14bis Plum Spooky (7 page)

NINE

I
DROPPED LULA
at the office, drove myself home, and dragged myself through my front door. The egg-and-fruit gunk had dried en route and was matted in my hair and plastered to my jeans and T-shirt.

Diesel looked me up and down. “Another issue at the produce ware house?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It involved a rat.”

“What’s in your hair?”

I felt around. “I think it’s mostly egg.”

“Do you need help? Do you want me to hose you off in the parking lot?”

“Jeez Louise,” I said. “I had a really crumby morning and I’ve got egg in my hair. Could I get a little sensitivity here?”

Diesel smiled. “I could take a shot at it.” He gathered me into his arms, held me close, and leaned his head against mine. “You smell nice,” he said. “Like fruit salad.”

__________________

A
N HOUR LATER,
we were all in the Escalade. Carl had pitched a fit about being left alone, so we’d brought him along. He was in the backseat, strapped in by a seat belt, his hands folded in his lap, looking as if at any moment he was going to ask if we were there yet.

“Is it me, or is this whole monkey thing getting a little Twilight Zone?” Diesel asked, checking Carl out in the rearview mirror.

“You think it’s just
getting
Twilight Zone? You don’t think it’s
always
been Twilight Zone?”

“Have you heard anything from his mother?”

“No. Not a word.”

“It’s like we’ve adopted a hairy little kid,” Diesel said. “There’s something about him sitting in the backseat that’s friggin’ spooky.”

I looked over my shoulder at Carl, and he sent me a finger wave.

“So if I wasn’t along for the ride, would you just pop yourself over to Philadelphia?” I asked Diesel.

“No. It’s not that easy to get
popped
someplace.”

“Wulf didn’t seem to have a lot of trouble with it. Is he more powerful than you?”

“No. He’s just different.”

“How so?”

“For starters, he kills people.”

Diesel crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania.

“Do you know Wulf?”

“Yes.”

“Have you known him for a long time?”

“I’ve known him forever,” Diesel said. “He’s my cousin.”

That took my breath away. His cousin. He was hunting down a family member!

“This must be hard on you,” I said to Diesel. “I would hate to be in that position.” And my mother would be in a state.

“Someone has to disable Wulf, and I’ve been tapped. Even if it wasn’t my job, I would probably feel compelled to stop him.”

“Has he always been bad?”

“He’s always been different. Intense, melancholy, angry, obsessed with his power. And brilliant.”

Diesel looked normal. He was the embodiment of the all-American charismatic oaf. But he was from a gene pool closely related to Wulf. And Wulf wasn’t nearly normal. Wulf dominated his airspace and radiated unnatural energy. And God knows what else Wulf could do. So I had a few thoughts here about Diesel and his abilities that went beyond normal. Or heck, maybe I’ve just seen so much weird stuff since I became a bounty hunter that I’ll believe anything.

Carl was making sounds in the backseat. “Puh, puh, puh.”

Diesel looked at him in the rearview mirror. “What’s with the monkey?”

“I think he’s amusing himself.”

“Puh, puh, puh, puh, puh,” Carl said.

Diesel turned the radio on and Carl made the sounds louder.

“PUH, PUH, PUH, PUH.”

Diesel shut the radio off and shot a black look at Carl. “If you keep making that sound, I’m going to set you out at the side of the road and not come back for you.”

Carl blew out a sigh and went silent.

“Feeling cranky?” I asked Diesel.

“Not until a couple minutes ago.”

“Chirrup,” Carl said. “Chirrup, chirrup, chirrup.”

“Do you have your gun with you?” Diesel asked me.

“Yeah, but there aren’t any bullets in it.”

“Probably a good thing,” Diesel said.

“Chirrup, chirrup, chirrup, chirrup, chirrup,” Carl said.

Diesel exited the highway and hooked a right.

“You aren’t really going to leave him on the side of the road, are you?” I asked him.

“No. I saw a sign for Wal-Mart. I’m making a pit stop.”

He pulled into the lot and parked. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Carl sat up straight and looked out the window. “Eeee?”

