She fastened me with an angry look I was coming to know too well. 'I tipped you to Roger Salisbury. And now I authorize you to do the autopsy. If you won't do it, I'll go to the state attorney. He can get a warrant or something, right?'
'Right,' I said. 'A court order. But then you lose control of the investigation. The coroner will do it. You and Charlie and I will be out in the cold. In fact, if you tell them that you've got the succinylcholine and traces are found in the body, you'll be suspect number one.'
Her eyes were flaming behind the tortoiseshell glasses. 'Then what do you propose we do?'
I looked at Charlie Riggs and he looked at me. We both were thinking the same thing. We looked at Susan Corrigan, whose short black hair was dripping little puddles onto the patio. We didn't say a word but she caught on.
Great minds think alike. But maybe slightly addled ones, too.
'There are some things we'll need,' I said.
'I have everything back in the Glades,' Charlie Riggs said.
'Tonight?' Susan Corrigan asked.
Charlie and I both nodded.
I went home to change. A charcoal suit with burgundy pinstripes is fine for lawyering, but it wouldn't do at all for my new avocation.
The saw made a frightful noise. Powered by a small gas motor, it was biting through the concrete seam of the crypt, tossing dust everywhere and making a racket that jack-hammered off the marble walls. Susan Corrigan stood guard outside the mausoleum, keeping an eye out for the night watchman.
I had second thoughts about bringing Susan on such a grisly assignment, but she was the only one who could bring us right where we needed to be. Charlie and I shouldn't be stumbling over gravestones after midnight looking for the right tomb. That was Susan's argument, anyway. Now that we were here, I saw it would have been hard to miss. Built on the top of a small knoll, the Corrigan mausoleum commanded an impressive view of a lake and the Palmetto Expressway in the sprawling southwest suburbs. I should have figured it. Even in death, Philip Corrigan adhered to the three rules of real estate: location, location, location.
I was muscling the power saw through the concrete. Charlie Riggs held a portable lamp that threw our shadows across the marble floor and up a decorative wall into which were inscribed the names of all the Corrigan shopping centers and condo projects, even the ones that resulted in class action consumer lawsuits.
I put the saw down for a rest. 'This place raises ostenta-tiousness to new levels.'
'De gustibus non est disputandum,' Charlie said.
'Gesundheit,' 1 said.
Charlie shook his head and grimaced. 'There's no accounting for taste. Or your abysmal lack of training in Latin. Didn't you learn anything in law school?'
'Only not to draw to an inside straight,' I admitted.
We went back to work. Twenty minutes later we were still watching our shadows dance up the wall when Charlie said, 'Help me with this. The top's ready to move.'
I got my hands into the seam and tried to lift the top. No dice. It must have weighed five hundred pounds. I put my shoulder against it and tried sliding it off. It moved two inches and sent a grinding noise up my spine.
Suddenly I heard padded footsteps on the marble floor of the foyer. A whisper from behind me, 'How's it going?'
'Okay, okay,' I said. 'Next time, Susan, call before you drop in.'
'Ignore him,' Charlie said. 'He's a little spooked.'
I kept pushing the top of the crypt, but no traction, my sneakers slipping on the marble floor. It was like trying to move a blocking sled on a rain-slicked field with John Matu-szak and Hulk Hogan sitting on top. Another inch. Nothing more. Just that damn grinding sound that maybe wouldn't bother someone used to opening tombs after midnight with the wind whistling through the gravestones.
Charlie lent me a shoulder. Another two inches. Susan pitched in and we got it going and then couldn't stop it. The concrete lid crashed to the marble floor and broke into a thousand pieces. The explosion echoed in my ears. Clouds of dust covered us and rose toward the ceiling. Someone sneezed. I hoped it was Charlie or Susan. I shined the light inside the crypt. Charlie leaned over as far as he could and patted a wooden casket.
'Good, very good indeed,' he said. 'Dry as toast.'
I looked at Susan. 'Why don't you wait for us by Charlie's truck?' Why ask her to watch as you dig out her father's body, two years in the grave. She gave me a look that said she was just as tough as me and probably a good deal more so, but she left anyway. Charlie and I went back to work. Both of us leaned on a crowbar to open the casket, a task we did in the dark because the portable light was now on the floor. The body was three feet below the top of the crypt, and since I was taller and stronger than Charlie, I was appointed as the retriever.
I leaned over, the concrete crypt folding me at the waist. I reached for what I thought would be shoulders and came up with a handful of mush.
'Yuck.'
'What's the matter?' Charlie asked.
'Feels like I just stuck my hands in a barrel of apple butter.'
'Mold,' Charlie said. 'That'd be his face. Even in a dry tomb, that'd happen.'
I wiped off my hands, reached lower, found some shoulders and lifted. Lighter than I thought. Charlie put the flashlight down and held open a zippered body bag, and in a minute we were traipsing across the dew-laden grass, Charlie Riggs toting his tools in a burlap sack, and me with a body bag slung over my shoulder. Transylvania's favorite couple.
'That LA detective was wrong,' I said, as we neared the truck.
'How's that?' Charlie Riggs asked.
'Marlowe, Philip Marlowe. In one of the books, he said dead men are heavier than broken hearts.'
'So?'
'The former Philip Corrigan is a bantamweight.'
'Bodies lose weight after death,' Charlie said, as if everybody knew that.
'The ultimate diet,' I concluded.
Charlie mumbled something to himself and kept walking, his scientific mind still on duty after our all-nighter. We were ten yards from the truck when Charlie stopped in his tracks. Susan Corrigan was crouched on her haunches at the rear of the pickup waiting for us, alone with her thoughts.
'Let's ID the subject,' Charlie said, sounding like a homicide detective.
He unzipped the bag and popped the light into it.
'Uh-oh,' I said.
'What's wrong?' Susan asked, joining us, a tremble in her voice.
'Was your father buried in a yellow chiffon dress?'
'Oh God,' she said. 'That's Mom and the dress is pink, or at least, it was.'
'How the hell!' I shouted, nearly dropping the bag.
'I'm sorry,' Susan said, her voice tight. 'It's my fault. I told you the crypt on the left, but that's looking out, not in. 1 got turned around.'
We sat down on the wet grass, as much to rest as to figure out what to do next. We used a flattened headstone for a conference table, and like a good lawyer, I called a meeting. Moonbeams were bouncing off the pale tombstones, casting a gauzy, soft focus over Susan's features. Mood lighting.] looked at her, wondering. How could she make that mistake? Did she really want us to dig up Dad? I was thinking about what Charlie had said, homicide in the family. But] looked at Susan Corrigan in that misty moonlight and thought I saw tears in her eyes.
Crazy. A night without sleep hauling ass through a graveyard and the mind starts playing tricks. Susan Corrigan could no more kill her father than, than…
'Not much time,' Charlie Riggs said, gesturing toward the east, where pink slivers of sky were beginning to show.
'Right,' I said. 'Let's put Mom in the truck and get Dad.'
Like most things in life, grave robbery is easier the second time around. If we kept up our two-a-day practices like the Dolphins in August, we'd be able to purloin a body in forty-five minutes flat. This time the corpse wore a
