Explosive Eighteen(46)

“I’m going to wander around,” I told Grandma. “I’ll meet you by the refreshments.”

I reached the table with cookies and coffee set out just as my mom called me.

“What happened to you? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. Eighteen people have called me so far asking if you were in a car crash. I’ve been calling you for a half hour and you haven’t been answering.”

“I couldn’t hear the phone ringing when I was in the viewing room. Too much noise.”

“Myra Kruger said you had a black eye. And Cindy Beryl said you had a broken knee. How can you drive with a broken knee?”

“I don’t have a broken knee. I have a scrape on my knee, and a bruise under my eye. I slipped in a parking garage and banged my face into a parked car. It’s not serious.”

“Did you get shot?”

“No!”

I disconnected and stared at the tray of cookies. Nothing soft enough for me to eat with a split lip. I looked around the room and wondered who else had ratted me out to my mother. My phone rang again. Joyce.

“Well?” Joyce asked. “What was she wearing?”

“Small gold hoops and a gold necklace. It didn’t look especially expensive, but what do I know.”

“Were there diamonds in the hoops or the necklace?”

“No.”

“Interesting,” Joyce said. And she hung up.

It was close to nine o’clock when Grandma found her way to the cookie table. She ate three cookies, wrapped four more in a napkin, put them in her purse, and she was ready to head for home.

“It got better after you left,” she said. “Melvin Shupe came through the line and cut the cheese right when he got up to the casket. He said he was sorry, but the widow made a big fuss over it. And then the funeral director came with air freshener, and when he sprayed it around, Louisa Belman got a asthma attack and they had to cart her out the back door to get some air. Earl Krizinski was sitting behind me, and he said he saw Louisa’s underpants when they picked her up, and he said he got a stiffy.”

“Louisa Belman is ninety-three years old.”

“Well, I guess to Earl underpants are underpants.”

We walked the block to the truck without incident. We got in and Grandma got a text.

“It’s from Annie,” Grandma said. “She wants to know if you found your true love.”

“Tell her I’m not looking, but if he happens along, she’ll be one of the first to know.”

“That’s a lot to write,” Grandma said. “I’ll just say not yet.” She tapped out the message and sat back in the seat. “It was so much easier when I was young. You got a boyfriend, and you married him. You had some kids, you got older, one of you died, and that was it.”

“Jeez. No true love?”

“There’s always been true love, but in my day, you either talked yourself into thinking you had it, or you talked yourself into thinking you didn’t need it.”

• • •





I took Grandma home, but I didn’t go in. It had been a long day, and I was looking forward to my quiet apartment. I did the usual bad guy car search in my lot, parked the truck, and crossed to the apartment building’s back door with one hand wrapped around the Glock. I took the elevator to my floor and walked down the hall thinking I should probably learn how to shoot. I knew the basics. Lula, Morelli, and Ranger all carried semiautomatics. So I had a lot of exposure, but my actual use was limited.

I let myself into my apartment, still holding the Glock. I stepped into the small foyer and realized the television was on. I was thinking Ranger or Morelli, but it turned out to be Joyce Barnhardt.

“Hey, girlfriend,” Joyce said.

“What the heck are you doing here? And I’m not your girlfriend. I’ve never been your friend. I will never want to be your friend.”

“Gee, that hurts.”

“How did you get in?”

“I climbed up the fire escape and jimmied your window.”

I raised the Glock. “I guess I should be thanking you. This makes everything easy for me.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m not going anywhere, especially not to jail.”

“I have an arrest agreement, and I have a gun aimed at you.”

“Honestly,” Joyce said, “put the gun down. You’re not going to shoot me. For one thing, I’d bleed all over your carpet. Not that it’s all that great. And I’m unarmed. Just think of the paperwork, not to mention you’d probably get charged with assault with a deadly weapon. That carries a decent amount of time in an orange jumpsuit.”