Lean Mean Thirteen (Stephanie Plum 13)

“They're behind the Kellners. Myra Kellner has an angel carved at the top of her marker.”

“I don't know how you remember these things,” Lula said. “Half the time, you get lost in Quakerbridge parking lot, but you know where the Kellners and Bergs live in this graveyard.”

“When I was little, I used to come here with my mother and grandmother. My relatives are buried here.”

I used to love the cemetery excursions. The family plot, like my mother's kitchen, is tended by women.

“This is your Great-Aunt Ethel,” Grandma Mazur would say to my sister, Valerie, and me. “Ethel was ninety-eight years old when she died. She was a pip. She loved a good cigar after dinner. And Ethel played the accordion. She could play 'Lady of Spain' by heart. Her sister Baby Jane is buried next to her. Baby Jane died young. She was only seventy-six when she died. She choked on a kielbasa. She didn't have no teeth. Used to gum all her food, but I guess you can't gum kielbasa so good. They didn't know the Heimlich in those days. And here's your Uncle Andy. He was the smart one. He could have gone to college, but there was no money for it. He died a bachelor. His brother Christian is next to him. Nobody really knows how Christian died. He just woke up dead one day. Probably, it was his heart.”

Valerie and I had every square inch of our plot committed to memory, but it was part of the experience to have Grandma point out Great-Aunt Ethel. Just as it was part of the experience to go exploring in the tombstone forest while my mother and grandmother planted the flowers. Val and I visited the Hansens and the Krizinskis and the Andersons on the top of the hill. We knew them almost as well as Great-Aunt Ethel and Baby Jane. We planted lilies for Easter and geraniums for the Fourth of July. In the fall, we'd visit just to clean things up and make sure all was right with

the family.

I stopped going to the cemetery when I was in junior high. Now I only go for a funeral or to chase down Simon Diggery. My mother and grandmother still go to plant the lilies and geraniums. And now that my sister has moved back to the Burg with her three girls, I'm sure they'll help plant the lilies this year and listen to Grandma talk about Ethel.

“Here s an angel,” Lula said, stepping off the path, heading uphill. “Excuse me,” she said, walking on graves. “Sorry. Excuse me.”

Binkie was silent behind me. I turned and looked at him, and he had his hand on his gun. I wasn't sure what he thought he might have to shoot.

“Simon Diggery isn't usually armed with anything other than a shovel,” I told Binkie. “Lula and I have done this before. We'll get to the grave site and find a place to hide. Then we'll let Simon dig himself into a hole. It makes the apprehension easier.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Binkie said.

“I hate being ma'am,” I told him. “Call me Stephanie.”

“Yes, ma'am, Stephanie.”

“I'm at the top of the hill, and I don't see no fresh-dug grave,” Lula said.

“Are you sure you turned at Kellner?”

“I turned at the angel. I don't know about Kellner.”

I squinted into the darkness. Nothing looked familiar.

“Is that rain I feel?” Lula asked. “It wasn't supposed to rain, was it?”

“Chance of showers,” I told her.

“That's it,” she said. “I'm going home. I'm not being out here in the rain. I'm wearing suede.” Lula looked around. “Which way's home?”

I didn't know. It was pitch black, and I was all turned around.

“We can't go wrong if we go downhill,” Lula said, taking off. “Oops, excuse me. So sorry. Excuse me.”

It was raining harder and the ground was getting slick underfoot.

“Slow down,” I said to Lula. “You can't see where you're going.”

“I got X-ray vision. I'm like a cat. Don't worry about me. I just gotta get this coat out of the rain. I can see there's a tent ahead.”

A tent? And then I saw it. The grounds crew had erected a tarp over a hole dug for a morning burial.

“I'm just waiting under this tent until the rain lets up,” Lula said, rushing forward.

“No!”

Too late.