Wicked Appetite

  I stood with arms slack at my side, pretty much dumbfounded by the whole incomprehensible event.

  “The booby-trap gizmo was so small,” I said. “How did it make such a disaster?”

  “I suspect it ignited a gas line. I don’t know what else would account for the second explosion and fire.”

  We left the scene, buckled ourselves into Diesel’s Porsche, and motored off, giving one last look at the smoldering rubble that used to be Lenny’s house. The FOR SALE sign was still standing, and behind it, the brick skeleton of the fireplace was blackened but intact.

  I choked back emotion, overwhelmed by Lenny’s loss and the destruction of a house that had survived for over a hundred years.

  Diesel reached over and tugged at my ponytail. “It’s okay,” he said. “No one was hurt. And everything will eventually recycle.”

  “Recycling sucks.”

  Diesel nodded. “Sometimes it definitely does suck.”

  It was a little after seven o’clock, and now that I was away from the action, I was hungry. I’d had some bites of muffin around three but nothing since, and I’d expended a lot of energy being terrified.

  “I’m starving,” I said to Diesel. “And you’re going in the wrong direction. Marblehead is south.”

  “I’m not going to Marblehead. I’m going to Beverly. When Wulf finds out Lenny’s inheritance isn’t available, he’s going to go after the remaining piece to the puzzle.”

  “Mark More.”

  “Yeah. We need to get to him first.”

  “What about dinner?”

  “Keep your eyes peeled for fast food.”

  “There!” I said. “On the left. It’s a cluster fast-food stop. Burgers, doughnuts, chicken, subs.”

  “Which do you want?”

  “I want them all.”

  “Pick one,” Diesel said.

  “Burgers. No wait. Chicken. No, no. Burgers. Definitely burgers. With extra cheese. And fries. A large size. And a chocolate shake. And doughnuts.”

  Ten minutes later, we were back on the road with bags of burgers and fries and a dozen doughnuts. I ate my double cheeseburger, finished off my fries, and eyed Diesel’s fries.

  “Are you going to eat all those fries?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” Diesel said. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Just asking.”

  I opened the box of doughnuts and almost passed out. Boston cream, maple glazed, jelly, strawberry with sprinkles, chocolate, lemon pudding. I grabbed the Boston cream and devoured it. “Oh man,” I said. “Oh jeez, this is good.” My second doughnut was the maple glazed. “I bet I could eat all these. I bet I could eat them in record time.”

  Diesel reached for the chocolate, and I sucked in some air.

  “What?” Diesel asked.

  “You took the chocolate.”

  “There are two of them. We got two of everything.”

  “I didn’t realize there were two. It’s fine. I’m good.” I finished the maple glazed and snatched the second chocolate out of the box.

  “Ordinarily, I like a woman with strong appetites,” Diesel said, “but you’re downright scary. I’m afraid when you finish the doughnuts, you’re going to start gnawing on my arm.”

  “Sorry. I panicked over the chocolate.”

  Diesel handed me his phone. “I have the GPS working. Copilot me to Mark’s business address.”

  I had the phone in one hand and my strawberry doughnut in the other.

  “Turn left at the next street,” I told him. “And then go one block and turn left again.”

  Marblehead is quaint. Salem is weird. And Beverly is a normal, hardworking town. Mark More lived and worked in a part of Beverly that was devoted to commercial real estate. Warehouses, light industry, a seafood processing plant. I followed the directions to a two-story redbrick cube of a building with a two-bay loading dock on one side. The sign on the front said MORE IS BETTER.

  The sun was low in the sky and lights were on in what I assumed was the office. One car was parked in the lot. The bay doors were closed. Diesel parked next to the car in the lot, and we walked around to the street entrance.

  “After seeing what the inheritance did to Shirley and Lenny, I’m almost afraid to go inside,” I said to Diesel.

  “According to my assistant, Mark is the local distributor for Momma Jane’s Green Mints. So I guess we’ll find a lot of mints.”

  “You have an assistant?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s his name? Where is he? Do you have an office?”

