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I said goodbye to Morelli and called Mrs. Beedle.
“Have you heard from Carpenter?” I asked her. “Is he at home?”
“No,” she said, “but that’s not unusual. He often comes and goes at odd hours.”
I cleaned the hamster cage and gave Rex fresh food and water. This involved giving him a new soup can, so I multitasked and had Campbell’s Tomato Soup for dinner. I supplemented the soup with a peanut butter and olive sandwich and washed it down with a Stella. I was pretty sure this combination gave me all the necessary food groups, with the exception of chocolate.
CHAPTER NINE
At six o’clock I changed into a sleeveless black knit dress with a short fitted white jacket with black trim. I added an extra swipe of mascara to my lashes, freshened my lipstick, and neatened my ponytail. I was wearing black flats in case I had to chase down a bad guy, and I had Ranger’s gun in my purse. I hadn’t heard from him since this afternoon. I assumed this meant there was no news about Connie.
I had a decision to make when I got to the parking lot. I could drive my Honda or I could drive Ranger’s Porsche. I justified taking the Porsche by telling myself Grandma would be disappointed if I picked her up in the Honda.
Doors opened at the funeral home at seven o’clock. I got us there with ten minutes to spare and already there was a crowd on the front porch.
“Ordinarily I’d muscle my way through all those people, so I could get a seat up front,” Grandma said. “I don’t care about that tonight on account of we’ve got a job to do.”
“We aren’t capturing Bella,” I said.
“I know. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about listening for word about Connie. We need to have a plan. One of us should take the cookie table and one of us should float around the room. Which do you want?”
“I’ll float,” I said.
The doors opened and we all rushed inside. The funeral home had several slumber rooms and a large lobby. On peak days, like today, the packed lobby became a sweltering torture chamber. The cloying smell of funeral flowers, sweat, and whiskey breath permeated every part of the room and clung to every mourner and cookie moocher. Voices rose and blended into a sound that was something between the roar of Niagara Falls and extreme tinnitus.
I worked the perimeter of the room, half-heartedly eavesdropping on conversations about hernias, bloat, gas prices, toilet paper preferences, Mrs. Moyers’s cat, kidney stones, Harry Wortle’s erectile dysfunction, and Loretta Kulicki’s yeast infection. I didn’t catch anyone talking about Connie or known kidnappers.
I spotted crazy Bella in line to take a last look at the deceased and give condolences to Len Leoni’s widow. I made sure there was distance between us.
The crowd was beginning to thin out at eight thirty, and I was able to make my way to Grandma at the cookie table. She was talking to Ethel Scheck and some other woman. Another clump of ladies was on the far side of the round table. I helped myself to an Oreo and realized that the cookie table conversation hadsuddenly stopped, and everyone was staring at something behind me. I turned and was face-to-face with Bella.
“You!” she said to me. “Slut girl. Get out of my way.”
I stepped aside, effectively blocking Grandma from grabbing Bella by the throat.
“Nice to see you, Mrs. Morelli,” I said.
“I bet,” she said. “Maybe you’ve been looking for me, eh?” Bella stared at the selection of cookies. “Where’s the pignoli? There’s no pignoli here.”
I cut my eyes to Grandma and saw her smile. She had the pignoli in her purse.
“Someone ate my pignoli,” Bella said. “I give the eye to them when I find them.”
The women on the other side of the table scurried away.
Bella spied Grandma Mazur. “I see you hiding behind your worthless granddaughter. You big coward. You the one who took my pignoli.”
“Excuse me?” Grandma said to Bella, pushing me aside. “Are you calling me a coward, you miserable old crone?”
“You Hungarian washerwoman,” Bella said. “Don’t have the cojones like Italian.”
“Oh yeah?” Grandma said. “You want a piece of me? I could kick your ass any day of the week.”
“I give you the eye,” Bella said.
“And I give you the finger,” Grandma said. “You don’t scare me. You’re just a big bag of wind.”
Bella turned on me. “What you think, slut? Am I big bag of wind? You want a piece of me too? You got cojones? Put the cuffs on me. We see what you got.”
