High Five (15 page)

Unfortunately, if I went back to bed I might lie there taking stock of my life. And my life had some problems. The project that was taking most of my time and mental energy wasn't going to get me lunch money. Not that it mattered, I was determined to find Fred, dead or alive. The projects Ranger gave me weren't working out. And the bounty hunter projects were a big goose egg. If I thought about my life long enough I might reach the conclusion I needed to go out and get a real job. Something that required pantyhose every day and a good attitude.

Even worse, I might get to thinking about Morelli, and that I was an idiot not to have invited him to spend the night. Or worse still, I might think about Ranger, and I didn't want to go there
at all!

And then I remembered why I hadn't invited Morelli into my apartment. Briggs. I closed my eyes. Let it all be a bad dream.
Bam, bam, bam,
on my door. “Hey!” Briggs yelled. “You haven't got any coffee. How am I supposed to work without coffee? Do you know what time it is, Sleeping Beauty? What, do you sleep all day? No wonder you can't afford any food in this hellhole.”

I got up and got dressed and stomped out to the living room. “Listen, Shorty, who the hell do you think you are, anyway?” “I'm the guy who's gonna sue your ass. That's who I am.” “Give me a little time, and I could really learn to hate you.” “Jeez, and just when I was thinking you were my soul mate.” I gave him my best eat-dirt-and-die look, zipped myself into my rain jacket, and grabbed my shoulder bag. “How do you like your coffee?”

“Black. Lots of it.”

I sprinted through the rain to the Buick and drove to Giovichinni's. The front of the store was redbrick, sandwiched between other businesses. On either side of Giovichinni's the buildings were single story. Giovichinni's was two stories, but the second floor wasn't used for much. Storage and an office. I drove to the end of the block and took the service alley that ran behind the store. The back side of Giovichinni's was redbrick, just like the front. And the back door opened to a small yard. At the end of the yard was a dirt parking area for delivery trucks. Two doors down was a real estate office. The back wall was stuccoed over and painted beige. And the back door opened to a small asphalt parking lot.

So suppose cheapskate Fred drives his leaves to Giovichinni's in the dark of night. He parks the car and turns off his lights. Doesn't want to get caught. He unloads the leaves and hears a car coming. What would he do? Hide. Then maybe he's there hiding, and he sees someone come along and deposit a garbage bag behind the real estate office.

After that I was lost. I had to think about
after that
some more.

Next stop was the 7-Eleven and then home with a large coffee for me and a Big Gulp of coffee for Briggs and a box of chocolate-covered doughnuts . . .because if I had to put up with Briggs, I needed doughnuts.

I shucked my wet jacket and settled down at the dining room table with the coffee and doughnuts and a steno pad, doing my best to ignore the fact that I had a man typing away at my coffee table. I listed out all the things I knew about Fred's disappearance. No doubt now that the photographs played a large role. When I ran out of things to write in the steno pad, I locked myself in my bedroom and watched cartoons on television. This took me to lunchtime. I didn't feel like eating lamb leftovers, so I finished off the box of doughnuts.

“Cripes,” Briggs said, “do you always eat like this? Don't you know about the major food groups? No wonder you have to wear those 'romantic' dresses.”

I retreated to my bedroom, and while I was retreating I took a nap. I was startled awake by the phone ringing.

“Just wanted to make sure you were going to come take me to the Lipinski viewing tonight,” Grandma said.

The Lipinski viewing. Ugh. Trekking out in the rain to see some dead guy wasn't high on my list of desirable things to do. “How about Harriet Schnable?” I suggested. “Maybe Harriet could take you.”

“Harriet's car's on the fritz.”

“Effie Reeder?”

“Effie died.”

“Oh! I didn't know that.”

“Almost everybody I know has died,” Grandma said. “Bunch of wimps.”

“Okay, I'll take you.”

“Good. And your mother says you should come for dinner.”

I
BUZZED THROUGH
the living room, but before I could get to the door Briggs was on his feet.

“Hey, where are you going?” he asked.

“Out.”

“Out where?”

“My parents' house.”

“I bet you're going there for dinner. Man, that's the pits. You're gonna leave me here with nothing to eat, and you're going to your parents' house for dinner.”

“There's some cold lamb in the refrigerator.”

