Finger Lickin' Fifteen (Stephanie Plum 15)

No response.

“What’s this computer?” I asked, referring to the code computer. “Why isn’t there anything on the screen?”

“I don’t need it right now.”

“What happens if you have to go to the bathroom?”

“One of the other men will cover. There’s always an extra man in the control room.”

I stood there for a while, watching Diaz ignore me.

“This is a little boring,” I finally said to him.

“I like it,” Diaz said. “It’s quiet. It lets me think.”

“What do you think about?”

“Nothing.”

I found that easy to believe. I returned to my cubicle and my cell phone buzzed.

“Hey, girlfriend,” Lula said. “Your granny needed a ride to a viewing at the funeral parlor tonight, so after the fire department hosed the tree down, I took her over here to pay respects to some old coot. Anyways, we were just about to leave and who do you think walked in? Junior Turley, your exhibitionist FTA. I didn’t recognize him at first. It was your granny who spotted him. And she said she almost missed him, bein’ he had all his clothes on. She said usually he’s in her backyard waving his winkie at her when she’s at the kitchen window. And she said she wouldn’t mind seeing his winkie up close to make a positive identification, but I thought we should wait until you got here.”

“Good call. I’m about fifteen minutes away.”

I grabbed my purse and took the stairs, deciding they were faster than the elevator. I wanted to capture Turley, but even more I didn’t want Grandma trying to make a citizen’s arrest based on identification of Turley’s winkie. I rolled out of the garage and called Ranger.

“Lula has one of my skips cornered,” I told him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

SEVEN

THE FUNERAL PARLOR is part renovated Victorian and part brick bunker. I found on-street parking and jogged to the front porch. Hours were almost over, but there were still a lot of mourners milling around. A group of men stood to one side on the wraparound porch. They were smoking and laughing, smelling faintly of whiskey. The funeral parlor had several viewing rooms. Two were presently occupied. Knowing Grandma, she probably visited both. Viewings were at the core of Grandma’s social scene. On a slow week, Grandma would go to the viewing of a perfect stranger if nothing better popped up.

I found Grandma and Lula to the back of Slumber Room #3.

“He’s up there at the casket,” Lula said. “He looks like he knows the stiff’s ol’ lady.”

“They’re relations,” Grandma said. “Nothin’ anyone would want to admit to. That whole family is odd. I went to school with Mary Jane Dugan, the wife of the deceased. She was Mary Jane Turley then. Up until fourth grade, she quacked like a duck. Never said a blessed word in school. Just quacked. And then one day she fell off the top of the sliding board in the park and hit her head and she started talking. Never quacked again. Not to this day. Junior’s father, Harry, was Mary Jane’s brother. He electrocuted himself trying to pry a broken plug out of a wall socket with a screwdriver. I remember when it happened. He blew out one of them transformer things, and four houses on that block didn’t have electric for two days. I didn’t see Harry after the accident, but Lorraine Shatz said she heard they had to put him in the meat locker to get him to stop smokin’.”

“Stay here,” I said to Lula. “I’m going to make my way up to the casket. You grab Junior if he bolts and tries to leave by this door.”

“Don’t you worry,” Lula said. “Nobody’s gonna get past me. I’m on the job. He come this way, and I’ll shoot him.”

“No! No shooting. Just grab him and sit on him.”

“I guess I could do that, but shooting seems like the right thing to do.”

“Shooting is the wrong thing to do. He’s an exhibitionist, not a murderer. He’s probably not even armed.”

Grandma helped herself to a cookie set out on a tray by the door. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you saw him naked.”

I eased my way along the wall, inching past knots of people who were more interested in socializing than in grieving. Not that this was a bad thing. Death in the Burg was like pot roast at six o’clock. An unavoidable and perfectly normal part of the fabric of life. You got born, you ate pot roast, and you died.

I came up behind Turley and snapped a cuff on his right wrist. “Bond enforcement,” I whispered in his ear. “Come with me, and we don’t have to make a big scene. We’ll just quietly walk to the door.”

Turley looked at me, and looked at the cuff on his wrist. “What?”