Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight (Stephanie Plum #28)(34)

“How’s Mom doing with my latest disaster?” I asked Grandma.

“She’s not speaking to your father and she’s in the kitchen ironing to calm herself. Melvin is keeping an eye on her. I told him if she irons the same shirt more than fourteen times, he should pull the plug on the iron.”

“Melvin didn’t want to go to Clark Stupin’s viewing?”

“No. He said he’s not into stuff like that. He said he already talked to Clark about it, and Clark said he didn’t want to go to the viewing, either.”

“Good to know he’s communicating with Clark,” I said. “Did Clark have any inside information about Oswald? Maybe he told Melvin how to crack Oswald’s network?”

“Melvin didn’t mention anything,” Grandma said.

We were fifteen minutes early, but a crowd had already gathered outside the funeral home. Diesel dropped Grandma and me off and went in search of a parking space.

“We have to get up on the porch so when they open the door we can rush in and get a good seat,” Grandma said.

I knew the drill. This wasn’t my first viewing with Grandma. My mother refused to go with her, so I frequently ended up with the chore. As gratitude I got free laundry services and desserts of my choosing.

I followed Grandma as she pushed her way to the front.

“Excuse me,” Grandma said, “old lady coming through. Excuse me, pregnant woman. Excuse me, I got diarrhea.”

More often than not, people would see that it was Grandma, roll their eyes, and step aside.

The doors opened and Grandma jumped in and went straight to Slumber Room #1. She put her purse down on a chair in the first row, set me next to it, and got in line to give her condolences. This was the tricky part because I knew she would look for an opportunity to search the casket for the tongue. If security was lax, there was a good chance she’d try to pry the deceased’s mouth open for a quick peek. This was where I earned my free laundry and dessert.

It took twenty minutes for Grandma to inch her way up to the casket. She did a very slow pass, scrutinizing the white faux silk interior. She nodded to the stoic parents and studied Clark Stupin’s face.

“He looks good,” she said to the parents. “You’d never know he didn’t have a tongue. Did they put it back where it belongs?”

I jumped up and swept Grandma away before the Stupins could answer. I grabbed her purse and steered her up the nearest aisle to the lobby.

“I need a cookie,” I said to Grandma. “Don’t you need a cookie?”

“I suppose,” Grandma said. “They’re going to go fast what with this crowd.”

We reached the hostess table, and a ripple of excitement went through the lobby.

“Someone important must have just walked in,” Grandma said. “I can’t see through all these people. There are some men in K of C regalia here. And I spotted a couple Elks. It might be the big cheese of some lodge.”

Marjorie Schneck was standing at the table next to Grandma. “It’s the hero,” she said. “I just caught a glimpse of him. He’s even more rugged and handsome than his pictures. Everyone is talking about him online. He’s a total hottie.” Marjorie spotted me next to Grandma and leaned in. “What’s he like? Do you know him? It must have been amazing to have him rescue you.”

The hero broke though the cluster of women who were surrounding him and walked toward us.

“Next time you get pushed off a train platform I’m going to let the train run over you,” he said to me. “The hot hero thing is a nightmare. Some woman just grabbed my ass.”

“Have a cookie,” I told him. “The night is young.”

“I didn’t see the tongue in the casket,” Grandma said to Marjorie. “I thought they might have put it in a little box or something.”

“Betty Lukach does hair and makeup for the funeral home, and she said in cases like this they usually stuff it into a convenient cavity like you would for a turkey. Of course, she didn’t know about a tongue because that’s so unusual. She was talking mostly about fingers and toes.”

“Makes sense,” Grandma said. “I didn’t get a chance to look in any cavities.”

Diesel was grinning. “Would she really check out the cavities?”

“In a heartbeat,” I said.

Diesel took a couple of cookies and looked around. “I don’t see Oswald. I imagine he’s gone underground. The police and half the country have seen him on the transit security feed.”

Grandma had her big patent leather purse in the crook of her arm, and she was balancing a cup of tea and a small paper plate filled with cookies. Women were swarming around us, and Grandma was getting jostled. Some tea sloshed out of her cup onto her hand, and cookies slid off her paper plate onto the floor.

“What the heck,” Grandma said. “What’s wrong with these people? It’s like they never saw a cookie before.”

“It’s not the cookies,” I said. “It’s Diesel.”

“Okay, I guess I can understand that,” she said. “He’s something to look at.”

I tugged Grandma away from the hostess table, toward the door. “We should go home and check on Mom and Melvin,” I said.

“That’s fine with me,” she said. “They didn’t have any of my favorite cookies anyway.”