“I ate that for lunch. Hold on, I'll go with you.”

“No! You will
not
go with me.”

“What, are you ashamed of me?”

“Yes!”

“W
ELL, WHO's THIS
little guy?” Grandma asked when I walked in with Briggs.

“This is my . . .friend, Randy.”

“Aren't you something,” Grandma said. “I never saw a midget up close.”

“Little person,” Briggs said. “And I never saw anyone as old as you up close, either.”

I gave him a smack on the top of his head. “Behave yourself,” I said.

“What happened to your face?” Grandma wanted to know.

“Your granddaughter beat me up.”

“No kidding?” Grandma said. “She did a pip of a job.”

My father was in front of the TV. He turned in his chair and looked at us. “Oh, cripes, now what?” he said.

“This is Randy,” I told him.

“He's kinda short, isn't he?”

“He's not a boyfriend.”

My father went back to the television. “Thank God for that.”

There were five places set at the table. “Who's the fifth person?” I asked.

“Mabel,” my mother said. “Your grandmother invited her.”

“I thought it would give us a chance to grill her. See if she's holding something out,” Grandma said.

“There will be
no grilling”
my mother said to my grandmother. “You invited Mabel over for dinner, and that's what we're going to have . . . a nice dinner.”

“Sure,” Grandma said, “but it wouldn't hurt to ask her a few questions.”

A car door slammed at the front of the house and everyone migrated to the foyer.

“What's that car Mabel's driving?” Grandma asked. “That's not the station wagon.”

“Mabel bought a new car,” I said. “She thought the old one was too big.”

“Good for her,” my mother said. “She should be able to make those decisions.”

“Yeah,” Grandma said. “But she better hope Fred's dead.”

“Who's Mabel and Fred?” Briggs asked.

I gave him the condensed explanation.

“Cool,” Briggs said. “I'm starting to like this family.”

“I brought a coffee cake,” Mabel said, handing a box to my mother, closing the door with her other hand. “It's prune. I know Frank likes prune.” She craned her neck to the living room. “Hello, Frank,” she called.

“Mabel,” my father said.

“Nice car,” Grandma said to Mabel. “Aren't you afraid Fred'll come back and have a cow?”

“He shouldn't have left,” Mabel said. “And anyway, how am I to know he'll come back? I got a new bedroom set, too. It's getting delivered tomorrow. New mattress and everything.”

“Maybe you were the one who bumped Fred off,” Grandma said. “Maybe you did it for the money.”

My mother slammed a bowl of creamed peas down on the table.
“Mother!”
she said.

“It was just a thought,” Grandma said to Mabel.

We all took our seats, and my mother set a highball down for Mabel and a beer for my father and brought a kid cushion for Briggs to sit on.

“My grandchildren use these,” she said.

Briggs looked over at me.

“My sister Valerie's kids,” I said.

“Hah,” he said. “So you're a loser in the grandchildren race, too.”

“I have a hamster,” I told him.

My father forked some roast chicken onto his plate and reached for the mashed potatoes.

Mabel swilled down half her highball.

“What else you gonna buy?” Grandma asked her.

“I might go on a vacation,” Mabel said. “I might go to Hawaii. Or I might go on a cruise. I always wanted to go on a cruise. Of course I wouldn't do that for a while. Unless Stephanie finds that man. Then that might speed things up.”

“What man?” Grandma wanted to know.

I told her about the woman at the Grand Union.

“Now we're getting somewhere,” Grandma said. “This is more like it. All we have to do is find that man.” She turned to me. “You have any suspects?”

“No.”

“Nobody at all?”

“I'll tell you who I suspect,” Mabel said. “I suspect that garbage company. They didn't like Fred.”

Grandma waved a chicken leg at her. “That's just what I said the other day. There's something funny going on with that garbage company. We're going to the viewing tonight to look into it.” She ate some chicken while she thought. “You met the deceased when you went to the garbage office, didn't you?” she asked me. “What did he look like? He look like the guy who took Fred for a ride?”

“I guess he could fit the description.”

“Too bad it's gonna be a closed casket. If it was open we could take the Grand Union woman with us and see if she recognizes Lipinski.”

“Hell,” my father said, “why don't you just haul Lipinski out and put him in a lineup?”

Grandma looked at my father. “You think we could do that? I imagine he'd be stiff enough.”

