”

  “There are three of them in this area. Two on this side of the road and one on the other.” I showed him my file picture of Geoffrey Cubbin. “I’m looking for this guy. If you find h
im he’s mine, but I’ll give you his jewelry if he has any. The others are all yours.”

  “Sounds fair,” Simon said. “Let’s get to work.”

  “We’re going to hell for this,” Lula said. “This here’s sacrilegious or something. I’m pretty sure it’s a sin.”

  Thirty minutes into the dig Simon yelled out that he’d found something.

  “I think this might be your man,” he said. “Come take a look.”

  “I’m not looking,” Lula said. “I get nightmares about these things. I get chased by boogeymen all the time. Sometimes they look like people I know.”

  I walked over and forced myself to look beyond the pile of dirt Simon had accumulated. I caught a glimpse of a black body bag partially unzipped, and what was in the bag wasn’t in perfect shape.

  “He’s still pretty good,” Simon said. “I’ve seen a lot worse. Sure he’s a little wormy and all, but you could see he’s got the right color hair. Some of that’s left. And I took a ring off him that had his initials on.”

  “Good enough for me,” I said. “Zip him up and get him in my car.”

  Simon and Melvin lugged the body bag to the Buick and shoved it into the trunk.

  “He don’t all fit,” Simon said. “He’s not at that stage yet where he bends easy. Problem is as you can see he’s a little gassed up.”

  “Maybe I could borrow your clothesline to hold the lid down,” I said to Simon.

  Simon took the clothesline off his tailgate, the tailgate fell onto the road, and he picked it up and tossed it into the back of his truck.

  Simon and Melvin tied the lid of my trunk to the bumper so Geoffrey Cubbin wouldn’t slide out onto the highway, and we were good to go. I gave Simon and Melvin each a twenty and they thanked me profusely and went back to digging.

  “I have to say I admire your determination to get the job done,” Lula said when we were back on Route 1. “I’m freaked out about it all, but I gotta hand it to you, you got guts.”

  “Hey,” I said. “No guts, no glory.”

  “That’s so true,” Lula said. “I say that all the time. That’s practically my motto.”

  I turned off Route 1 onto Olden and slowed down. “Keep your eye on Geoffrey in case he bounces out when we go over the railway tracks,” I said to Lula.

  “He seems like he’s okay,” Lula said. “I think a lady just run her car up on a curb looking at him, but he’s holding tight.”

  I swung into the police lot and parked near the back entrance. Lula and I ran around to the back of the Buick, untied the clothesline, and lugged Cubbin in to the docket lieutenant.

  “Geoffrey Cubbin,” I said, setting him on the floor. I pulled my documentation out of my messenger bag and presented it. “I need a body receipt.”

  There were a bunch of cops, keeping their distance, gawking at us.

  “Lady, that smells really bad,” one of them said.

  “He’s a little gassy,” I told him.

  “Yeah, and we can all relate to that,” Lula said.

  “How am I supposed to know it’s Cubbin?” the lieutenant at the desk asked.

  “Some of his hair is left,” I said. “And he’s got most of his teeth. You can identify him by his teeth.”

  Clumps of dirt were still clinging to the body bag, falling off onto the floor.

  The lieutenant grimaced. “What did you do, dig him up?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “That would be illegal, right?”

  “Right,” the lieutenant said.

  “We found him on the side of the road,” Lula said. “We was driving along and we saw this body bag and stopped to investigate and lo and behold we realized it was Geoffrey Cubbin. He must have fallen off a truck or something.”

  The lieutenant looked down at Cubbin. “I can’t give you a receipt until we identify him.”

  “That could take weeks,” I said. “Maybe months.”

  “I can’t wait months,” Lula said. “Somebody’s gonna have to step up to the plate and make an executive decision here. And in fact this is making me all upset and I’m gonna be sick. I have a delicate constitution and I feel my lunch coming up. It was cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and pork. It’s not gonna be good. Cabbage throw-up is the worst. Oh Lord, I’m sweatin’ now. It’s coming up any time.”

  “Get her out of here!” the lieutenant said.

  “No way,” Lula said. “Even though I’m sick I can’t leave until she gets the body receipt. Maybe if I stick my finger down my throat it would come up faster and I’d feel better.”

  “That’s disgusting,” he said.

  “It’s just nature taking its course,” Lula said. “I might even be getting diarrhea too!”

  He grimaced and scribbled out a receipt. “Take it! Go! Take her with you.”

  Lula and I hustled out of the station, jumped into the Buick, and took off.

