Plum Spooky

  “Are you going back now?”

  “No. I want to look at more aerial views, and I have a call in to Scanlon’s supervisor.”

  “That’s okay by me. I’d like to take another stab at Gordo Bollo.”

  “As long as you don’t go out of cell range . . . and you take the monkey.”

  “Why can’t Carl stay here?”

  “He’s annoying. It’s nonnegotiable.”

  “Okay, fine, but you owe me.”

  “Lookin’ forward to settling the score,” Diesel said.

  “Boy, you never give up, do you?”

  “I wouldn’t be me if I gave up.”

  I got Carl settled in the back of the Jeep and I drove to the office.

  “I’ll go with you,” Lula said, “but I’m not going inside. I’m not having no more rat experiences.”

  “What good are you if you won’t go inside?”

  “I can guard the Jeep. Suppose by dumb luck or something you snag Melon Head. You want to make sure the Jeep is still there when you come out, right?”

  Twenty minutes later, I left Lula and Carl in the parking lot, put on my game face, and walked into Greenblat Produce.

  “If you’re looking for Gordo, you’re out of luck today,” one of the women said. “He called in sick.”

  “That was fast,” Lula said when I climbed behind the wheel.

  I pulled Bollo’s file out of my bag. “He called in sick.” I thumbed through pages and found his home address. “He lives in Bordentown.”

  “I’m cool with that,” Lula said. “Let’s go to Bordentown and root him out.”

  The day had started out warm, but clouds had rolled in and the temperature was dropping. Not winter-​quality dropping, but enough to notice when there were no windows in your car. I turned the heater on full blast and hunkered down.

  “Where’s your windows?” Lula wanted to know.

  “They need to get zipped in.”

  “Well, zip them in. I’m freezing my ass off.”

  I’d bought the Jeep a month before, when it was hot and I didn’t need windows. I’d tried to zip them in once when it rained and had partial success. I was willing to try again. I pulled to the side of the road, and Lula and I grunted and tugged and cussed at the plastic windows. We finally got most of them secure, with the exception of the back window. The back window would zip only halfway.

  “Good enough,” Lula said. “We need ventilation anyway since the monkey’s back there.”

  Carl gave her the finger.

  “That all you got?” Lula asked Carl.

  Carl grabbed his crotch and hiked it up.

  “That’s disgusting on a monkey” Lula said. “You been letting him watch MTV? You want to monitor his tele vision viewing.”

  I checked Carl out in my rearview mirror. He was back to playing with his game.

  “Get the map out and find 656 Ward Street in Borden-​town,” I told Lula.

  Lula opened the map and traced a line with her finger. “You gotta get off Route 206 in about half a mile.”

  Ten minutes later, we were on Ward Street, but we couldn’t find Bollo’s house. There was no 656 on Ward Street. The only thing on Ward Street was a cemetery on one side and a ceramic pipe factory on the other.

  I called Bollo’s home phone. No answer. No machine picked up. I called his cell phone.

  “Yeah?” Bollo said.

  “This is UPS. I have a delivery for Gordo Bollo, and I need a correct address.”

  “Eat me,” Bollo said. And he hung up.

  “I think he knew it was me,” I said to Lula.

  “Should have let the monkey make the call.”

  I called Connie. “I got a bogus home address for Gordo Bollo.”

  “I’ll get back to you,” Connie said.

  “You know what?” Lula said. “We’re halfway to Atlantic City. We could go to Atlantic City and make a killing on the slots.”

  “Tempting, but I told Diesel I’d be available.”

  “Available for what?”

  “For bounty hunter stuff.”

  My phone rang and I heard labored breathing and a whispered hello.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Is this the bounty hunter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God. I had your card in my pocket, and I didn’t know who to call. They think I’m still unconscious. I couldn’t call the police. I’m afraid they’d take my animals. But you find people, right?”

  “Gail?”

  “You have to help me. Please. They’re taking me somewhere.” It was clear she was struggling to talk, trying not to cry, but a sob escaped before she reigned herself in. “I’m in terrible trouble,” she whispered. “You have to find me. And take care of my poor animals. Oh God,” she moaned. “It’s Wulf. He’s coming back. He’s coming to get me.” And the line went dead.

  “You don’t look good,” Lula said to me. “You just turned white. What was that call about?”

  “It was Gail Scanlon. It sounded like Wulf has kidnapped her.”

