Wicked Appetite

  We took the stairs, and Glo led the way down the hall to Shirley’s door. I knocked, and Shirley answered immediately.

  “Beetle ears,” Shirley said, all cheerful.

  I looked past her and saw she was at work packing food into cardboard boxes and grocery bags. There were boxes loaded with Pop-Tarts, jars of jam, bags of cookies, canned corn, tomato sauce, and mayonnaise. It was a glutton dream come true, and I felt my heart quicken and my eyes glaze over.

  “What are you doing with all this stuff?” Glo asked Shirley.

  “Shoe horn for poor poopers.”

  “That’s nice,” Glo said. “They’ll be happy to get all this.”

  “Anyone would be happy to get this,” I said. “Poor poopers, rich poopers, and in-between poopers.” I ran my hand lovingly over the grocery bag filled with candy bars. “I could help you deliver this,” I said to Shirley. “I’d be happy to take it off your hands.”

  “Don’t give it to her,” Glo said. “She’ll eat it. She caught your gluttony.”

  “Blek?” Shirley asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “But it wears off if I stay away from the ladybug.”

  “Booger bug,” Shirley said.

  Glo nodded in agreement. “Anyway, we came over today because I have a spell that’ll fix the scramble spell I accidentally put on you.”

  Shirley looked skeptical. “Icky wiggle waggle,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” Glo said. “It’s foolproof. I don’t need powdered yak brain or anything.” She opened Ripple’s book and found her page. “Turn around word and talk not tongue. Shirley More speaketh now not gobbledegook, gobbledegook, gobbledegook but only gobble, gobble, gobble.”

  Glo and I held our breath and watched Shirley.

  “Say something,” Glo told her.

  “Gobble.”

  “That’s not funny,” Glo told her.

  “Gobble, gobble, gobble.” Shirley’s face turned red. “Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble!”

  “I’m sure I read it perfectly,” Glo said. “How many gobbles did I say?”

  “I think there were three.”

  “And three gobbledegooks, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Honestly,” Glo said. “This is so annoying.”

  Shirley stamped her foot and balled her hands into fists. She whirled around and huffed off to her bedroom.

  “Oh boy,” Glo said. “We need to get out of here before she comes back with the gun.”

  We ran for the door, sprinted down the hall, and flew down the stairs. We jumped into the Mini and roared away from the curb and down the road.

  “So how’s it going with Mister Tall, Blond, and Ferociously Handsome?” Glo asked.

  “I don’t know. He gets close, and he smells good, and he feels good, and I think he’s going to kiss me, and then he doesn’t. And sometimes he just scares the heck out of me. I mean, he’s not normal.”

  “Yeah, but he’s not normal in a good way. I bet he’s got an Unmentionable schvansticker.”

  “I don’t want to think about his schvansticker. It’s enough to give me a panic attack.”

  Glo nodded in agreement. “It could be formidable.”

  “That’s not what panics me. It’s him. He’s so big and confident and good at flirting.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m such a dope. I’m not good at flirting. And I’m really not good at being sexy. I’m out of practice.”

  “Really? How long has it been since . . . you know?”

  “Years.”

  “Get out! Years?”

  “I’ve been busy. I worked long hours at the restaurant in New York. I was tired a lot. And I didn’t like any of the men I met.”

  Glo nodded in agreement. “I know. It’s hard to meet nice men. Either they’re married, or else they’ve got nails driven into their heads.”

  “You know men with nails in their heads?”

  “I’m a magnet for them. Go figure.”

  Glo stopped at Lafayette Street. “Will you be okay if I take you home? I’d offer to stay with you, but I have a date tonight.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I told her. “Does he have a nail in his head?”

  “No. He’s adorable. I met him at the car wash. He’s the interior specialist.”

  The house was quiet when I got home. Diesel and Carl were still off hiding the charms. The Spook Patrol hadn’t returned. Cat 7143 met me at the door, looking relieved to see that I was alone.

  “Were you my Great Aunt Ophelia’s cat?” I asked him.

  Cat looked at me and blinked.

  “I’m going to take that as a yes,” I told Cat.