  “Her name is Gwen. And I’m not sure where she is. And no, I don’t have an office.”

  Diesel opened the glass-paned door, and we stepped into a small room with a desk at one end and a couple utilitarian plastic waiting room chairs at the other. A hallway led to the innards of the building. Somewhere down the hallway, we could hear machinery at work.

  We followed the sound of machinery, stopped in front of an open door, and looked into the large warehouse. The floor was polished cement, the ceilings were high, and the walls were cinder block. The area was well lit. Cartons of mints, shrink-wrapped on pallets, were stacked along one wall. A forklift had been parked in front of them. A pile of what looked like assorted junk filled a corner on the opposite wall. The junk was one-and-a-half stories high and extended about a third of the way into the warehouse. Mark More was rearranging the pile of junk with the help of a backhoe. I recognized him from the street encounter with Shirley. He was average height, with light brown hair cut too short on the sides for his Dumbo ears. I guessed his age at late thirties. He wasn’t fat, but he wasn’t fit, either. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt, and he looked like he was concentrating hard on his job.

  Diesel and I walked halfway into the room, and Mark spotted us and cut his engine.

  “Can I help you?” he called out.

  “We need to talk,” Diesel said.

  Mark swung down from the backhoe and crossed to us.

  “I hope this is about mints,” he said. “Because I’ve got a lot of them.”

  “I’ve never heard of Momma Jane’s Green Mints,” I told him.

  “They go to hotels and restaurants, mostly,” Mark said. “They’re the crummy little things they put on your pillow or have out in a bowl.”

  “I’m interested in your inheritance,” Diesel said to Mark.

  “From Uncle Phil? What about it?”

  “I’d like to see it,” Diesel said.

  “No can do,” Mark said. “Uncle Phil wanted it kept secret.”

  “The object you inherited might be putting you in danger,” I said. “Has anyone else approached you about it?”

  “Nope. Just you. And there’s no way it could put me in danger, except from Uncle Phil.”

  If I looked over Mark’s shoulder, I could see the mountain of junk glittering under the overhead lights. It appeared that most of the pieces were silver or brass, with an occasional small splash of color. I left Diesel to talk to Mark, and I wandered closer, skirting the backhoe to get a better look at whatever was filling an entire corner of the warehouse. It took me a moment, but then I got it. I was looking at a mammoth collection of padlocks. Some were large, some were small, some were real, and some looked like trinkets.

  I returned to Diesel and Mark, and from both men’s body language I assumed things weren’t going well.

  “So,” I said. “What’s happening?”

  “Your friend is a nutcase,” Mark said to me. “He thinks my inheritance is possessed.”

  “I didn’t say it was possessed,” Diesel said. “Possessed implies that demons or other disincarnate entities have temporarily taken control of a body. I said the inheritance was possibly infused with a dangerous energy.”

  “How about I infuse you with a bullet up your butt if you don’t leave,” Mark said. “I have a gun.”

  “I’m curious,” I said to Mark. “This was the only address we could find for you. Do you live here?”

/>   “Just about. My wife got the house and the dog in the divorce settlement, so I found a little apartment not far from here.”

  “Is the divorce recent?”

  “It’s been a couple years. She said I liked my collections more than I liked her . . . and that probably was true. I get a lot of satisfaction from my lock collection here. Lately, I pretty much eat, sleep, and dream locks.”

  “Boy, that’s really interesting,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Diesel said, cutting his eyes to the junk corner. “Interesting.”

  “Well, I guess we should be moving on,” I said to Mark. “Sorry if Diesel was an annoyance. I’ll take him home and give him a pill.”

  “I know Uncle Phil was weird,” Mark said, “but he wasn’t some voodoo guy.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Did you ever see him change a cat into a fry pan?”

  “No, but I saw him change an opossum into a flowerpot. I could never figure out how he did it. It was Uncle Phil’s best trick. It was like one of those Vegas magicians making a school bus disappear.”

  We said adios to Mark, let ourselves out, and climbed into Diesel’s SUV. Diesel drove half a block down the street, made a U-turn, and parked.