“No,” I said. “We’re not there yet. Pit stop.”

Carl looked confused. He didn’t know pit stop.

“Just go with it,” I told him. “Diesel will be back in a couple minutes.”

“Chirrup.”

Ten minutes later, Diesel jogged back to the SUV. Carl had gone from chirrup, to choo choo choo, to buhbuhbuhbuh, and I was on the verge of gonzo. Diesel angled behind the wheel, handed me a bag, and tossed a bag into the backseat.

“Knock yourself out,” Diesel said to Carl.

“What’s in his bag?”

“Food and an electronic game. I got them to sell me the demo that was already charged.”

“What’s in my bag?”

“Food.”

Carl selected a bag of chips, and I did the same.

“That was pretty smart,” I said to Diesel.

Diesel stuck his hand into the chip bag and took a fistful. “I have a highly developed sense of self-preservation, and a low tolerance for monkey business.”

“What do you expect to get from Scanlon’s sister?”

“I don’t know. You throw the net out and see what you pull in.”

“I hate intruding at a time like this. She just found out someone killed her brother.”

“She’ll want that person brought to justice. And I’m sure you’re good at talking to a grieving woman.”

“Me? What about you?”

“I suck at it.”

“You’re kidding! You’re going to make me do the interrogation?”

“Yeah. This is one of those girl skills.”

“That’s so sexist.”

“And?”

“What do you want me to ask her?”

“I’m looking for real estate. I’m guessing Wulf and Munch are holed up somewhere in south Jersey within commuting distance to Trenton. I did property searches on Munch and Scanlon and nothing turned up. I looked for Wulf using known aliases and holding companies and got zero. I guess they could be under assumed names in a high-roller suite at Caesars, but it would be impractical. Especially if they’re working with illegal technology. Munch was a complete loner with no Jersey ties that we know of. That leaves Scanlon. Ask about the missing sister.”

“There could also be a third person involved. Someone we haven’t discovered yet.”

“It’s possible.”

Carl was examining the hand held game. He shook it and smelled it. He bit it. He looked forward to me. I leaned over the seat and showed Carl how to turn the game on and push the buttons.

A castle appeared on the screen. Blue sky. Clouds. Music. Birds flying. A little man ran into the center of the screen. The little man was joined by a pretty girl in a pink gown. Lightning struck the castle. The castle exploded.

“Eep,” Carl said.

The man and the pink-gowned girl returned and Carl hunkered in, eyes narrowed, concentrating.

Diesel was back on the road, the big Escalade rolling south like a cruise ship under full power. Farms flew by the window, and in the backseat Carl was barely breathing as his fingers twitched on the game buttons and the happy sounds of Super Mario Bros. drifted up to us.

_________________

R
OBERTA SCANLON LIVED
in a brick row house in a blue-collar section of north Philadelphia. According to Diesel’s research, she had never married, and she worked out of her house doing Web site design and maintenance. We sat at the curb for a couple minutes, watching the house, getting a sense of the neighborhood. It was quiet at this time of the day. No traffic. No kids playing outdoors. No dogs barking. Only Carl the Monkey making Mario music in the backseat.

“Okay, cutie-pie,” Diesel said to me. “Go do your thing.”

I blew out a sigh and heaved myself out of the SUV. I hated this part of my job. I hated prying into people’s private lives and intruding on their grief. I understood that it was sometimes necessary, but that didn’t make it any more palatable. I trudged up the sidewalk and rang the bell, thinking I wouldn’t mind if Roberta wasn’t home. No such luck. Roberta Scanlon opened the door and looked out at me.

“Yes?” Roberta said.

I apologized for the intrusion, introduced myself, and asked if I could speak with her.

“I suppose,” she said, “but I’ve already spoken to the police. I just don’t know what more I can tell you.”

“Did your brother own property in south Jersey?”

“Not that I know about, but he didn’t tell me much. It’s not like we were a close family. I couldn’t even tell you when I talked to him last.”

