Janet Evanovich - Twelve Sharp

I grabbed my handbag and swung my ass out of the kitchen, out of the apartment, and down the hall. I was thinking I might get into the Mini and drive to California. Start over. New job. New boyfriend. No forwarding address. I checked my rearview mirror. Ranger in the silver BMW. Morelli in his green SUV. Two RangeMan goons in a black SUV, too far back to see their identity. I was leading a friggin' parade. And the parade would follow me to California.

'Stephanie,' I said, 'you're in deep shit.'

The little lot attached to the funeral home was packed by the time I got there. I drove up and down the streets, but the curbside parking was taken for blocks. I double-parked and got out of the car. The shiny black RangeMan SUV rolled up to me, the window slid down, and Hal looked out from the passenger seat.

'RangeMan valet parking?' I asked.

Hal got out, rammed himself into the Mini, and I thought I saw the tires flatten a little. Both cars drove off. One mark on the tally for Ranger. Employees available for valet parking. On the Morelli side was hates salad.

I fought my way through the crush of people on the funeral home porch and wormed my way through the crowd in the lobby. I felt a hand at my back and heard Morelli's voice in my ear.

'Go do your thing, and I'll keep you in sight,' Morelli said. 'Ranger has some men in here who are also watching you. Probably there are a couple feds as well.'

I got into the viewing room, but there was a wall of people in front of me. I looked left and saw a head rising above all else. It was Sally Sweet, close to seven feet tall in his heels. I inched closer and saw he was wearing shocking pink platform pumps with a five-inch stiletto heel and a raincoat. Lula was beside him, also in pink heels and a raincoat. I looked at the ground and saw they were molting pink feathers.

'This here's a mess,' Lula yelled when she saw me. 'I can't go forward, and I can't go back.'

Grandma elbowed her way over to us. 'I lost my sense of direction. Which way's the casket? I can't see a darned thing.'

Sally picked Grandma up and held her over his head.

'Okay,' Grandma yelled to Sally. 'I got a fix on it. You can set me down now.' And Grandma took off, burrowing through the bodies.

I tried following, but Grandma was instantly swallowed up by the mob of mourners. 'Can you see her?' I asked Sally.

'I can't exactly see her, but I can see people moving to get out of her way. She's almost all the way up front. She should pop out any minute now. Yep, there she is. She's right in front of the casket. Looks like the funeral director standing firm to one side, and everyone else is milling around, jockeying for position. And there's Granny, holding her ground. I can only see the tops of heads,' Sally said. 'Hold on, something's happening. People are scrambling. The funeral director's waving his arms and bobbing around.'

I heard someone shouting to stand back. Then some hysterical screaming. And a loud crash. Someone yelled out Get her!

'What's going on?' I asked Sally.

'It looks like a riot. Someone just got knocked into a big floral arrangement, and it all went over. And I think the funeral director's thrown himself on top of the casket. Looks like there's someone under him. I can see two feet sticking out. It's someone in patent leather pumps. Omigod, I think it's your granny.'

'I bet she tried to get the lid up,' Lula said. 'You know how she hates when she can't see nothing.'

My mother was going to kill me.

'Everybody looks real angry,' Sally said. 'We should probably try to rescue Granny.'

'Coming through,' Lula said, head down, plowing her way to the front. 'S'cuse me, move your bony little ass, outta my way, make way for mama.'

Sally and I rode in her wake, stumbling up to the casket, coming nose to nose with Dave Nelson.

Nelson grabbed me by the front of my shirt. 'You have to help me. These people are insane. Your grandmother is insane. She started it all. Somehow she got the lid up. And now everyone wants to see!'

'Is there a problem with that?' I asked.

'Carmen Manoso has been autopsied! She makes Frankenstein look good. She's had her brain taken out and weighed and put back in!'

'Oh yeah,' I said. 'I forgot.'

'I drove here from Perth Amboy,' some lady said. 'I'm not leaving until I get to see the body.'

'Yeah,' everyone said. 'We want to see.'

'They're going to take my mortuary apart, brick by brick,' Dave whispered. 'These people are all ghouls.'

'They just want to be entertained,' I told them. 'I bet you ran out of cookies.'

I stood on a chair and yelled at the crowd. 'Everybody quiet down. We can't open the casket, but we've got some exciting entertainment. Two members of the What band have agreed to do a special performance.'

'We can't do that,' Lula said. 'We don't have any music. And besides, we're professionals. We don't do this shit for nothing.'

'All kinds of people have come to see Carmen,' I told Lula. 'I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of television crews were here. And I think I saw Al Roker when I walked in.'

'Al Roker! I love Al Roker. Do you think he's married?'

'I thought you were in love with Tank.'

'Yeah, but Al is so cute. And I hear he has his own barbecue sauce. You gotta love a man's got his own barbecue sauce. Boy, it'd be real hard to have to choose between Al and Tank.'

'There's a stage behind the casket,' I said. 'And there's even a microphone on that pulpit thing. This could be your big break.'

Okay, so I didn't really see Al Roker and this was probably a rotten thing to do, but I couldn't figure anything else out. And who knows, maybe there were television people in the viewing room. From where I was standing, it looked like half the state was here.

Lula and Sally took the stage and stood there in their pink high heels and raincoats and the whole room went silent. They took their raincoats off and the room went nuts. Lula looked like a big round pink puffball in her genuine domestic farm-raised fowl feather dress. Sally looked like nothing anyone had ever seen before. He was wearing the heels and the flamingo feather thong. The thong sack looked like dyed dead bird. And the rest of Sally made a strong case for full body waxing.

'Hey, all you fuckin' mourners,' Sally yelled. 'Are you fuckin' ready for this?'

Everyone cheered and clapped and hooted. Jersey's always fuckin' ready for anything. Especially if it's hairy and in a thong.

Lula and Sally started singing and waving their arms and dancing around and the mourners all backed up a couple feet. Feathers were flying, and Lula was sweating, and the room was starting to smell like wet water fowl. By the time Lula and Sally got through the second song the room had emptied out some.

'Thanks,' I said to Lula. 'That did the trick. Everybody's happy now. I think you can stop singing.'

'Yeah,' Lula said, climbing off the stage. 'We were pretty good. Too bad, I didn't see Al Roker out there. But I think I saw Meri. Guess she didn't want to be left out.'

'I always wanted to be in a rock-and-roll band,' Grandma said. 'I could do all those dancing moves too. I'm old, but I still got legs. I can't play any instruments though.'

'Can you sing?' Sally asked.

'Sure. I'm a good singer,' Grandma said.

'I've been thinking now that we're playing all these geezer gigs we could use an older demographic in the band. You'd have to get some outfits, and we practice once a week.'

'I could do all that,' Grandma said.

'Sometimes we're not done until ten o'clock when we do assisted living,' Sally said. Those cats get to stay up later. Can you stay up that late?'

'Sure,' Grandma said. 'Sometimes I even watch the ten o'clock news.'