  “Waiting for Mark to leave?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Do you know what he inherited?”

  “No, but I know where to start looking. If it’s a charm in the shape of a lock, it’s probably going to be at the bottom of the pile, since it would have been his first lock.”

  “This could be fun,” I said. “I always wanted to run a backhoe.” I looked at my watch. “It’s going to be a long night. We should get some snacks to tide us over. Maybe a bucket of chicken.”

  “Honey, you just ate ten doughnuts.”

  “But what if we get stuck here and there’s no food?”

  Diesel grinned at me. “Maybe you should let me hold Shirley’s ladybug.”

  “You don’t suppose I’m turning into a glutton, do you?”

  Even as I asked the question, I was thinking I should stock up on pork chops and graham crackers.

  “A couple more days of carrying Shirley’s inheritance, and you’re going to have a snout and a tail,” Diesel said.

  I fished in my pocket, found the charm, and handed it over. “No one said anything about Uncle Phil having any of these obsessions. Is it possible it’s all mental with Lenny, Shirley, Mark, and me? The SALIGIA Stone story is pretty far out there.”

  “Personally, I’m a lazy kind of guy, and leaving the door open on the mystical saves me work. I don’t have to stress my brain trying to explain the unexplainable. It’s magic. End of discussion.”

  “So you’re buying into the SALIGIA Stone fairy tale?”

  “Yeah. I’m believing the whole enchilada.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The light blinked off in Mark More’s office, and Mark exited via the front door and walked to his car. The engine caught, and he drove out of the lot and down the street.

  “Showtime,” Diesel said.

  “What if he set an alarm?”

  “Not a concern. I didn’t see a security system keypad anywhere in the building.”

  We covered the short distance to the warehouse, Diesel opened the door, and we walked in. No alarm sounded. No little red diode flashed from anywhere in the room.

  I heard Diesel move toward the hall in the pitch-black building and I followed him, immediately smashing into the desk.

  “I suppose you can see in the dark,” I said on a sigh.

  “Yeah, and obviously you can’t, so stick close to me.”

  I put my hand to his back.

  “Closer would be better,” he said.

  “How close did you have in mind?”

  “Really, really close.”

  I kicked him in the back of the leg, and he grunted.

  Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t mind getting close, but holy cow, not when I’m doing B&E on a chocolate mint warehouse.

  “I hear you,” Diesel said, “but I’m only human . . . sort of.”

  “What about the limit on how far we can go?”

  “I’ll let you know when we reach it.”

  He led me to the warehouse, and once we were inside and the door was closed behind us, he switched the lights on.

  “Do you want first crack at the backhoe?” he asked.

  “Yes!”

  I climbed on board and studied the controls. I turned the key, stepped on the gas, and rolled to the pile of locks. I lowered the shovel and dug in. I backed up and carried the locks to the other side of the room and dumped them next to the cartons of mints. I did this ten times, motored over to Diesel, and parked it.

  “It’s all yours,” I said, jumping off. “I don’t want to be a backhoe hog.”

  “It’s boring, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Diesel hauled himself up behind the wheel and went to work shoveling locks. I watched him for a while, wondering who on earth he was. When I found myself fantasizing him naked, I gave myself a mental slap and looked for something else to do. If I’d had my computer, I’d have googled SALIGIA Stones. In the absence of the computer, I called my mom.

  “So, how’s it going?” I asked her.

  “It’s going just fine. How’s it going with you? Do you like your new job?”

  “Yes. My job is terrific.”

  I grew up in Fairfax, Virginia, just outside the Beltway. My parents still live there, in the same redbrick ranch with a dogwood tree in the front yard and picnic table and swing set in the back. My dad’s old Bonneville and my mom’s new Camry are tucked away in a two-car attached garage, and at this time of the year, the azaleas are beginning to bloom.

