Two for the Dough (Stephanie Plum 2)

“That does it. Go sit in the car.”

In spite of all the sparring that went on between us, I sort of liked Morelli. Good judgment told me to stand clear of him, but then I've never been a slave to good judgment. I liked his dedication to the job, and the way he'd risen above his wild teen years. He'd been a street-smart kid, and now he was a street-smart cop. True, he was sort of a chauvinist, but it wasn't entirely his fault. After all, he was from New Jersey, and on top of that he was a Morelli. All things considered, I thought he was coping pretty well.

The office consisted of a small room divided in half by a service counter. A woman wearing a white T-shirt sporting a blue R and J Storage logo stood behind the counter. She was in her late forties—nearly fifties, with a pleasant face and a body that had comfortably gone to plump. She gave me a perfunctory nod before focusing on Morelli, who had paid no attention to my order and was standing close behind me.

Morelli was wearing washed-out jeans that had suggestively molded to an impressive package in front and the state's best buns in back. His brown leather jacket hid only his gun. The R and J lady swallowed visibly and dragged her eyes upward from Morelli's crotch.

I told her I was checking on some stored items for a friend of mine and that I was concerned with security.

“Who was this friend?” she asked.

“Spiro Stiva.”

“No offense,” she said, fighting back a grimace, “but he's got that locker filled with coffins. He said they were empty, but I don't care. I wouldn't come within fifty feet of that place. And I don't think you have to worry about security. Who on earth would steal a coffin?”

“How do you know he has coffins in there?”

“Saw them come in. He had so many they had to come in a semi and get off loaded with a forklift.”

“Do you work here full-time?” I asked.

“I work here all the time,” she said. “My husband and I own it. I'm the R in the R and J. Roberta.”

“You have any other big trucks come in here in the last couple of months?”

“A few real big U-Hauls. Is there a problem?”

Spiro had sworn me to secrecy, but I didn't see any way I could get the information I needed without bringing Roberta into the investigation. Besides, she undoubtedly had a master key, and coffins or not, she'd probably check on Spiro's locker when we left and discover it was empty.

“Stiva's coffins are missing,” I said. “The locker is empty.”

"That's impossible! A person can't just make off with a locker full of caskets. That's a lot of caskets. They filled the locker from one end to the other!

“We have trucks coming and going all the time, but I would have known if they were loading caskets!”

“Locker sixteen is in the back,” I said. “You can't see it from here. And maybe they didn't take them all at once.”

“How did they get in?” she wanted to know. “Was the lock broken?”

I didn't know how they got in. The lock wasn't broken, and Spiro had been emphatic that the key had never left his possession. Of course, that could be a lie.

“I'd like to see a list of your other renters,” I said. “And it would be helpful if you could think back to trucks in the vicinity of Spiro's locker. Trucks big enough to haul those caskets.”

“He's insured,” she said. “We make everybody take insurance.”

“He can't collect on insurance without filing a police report, and at this preliminary stage Mr. Stiva would prefer to keep things quiet.”

“Tell you the truth I'm not anxious for this to get around, either. Don't want people thinking our lockers aren't safe.” She punched up her computer and produced a printout of renters. “These are renters that are on the books right now. When someone vacates we keep them in file for three months and then the computer drops them.”

Morelli and I scanned the list, but we didn't recognize any of the names.

“Do you require identification?” Morelli asked.

“Driver's license,” she said. “The insurance company makes us get a photo ID.”

I folded the printout, tucked it into my pocketbook, and gave Roberta one of my cards with instructions to call should something turn up. As an afterthought I asked her to use her set of master keys and check each locker on the odd possibility that the caskets weren't taken off the premises.

When we got back to the Jeep, Morelli and I looked the list over one more time and drew a big zero.