Wicked Charms (2 page)

The coroner was a pleasant-looking guy in a wrinkled gray suit and wrinkled white dress shirt. He was my height, probably in his late thirties, wore Harry Potter glasses, had sandy blond hair, and was soft enough around the middle to look cuddly. His name was Theodore Nergal.

Nergal slipped under the crime scene tape and knelt beside the corpse. “Yep,” he said. “This guy’s dead.”

One of the plainclothes cops looked over the tape. “It’s a real flesh-and-blood body, right?”

Nergal nodded. “It was flesh and blood before someone decided to try his hand at mummification. Now it’s tanned hide and partly calcified bone.” He pulled on disposable gloves, picked the skull up, and examined it. “There’s an entrance wound in the back of the head where he’s been shot.” He shook the head, and there was a rattling sound, like dice in a cup. He tipped the head forward, and a small lump of misshapen metal fell out of the man’s mouth and plopped into the coroner’s hand. “This is a Lubaloy round manufactured only in the 1920s,” Nergal said. “This man was shot some ninety years ago.”

“Wow,” Glo said. “I guess you’ll put out an APB for a perp with a walker and a hearing aid.”

“Aargh, again,” Josh said.

Nergal set the skull in the vicinity of the corpse’s neck and stood. “Who found this?”

“We did,” I said. “Josh works in the museum, and he was giving us an after-hours tour. I touched the cage, and it came crashing down.”

“And you are who?”

“Lizzy Tucker,” I said. “I’m a pastry chef at Dazzle’s Bakery.”

His eyes widened. “Do you make the red velvet cupcakes?”

“I do.”

“I
love
those cupcakes!”

Nergal went back to examining the Slim Jim, and Glo elbowed me. “He loves your cupcakes,” she said.

“I heard.”

She leaned close. “He’s cute!” she whispered.

“And?”

“He’s not wearing a wedding ring.”

“And?”

“Neither are you.”

“I don’t think he’s my type,” I told Glo.

“Okay, so he examines dead people all day,” Glo said. “Nobody’s perfect. He probably has all kinds of interesting hobbies.”

“Excuse me,” I said to Nergal. “Can we go now?”

“Of course,” he said, “but don’t leave town.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he said. “I’m addicted to your cupcakes.”

Glo elbowed me again. “I think he might be flirting with you,” she whispered.

“It’s the cupcakes,” I said. “It has nothing to do with me. I’m leaving.”

“I can’t leave,” Josh said. “I have to stay to lock up the museum.”

“I’ll stay with you,” Glo said to Josh. “This is just like one of those
CSI
shows.”

I gave everyone a wave goodbye and walked out of the museum into the warm July night. The streetlights cast little pools of light onto the shadowy sidewalk. One of the lights flickered just as I reached it, blinking out twice before flaring back to life, brighter than ever.

I felt a chill ripple down my spine and goosebumps erupt on my arms. A man was standing under the streetlight. He was deadly handsome in a scary sexy-vampire sort of way. He had pale skin, piercing dark eyes, and shoulder-length raven-black hair that was swept back from his face. He was dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit with a black dress shirt. I knew him, and there had been times when I thought his soul might be black as well. His name is Gerwulf Grimoire. Mostly known as Wulf. He entered my life shortly after I moved to the North Shore. He’d introduced himself, touched his fingertip to the back of my hand, and left a burn mark. The scar is still there.

“Miss Tucker,” he said. “We meet again.”

“Nice to see you, Wulf.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Wulf said, “but I appreciate the lie. I’m here to relieve you of the coin you just found.”

“What coin? What are you talking about?”

Wulf studied me for a beat. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“I assume you’re not looking for a nickel or a dime.”

“Hardly. You’ll know soon enough about the coin. I’m sure my cousin Diesel is looking for it as well and will enlist your aid. If you’re smart, you won’t get involved. Consider this a warning.”

“I’m not afraid of you.” Another lie.

“I’m the least of your worries,” Wulf said.

There was a
pop
and a puff of smoke, and Wulf was gone. Vanished.

A text message from Glo buzzed on my phone.
Locking up in ten minutes. Going to Ship’s Side on Wharf Street for Jose Cuervo for me, and bringing cute coroner for you. Meet you there.

—

The Ship’s Side was a glorified clam shack with the requisite gray shake siding on the outside and decorated with nets, buoys, and lobster traps on the inside. We were seated at a round table on the back porch overlooking Salem Harbor. Josh was still in costume and still in character.