  My mom teaches fifth grade, and my dad drives a public transport bus, like Ralph Cramden on The Honeymooners. My sister, Sara, is a year older than me and already has two kids. My brother, Tommy, is a year younger, is still single, and works in an auto body shop, customizing motorcycles. We’re the typical all-American family . . . except at least one of us might be an Unmentionable.

  “Is there anything weird about our family?” I asked my mother.

  “Weird?”

  “Maybe special is a better word. Like, do we have any special abilities?”

  “Your Uncle Fred can touch his tongue to his nose.”

  “How about turning cats into fry pans?”

  “Fred can’t do that. And besides, it would be mean.”

  “I’ve always been able to make cupcakes better than anyone else.”

  “That’s true,” my mother said. “You make wonderful cupcakes. You got that from your Great Grandmother Fanny.”

  “I never knew her. Was she an Unmentionable?”

  “Unmentionable? Heavens, no. We talked about her all the time. She was a hoot.”

  “What about Ophelia? I only remember her from photographs.”

  “Ophelia was Fanny’s little sister. She married a man named Wilbur Snell. He owned a shoe factory in Salem, and two weeks after the wedding, he disappeared and never was seen again. Ophelia stayed in Snell’s house in Marblehead until the day she died. The shoe factory closed long ago, but I guess it left Ophelia with enough to keep going. The family drifted apart, and the last time we saw Ophelia, you were five years old. She thought you were very special. She said you had a complicated destiny. I’ve remembered her words all these years. Ophelia was a little New Age in her old age.”

  “Do you know why she left me her house?”

  “She stated in the will that you were a kindred spirit. And of course, she didn’t have any children of her own. Only a one-eyed cat. And she could hardly leave her house to him.”

  My heart skipped a couple beats. “What happened to the one-eyed cat?”

  “I don’t know. I imagine he went to the animal shelter.”

  “Do you know any more about him?”

  “No. Your grandmother spoke to Ophelia from time to time, and she would mention the cat.”

  I
made a little more small talk, then disconnected and watched Diesel some more. I offered to take another shift, but he declined.

  “More to the left,” I yelled out to him after a couple hours. “The pile is uneven.”

  He looked back to me. “You want to take over, Miss Picky?”

  “Just trying to be helpful.”

  “You can be helpful by looking through all the locks that are left.”

  My eyebrows went up an inch into my forehead. “Are you serious? There are still hundreds of locks. Maybe thousands.”

  Diesel cut the engine and swung down off the backhoe. “I’ve reduced the pile by ninety percent. I can’t cut it down any more than that. These locks have been pushed around for years. The lock charm isn’t going to be exactly where it was originally placed.”

  He was right. Problem was, I’d been going since four this morning, and I was running on empty. I walked to the edge of the remaining lock pile and began working my way through it, picking locks up, tossing them to Diesel, who pitched them across the room to the new heap of locks. After an hour, there were no more locks, I hadn’t come across a charm, and nothing had glowed or buzzed in my hand.

  “Now what?” I asked Diesel.

  “Now we go home. And tomorrow we have another conversation with Mark More.”

  It was a little past midnight when we parked in front of my house. The Spook Patrol was absent, and the street was dark and blissfully quiet. Diesel let us in and flipped the lights on. Cat 7143 was sprawled in the middle of the floor, feet in the air.

  “Omigosh,” I said. “He’s dead!”

  Cat’s good eye opened, his tail twitched, and the eye closed.

  “Sleeping,” Diesel said.

  I looked more closely at Cat. He had muffin crumbs stuck to his face fur. “Looks like he helped himself to dinner.”

  Diesel sauntered into the kitchen and stood hands on hips, surveying the carnage. “If Uncle Phil were here, he’d turn Cat into a waffle iron.”

  Every muffin had been sampled. Some more than others. And some were completely destroyed.

  “He prefers the muffins in the pink wrappers,” Diesel said.

  They were my favorites, too. Good to have my opinion verified, even if it was by a cat. I cleaned the kitchen, and when Diesel wasn’t looking, I ate the untouched muffin bottoms, since Cat had mostly eaten the muffin tops. I struggled up the stairs and collapsed onto my bed.