Roberta was in her forties but looked older. Her brown hair was shot with gray; her face was lined and makeup-free. Her clothes were shapeless, designed for comfort and not for fashion.

“I couldn’t find any information on your sister, Gail,” I said to Roberta. “I couldn’t find an address.”

“Gail’s a free spirit. She doesn’t exactly have an address, although she obviously lives somewhere. Everyone lives
somewhere,
right? Even street people live somewhere.”

“How do you get in touch with her? Does she have a cell phone?”

“She has a post office box in Marbury. I sent her a letter about Eugene, but I haven’t heard anything back.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Years ago. She came for our father’s funeral. She flitted in and flitted out. She said she had to get back to her animals. I don’t know what kind of animals she was talking about. Gail always has some sort of cause. She left home after she graduated from high school so she could live in a tree and save a habitat for owls. After that it was wood ducks. And I think at one time she had a collection of rabbits that she’d rescued from a cosmetics lab.”

“But she always gets her mail in Marbury?”

“So far as I know. I guess she could have it forwarded somewhere.”

“And what’s her last name?”

“Scanlon. She never married. None of us ever married.”

I left my card with Roberta and asked her to call if she heard from Gail.

“Well?” Diesel wanted to know when I buckled myself in next to him.

“Not much. Her sister doesn’t have an address, but she has a post office box in Marbury. And it sounds like she’s made a career of saving owl habitats and rabbit eyelids.”

“That’s it? That’s all you got?”

“Yep.”

“Where’s Marbury?” he asked.

I got a map out of the side-door pocket and found Marbury. “It’s on the way to Atlantic City” I said. “Give or take a bunch of miles.”

Carl tapped me on the shoulder. “Eep.”

“What?”

“Eep.”

“I don’t speak monkey” I told him. “I don’t know
eejs”

He pointed to his crotch and crossed his legs.

“I think he has to go to the bathroom,” I said to Diesel.

Diesel powered a back window down. “Go to it,” he said to Carl.

Carl looked out the window and looked up and down the street and shook his head.

Diesel cut his eyes to Carl. “Dude, you’re a monkey. You can do it anywhere.”

Carl shrugged.

“I think he might have some species confusion,” I said to Diesel.

Diesel put the car into gear and drove back to the main street. He cruised two blocks, found a McDonald’s, and parked. Carl jumped out the window and scampered to the door to McDonald’s. He grabbed the handle with both hands, but he couldn’t get the door to open.

“I’ll get it,” I said to Diesel. “I could use a milk shake. Do you want anything?”

“Double cheeseburger, fries, Coke.”

I opened the door for Carl, and he rushed off. I put my order in, paid the cashier, and was about to leave with my food when there was a muffled scream from the ladies’ rest-room. A door banged open, and a woman stormed out with Carl in tow.

“Who owns this monkey?” she asked. “It was in the ladies’ room, looking under all the stall doors.”

Carl pointed to me.

“You need to teach your monkey some manners,” the woman said.

I looked down at Carl. “Are you done?” I asked him.

He shrugged, and we quickly walked back to the SUV. I sucked down my milk shake, Diesel ate his burger, and Carl ate his box of cookies.

“Your monkey was looking under the stall doors in the ladies’ room,” I told Diesel.

“That’s my boy,” Diesel said.

TEN

I
T WAS ALMOST
four o’clock when we rolled into Marbury. Diesel nosed the SUV into a parking space in front of the post office and unbuckled his seat belt.

“My turn,” he said. “This shouldn’t take long. It sounds like Gail Scanlon’s had a post office box here for years. I’m hoping someone knows her.”

I watched Diesel walk away and I enjoyed the view. I had no intention of getting involved, but that didn’t mean I was blind to the masterpiece in front of me. Diesel was a big, solid guy who moved with seemingly effortless efficiency. Everything about him was in perfect proportion. And from where I was sitting, his ass looked like Little Bear’s bed . . . not too hard, and not too soft, but
just right.

Diesel disappeared into the building, and I turned to Carl. “So,” I said, “how’s it going?”

