Lula bustled over. “Your extensions are smokin’,” she said. “I could see them all the way across the room.” She elbowed Grandma. “Condolences.”
“Thank you,” Grandma said. “Have some kielbasa.”
Connie pushed her way through the crowd. “This is insane,” Connie said. “I’ve never seen this many people at a wake. They’re going through the buffet like they haven’t eaten in a week, and some of them want to know when the pole girls arrive and the show starts.”
My father was at the bar shoveling food onto his plate. My mother looked like she wanted to iron a shirt.
“You’re in charge of my family,” I told Morelli. “I’m looking for Charlie Shine or Stan or Benny the Skootch.”
“Benny was at the church and the cemetery. I haven’t seen Charlie Shine, and I don’t know Stan,” Morelli said. “Lou Salgusta and Julius Roman are also club members. They were with Benny earlier. I don’t see any of them now, so I’m guessing they’re in the back room.”
I glanced over at the door to the back room. Crap. Been there. Done that. Not a good experience.
“Is there a problem?” Morelli asked.
“Nope,” I said. “Easy-peasy.”
I marched over and knocked on the back room door. The door opened, and Stan looked out at me.
“My sincere condolences on your loss,” he said.
I nodded politely. “Thank you. I need to talk to the La-Z-Boys.”
Stan was blocking my view of the room, but I heard a voice some distance behind him.
“Who’s there?” a man asked.
“Stephanie Plum,” Stan said.
“Bring her over here. Has she got the keys?”
I stepped around Stan and took stock of the room. There was a huge safe against one wall, with a long folding table in front of it. I assumed this was for the convenience of the bagmen. There was a card table and four folding chairs in a corner, a big brown leather couch against the far wall, and six La-Z-Boy recliners lined up in front of a big flat-screen television. That was pretty much it. Disappointing. At the very least, I’d expected wood paneling and a private bar.
Four of the La-Z-Boy chairs were occupied. Charlie, Benny, Lou, and Julius. I knew the four of them by sight. Jimmy’s chair had a framed picture of him resting in it. The sixth chair was empty. I didn’t know who sat there.
“About the keys,” I said.
“Are you sure you want to talk about this today, what with your recent loss and all?” Benny asked.
“Grandma doesn’t have the keys,” I told him. “Jimmy didn’t pass them on to her. His death was sudden. He was playing at a poker machine, apparently had a massive heart attack, and died on the spot. He didn’t say anything to Grandma. He didn’t pass anything over to her. And he didn’t give her anything that would resemble a key previous to that.”
Benny exchanged glances with the other boys. “That’s her version.”
“It’s the only version,” I said.
“We got a witness who says it didn’t go down like that,” Benny said. “We talked to an attendant who said Jimmy, should he rest in peace, grabbed hold of your granny and said something to her before he fell out of his chair. We’re thinking there was time for Granny to get the keys from Jimmy. We’re thinking that Granny very unwisely has decided to keep the keys for herself.”
“She would have told me.”
“We got no reason to trust you, either,” Benny said. “So, here’s the deal. Because we’re civilized good Catholic men, we’re giving you a grace period due to your loss. You’ve got twenty-four hours, more or less, to get the keys to us. After that we have no choice but to exert some persuasive force on your granny.”
“Why are these keys so important?”
“That’s not for you to know. It’s important to us and that’s enough.”
I narrowed my eyes at Benny. “If you do anything to cause my grandmother discomfort, you’ll answer to me.”
“Haw! We’re real scared about that.”
“I have friends.”
“We know all about your friends, and we might have to take care of them too.”
I took a moment to steady myself. I looked him in the eye and allowed a small smile to surface. “Good luck with that one,” I said. “You would be smart to let this go and start looking for a good locksmith.”
Benny leaned forward and squinted at me. “What’s with your hair? It’s got blue streaks in it. Is that something new? Like a funeral thing?”
“It looks like metal,” Julius said. “It could be a wire.”
“Do you want me to look at it more closely?” Stan asked. “Do you want me to see if she’s got a transmitter hidden somewhere?”
“They’re extensions,” I said. “I got them at the hair salon.”
“What happens if you set them on fire?” Lou asked. “Do they burn or just melt?” He smiled. “I like burning things. It’s my specialty.”
“He’s right about that,” Julius said. “He’s done some real good burn work.”
“There’s an art to it,” Lou said. “I haven’t lost my touch, either.” Another smile aimed at me. “Maybe I could show you what I can do someday? I could do you and your granny.”
“Lou likes to burn the ladies,” Julius said. “He always starts by putting his initials on their lady parts.”
I turned and calmly walked out of the room, closing the door behind me. By the time I reached the bar my heart was pounding in my ears. I picked a small sandwich up from a tray and realized my hand was shaking. Okay, so I was terrified, horrified, enraged, and had gone scramble brained. Perfectly normal for a person who is basically a wimp at heart and completely lacking in tough-guy skills. The important thing is that I was strong in front of Benny and the Boys. I was pretty sure I’d pulled it off. Whether it meant anything to them was a whole other issue.