My mother sucked in some air.

“I don't know if you stay stiff,” Mabel said. “I think you might loosen up again.”

“How about passing the gravy,” my father said. “Could I get some gravy down here?”

Grandma's face lit with inspiration. “There'll be lots of Lipinski's relatives there tonight. Maybe one of them will give us a picture! Then we can show the picture to the Grand Union lady.”

I thought this was all a little grim, considering Mabel was at the table, but Mabel seemed unfazed.

“What do you think, Stephanie?” she asked. “Do you think I should go to Hawaii? Or do you think I should take a cruise?”

“Jesus,” Briggs said to me, “you turned out pretty good considering your gene pool.”

 

 

“W
OW, LOOK AT
this,” Grandma said, peering out at the parking lot. “This place is packed tonight. That's on account of Stiva has a full house. He's got somebody in every room. I was talking to Jean Moon, and she said her cousin Dorothy died yesterday morning, and they couldn't get her into Stiva's. Had to take her to Mosel.”

“What's wrong with Mosel?” Briggs asked.

“He don't know nothing about makeup,” Grandma said. “Uses too much rouge. I like when the deceased looks nice and natural.”

“Yeah, I like that, too,” Briggs said. “Nothing worse than an unnatural corpse.”

The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but it still wasn't a glorious night to be out, so I dropped Grandma and Briggs off at the door and went in search of a parking place on the street. I found one a block away, and by the time I reached Stiva's front porch my hair was more frizz than curl and my cotton knit sweater had grown two inches.

Larry Lipinski was in room number one, as was befitting a suicidal killer. Family and friends were clustered in a knot around the casket. The rest of the room was filled with the same crowd I'd seen at the Deeter viewing. There were the professional mourners like Grandma Mazur and Sue Ann Schmatz. And there were the garbage people.

Grandma Mazur marched over to me with Briggs running after her. “I already gave my condolences,” she said. “And I want to tell you they're a real standoffish group. It's a shame when people like that get to take rooms away from people like Dorothy Moon.”

“I guess that means they wouldn't give you a picture.”

“Zip,” Grandma said. “They gave me zip.”

“They gave it to her in a big way, too,” Briggs said, smiling. “You should have been there.”

“I don't think he's the one, anyway,” I said.

“I'm not so sure,” Grandma said. “These people look to me like they got something to hide. I think this is a shifty lot.”

If I was related to someone who'd confessed to murder, I'd probably be feeling a little uncomfortable, too.

“Don't worry,” Grandma said. “I thought this might happen, and I've got a plan.”

“Yeah, the plan is we forget about it,” I said.

Grandma slid her uppers around while she scanned the crowd. “Emma Getz told me the deceased in room number four is done up real nice. I thought I might take a look.”

“Me too,” Briggs said. “I don't want to miss anything.”

I wasn't interested in how room four was done up, so I volunteered to wait in the lobby. Waiting got old after a couple minutes, so I wandered over to the tea table and helped myself to some cookies. Then the cookies got old, so I went to the ladies' room to check out my hair. Big mistake. Best not to look at my hair. I went back to the cookies and put one in my pocket for Rex.

I was counting the ceiling tiles, wondering what to do next, when the fire alarm went off. Since not that long ago Stiva's almost burned to the ground, no one was wasting any time vacating the premises. People poured from the viewing rooms into the lobby and ran for the door. I didn't see Grandma Mazur, so I struggled through the crowd to viewing room four. The room was empty when I got there, with the exception of Mrs. Kunkle, who was serene in her twelve-thousand-dollar mahogany and solid brass slumber chamber. I ran back to the lobby and was about to check outside for Grandma Mazur when I noticed the door to room one was closed. All the other doors were open, but the Lipinski door was closed.

Sirens whined in the distance, and I had a bad feeling about room one. Stiva was on the other side of the lobby, yelling to his assistant to check the back rooms. He turned and looked at me, and his face went white.

“It wasn't me!” I said. “I swear!”

He followed after the assistant, and the second he was out of sight I ran to room one and tried the door. The knob turned but the door wouldn't open, so I put my weight behind it and gave it a shove. The door flew open, and Briggs fell over backward.

“Shit,” he said, “close the door, you big oaf.”

“What are you doing?”