  I wasn’t hungry anymore, and I had no desire to be spanked. All good things. I found my notebook right where I left it, open on the kitchen counter. I selected a recipe that didn’t require butter and went to work. An hour later, Diesel walked into the kitchen with Carl close on his heels.

  “It smells good in here,” Diesel said. “What are you making?”

  “Corn muffins. They just came out of the oven.”

  “Doesn’t look like you’ve eaten any.”

  “I don’t ever want to eat again.”

  Diesel selected a muffin and ate half. “This is delicious.”

  “I added roasted corn and jalapeños to that batch.”

  “Eep?” Carl asked.

  Diesel gave him the remaining half muffin. Carl crammed it all into his mouth, and crumbs fell out onto the floor.

  “You need to learn table manners,” Diesel said to Carl.

  Carl thought about it a beat and gave Diesel the finger.

  “I’m surprised you get along so well with Carl,” I said to Diesel. “You don’t strike me as being a monkey person.”

  “I can take ’em or leave ’em,” Diesel said. “I guess I’ve always been more of a dog person. Dogs eat shoes and burp and dig holes in the backyard. I can relate to all that.”

  Carl stuck his belly out, opened his mouth wide, and burped.

  “Good one,” Diesel said. “But you’re going back to Monkey Rescue if you eat my shoes.”

  I cleaned the crumbs up. “I’ve been thinking about Mark and how he saves things and pushes them around with his backhoe. It reminds me of Uncle Scrooge.”

  Diesel was blank-face.

  “Didn’t you ever read Donald Duck comics when you were a kid?” I asked him.

  “No. I read Spider-Man and Swamp Thing.”

  “Figures. Long story short is that Scrooge was Donald’s rich uncle. Scrooge hoarded money and treasures in a big money bin, and he pushed it all around with a bulldozer. But here’s the good part. The first dime he ever made he kept with him because it was his lucky dime.”

  Diesel selected another muffin. “So you’re saying you think Mark keeps his inheritance close to him, like Scrooge’s dime.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s as good a theory as any.”

  I checked the time. “When do you suppose Mark goes home?”

  “Hard to say. If he leaves at the close of business, he should be home now. If he stays to rearrange his lock collection, he could be at work all night.” Diesel’s phone rang, and he looked at the readout. “Bingo,” Diesel said.

  He had a short conversation, paused, and the line of his mouth tightened. He listened for a beat and disconnected.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  “Mark was home. Borderline hysterical. He asked if I thought it was Wulf who made the mess. I said it was possible. He said he was scared. Didn’t know what to do. And then he said oh no! There was a sound like a gunshot or small explosion and the line went dead.”

  I felt my heart constrict, and I bit into my lower lip. Before I met Diesel, the only danger I’d experienced was exposure to carving knives and horny line cooks. Now I was involved in explosions and abductions and who-knows-what-else. My stomach got sick just thinking about it.

  Diesel dialed Mark’s number and let it ring. No answer.

>   “We need to go over there,” Diesel said.

  “I don’t want to go over there. I wasn’t cut out for this. I never wanted to be G.I. Joe or Wonder Woman. I wanted to be Julia Child.”

  Diesel took one last muffin, turned to leave, and spotted Cat sitting in the doorway. “Cat looks hungry.”

  I put half a muffin in Cat’s food dish and plastic-bagged the rest. Carl climbed down from the top of the refrigerator, gave wide berth to Cat, and followed us out the door to Diesel’s SUV.

  “I’m having an identity crisis,” Diesel said, pulling away from the house. “I’m used to flying solo. Now, every time I look in my rearview mirror, I see a monkey. It’s like having a hairy little kid back there. I’m starting to feel like a family man with a mutated gene pool.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you could think of him as a partner.”

  “No.”

  “Pet?”

  Diesel flicked a glance at Carl. “There’s no place in my life for a pet.”

  No place for a woman, either, I thought.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  There were fire trucks and cop cars angled to the curb in front of Mark’s apartment building when we drove up. The downstairs door was open and hoses snaked out from the fire trucks, but the hoses didn’t look like they were in use. Firemen and cops milled around, and after a couple beats, I realized what I was seeing. They were chasing ferrets.

