Two for the Dough (Stephanie Plum 2)

The air had grown cool, but Spiro seemed oblivious to the chill. He dragged the smoke deep into his lungs and exhaled slowly. I figured he was trying to absorb as much tar as possible, the sooner to end his wretched life.

I knocked lightly on the glass door to get his attention. “Would you like to discuss the, um, you know . . . now?”

He nodded to me, took one last long drag, and pitched his cigarette onto the driveway. “I would have called you this afternoon, but I figured you'd come to see Bues tonight. I need these things found yesterday.” He shifted his eyes over the lot to make sure we were alone.

“Caskets are like anything else. Manufacturers have surplus, they have seconds, they have sales. Sometimes it's possible to buy bulk and get a good price. About six months ago I put in a bulk bid and got twenty-four caskets below cost. We're short on storage space here, so I stowed the caskets in a rental locker.”

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.