“Kenny?”
“He was here.”
This brought me out of my chair. “When? Did you see him?”
Spiro slid the middle drawer open and extracted a sheet of paper. He flipped the paper over to me. “I found this on my desk when I came in this morning.”
The message was cryptic. “You have something that's mine, now I have something that's yours.” The message was formed from silver paste-on letters. It was signed with a silver K. I stared at the paste-on the letters and swallowed audibly. Spiro and I had a common pen pal.
“What does this mean?” I asked Spiro.
Spiro was still sunk into the chair. “I don't know what it means. It means he's crazy. You're going to keep looking for the caskets, aren't you?” Spiro asked. “We made a deal.”
Here Spiro is, totally stressed over this bizarre note from Kenny, and in the next breath he's quizzing me about the caskets. Very suspicious, Dr. Watson.
“I suppose I'll keep looking,” I told him, “but in all honesty, I'm stumped.”
I found Grandma still in the Mackey room, manning the command post at the head of the casket with Marjorie Boyer and Mrs. Mackey. Mrs. Mackey was nicely snockered on 100-proof tea, entertaining Grandma and Marjorie with a slightly slurred version of the story of her life, concentrating on the seamier moments. She was swaying and gesturing, and every now and then a splot of whatever would slurp out of her teacup and splatter onto her shoe.
“You have to see this,” Grandma said to me. “They gave George a dark blue satin liner on account of his lodge colors are blue and gold. Isn't that something?”
“All the lodge brothers'll be here tonight,” Mrs. Mackey said. “They're gonna have a ceremony. And they sent a spray . . . THIS BIG!”
“That's a pip of a ring George is wearing,” Grandma said to Mrs. Mackey.
Mrs. Mackey chugged the rest of her tea. “It's his lodge ring, the Lord rest his soul, George wanted to be buried with his lodge ring.”
Grandma bent down for a better look. She leaned into the casket and touched the ring. “Uh-oh.”
We were all afraid to ask.
Grandma straightened and turned to face us. “Well,
will you look at this,” she said, holding an object the size of a Tootsie Roll in her hand. “His finger came off.”
Mrs. Mackey fainted crash onto the floor, and Marjorie Boyer ran screaming out of the room.
I inched forward for a better look. “Are you sure?” I asked Grandma Mazur. “How could that happen?”
“I was just admiring his ring, feeling the smooth glass stone, and next thing I knew his finger came off in my hand,” she said.
Spiro charged into the room with Marjorie Boyer close on his heels. “What's this about a finger?”
Grandma held it out for him to see. “I was just taking a close look, and next thing I knew here was the finger.”
Spiro snatched at the finger. “This isn't a real finger. This is wax.”
“It came off his hand,” Grandma said. “See for yourself.”
We all peered into the casket, staring at the little stump where George's middle finger used to be.
“There was a man on TV the other night said aliens were snatching up people and doing scientific experiments on them,” Grandma said. “Maybe that's what happened here. Maybe aliens got George's finger. Maybe they got some other parts too. You want me to check out the rest of George's parts?”
Spiro flipped the lid closed. “Sometimes accidents happen during the preparation process,” he said. “Sometimes it's necessary to do a little artificial enhancement.”
A creepy thought skittered into my mind regarding George's finger loss. Nah, I told myself. Kenny Mancuso wouldn't do something like that. That would be too gross even for Mancuso.
Spiro stepped over Mrs. Mackey and moved to the intercom just outside the door. I followed after him and waited while he instructed Louie Moon to call the ERT and then to bring some putty to room number four.