  Diesel parked halfway down the block, we locked Carl in the car, and we made our way to a fireman holding an extinguisher.

  “What’s going on?” Diesel asked.

  “There was a small fire on the second floor. We put it out, and then we realized there were about forty ferrets running loose in the apartment. It took them two minutes to figure out we left the door open. We’re trying to catch them, but I think it’s hopeless. Those suckers are off on the great adventure.”

  A ferret ran up the fireman’s leg, jumped from him to Diesel, catapulted itself off Diesel to the ground, and disappeared into the night.

  “Tricky little devils,” the fireman said.

  “Were any people in the apartment?” I asked him.

  “No. Just the ferrets.”

  We got back into the SUV and drove to More Is Better. No lights shining from the office. No cars in the lot.

  “Stay here with Carl,” Diesel said to me. “I’m going to do a fast walk-through.” Five minutes later, Diesel jogged to the SUV and slid behind the wheel. “Nobody home.”

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “We go to Lenny.”

  “It’s after work hours. Do you know where Lenny is living?”

  “I had Gwen find him. He’s living with his cousin Melody.”

  Melody lived in a small, lopsided, worn-out house in north Salem. The house didn’t have a historic plaque tacked to the front and the windows were circa 1970 aluminum, so probably the condition of the house couldn’t be explained away by age. We rang the bell and a frazzled woman in her late thirties answered the door. She had short, curly brown hair that had gone to frizz. She was medium height, plump but not obese, dressed in jeans and a too-big shirt. She had a baby in one of those baby slings attached to the front of her, a toddler hanging on to her pants leg, and two more kids who looked to be in the seven-to-eight-year range. It was hard to tell who was a girl and who was a boy. From the toddler on up, they all had pretty much the same chopped-off haircut and were wearing jeans and sneakers and T-shirts, none of which were pink.

  “Melody More?” Diesel asked.

  “Yuh.”

  “Mommy,” the toddler said. “I gotta poop.”

  “Not now,” Melody said. “Mommy’s busy.”

  “But I gotta!”

  “Stu,” Melody yelled. “Stu!”

  A pleasant-looking thirty-something guy ambled into the living room. “Yuh?”

  “Kenny has to poop.”

  “Again?”

  Melody turned back to us. “We’re not buying anything, and we already found Jesus.”

  “We’re looking for Lenny,” Diesel said. “We were told he moved here after the fire.”

  “I don’t let perverts into the house,” Melody said. “Are you a couple of perverts?”

  “No,” I told her. “I’m a pastry chef.”

  “How about him?” she asked, eyeing Diesel.

  “I’m not sure about him,” I said.

  “And the monkey?”

  Diesel and I had forgotten about Carl. He was standing behind us on the front porch. He did his best to smile and do a finger wave.

  “Goggy!” the toddler said. He clapped his hands and ran at Carl. “Goggy, goggy!”

  Carl stumbled back, but the kid tackled him and hugged him.

  “Eep!” Carl said, arms pinned to his sides, nose-to-nose with Melody’s toddler.

  “Maybe he shouldn’t be hugging him like that,” I said to Melody. “He could have fleas or something.”

  Melody snatched the kid up, and Carl gave me the finger.

  Something crashed in another room, and Melody took stock of the kids next to her. “Who’s missing?”

  “Mary Susan,” one of the older kids said. “And Kevin is getting a time-out in the attic.”

  “Mary Susan?” Melody hollered. “What was that noise I heard?”

  No answer.

  “Remember when she broke the fish tank?” the older kid said. “And all the fishes were swimming on the rug and then they got dead.”

  “I have to see what Mary Susan is up to,” Melody said to us. “I guess you can come in. Just don’t try anything funny with my kids, or I’ll cut your hearts out.” She turned to her oldest. “Get Uncle Lenny. Tell him he has company.”

