"I don't think he's the one, anyway," I said.
"I'm not so sure," Grandma said. "These people look to me like they got something to hide. I think this is a shifty lot."
If I was related to someone who'd confessed to murder, I'd probably be feeling a little uncomfortable, too.
"Don't worry," Grandma said. "I thought this might happen, and I've got a plan."
"Yeah, the plan is we forget about it," I said.
Grandma slid her uppers around while she scanned the crowd. "Emma Getz told me the deceased in room number four is done up real nice. I thought I might take a look."
"Me too," Briggs said. "I don't want to miss anything."
I wasn't interested in how room four was done up, so I volunteered to wait in the lobby. Waiting got old after a couple minutes, so I wandered over to the tea table and helped myself to some cookies. Then the cookies got old, so I went to the ladies' room to check out my hair. Big mistake. Best not to look at my hair. I went back to the cookies and put one in my pocket for Rex.
I was counting the ceiling tiles, wondering what to do next, when the fire alarm went off. Since not that long ago Stiva's almost burned to the ground, no one was wasting any time vacating the premises. People poured from the viewing rooms into the lobby and ran for the door. I didn't see Grandma Mazur, so I struggled through the crowd to viewing room four. The room was empty when I got there, with the exception of Mrs. Kunkle, who was serene in her twelve-thousand-dollar mahogany and solid brass slumber chamber. I ran back to the lobby and was about to check outside for Grandma Mazur when I noticed the door to room one was closed. All the other doors were open, but the Lipinski door was closed.
Sirens whined in the distance, and I had a bad feeling about room one. Stiva was on the other side of the lobby, yelling to his assistant to check the back rooms. He turned and looked at me, and his face went white.
"It wasn't me!" I said. "I swear!"
He followed after the assistant, and the second he was out of sight I ran to room one and tried the door. The knob turned but the door wouldn't open, so I put my weight behind it and gave it a shove. The door flew open, and Briggs fell over backward.
"Shit," he said, "close the door, you big oaf."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm doing lookout for your grandma. What do you think I'm doing?"
At the other end of the room, Grandma had the lid up on Larry Lipinski. She was standing one foot on a folding chair, one foot on the edge of the casket, and she was taking pictures with a disposable camera.
"Grandma!"
"Boy," she said, "this guy don't look so good."
"Get down!"
"I gotta finish this roll out. I hate when there's pictures left over."
I ran down the aisle between the folding chairs. "You can't do this!"
"I can now that I got this chair. I was only getting the side of his face before. And that wasn't working good, on account of there's a lot of his head missing."
"Stop taking pictures this instant and get down!"
"Last picture!" Grandma said, climbing off the chair, dropping the camera into her purse. "I got some beauts."
"Close the lid! Close the lid!"
Crash!
"Didn't realize it was so heavy," Grandma said.
I moved the chair back against the wall. I scrutinized the casket to make sure everything looked okay. And then I took Grandma by the hand. "Let's get out of here."
The door was wrenched open before we got to it, and Stiva gave me a startled look. "What are you doing in here? I thought you were leaving the building."
"I couldn't find Grandma," I said. "And um—"
"She came in here to rescue me," Grandma said, hanging on to me, making her way to the door. "I was paying my respects when the alarm went off, and everybody stampeded out of here. And somebody knocked me over, and I couldn't get up. The midget was in here with me, but it would have taken two of them to do the job. If it wasn't for my granddaughter coming to get me I'd have burned to a cinder."
"Little person!" Randy Briggs said. "How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not a midget."
"Well, you sure do look like a midget," Grandma said. She sniffed the air. "Do I smell smoke?"
"No," Stiva said. "It looks like a false alarm. Are you all right?"
"I think so," Grandma said. "And it's a lucky thing, too, because I got fragile bones on account of I'm so old." Grandma glanced over at me. "Imagine that, a false alarm."
Imagine that. Unh. Mental head slap.
There were two fire trucks in the street when we left. Mourners were outside, shivering in the drizzle, kept in place by curiosity and the fact that their coats were inside. A police car was angled at the curb.
"You didn't set that alarm off, did you?" I asked Grandma Mazur.
"Who, me?"
* * * * *
MY MOTHER WAS waiting at the door when we got back to the house. "I heard the sirens," she said. "Are you all right?"
"Sure we're all right," Grandma said. "Can't you see we're all right?"
"Mrs. Ciak got a call from her daughter, who told her there was a fire at Stiva's."
"No fire," Grandma said. "It was one of them false alarms."
My mother's mouth had turned grim.
Grandma shook the rain off her coat and hung it in the closet. "Ordinarily I guess I might feel bad that the fire department had to go out for nothing, but I noticed Bucky Moyer was driving. And you know how Bucky loves to drive that big truck."
Actually this was true about Bucky. In fact, he'd been suspected on more than one occasion for setting off a false alarm himself just so he could take the truck out.
"I have to go," I said. "I have a lot to do tomorrow."
"Wait," my mother said, "let me give you some chicken."
* * * * *
GRANDMA CALLED AT eight. "I got a beauty parlor appointment this morning," she said. "I thought maybe you could give me a ride, and on the way we could drop the you-know-what off."
"The film?"
"Yeah."
"When is your appointment?"
"Nine."
* * * * *
WE STOPPED AT the photo store first. "Do that one-hour thing," Grandma said, handing me the film.
"That costs a fortune."
"I got a coupon," Grandma said. "They give them to us seniors on account of we haven't got a lot of time to waste. We have to wait too long to get our pictures back, and we could be dead."
After I deposited Grandma at the hair salon I drove to the office. Lula was on the Naugahyde couch, drinking coffee, reading her horoscope. Connie was at her desk, eating a bagel. And Vinnie was nowhere in sight.
Lula put the paper down as soon as she spied me walking through the door. "I want to know all about it. Everything. I want details."
"Not much to tell," I said. "I chickened out and didn't wear the dress."
"What? Say that again?"
"It's sort of complicated."
"So you're telling me you didn't get any this weekend."
"Yeah."
"Girl, that's a sad-ass state of affairs."
Tell me about it.
"You got any FTAs?" I asked Connie.
"Nothing came in on Saturday. And it's too early for today."
"Where's Vinnie?"
"At the lockup, writing bail on a shoplifter."
I left the office and stood outside, staring at the Buick. "I hate you," I said.
I heard someone laughing softly behind me and turned to find Ranger.
"You always talk to your car like that? Think you need a life, Babe."
"I've got a life. What I need is a new car."
He stared at me for a couple beats, and I was afraid to speculate on what he was thinking. His brown eyes were assessing, and his expression was mildly amused. "What would you be willing to do for a new car?"
"What did you have in mind?"
Again, the soft laugh. "Would it still have to be morally correct?"
"What kind of car are we talking about?"
"Powerful. Sexy."
I had a feeling those words might be included in the job description, too.