“I really do have to go.”
“Later,” Spiro said, making a gun with his hand and pulling the trigger.
I practically ran back to the Buick. I slid behind the wheel, locked the door, and called Morelli.
“Maybe you're right about my going into cosmetology.”
“You'd love it,” Morelli said. “You'd get to draw eyebrows on a bunch of old babes.”
“Spiro wouldn't tell me anything. At least not anything I wanted to hear.”
“I picked up something interesting on the radio while I was waiting for you. There was a fire on Low Street last night. It was in one of the buildings belonging to the old pipe factory. Clearly arson. The pipe factory's been boarded up for years, but it seems someone was using the building to store caskets.”
“Are you telling me someone torched my caskets?”
“Did Spiro put any contingencies on casket condition, or do you get paid dead or alive?”
“I'll meet you over there.”
The pipe factory was on a mean piece of land caught between Low Street and the train tracks. It had been shut down in the seventies and left to decay. On either side were flat fields of no value. Beyond the fields were surviving industries: an auto graveyard, a plumbing supply house, Jackson Moving and Storage.
The gate leading to the pipe factory lot was rusted open, the blacktop cracked and pocked, littered with glass and weathered refuse. A leaden sky reflected in pools of sooty water. A fire truck idled in the lot. An official-type car had been parked next to the truck. A blue-and-white and a fire marshal's car were angled closer to the loading dock, where the fire had obviously taken place.
Morelli and I parked side by side and walked toward a group of men who were talking and writing on clipboards.
They looked up when we approached and nodded acknowledgment to Morelli.
“What's the story?” Morelli said.
I recognized the man who answered. John Petrucci. When my father worked in the post office Petrucci was his supervisor. Now Petrucci was the fire marshal. Go figure.
“Arson,” Petrucci said. “Pretty much confined to the one bay. Somebody soaked a bunch of caskets in gasoline and set a fuse. The fire trail is clear.”
“Any suspects?” Morelli asked.
They looked at him like he was crazy.
Morelli grinned. “Just thought I'd ask. Mind if we look around?”
“Help yourself. We're done here. The insurance investigator's already gone through. There wasn't much structural damage. Everything's cement. Someone's coming over to board things up.”
Morelli and I scrambled up to the loading dock. I pulled my flashlight out of my pocketbook and flicked it on a heap of charred, waterlogged trash sitting in the middle of the bay. Only at the far perimeter of the sodden mess were remains that could be recognized as a casket. An outer wood box and an inner wood box. Nothing fancy. Both blackened from fire. I reached out to touch a corner, and the casket and packaging collapsed in on itself, settling with a sigh.
“If you wanted to be real diligent about this, you could tell how many caskets were here by collecting the hardware,” Morelli said. “Then you could take the hardware back to Spiro and see if he could identify it.”
“How many caskets do you think were here?”
“A bunch.”
“Good enough for me.” I selected a clasp, wrapped it in Kleenex, and slid it into my jacket pocket. “Why would someone steal caskets and then burn them?”
“A lark? A grudge? Maybe ripping off caskets seemed like a good idea at the time, but whoever took them couldn't get rid of them.”
“Spiro isn't going to be happy.”
“Yeah,” Morelli said. “Kind of warms your heart, doesn't it?”
“I needed that money.”