'I guess he could fit the description.'
'Too bad it's gonna be a closed casket. If it was open we could take the Grand Union woman with us and see if she recognizes Lipinski.'
'Hell,' my father said, 'why don't you just haul Lipinski out and put him in a lineup?'
Grandma looked at my father. 'You think we could do that? I imagine he'd be stiff enough.'
My mother sucked in some air.
'I don't know if you stay stiff,' Mabel said. 'I think you might loosen up again.'
'How about passing the gravy,' my father said. 'Could I get some gravy down here?'
Grandma's face lit with inspiration. 'There'll be lots of Lipinski's relatives there tonight. Maybe one of them will give us a picture! Then we can show the picture to the Grand Union lady.'
I thought this was all a little grim, considering Mabel was at the table, but Mabel seemed unfazed.
'What do you think, Stephanie?' she asked. 'Do you think I should go to Hawaii? Or do you think I should take a cruise?'
'Jesus,' Briggs said to me, 'you turned out pretty good considering your gene pool.'
9
'WOW, LOOK AT this,' Grandma said, peering out at the parking lot. 'This place is packed tonight. That's on account of Stiva has a full house. He's got somebody in every room. I was talking to Jean Moon, and she said her cousin Dorothy died yesterday morning, and they couldn't get her into Stiva's. Had to take her to Mosel.'
'What's wrong with Mosel?' Briggs asked.
'He don't know nothing about makeup,' Grandma said. 'Uses too much rouge. I like when the deceased looks nice and natural.'
'Yeah, I like that, too,' Briggs said. 'Nothing worse than an unnatural corpse.'
The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but it still wasn't a glorious night to be out, so I dropped Grandma and Briggs off at the door and went in search of a parking place on the street. I found one a block away, and by the time I reached Stiva's front porch my hair was more frizz than curl and my cotton knit sweater had grown two inches.
Larry Lipinski was in room number one, as was befitting a suicidal killer. Family and friends were clustered in a knot around the casket. The rest of the room was filled with the same crowd I'd seen at the Deeter viewing. There were the professional mourners like Grandma Mazur and Sue Ann Schmatz. And there were the garbage people.
Grandma Mazur marched over to me with Briggs running after her. 'I already gave my condolences,' she said. 'And I want to tell you they're a real standoffish group. It's a shame when people like that get to take rooms away from people like Dorothy Moon.'
'I guess that means they wouldn't give you a picture.'
'Zip,' Grandma said. 'They gave me zip.'
'They gave it to her in a big way, too,' Briggs said, smiling. 'You should have been there.'
'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.
