“Are you sure it was suicide?”
“There was a note, and I read it. Lipinski said he was the one who offed Martha Deeter. Said they'd had a fight over an account, and he shot her. And then he tried to make it look like she was robbed. Said he couldn't live with what he'd done, so he was checkin' out.”
Oh boy.
“That's horseshit,” Bunchy said. “That smells like a load of horseshit.”
I hung around for a while longer. The forensic photographer left. And most of the police left. The RGC men left one by one. And then I left, too, with Bunchy in tow. He'd gotten quiet after his horseshit pronouncement. And very serious.
“Two RGC employees are dead,” I said to him. “Why?”
We locked eyes for a moment, and he shook his head and walked away.
I TOOK A fast shower, dried my hair, and dressed in a short denim skirt and red T-?shirt. I took a look at my hair and decided it needed some help, so I did the hot roller thing. My hair still didn't look wonderful after the rollers, so I lined my eyes and added extra mascara. Stephanie Plum, master of diversion. If your hair is bad, shorten your skirt and add extra mascara.
Before I left the apartment, I took a minute to go through the Yellow Pages and find a new garbage company for Mabel.
Bunchy was in the lobby when I came down. He was leaning against the wall, and he was still looking serious. Or maybe he just looked tired.
“You look nice,” he said to me. “Real nice, but you wear too much makeup.”
GRANDMA WAS AT the door when I arrived. “Did you hear about the garbage guy? Blew his brains out. Lavern Stankowski called and said her son, Joey, was working the EMS truck. And he said he never saw anything like it. Said there was brains all over the place. Said the whole back half of the guy's head was stuck to the wall in the garbage office.”
Grandma slid her uppers around some. “Lavern said the deceased was being laid out at Stiva's. Imagine the job Stiva's going to have with that one. Probably use up two pounds of putty to fill all the holes. Remember Rita Gunt?”
Rita Gunt was ninety-?two when she died. She'd lost a lot of weight in the later years of her life, and her family had asked Stiva to give her a more robust look for her last public appearance. I guess Stiva had done the best he could with what he had to work with, but Rita had gone into the ground looking like Mrs. Potato Head.
“If somebody was going to kill me I wouldn't want it to be with a bullet to the head,” Grandma said.
My father was in the living room in his favorite chair. And from the corner of my eye I saw him peek around the edge of his newspaper.
“I want to get poisoned,” Grandma said. “That way my hair wouldn't get messed.”
“Hmm,” my father said thoughtfully.
My mother came out from the kitchen. She smelled like roast lamb and red cabbage, and her face glowed from stove steam. “Any word about Fred?”
“Nothing new,” I said.
“I think there's something funny going on with these garbage people,” Grandma said. “Somebody's kill
ing the garbage people, and I bet they killed Fred, too.”
“Larry Lipinski left a suicide note,” I told her.
“It could have been forged,” Grandma said. “It could have been a fake to throw everybody off guard.”
“I thought it was aliens that took Fred,” my father said from behind his paper.
“That would account for a lot of things,” Grandma said. “Nothing to say aliens didn't off the garbage people, too.”
My mother shot my father a warning glance and went back to the kitchen. “Everyone come to the table before the lamb gets cold,” she said. “And I don't want to hear any more talk about aliens and killing.”
“It's the change,” Grandma whispered to me. “Your mother's been snarfy ever since she started the change.”
“I heard that,” my mother said. “And I'm not snarfy.”
“I keep telling her she should take them hormone pills,” Grandma said. “I've been thinking about taking them myself. Mary Jo Klick started taking them, and she said there were parts to her that had got all shriveled, and after a week on them hormones she was all plumped up again.” Grandma looked down at herself. “I wouldn't mind getting plumped up in some of them parts.”