“I'm doing lookout for your grandma. What do you think I'm doing?”

At the other end of the room, Grandma had the lid up on Larry Lipinski. She was standing one foot on a folding chair, one foot on the edge of the casket, and she was taking pictures with a disposable camera.

“Grandma!”

“Boy,” she said, “this guy don't look so good.”

“Get down!”

“I gotta finish this roll out. I hate when there's pictures left over.”

I ran down the aisle between the folding chairs. “You can't do this!”

“I can now that I got this chair. I was only getting the side of his face before. And that wasn't working good, on account of there's a lot of his head missing.”

“Stop taking pictures this instant and get down!”

“Last picture!” Grandma said, climbing off the chair, dropping the camera into her purse. “I got some beauts.”

“Close the lid! Close the lid!”

Crash!

“Didn't realize it was so heavy,” Grandma said.

I moved the chair back against the wall. I scrutinized the casket to make sure everything looked okay. And then I took Grandma by the hand. “Let's get out of here.”

The door was wrenched open before we got to it, and Stiva gave me a startled look. “What are you doing in here? I thought you were leaving the building.”

“I couldn't find Grandma,” I said. “And um—”

“She came in here to rescue me,” Grandma said, hanging on to me, making her way to the door. “I was paying my respects when the alarm went off, and everybody stampeded out of here. And somebody knocked me over, and I couldn't get up. The midget was in here with me, but it would have taken two of them to do the job. If it wasn't for my granddaughter coming to get me I'd have burned to a cinder.”

“Little person!” Randy Briggs said. “How many times do I have to tell you, I'm
not
a midget.”

“Well, you sure do look like a midget,” Grandma said. She sniffed the air. “Do I smell smoke?”

“No,” Stiva said. “It looks like a false alarm. Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Grandma said. “And it's a lucky thing, too, because I got fragile bones on account of I'm so old.” Grandma glanced over at me. “Imagine that, a false alarm.”

Imagine that. Unh. Mental head slap.

There were two fire trucks in the street when we left. Mourners were outside, shivering in the drizzle, kept in place by curiosity and the fact that their coats were inside. A police car was angled at the curb.

“You didn't set that alarm off, did you?” I asked Grandma Mazur.

“Who, me?”

M
Y MOTHER WAS
waiting at the door when we got back to the house. “I heard the sirens,” she said, “Are you all right?”

“Sure we're all right,” Grandma said. “Can't you see we're all right?”

“Mrs. Ciak got a call from her daughter, who told her there was a fire at Stiva's.”

“No fire,” Grandma said. “It was one of them false alarms.”

My mother's mouth had turned grim.

Grandma shook the rain off her coat and hung it in the closet. “Ordinarily I guess I might feel bad that the fire department had to go out for nothing, but I noticed Bucky Moyer was driving. And you know how Bucky loves to drive that big truck.”

Actually this was true about Bucky. In fact, he'd been suspected on more than one occasion for setting off a false alarm himself just so he could take the truck out.

“I have to go,” I said. “I have a lot to do tomorrow.”

“Wait,” my mother said, “let me give you some chicken.”

G
RANDMA CALLED AT
eight. “I got a beauty parlor appointment this morning,” she said. “I thought maybe you could give me a ride, and on the way we could drop the you-know-what off.”

“The film?”

“Yeah.”

“When is your appointment?”

“Nine.”

W
E STOPPED AT
the photo store first. “Do that one-hour thing,” Grandma said, handing me the film.

“That costs a fortune.”

“I got a coupon,” Grandma said. “They give them to us seniors on account of we haven't got a lot of time to waste. We have to wait too long to get our pictures back, and we could be dead.”

After I deposited Grandma at the hair salon I drove to the office. Lula was on the Naugahyde couch, drinking coffee, reading her horoscope. Connie was at her desk, eating a bagel. And Vinnie was nowhere in sight.

Lula put the paper down as soon as she spied me walking through the door. “I want to know
all
about it. Everything. I want details.”

“Not much to tell,” I said. “I chickened out and didn't wear the dress.”

“What? Say that again?”

“It's sort of complicated.”

“So you're telling me you didn't get any this weekend.”

“Yeah.”

“Girl, that's a sad-ass state of affairs.”

Tell me about it.