I did slow breathing and thought about daisies in a field. Hummingbirds and butterflies. The sound of the surf at the Jersey shore. I forced myself to eat the sandwich. It was going to be okay, I told myself. I had to stay on my toes and keep my eyes open. And it wasn’t as if I had no skills at all. I’d become good at finding people. I had to transfer that skill to finding things. Like some keys.
I looked around the room. The novelty of the Mole Hole was wearing off. The possibility of pole girls performing was slim to none. The food had been savagely picked over. The crowd had thinned out, and Grandma was accepting good wishes from a handful of stragglers. Morelli was back on his heels. My parents were sitting at a table. They both looked shell-shocked.
I sidled up to Morelli, and he slid an arm around me.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“About as expected. We have twenty-four hours, more or less, to give them the keys.”
“And then?”
“Those old guys are sickos. I don’t even want to repeat what they said.”
“I can lean on them.”
“They’d probably like that. Make them feel like they were back in the game. There were six chairs in the club room. One was Jimmy’s. The other chairs were occupied by Benny the Skootch, Charlie Shine, Lou Salgusta, and Julius Roman. Who sits in the sixth chair?”
“I don’t know,” Morelli said. “It used to belong to Big Artie. He died last year, and I don’t know if the chair was ever filled. I can ask around. Did you try to apprehend Charlie Shine?”
“It never even occurred to me. I just wanted to say my piece and get out of the room.”
Grandma joined Morelli and me. “Stick a fork in me,” she said. “I’m pooped. Do you think it’s okay to go home now? There’s still a couple people left, but I can’t take any more condolences.”
I signaled to my parents that we were ready to leave, and they heaved themselves up and shuffled over to us.
“It was like an invasion of
meatball-eating zombies,” my father said, glassy eyed. “It was like one of those videogames you see advertised on television where a screaming horde storms the castle.”
My mother stared at the bar. “They ate everything. It didn’t last a half hour. Gone. All of it gone.”
“Yeah,” Grandma said. “It was a pip of a wake.”
Morelli herded everyone outside, Grandma took a selfie of herself leaving the Mole Hole, and we climbed into the limo.
“I didn’t see the Rosolli sisters at the Mole Hole,” Grandma said. “I guess they got worn out at the cemetery.”
“You almost killed Tootie,” my mother said. “I’m sure she’s home with an ice pack.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Grandma said. “I caught her on the side of the head. I probably didn’t even break her nose. And besides I could feel that I got a bruise where she ran into me.”
I was relieved that no one got pitched into the hole in the ground along with Jimmy. Between the mob and the gangs, Trenton funerals aren’t always a model of decorum.
“I had a talk with Benny La-Z-Boy,” I said to Grandma. “He claims to have a source who saw Jimmy have the heart attack. He said Jimmy grabbed hold of you and said something to you before he fell to the ground.”
“Yep,” Grandma said. “That’s the way it happened.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Oh crap apples.’ And then he was dead.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE CAR DROPPED US at my parents’ house, and Morelli and I went our own way. He went home to walk Bob. I headed for my apartment because I had nothing better to do. I drove two blocks, and I got a call from Grandma.
“Someone broke into our house,” she said. “There’s stuff thrown everywhere. Your mother is in a state. I was hoping you could come back and calm her down.”
“I’m turning around,” I said. “I’ll be there in two minutes.”
Five minutes later, Morelli and I were walking through the house cataloging the damage and setting things straight.
“My apartment looked exactly like this when it got tossed,” I said. “I’m guessing the same idiots did both jobs.”
“I’ll file a report,” Morelli said. “Depending on the deductible, your parents might be able to put in an insurance claim.”
“From what I’m seeing, the damage is more emotional than physical. A couple couch cushions were slashed. A candy dish was broken in the living room. It wasn’t expensive.” I replaced a dresser drawer in my parents’ bedroom, scooped the contents up off the floor, and refolded everything. “This is the second time my parents’ house was targeted in less than a week’s time. This shouldn’t be happening. This is their home. This is their safe place.”
Morelli checked his watch. “Agreed. You seem to have everything under control here, so I’m going to take Bob for a short walk, and then I’ll go back to the Mole Hole and have a talk with the Boys. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
I moved into Grandma’s room. She had everything put back together and was making her bed.
“I guess this is my fault,” she said. “I got mixed up with the wrong man.”
I picked her pillow up off the floor and placed it on her bed. “Jimmy might have been the wrong man, but this isn’t your fault.”
“I wish I had the keys so I could give them up and have it be over and done.”
“Yeah, that would be good, but you don’t have the keys, so we’ll have to be careful until the keys are found.”
“I don’t know how we could be more careful,” Grandma said. “The doors were locked and the windows were closed, and someone broke in anyway. I don’t know what more we could do.”
For starters, I was going to have Ranger install a home security system. It wouldn’t stop someone from throwing a firebomb through the window, but it would give warning that someone had broken in.