Carl looked at me, shrugged, and went back to his game. A pickup rumbled past us. An old man shuffled out of the post office and walked down the street. I went to my cell phone to call Morelli, but we were in the middle of the Jersey Pine Barrens, and there wasn’t cell ser vice.

The Pine Barrens is a heavily forested area covering a little over a million acres of coastal plain across south Jersey. The soil is sandy and the trees are pine mixed with oaks that have managed to survive the occasional fire. Hundreds of acres are uninhabited, unless you count blueberries, and cranberries, and the stubborn, hardscrabble folks known as Pineys who live and work there. There are also hundreds of antique shops, bed and breakfasts of varying quality, and dirt roads that go nowhere. Plus, there’s the Jersey Dev il. The Pacific Northwest has Sasquatch. Loch Ness has Nessie. And the Pine Barrens has the Jersey Dev il.

Diesel left the post office, walked to the car, and slid in behind the wheel.

“Well?” I asked.

“Gail Scanlon comes in on no fixed schedule and gets her mail. Sometimes she’s in once a week. Sometimes they don’t see her for six months. Her box was emptied yesterday, but no one saw her come in. The post office boxes are around a corner from the counter.”

“Did you get a description?”

“Slim, average height, long black hair, early forties, eccentric.”

“What does ‘eccentric’ mean?”

“They didn’t elaborate. But she must really be out there for them to call her eccentric. This isn’t exactly the center of sane.”

“Did they know where she lived?”

“No. One of the guys said she was a citizen of the world. And the woman next to him said she was a nymphomaniac.”

“Sounds like your kind of woman.”

“Yeah, she has potential.”

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now we go home and regroup.”

D
IESEL WAS REGROUPING
on the couch, watching
Seinfeld
reruns, and Carl was sitting beside him.

“This is going too slow,” I said to Diesel. “You’re supposed to be the big-deal super bounty hunter. Why aren’t you doing something?”

“I am doing something. I’m waiting.”

“Waiting isn’t good. I hate waiting. Waiting feels like doing nothing.”

“I have Flash watching the Sky Social Club. And every ten minutes, I go to the window to see if the cloud of doom has rolled over Trenton, signifying Wulf’s presence.”

“Nothing personal, but I don’t care about Wulf I need to find Martin Munch.”

“I know how Wulf works. Right now, he’s involved in a project that involves Munch, and they’re joined at the hip. If we find one of them, we’ll find both of them. If we don’t find them until after Munch has served his purpose, we’ll find Munch with his head screwed on backwards.”

I cracked my knuckles and gnawed on my lower lip. I didn’t want to find Munch with his head screwed on backward. I felt my cell phone buzz at my hip, and I checked the readout. Morelli.

“I have a problem,” Morelli said.

“No kidding.”

“More than that. I just got home, and Anthony is missing, and there’s a naked woman in my bed.”

“And?”

“I don’t want to talk about this on the phone. Can you get over here? I need help.”

“I’m on my way.” I disconnected and grabbed my bag. “Gotta go,” I said to Diesel. “Morelli needs help with a naked woman.”

“I didn’t know you were into that,” Diesel said.

“It’s not a party. It’s a problem. I’ll be on my cell if you notice the cloud of doom hanging over my apartment building.”

Ten minutes later, I walked into the disaster area that used to be Morelli’s living room. It was littered with empty beer cans, fast-food wrappers, and discarded socks, shoes, and underwear. Crumpled pages ripped off a yellow lined pad were scattered across the floor. A rumpled pillow and balled-up quilt were pushed to one end of the couch.

Morelli smiled when he saw me, and I got warm inside and smiled back. He was still in work clothes. Dark jeans and boots. Cream-colored sweater with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. Gun on his hip. He had a garbage bag in one hand and a can of air freshener in the other.

“I thought your mother was coming over to clean?” I said to him.

“She was here this morning. This is afternoon trash.”

“What’s with all the crumpled pieces of lined paper?”

“Anthony decided he should write a book about his life.”

“Because why?” I asked Morelli.