“I’ll have a grog,” he said to the waitress.

“Sorry, hon,” she said. “We don’t carry grog. You’ll have to settle for beer.”

“You see this?” Josh said. “This is another example of how mainstream society refuses to serve the needs of my people.”

“Your people?” I asked. “Do you mean pirates?”

“We prefer the term ‘Buccaneer Americans,’ ” Josh said.

“So does the Buccaneer American want beer?” the waitress asked.

“Aye,” Josh said.

“I can’t help noticing that you talk like a Buccaneer American even when you’re not at work,” Nergal said to Josh.

“ ’Tis a terrible curse,” Josh said. “I speak Buccaneer all day, and then I can’t stop. My brain doth think in Buccaneer.”

“I like it,” Glo said. “Sometimes he says I’m winsome.”

“True enough, ye be a winsome lass,” Josh said to Glo.

“Fortunately, I can stop speaking in coroner,” Nergal said.

Josh nodded. “Speaking in coroner after hours wouldst be a bummer.”

“It seems like an odd occupation,” I said to Nergal. “Why did you become a coroner?”

“I was in debt after med school and this opportunity happened along. I know it seems gruesome to the average outsider, but it’s really very interesting work. Why did you become a baker?”

“I flunked gravy when I was in culinary school, but I was good at making cupcakes.”

I felt someone lean into me, and a long arm reached out for the breadbasket. I recognized the arm. It belonged to Diesel. He scraped a chair up to the table and positioned himself between Nergal and me.

“So what’s new?” Diesel said, giving my ponytail a playful tug.

I was momentarily dumbstruck.

“Where the heck were you?” I said to him. “One minute you were in my house and then next thing you were gone. For all I knew you were dead. I haven’t heard a word from you in weeks. You didn’t even say goodbye.”

“I was on a job. And I’m pretty sure I said goodbye.”

“The last thing you said to me was ‘I’ll be back.’ ”

“And?”

“ ‘I’ll be back’ is
not
‘goodbye.’ ”

Diesel took a roll from the breadbasket. “This is why I don’t work with women.”

“You
do
work with women.
I’m
a woman.”

“Yeah, but I have no choice. I only had two options and Wulf snagged option number one. He got to Steven Hatchet first.”

I thunked my forehead with the heel of my hand.
“Unh!”

Steven Hatchet is the only other person with the ability to recognize a disguised stone. It’s sort of insulting that Diesel would consider Hatchet to be the number one choice since Hatchet is flat-out nuts. He looks like an underbaked dinner roll with legs. He has scraggly red hair, is around my age, and thinks he’s a medieval minion, serving his liege lord Wulf.

“You’re crowding the table,” I said to Diesel. “This table only has room for four.”

“You’re bummed, right?” Diesel said.

“Yes! Go away.”

The waitress returned with our drinks and asked if we wanted to order food.

Glo ordered a burger, Josh ordered fried clams, Nergal ordered a lobster roll, and I ordered rice pudding.

“I’ll have a lobster roll, too,” Diesel said.

“No, he won’t,” I said to the waitress. “He’s not with us.”

“He’s sitting with you,” the waitress said.

“He’s a squatter,” I said. “Don’t encourage him.”

The waitress gave him a full body scan. “If it was
me
I’d totally encourage him.”

“I’ll have a beer with my lobster roll,” Diesel said.

“No, he won’t,” I said.

“What kind of beer do you want?” the waitress asked Diesel.

“Surprise me,” he said. “And I’ll have a second lobster roll to go. My monkey’s in the car and he’s hungry.”

“That is so adorable,” the waitress said. “What’s your monkey’s name?”

“Carl,” Diesel said. “And it would be great if you could hurry things along because Carl is probably gnawing on the steering wheel. We just got back from Sri Lanka, and he’s still freaked over the elephants. There were lots of elephants.”

“This is Theodore Nergal,” I said to Diesel. “And the guy with the patch on his forehead is Josh the Pirate.”

“Aargh,” Josh said to Diesel. “Who be you?”

“I be Diesel,” Diesel said.

“What were you doing in Sri Lanka?” Nergal asked Diesel.

“This and that,” Diesel said.

“Ah, one thing and another,” Nergal said.

Diesel ate half his dinner roll. “You got it.”

“Was it difficult getting your monkey into the country without a quarantine period?” Nergal asked.

