As if I’d want to dawdle over Fred Dagusto.

“She isn’t here,” I said, returning to Spiro, who was straddling the doorjamb, keeping an eagle eye out for unusual bulges in overcoats that might indicate a mourner was absconding with a stolen roll of toilet paper.

“Yeah, right,” he said. “Big surprise.”

“The only place I haven’t looked is the basement.”

“She isn’t in the basement. The door is locked. Just like this one was locked.”

“I want to see.”

“Listen,” Spiro said. “She’s probably gone off with some other old broad. She’s probably at some diner, driving some poor waitress nuts.”

“Let me into the cellar, and I swear I won’t bother you anymore.”

“That’s a cheery thought.”

An old man clapped a hand on Spiro’s shoulder. “How’s Con doing? He outta the hospital yet?”

“Yeah,” Spiro said, brushing past. “He’s out of the hospital. He’ll be back to work next week. Monday.”

“Bet you’ll be happy to see him come back.”

“Yeah, I’m jumping for joy just thinking about it.”

Spiro crossed to the other side of the lobby, slithering between knots of people, ignoring some, toadying up to others. I followed him to the cellar door and waited impatiently while he fumbled with keys. My heart was skittering in my chest, fearful of what I might find at the foot of the stairs.

I wanted Spiro to be right. I wanted Grandma to be at a diner somewhere with one of her croonies, but I didn’t think it was likely.

If she’d been forcibly removed from the house, Morelli or Roche would have acted. Unless she’d been taken out the back door. The back door was their blind spot. Still, they’d compensated for that by planting a bug. And if the bugs were working, Morelli and Roche would have heard me looking for Grandma and would be doing their thing … whatever that was.

I flipped the stairwell light switch and called out. “Grandma?”

The furnace roared in some far-off place, and there was the murmur of voices in the rooms behind me. A small circle of light brightened the cellar floor at the bottom of the stairs. I squinted to see beyond the light, strained to hear whatever small sound the cellar might offer up.

My stomach clenched at the silence. Someone was down there. I could feel it, just as surely as I could feel Spiro’s breath on my neck.

The truth is, I’m not the heroic type. I’m afraid of spiders and extraterrestrials and sometimes feel the need to check under my bed for drooly guys with claws. If I ever found one I’d run screaming out of my apartment and never come back.

“The meter’s running,” Spiro said. “You going down there, or what?”

I rummaged through my pocketbook for my .38 and descended the stairs with gun drawn. Stephanie Plum, chickenshit bounty hunter, takes stairs one at a time, practically blinded because her heart is beating in her throat so hard it’s knocking her head back and forth, blurring her vision.