“Oh, well,” Laurie said. “It was just a thought.”

“Hey, I’m not knocking your questioning it,” Lou said. “Your recall always impresses me. I’m not sure I would have made the association. Anyway, what about some dinner?”

“As tired as you look, how about just coming over to my apartment for some spaghetti?” Laurie suggested. Lou and Laurie had become best of friends over the years. After being thrust together on the Cerino case five years previously, they’d flirted with a romantic relationship. But it hadn’t worked out. Becoming friends had been a mutual decision. In the years since, they made it a point to have dinner together every couple of weeks.

“You wouldn’t mind?” Lou asked. The idea of kicking back on Laurie’s couch sounded like heaven.

“Not at all,” Laurie said. “In fact, I’d prefer it. I’ve got some sauce in the freezer and plenty of salad makings.”

“Great!” Lou said. “I’ll grab some Chianti on my way downtown. I’ll give you a call when I’m leaving headquarters.”

“Perfect,” Laurie said.

After Lou had left, Laurie went back to her slide. But Lou’s visit had broken her concentration by reawakening the Franconi business. Besides, she was tired of looking through the microscope. Leaning back, she rubbed her eyes.

“Damn it all!” she murmured. She sighed and gazed up a at the cob-webbed ceiling. Every time she questioned how Franconi’s body could have gotten out of the morgue, she agonized anew. She also felt guilty that she couldn’t provide even a modicum of help to Lou.

Laurie got up and got her coat, snapped shut her briefcase, and walked out of her office. But she didn’t leave the morgue. Instead, she went down for another visit to the mortuary office. There was a question that was nagging her and which she’d forgotten to ask Marvin Fletcher, the evening mortuary tech, the previous late afternoon.

She found Marvin at his desk busily filling out the required forms for the scheduled pickups for that evening. Marvin was one of Laurie’s favorite coworkers. He’d been on the day shift before Bruce Pomowski’s tragic murder during the Cerino affair. After that event, Marvin had been switched to evenings. It had been a promotion because the evening mortuary tech had a lot of responsibility.

“Hey, Laurie! What’s happening?” Marvin said the moment he caught sight of her. Marvin was a handsome African-American, with the most flawless skin Laurie had ever seen. It seemed to glow as if lit internally.

Laurie chatted with Marvin for a few minutes, catching him up on the intraoffice gossip of the day before getting down to business. “Marvin, I’ve got to ask you something, but I don’t want you to feel defensive.” Laurie couldn’t help remembering Mike Passano’s reaction to her questioning, and she certainly didn’t want Marvin complaining to Calvin.

“About what?” Marvin asked.

“Franconi,” Laurie said. “I wanted to ask why you didn’t X-ray the body.”

“What are you talking about?” Marvin questioned.

“Just what I said,” Laurie remarked. “There was no X-ray slip in the autopsy folder and there were no films down here with others when I looked prior to finding out that the body had disappeared.”

“I took X rays,” Marvin said. He acted hurt that Laurie would suggest that he hadn’t. “I always take X rays when a body comes in unless one of the doctors tells me otherwise.”

“Then where’s the slip and where are the films?” Laurie asked.

“Hey, I don’t know what happened to the slip,” Marvin said. “But the films: They went with Doctor Bingham.”

“Bingham took them?” Laurie questioned. Even that was odd, yet she recognized that Bingham probably was planning on doing the post the following morning.

“He told me he was taking them up to his office,” Marvin said. “What am I supposed to do, tell the boss he can’t take the X rays. No way! Not this dude.”

“Right, of course,” Laurie said vaguely. She was preoccupied. Here was a new surprise. X rays existed of Franconi’s body! Of course, it didn’t matter much without the body itself, but she wondered why she’d not been told. Then again she’d not seen Bingham until after it was known that Franconi’s body had been stolen.

“Well, I’m glad I spoke to you,” Laurie said, coming out of her musing. “And I apologize for suggesting that you’d forgotten to take the films.”

“Hey, it’s cool,” Marvin said.

Laurie was about to leave when she thought about the Spoletto Funeral Home. On a whim, she asked Marvin about it.

Marvin shrugged. “What do you want to know?” he asked. “I don’t know much. I’ve never been there, you know what I’m saying.”

“What are the people like who come here from the home?” Laurie asked.

“Normal,” Marvin said with another shrug. “I’ve probably only seen them a couple of times. I mean, I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Laurie nodded. “It was a silly question. I don’t know why I asked.”

Laurie left the mortuary office and exited the morgue through the loading area onto Thirtieth Street. It seemed to her that nothing about the Franconi case was routine.

As Laurie commenced walking south along First Avenue another whim hit her. Suddenly, the idea of visiting the Spoletto Funeral Home seemed very appealing. She hesitated for a second while considering the idea and then stepped out into the street to hail a cab.

“Where to, lady?” the driver asked. Laurie could see from his hackney license that his name was Michael Neuman.

“Do you know where Ozone Park is?” Laurie asked.

“Sure, it’s over in Queens,” Michael said. He was an older man who, Laurie guessed, was in his late sixties. He was sitting on a foam rubber-stuffed pillow with a lot of foam rubber visible. His backrest was constructed of wooden beads.

“How long would it take to get there?” Laurie asked. If it was going to take hours, she wouldn’t do it.

Michael made a questioning expression by compressing his lips while thinking. “Not long,” he said vaguely. “Traffic’s light. In fact, I was just out at Kennedy Airport, and it was a breeze.”

“Let’s go,” Laurie said.

As Michael promised, the trip took only a short time, especially once they got on the Van Wyck Expressway. While they were traveling, Laurie found out that Michael had been driving a cab for over thirty years. He was a loquacious and opinionated man who also exuded a paternal charm.

“Would you know where Gold Road is in Ozone Park?” Laurie asked. She felt privileged to have found an experienced taxi driver. She’d remembered the address of the Spoletto Funeral Home from the Rolodex in the mortuary office. The street name had stuck in her mind as making a metaphorical statement about the undertaking business.

“Gold Road,” Michael said. “No problem. It’s a continuation of Eighty-ninth Street. You looking for a house or what?”

“I’m looking for the Spoletto Funeral Home,” Laurie said.

“I’ll have you there in no time,” Michael said.

Laurie sat back with a contented feeling, only half listening to Michael’s nonstop chatter. For the moment luck seemed to be on her side. The reason she’d decided to visit the Spoletto Funeral Home was because Jack had been wrong about it. The home did have a mob connection, and even though it was with the wrong family according to Lou, the fact that it was associated at all was suspicious to Laurie.

True to his promise, within a surprisingly short time Michael pulled up to a three-storied white clapboard house wedged between several brick tenements. It had Greek-style columns holding up the roof of a wide front porch. A glazed, internally lit sign in the middle of a postage stamp-sized lawn read: “Spoletto Funeral Home, a family business, two generations of caring.”

The establishment was in full operation. Lights were on in all the windows. A few cigarette smokers were on the porch. Other people were visible through the ground-floor windows.