  “That went well,” Lula said. “I’m hungry. All that talk about cabbage and pork got me thinking about one of them Taylor Pork Roll sandwiches.”

  I had one loose end to tie up. I had Susan Cubbin drinking coffee in a kitchen filled with gold bars, not knowing what to do with them. I parked and followed Lula into the office. I gave Connie my body receipt and took a chair by her desk.

  “What do you know about gold?” I asked her.

  “Not a whole lot. What do you want to know?”

  “How much a bar is worth.”

  Connie surfed around on her computer. “Gold is up today. A kilo bar would be around fifty thousand dollars.”

  I was pretty sure Susan had kilo bars. I punched some numbers into the calculator on my phone and gasped at the result. Over the course of Geoffrey’s career at Cranberry Manor he’d embezzled five million dollars, converted it to gold, and the gold was now worth $6,650,000. Turned out Geoffrey Cubbin was the best thing that ever happened to the folks at Cranberry Manor.

  “Gotta go,” I said to Connie and Lula.

  “Are you buying gold?” Connie asked.

  “No. I’m helping Susan Cubbin clean house. I’ll tell you all the details tomorrow.”

  Forty minutes later I was in Susan’s kitchen.

  “It’s worth more than he stole,” I told her. “Gold has risen in value since Geoffrey bought it. All you have to do is take the gold to Cranberry Manor and tell the residents it was a misunderstanding, that Geoffrey was actually making smart investments on their behalf. They’ll probably name a wing after him.”

  I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it would go down like that but it was the best I could do.

  Susan had sheets draped over the stacks of gold. “How am I going to get this moved? Do I need to hire an armored truck?”

  “I have a friend,” I said.

  I called Ranger and told him I needed to transport 133 kilos of gold.

  “Now?”

  “Now would be good.”

  “I’ll send Tank with a couple cars. I have a client meeting in five minutes. I assume I’m not necessary.”

  “You’re desirable, but in this case not necessary,” I told him.

  “Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

  Two Rangeman SUVs arrived, we loaded the SUVs and headed out. I led the parade in the Buick, and Susan brought up the tail in her van. We parked in front of Cranberry Manor and I told Tank to stack the gold up in the lobby.

  “This is from Geoffrey,” Susan Cubbin said to the room filled with gawkers. “It was all a misunderstanding. I found a note from him, and it turns out he was investing your money in gold and now you’re all rich.”

  There was stunned silence and then a cheer went up.

  “It worked,” Susan said to me. “Let’s get out of here before they start asking questions.”

  “We’ll need a receipt,” I said to Carol, the facility’s tour guide.

  She counted the bars and wrote out a receipt. “One hundred and thirty-two bars,” she said.

  I looked at Susan.

  “I might have left one in the kitc
hen,” Susan said.

  “One hundred and thirty-two bars is correct,” I said to Carol.

  I stopped at Pino’s, got lasagna with meat sauce, extra bread, and tiramisu for dessert, and took it to Morelli’s house. He was on the couch, watching television with his leg propped up on the coffee table. Bob was by his side, offering sympathy, standing guard.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “It’s going good. And it’s even better now that I have you here with dinner.”

  I went to the kitchen and got knives and forks and napkins and beer and brought it all back to Morelli.

  “I hear Cranberry Manor had some good fortune today,” Morelli said. “Apparently a photographer and a news guy arrived shortly after you left.”

  “Geoffrey had the bars buried in his backyard. Susan found a landscape plan and dug them up. When I got there she had them stacked up in her kitchen.”

  “Why did she give them back?”

  I shrugged. “I guess she felt bad. I think she might not have had a storybook marriage, but she cared for him. Probably she still loved him. She didn’t want to be the one to rat on him.”

  “Suppose it was me,” Morelli said. “And I had gold buried in my backyard . . .”

  “I’d love you even more.”

  Morelli grinned. “So are you telling me that you love me? Just not as much as if I were rich?”

  “Yep. That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “Good to know,” Morelli said.

  We ate dinner and watched television and Morelli was asleep on the couch by nine o’clock. I got him upstairs, gave him a pill, and tucked him in.

  I carted Rex out to the Buick and drove to my apartment. Stars were out and the air felt warm and gentle. My apartment building looked benign and safe, dark against the night sky, lights shining from my neighbors’ windows.

  I took the elevator, walked the length of the hall, and balanced the hamster tank on one knee while I opened my front door. I stepped inside and flipped on the light. Everything looked perfect. No Orin splattered on the wall. No broken window. Clean floor.

  There was a bottle of champagne on my kitchen counter plus a check and a note from Ranger.

  For a job well done, the note said. I’ll be around later. I need a date.