“He thinks his life is fascinating. He’s calling his book ‘Love Your Inner Jerk.’”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Morelli said, “but it can’t be good.”

I helped gather beer cans and food wrappers and stuffed them into the garbage bag. I left the underwear for Morelli. I wouldn’t touch the underwear with a big stick.

“Doesn’t Anthony have a job?” I asked.

“Not this week. He took the week off to get his act together.”

“Looks to me like he’s spreading his act all over your house.”

“This is nothing. You should see what I’ve got upstairs.”

“The naked woman?”

“Yeah. She won’t leave. She says she’s waiting for Anthony to come back with pizza.”

“So when he comes back she’ll leave, right?”

“He’s been gone for almost two hours. For all I know, he could be gone for two days. It’s happened.”

“Did you try telling her to leave?”

“Yeah. She told me to take a hike.”

“You’re a cop. You probably drag naked women out of bedrooms all the time.”

“Almost never. And this is
my
bedroom. And this woman was brought here by
my
married brother. I’m supposed to be keeping him in line. If this gets back to my sister-in-law and my mother, I’m in big trouble. And even worse, if I lay a hand on this bimbo, she could scream rape or police brutality or God knows what.”

“So you want me to get rid of her for you.”

“Yeah.” Morelli grinned at me again. “If you did that one thing for me, I’d be nice to you.
Really
nice.”

“And then what? Would I have to be really nice to you?”

“No. You could walk away. Adios. Sayonara. Good night.”

I’d heard this before. Once Morelli got rolling, no one walked away. No one ever
wanted
to walk away. Morelli naked was a force of nature. Of course, I could have him keep his clothes on, but that might feel weird.

“What about your brother?”

“I’ll lock the doors.”

“Hasn’t he got a key?”

Morelli dropped the garbage bag onto the floor and stuffed his hands onto his hips. “Are you going to do this for me, or what?”

“Sure. Do you know her name?”

“All I know is she’s naked, and mean as a snake.”

I climbed the stairs, knocked on Morelli’s closed bedroom door, and pushed it open. There was a naked woman in his bed all right, and she was mad. She was sitting up with her arms crossed over her huge breasts and her eyes narrowed. She had a lot of overpro cessed blond hair in a teased-up rat’s nest. She was early forties, with tanning-bed skin one step away from a carcinoma epidemic. Her lips had been inflated by someone not especially good at it. And she had a spider tattooed on her arm.

“Now what?” she said.

“You’re in my boyfriends bed.”

“He said he wasn’t attached. Are you some crazy bitch jilted girlfriend?”

“Nope. I’m the current girlfriend. This house belongs to Joe Morelli, and you’re waiting for his worthless married brother, Anthony.”

“Are you kidding me? Anthony told me this was his house.”

“Anthony’s house is about a quarter mile away and his wife is living in it.”

“How do I know you’re telling me the truth? And what’s Anthony doing here anyway? He had a key and everything.”

“His wife kicked him out, and he’s stuck here until she decides to take him back.”

“So he sort of
isn’t
attached,” she said.

“He’s married! And he has five kids.”

“Yeah, but she kicked him out.”

I had the feeling this was going nowhere. Time to improvise.

“Truth is, his wife would be better off if you took him off her hands,” I told her. “He comes home drunk all the time and beats her and the kids with a gravy ladle.”

“Jeez,” she said. “That’s awful.”

“And he can’t keep a job, so his wife has to work nights at the button factory,” I said.

“I didn’t know they made buttons at night.”

“She cleans up. Washes floors and toilets and stuff.”

“Ick. That’s even worse than my job.”

“What do you do?”

“I work for a construction company. They’re all a bunch of assholes.”

“You didn’t give him any money did you?”

“I gave him money for the pizza and more beer,” she said.

“Bad move. He probably bought a hooker with the money.”

“I don’t know. He didn’t look all that lively when I was done with him.”

“Yeah, but he’s a sex addict. Got a bunch of diseases. He wore a condom, right? I mean, you didn’t touch him or anything, did you?”

