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I swung into the police lot and parked near the back entrance. Lula and I ran around to the back of the Buick, untied the clothesline, and lugged Cubbin in to the docket lieutenant.
“Geoffrey Cubbin,” I said, setting him on the floor. I pulled my documentation out of my messenger bag and presented it. “I need a body receipt.”
There were a bunch of cops, keeping their distance, gawking at us.
“Lady, that smells really bad,” one of them said.
“He’s a little gassy,” I told him.
“Yeah, and we can all relate to that,” Lula said.
“How am I supposed to know it’s Cubbin?” the lieutenant at the desk asked.
“Some of his hair is left,” I said. “And he’s got most of his teeth. You can identify him by his teeth.”
Clumps of dirt were still clinging to the body bag, falling off onto the floor.
The lieutenant grimaced. “What did you do, dig him up?”
“Of course not,” I said. “That would be illegal, right?”
“Right,” the lieutenant said.
“We found him on the side of the road,” Lula said. “We was driving along and we saw this body bag and stopped to investigate and lo and behold we realized it was Geoffrey Cubbin. He must have fallen off a truck or something.”
The lieutenant looked down at Cubbin. “I can’t give you a receipt until we identify him.”
“That could take weeks,” I said. “Maybe months.”
“I can’t wait months,” Lula said. “Somebody’s gonna have to step up to the plate and make an executive decision here. And in fact this is making me all upset and I’m gonna be sick. I have a delicate constitution and I feel my lunch coming up. It was cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and pork. It’s not gonna be good. Cabbage throw-up is the worst. Oh Lord, I’m sweatin’ now. It’s coming up any time.”
“Get her out of here!” the lieutenant said.
“No way,” Lula said. “Even though I’m sick I can’t leave until she gets the body receipt. Maybe if I stick my finger down my throat it would come up faster and I’d feel better.”
“That’s disgusting,” he said.
“It’s just nature taking its course,” Lula said. “I might even be getting diarrhea too!”
He grimaced and scribbled out a receipt. “Take it! Go! Take her with you.”
Lula and I hustled out of the station, jumped into the Buick, and took off.
“That went well,” Lula said. “I’m hungry. All that talk about cabbage and pork got me thinking about one of them Taylor Pork Roll sandwiches.”
I had one loose end to tie up. I had Susan Cubbin drinking coffee in a kitchen filled with gold bars, not knowing what to do with them. I parked and followed Lula into the office. I gave Connie my body receipt and took a chair by her desk.
“What do you know about gold?” I asked her.
“Not a whole lot. What do you want to know?”
“How much a bar is worth.”
Connie surfed around on her computer. “Gold is up today. A kilo bar would be around fifty thousand dollars.”
I was pretty sure Susan had kilo bars. I punched some numbers into the calculator on my phone and gasped at the result. Over the course of Geoffrey’s career at Cranberry Manor he’d embezzled five million dollars, converted it to gold, and the gold was now worth $6,650,000. Turned out Geoffrey Cubbin was the best thing that ever happened to the folks at Cranberry Manor.
“Gotta go,” I said to Connie and Lula.