There was a long pause where no one spoke and everyone looked at Diesel.

“He’s a service monkey,” Diesel finally said.

Not to mention, Diesel doesn’t fly by ordinary means.

“You’ll never guess what happened tonight,” Glo said to Diesel. “Josh was giving us a tour of the Pirate Museum and one of the exhibits came crashing down at our feet, and it turned out to be a real dead guy. That’s how we got to meet Dr. Nergal. He’s a coroner, and he was awesome. He figured out that the guy had been shot, and he knew all about the gun and everything. And he figured out the guy had been shot over ninety years ago.”

“Impressive,” Diesel said.

Nergal shook his head. “Not at all. It was obvious.”

“The head fell off when the dead guy hit the floor,” Glo said. “And it was as if the instant Dr. Nergal touched the head he knew all this stuff!”

“He had a bullet hole in the back of his skull, and the round was still contained in the cavity,” Nergal said to Diesel.

The waitress brought the food, and we all dug in. Nergal was halfway through his lobster roll when his phone buzzed. He read the text message and tapped in a response.

“This has been fun,” he said, pushing back from the table, leaving his share of the bill, “but I have to be going. Duty calls.”

“He seems nice,” Diesel said to me when Nergal left. “You should consider going out with him.”

“You think?” I asked.

A half hour later we left the restaurant. Josh walked Glo to her car, and Diesel and I walked up Wharf Street to my tan Chevy clunker.

“I sense a disturbance in the Force,” Diesel said.

“Gee, I can’t imagine why. Maybe it’s because one minute we’re in bed together, and then all of a sudden you get dressed and leave, and I don’t hear from you for three weeks. And then I find out you’ve been in Sri Lanka.”

“Well, where did you think I was?”

“I don’t know…a drugstore. I thought you were going out for condoms.”

“Yeah, looking back I could see where that might have been a possibility.” He slung an arm around me and nuzzled my neck. “Maybe we should take up where we left off.”

“You’re actually willing to risk one of us losing our abilities?”

“I think I could work around it.”

“No way. I’m not taking the chance. Besides, I’m not even sure I like you.”

“Of course you like me. I’m fun.”

“I had an earlier run-in with Wulf, and now you’re here,” I said to Diesel. “What’s going on?”

“Do you know about Martin Ammon?”

“I know he’s a billionaire.”

“Martin Ammon is a publishing and media giant,” Diesel said. “He owns a bunch of newspaper and media outlets in England and the U.S. He also has a reputation as a devourer of companies, big and small. He’s an eccentric, power-hungry megalomaniac. His great-grandfather was Billy McCoy, a notorious rumrunner during Prohibition. McCoy’s partner was Peg Leg Dazzle.”

“Was Peg Leg related to the bakery Dazzles?”

“I imagine all the Salem Dazzles are related, but I don’t know where Peg Leg fits in. Anyway, McCoy and Peg Leg at some point in their illegal endeavors came across a diary and an accompanying coin. The diary belonged to a pirate name Palgrave Bellows, and it detailed a treasure he’d hidden on an island off the coast of Maine. The coin was supposed to help read Palgrave’s treasure map. Unfortunately for McCoy and Peg Leg, the map wasn’t with the diary and the coin, and they were never able to find the treasure.

“A bunch of years ago the diary fell into Ammon’s hands, and he became obsessed with finding the treasure. He bought a house on Marblehead Neck, and he buddied up with a history professor. The two of them put a lot of time and money into the project, but nothing came of it.”

“How do you know all this?”

“It wasn’t a secret. There were newspaper articles about the diary and the lost treasure of the
Gunsway.
”

“The
Gunsway
?”

“That was the name of the ship that Palgrave plundered. It originated in the Far East, and according to the diary it contained unimaginable riches both ordinary and magical.”

“Wow. Magical.”

“Yeah, that’s where Wulf and I come into the picture. The magical part of the treasure, if the diary is to be believed, is the Avaritia Stone. The Stone of Avarice. Ammon never made a big deal about the stone in all his interviews, but I suspect his real goal was to get his hands on it. He’s made joking references in the past about his drive to acquire more and more money, and says that it’s appropriate his parents named him Martin. If you combine his first initial with his last name it spells ‘Mammon,’ one of the seven princes of hell and the personification of wealth and greed.”

“That wouldn’t be my first choice for a prophetic name.”