That got her out of bed, hunting for her clothes. “I do
not
need any more diseases,” she said. She yanked black stretch pants over her ass and tugged a sweater over her head. “That prick had a lot of nerve misrepresenting himself. The more I’m thinking about it, the more steamed I’m getting.” She rammed her feet into four-inch stilettos and grabbed her purse off the dresser. “He hasn’t heard the last of it from me, either.”

She stormed out of the bedroom, stomped down the stairs, swept past Morelli and out the front door.

“I’m impressed,” Morelli said to me. “How did you do it?”

“We just had a heart-to-heart. You know, girl talk.”

“Do I get to be nice to you now?”

“No. Now you put on a pair of rubber gloves and take all the sheets off your bed and throw them away.”

Morelli went upstairs with a new garbage bag, and I continued to pick up the downstairs.

“Where’s Bob?” I called up to Morelli.

“He’s tied out back. I had him at work with me, and I didn’t want him snarfing around in the living room until I cleaned up.”

Bob is Morelli’s dog. He’s mostly golden retriever, with a touch of Sasquatch. He’s big and goofy, entirely lovable, and he eats everything . . . chairs, table legs, whole hams stolen from the table.

I let Bob in, and Bob rushed through the house, excited to be home, jumping around me like a rabbit. I filled his bowl with fresh water, and another bowl with dog crunchies, and Bob dug in. I tied off my garbage bag and set it by the back door. I was starting up the stairs to help Morelli when Anthony walked in.

“Hey, beautiful,” Anthony said to me. “Haven’t seen you in too long.”

Anthony, for all his faults, can be charming and hideously likable. He was carry ing a large pizza box and had his fingers hooked around a six-pack of Bud.

“Charlene,” he yelled up the stairs. “Come get your pizza.”

“Jeez,” I said. “Bad news. Charlene took off.”

“No big deal,” Anthony said, not missing a beat. “More pizza for us, right? Where’s Joe?”

“Upstairs.”

The front door banged open, and Charlene stormed in and pointed a nail gun at Anthony. Anthony partially turned to look at her, and she shot him in the ass.
Bang, bang, bang.

“That’s for the gravy ladle,” she said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.” And she left, slamming the door shut behind her.

Anthony and I were momentarily stunned, mouths open, bug-eyed.

“Fuck,” Anthony finally said. He dropped the pizza, and Bob galloped in and ate it.

Morelli appeared at the head of the stairs. “Were those gunshots?”

“Charlene came back and shot Anthony in the ass with a nail gun. She works for a construction company.”

“Where is she now?” Morelli asked.

“Gone.”

Morelli jogged down the stairs and looked at Anthony’s backside. Blood was seeping through his jeans.

“Shit,” Morelli said. “Why’d she shoot you?”

“I don’t know,” Anthony said. “Something about a gravy ladle.”

I ran to the kitchen and got a couple towels. By the time I got back to the living room, Morelli was dragging Anthony out the door to the car.

Morelli owns an SUV, so Bob has a safe, comfy place to ride, but he keeps a Ducati in his garage for times when he needs to take his wild side for a drive. We loaded Anthony into the back of Morelli’s SUV and Morelli drove the short distance to St. Francis Hospital. The pain was setting in when we off-loaded Anthony. He was white-faced and sweating, and he was swearing in two languages. Morelli dragged him into the emergency entrance, and I parked the car in the parking garage.

Okay, so I felt a little bad, but how was I to know Char-lene would shoot Anthony over the gravy ladle? I mean, who would even believe it? A gravy ladle, for crying out loud. I had no idea where gravy ladle had come from. Baseball bat and tennis racket had horrified me, and then gravy ladle popped into my head. Maybe I was hungry.

Morelli was slouched in a chair in the waiting room when I walked in. I took the seat beside him and sat with my bag hugged to my chest.

“Will he be okay?” I asked Morelli.

“That’s a complicated question. There’s a lot more wrong with him than a nail in the ass.”

An hour later, Anthony got wheeled out facedown on a gurney ready to go home. He was wearing baggy hospital pajamas, and one side of his butt had a big bulge where he was ban daged.