  So far as I could see, there were six kids and three adults living in a cracker box. Melody was like the woman who lived in a shoe and had so many kids she didn’t know what to do. Everywhere I looked, there were toys, kids’ books, stacks of baby clothes, sippy cups, and chocolate smudges.

  Carl picked a Barbie doll off the floor and studied it. He touched the pointy breast with his finger. “Eep?” he asked, looking up at Diesel.

  “It’s a doll,” Diesel said.

  Carl poked the breast again.

  “Give it a rest,” Diesel said to Carl.

  Carl dropped the doll on the floor and flipped it the finger.

  “I think he has repressed anger,” I said to Diesel.

  “I’d like to see it even more repressed.”

  Lenny came into the room and pulled up short when he saw us. “You two!”

  Diesel was hands in pockets, back on his heels and smiling. Friendly. “How’s it goin’?”

  “It’s goin’ okay. No thanks to you. You blew up my house.”

  “It was an accident,” I told him.

  “My whole life was in that house.”

  “Including your paddle collection,” Diesel said.

  Lenny grinned. “Okay, so I owe you for that. Good to get that monkey off my back.”

  “Eep?” Carl said.

  “Nothing personal,” Lenny said to him. “Figure of speech.”

  Two dogs ran through the room and out the front door.

  “There’s a lot going on in this house,” I said to Lenny.

  “Tell me about it,” Lenny said. “It needs rubber walls.”

  “Have you heard from Mark?” Diesel asked him.

  “Not in a couple days.”

  “If he wasn’t in his apartment, and he wasn’t at work, where would he be?”

  “Here, maybe. I don’t know where else. I guess he has friends, but I don’t know them. We all got kind of weird after Uncle Phil died. Kind of pulled into our own obsessive worlds. Is there a problem with Mark?”

  “It’s possible he’s with Wulf.”

  “It turns out Wulf is scarier than Uncle Phil,” Lenny said. “I was a glutton for punishment, and I gave it up pretty fast.”

  “Where did he take you?”
r />   “I don’t know. He did one of those pressure point things, and I was out like a light. When I came around, I was in a big empty room. All it had was a folding chair, and Wulf sat in it most of the time while his crazy servant guy described his favorite tortures to me. When he got his tool kit out, I told him what he wanted to hear, and next thing, I was wandering around Pickering Wharf Marina.”

  “What did the room look like?” Diesel asked him. “High ceiling? Paint color? Cement floor? Traffic noise? Windows?”

  Lenny closed his eyes and thought about it. “High ceiling with exposed air-conditioning ducts. So it might have been in an industrial area. Walls were white. Ceiling was black, including all the ductwork. Floor was . . . I’m not sure. Maybe cement or tile. Not wood or carpet. I didn’t hear anything. No traffic. A phone rang once, but it was far away in another room. No windows.” He opened his eyes and looked down at Carl. “What’s with the monkey?”

  “He adopted us,” I said.

  “That was a bust,” I said to Diesel when we were back in the SUV.

  “It was a long shot.”

  “You’ve been following Wulf. Don’t you know where he lives?”

  “Gwen tells me he’s staying in a brownstone in Boston on Beacon Hill. Wulf isn’t a small-town kind of guy. Wulf likes luxury and privacy.”

  “Shouldn’t we look there?”

  Diesel stopped for a light. “Wulf would never interrogate anyone in his personal space. And he’ll probably keep Hatchet locked down somewhere in Salem.”

  “So how do we find Mark?”

  Diesel shrugged. “Don’t know. When I first got involved in this, I thought Wulf had a road map to the Stones. Now I’m thinking he only had one small piece of the puzzle. Somehow, Wulf got a line on Uncle Phil and went sniffing after the rest of the More clan. I caught him following Shirley, so I concentrated on her. I thought we were trailing behind Wulf, but after we got the ladybug and the information about the two other inheritances, I’m guessing it was the other way around. Wulf probably snatched Lenny because we were in Lenny’s basement.”

  “And then Lenny spilled the beans about Mark?”

  Diesel shrugged. “Or maybe Mark was just the next name on Wulf’s list. For that matter, Mark might not be with Wulf at all. Maybe Mark just took off.”