“You got any FTAs?” I asked Connie.

“Nothing came in on Saturday. And it's too early for today.”

“Where's Vinnie?”

“At the lockup, writing bail on a shoplifter.”

I left the office and stood outside, staring at the Buick. “I hate you,” I said.

I heard someone laughing softly behind me and turned to find Ranger.

“You always talk to your car like that? Think you need a life, Babe.”

“I've got a life. What I need is a new car.”

He stared at me for a couple beats, and I was afraid to speculate on what he was thinking. His brown eyes were assessing, and his expression was mildly amused. “What would you be willing to do for a new car?”

“What did you have in mind?”

Again, the soft laugh. “Would it still have to be morally correct?”

“What kind of car are we talking about?”

“Powerful. Sexy.”

I had a feeling those words might be included in the job description, too.

A light rain had started to fall. He pulled my jacket hood up and tucked my hair in. His finger traced a line at my temple, our eyes met, and for a terrifying moment I thought he might kiss me. The moment passed, and Ranger pulled back.

“Let me know when you decide,” he said.

“Decide?”

He smiled. “About the car.”

“Okeydokey.”

Unh! I climbed into the Buick and roared off into the mist. I stopped for a light and thunked my head on the steering wheel while I waited for the green. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, I thought while I thunked. Why had I said “okeydokey"? What a dopey thing to say! I did one last thunk and the light turned.

Grandma was getting coated with hairspray when I got to the salon. Her hair was steel gray, and she kept it cut short and curled in rolls that marched in side-by-side rows on her pink skull. “I'm almost done,” she said. “Did you get the pictures?”

“Not yet.”

She paid for her wash and set, stuffed herself into her coat, and carefully tied the plastic rain bonnet on her head. “That was some viewing last night,” she said, being cautious how she walked on the wet pavement. “What a lot of excitement. You weren't even there when Margaret Burger pitched a fit over the guy in room three. You remember how Margaret's husband, Sol, died from a heart attack last year? Well, Margaret said it was all over a problem Sol was having with the cable company. Margaret said they drove Sol to high blood pressure. And she said the guy who did it was the dead guy in room three, John Curly. Margaret said she came to spit on his dead body.”

“Margaret Burger came to Stiva's to spit on someone?” Margaret Burger was a sweet white-haired lady.

“That's what she told me, but I didn't actually see her spit. I guess I came in too late. Or maybe after she saw this John Curly person she decided not to do it. He looked even worse than Lipinski.”

“How did he die?”

“Hit and run. And from the looks of him he must have got hit by a truck. Boy, I'm telling you these companies are something. Margaret said Sol was arguing over his bill, just like Fred, and this smart-mouth in the office, John Curly, didn't want to hear anything.”

I parked in front of One-Hour Photo and got Grandma's pictures.

“These aren't so bad,” she said, shuffling through the pack.

I looked over at them. Eeew.

“You think it's real obvious he's dead?” Grandma asked.

“He's in a casket.”

“Well, I still think they're pretty good. I think we should see if that Grand Union lady recognizes him.”

“Grandma, we can't ring some woman's doorbell and show her pictures of a dead man.”

Grandma pawed through her big black patent-leather handbag. “The only other thing I got is the memorial brochure from Stiva. The picture's kind of fuzzy, though.”

I took the paper from Grandma and looked at it. It was a photo of Lipinski and his wife. And below it was the Twenty-third Psalm. Lipinski was standing with his arm around a slim woman with short brown hair. It was a snapshot, taken outdoors on a summer day, and they were smiling at each other.

“Kind of funny they used that picture,” Grandma said. “I overheard people talking, saying as how Lipinski's wife left him last week. Just up and went. And she didn't show up for the viewing, either. Nobody could find her to tell her about it. Was like she just disappeared off the face of the earth. Just like Fred. Except from what I heard, Laura Lipinski left on purpose. Packed her bags and said she wanted a divorce. Isn't that a shame?”

Now I know there are billions of women out there who are slim with short brown hair. But my mind made the leap anyway to the severed head with the short brown hair. Larry Lipinski was the second RGC employee to die a violent death in the space of a week. And while it seemed like a remote connection, Fred had been in contact with Lipinski. Lipinski's wife was gone. And Lipinski's wife could, in a very vague way, fit the body in the bag.