Hardcore Twenty-Four (Stephanie Plum 24)

The duplex is small, and cluttered, and immaculately clean. Living room, dining room, kitchen on the first floor. Three small bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor. My father is seldom home for lunch. He’s retired from the post office, but he drives a cab part-time.

I parked on the street, and by the time I got to the front door Grandma Mazur already had it open.

“Just in time for lunch,” she said. “We have olive loaf from Giovichinni’s, and Italian cookies from the bakery.”

I followed Grandma to the kitchen at the back of the house and took a chair at the little wooden table. I ate breakfast and lunch at the same table when I was a kid. After school I did my homework there.

“We got company for lunch,” Grandma said to my mom.

My mom was pulling food out of the fridge. Pickles, mustard, macaroni salad, cold cuts, a loaf of bread. “Is olive loaf okay?” she asked me.

“Olive loaf is great,” I said.

My mom is the anchor in the family. She represents normal . . . at least what’s considered normal in the Burg. Grandma and I have totally gone rogue.

Grandma set out plates, knives, forks, water glasses. “Did you hear, some idiot politician is talking at the firehouse tonight,” she said. “So, they canceled bingo. I don’t know what this neighborhood’s coming to. You can’t count on anything anymore.” She sat down and spooned some macaroni salad onto her plate. “Last night I went to pay my respects to Leonard Friedman, and they had a closed casket. It shouldn’t be allowed. There should be a law. If you go to see someone one last time you should be able to see them.”

“He didn’t have a head,” my mother said.

“I admit, that makes it tricky, but they could have gotten around it somehow,” Grandma said. “Maybe they should have made more of an effort to find his head in the first place.”

“Was he the man killed behind the hardware store?” I asked.

“No,” Grandma said. “Lenny passed at home. Heart attack. A big one. He lost his head at the mortuary. I’m told he was slid into the meat locker on arrival and when they pulled him out next morning he didn’t have a head.” Grandma made herself a sandwich with olive loaf and Swiss cheese. “Emily Molinowski was in the drawer next to Lenny, and I guess she lost her head too. I’m glad I’m not dead this week. When I have my viewing I want to have my head. And I want Evelyn Stoddard to do my makeup. She has a good touch. Sometimes Julie Gross does makeup at Stiva’s, and I’m not a fan of her lipstick selections.”

Stiva’s funeral parlor is a social center for Grandma and her lady friends. It’s free entertainment. It’s available seven days a week. And you can count on cookies being served in the lobby.

In the past, Grandma has been known to pry open a closed casket, unlocking it with her nail file, so she could take a peek. On these occasions my mother bypasses prayer and goes straight for the Jim Beam.

“Let me get this straight,” I said to Grandma. “Someone severed two heads at Stiva’s, and the heads haven’t been found?”

“Yep,” Grandma said. “Pass the pickles to me.”

“How could that happen?”

“I guess it happened at night,” Grandma said. “They came in first thing in the morning to do the embalming, pulled out the trays, and no heads.”

“Wasn’t everything locked up? Doesn’t Stiva’s have a security system? Didn’t an alarm go off?”

“Yes. Yes. And no,” Grandma said. “People are thinking it must be an inside job, but I’ve got another theory. I think it was the zombies. There’s rumors going around that there’ve been zombie sightings. And you know how they like to eat brains. Well, you put two and two together and it makes sense.”

My mother very carefully spread mustard across a slice of bread and precisely placed olive loaf and Swiss cheese onto the mustard. I suspected she was making an effort to stay calm when what she really wanted to do was shake Grandma until her false teeth flew out of her mouth and she stopped rambling on about zombies.

Grandma forked up some macaroni, and I spotted a ring on her finger.

“Is that a new ring?” I asked her.

“It’s a friendship ring,” Grandma said. “I got a boyfriend. He’s a pip.”

My mother gave up a sigh and cut her sandwich into halves.

“Do I know him?” I asked.

“I met him on one of those Internet sites,” Grandma said. “He lives in Florida. By Key West. I might go down there to visit him. He’s a real hottie.”

I sneaked a look at my mom, but she wasn’t making eye contact. She was staring at her sandwich.

“What does he do?” I asked Grandma.