“What’s Mom doing?” I asked Grandma.
“She was working in the kitchen, putting stuff away and cleaning. They emptied a sack of flour and some cereal boxes. That must be where people hide keys if they’ve got them.”
I went downstairs and found my father in his chair in front of the television. He was staring at the television, but the television wasn’t on.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “I’m not okay. I’m mad. I’d like to punch someone. I’d like to find the guy who broke into my home and did this. It’s not right that this happened.”
“I’m going to have Ranger install a security system.”
“I don’t want a security system. This is a nice neighborhood. I shouldn’t need a security system.”
I left my dad and went into the kitchen. My mom was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea.
“I thought you’d be ironing by now,” I said, sitting across from her.
“Ironing is like meditation for me,” she said. “It’s calming. It’s soothing. I like the way a warm shirt smells. It’s clean. It’s like spring grass growing. It helps me clear my head. And I guess it lets me feel like I have some control over things when I can iron away a wrinkle.” She looked around the kitchen. “I had no control over this, and I don’t like it. This started with your grandmother, and now we’re all involved. Ironing isn’t going to make this go away.”
“I’d like Ranger to install a home security system here, but Dad is against it.”
“Have it installed,” my mother said. “We need help.”
* * *
—
It was almost four o’clock when I left my parents’ house. The Rangeman car that had been absent all day was back on my rear bumper. I circled the block, returned to my parents’ house, and parked in their driveway. I went in through the front door and out the back door. I cut through the alley behind the house and old Mr. Sanderson’s backyard. I looked around. No Rangeman. They were sticking with my car. Good deal. Now they were guarding Grandma. I walked the short distance to Morelli’s house and got a call from Ranger just as I reached Morelli’s front door.
“Babe,” he said. “Your car is at your parents’ house but your phone is approaching Morelli’s.”
“You pinged my phone?”
“Is there a problem with that?”
I did a mental head slap. “Some people would think that was an invasion of privacy. Not me, but some people.”
“As long as it’s not you,” Ranger said.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“I don’t laugh.”
“Once in a while you laugh. And I’m pretty sure you just smiled.”
“Why did you leave your escort at your parents’ house?”
“Someone broke into their house when we were at the funeral. It was searched and trashed just like mine. I decided my family needed the Rangeman protection more than I did.”
“Some people might consider that to be sneaky. Not me, but some people.”
“Would you have agreed to have your men watch Grandma?”
“No.”
“There you have it,” I said. “I have a favor to ask. I’d like to have a home security system installed in their house.”
“Done.”
And he disconnected.
Morelli’s car wasn’t parked at the curb, and he didn’t answer when I knocked, so I retrieved the key from under the doormat and let myself in. Bob came galloping at me from the kitchen. I braced for impact, and he threw himself against me, delirious with happiness.
I gave Bob some hugs, told him he was a good boy, and called Morelli.
“I’m on my way home,” he said. “I had an interesting talk with Benny, and then I stopped at my mom’s house to pick up a tray of lasagna.”
Morelli’s batshit crazy Grandma Bella lived with his mom. Bella was a small, sharp-eyed woman who dressed in old-country black, put the
hex on people, and scuttled around like a spider on the hunt. His mom was the movie version of an Italian mother. She’d endured her drunken, philandering, abusive husband and prayed for him when he passed. Her windows were clean. Her house was spotless. She kept her only unmarried son’s refrigerator filled with lasagna, red sauce, good hard cheese, ricotta cake, meatballs, and prosciutto. She knew his girlfriend wasn’t up to the task. And sad to say, she was right.
A couple years ago, Morelli inherited the house from his Aunt Rose, and little by little he was making it his own. He’d done a partial renovation on the kitchen, and he’d added a downstairs powder room. Rose’s curtains still hung in two of the upstairs bedrooms, but the master had a new bed and sleek motorized shades. Downstairs, there were some leftover end tables and lamps. He’d kept Rose’s toaster and pots and pans, but he’d traded her dainty couch for a big comfy leather job and added a flat-screen television.
The best lasagna on the planet was on its way to Morelli’s house, so Bob and I moseyed into the kitchen. I gave Bob a doggy treat, and I set the small kitchen table for dinner. Morelli always ate in the kitchen or in front of the television in the living room. He didn’t eat in the dining room because he’d swapped out Rose’s dining room table for a pool table. Just because a man owns a toaster doesn’t mean he’s entirely domesticated.
The front door opened and closed, and Bob took off at top speed. Seconds later he was dancing around Morelli while Morelli attempted to get the lasagna onto the kitchen counter without Bob slobbering on it.
“It’s still hot,” Morelli said. “My mom just took it out of the oven. I know it’s early, but I didn’t get anything to eat at the wake and I’m starving.”
“I figured. I have the table set. How did it go with Benny? Is he going to back off?”
Morelli got beer out of the fridge. He gave one to me and chugged half of his.
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