  I dialed Diesel’s cell. No answer. I left a message to call me, and I called my home phone. No answer there, either. I put the Jeep in gear and called Ranger.

  “Do you have my Jeep bugged?”

  “Bugged?”

  “You know, the gizmo you always put on my cars so you can find me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you find me anywhere?”

  “Pretty much. Where are you going?”

  “I’m heading for the Pine Barrens to check out a woman in trouble, and I’m afraid I’ll get lost.”

  “Babe,” Ranger said.

  “There isn’t cell service in some spots, so if you don’t hear back from me for a couple days, you should come get me.”

  “I’ll make a memo on my calendar.”

  I hung up, and Lula was shaking her head. “I swear, if I was gonna ask a favor of Ranger, it wouldn’t be to come rescue my ass. And I don’t believe he’s got a tracking device on your junk of a car. What’s that about?”

  “He has them on all his fleet vehicles, and he puts one on mine because I sometimes work for him.” And because he cares for me … a lot. The caring is mutual, but Ranger, like Diesel, is out of my relationship comfort zone.

  “So now what? Are we gonna go after Gail Scanlon?” Lula wanted to know.

  “Yeah. I have a pretty good idea where she lives. We’ll start there.”

  Lula had the map in front of her again. “You got an address?”

  “Yup. It’s follow the dirt road.”

  I TOOK ROUTE 206 to Marbury Road and turned left. Route 206 was a slower road than the Turnpike but more direct. Carl was happy in the backseat with a bucket of fried chicken parts. Lula had a bag of burgers and fries. I had a vanilla milk shake. I left Marbury Road, and my confidence level dropped. I was going as much on instinct as memory relieved when something looked familiar. I reached the dirt road and slowed. I didn’t want to create a dust cloud announcing my approach.

  Lula peered through the Jeep’s small windshield. “Are you sure we’re in Jersey? This don’t look like Jersey to me. This don’t even look like America.”

  “How much of America have you seen?” I asked her.

  “In person or on tele vision?”

  I crept around a stand of pines and saw the massacred faux bird bomb on the ground in front of me. Hooray. I was on the right path.

  “This is as far as I got with Diesel,” I said to Lula. “We lost Gail Scanlon here.”

  “You know how to get out of this hellhole, right?”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “I don’t like all these trees and no strip malls. It don’t seem normal.”

  I followed the dirt road for a half mile and came to a fork. Both sides of the fork looked exactly the same. I got out of the car and examined the dirt like I was Tonto running point for the Lone Ranger.

  “Well?” Lula asked.

  I got back into the Jeep. I hadn’t a clue. ??
?Left,” I said.

  “Boy, you’re good,” Lula said. “I didn’t see nothing in that dirt.”

  Carl was on his feet in the backseat, peering over my shoulder, looking worried.

  “What do you think?” I asked Carl. “Left?”

  “Eeep,” Carl said.

  I took the left fork, and after a while, I came to another fork in the road. And then another.

  “All I can see is trees and sand,” Lula said. “It’s like the end of the world. There’s no sidewalks. Where’s the cement? And I haven’t got no bars on my cell phone. What’s with that? I don’t like being without bars.”

  I looked at my phone. She was right. No bars. I hoped Diesel wasn’t trying to reach me.

  “Maybe we should turn around,” Lula said. “I’m freaking. These trees are closing in on me. I need bars on my phone.”

  “The road’s too narrow to make a U-​turn. I’ll turn as soon as it widens.”

  “What if it don’t widen?”

  “It’ll widen!”

  Truth is I had no confidence it would widen. And I had no idea where I was. I was lost beyond being lost. My plan was to go forward and keep turning left, and eventually I thought it had to take me somewhere.

  “I gotta go to the bathroom,” Lula said. “I shouldn’t of had that super-​size soda. You need to find a gas station or McDonald’s or something.”

  An hour later, I was still creeping along in the Barrens. No golden arches in sight.

  “I’m gonna burst,” Lula said. “I gotta go.”

  I came to a stop. “Pick a tree,” I said.

  “What?”

  “This is as good as it’s going to get. We’re lost, and we’re out of gas.”

  “I don’t want to hear that,” Lula said. “It’s gonna get dark. I don’t like the idea of being here in the dark. It’s creepy. And the Jersey Dev il comes out at night.”

  “There’s no Jersey Dev il.”

  “I heard about it. It got wings. Big wings.”

  Carl had climbed over the seat and was sitting hunched on the gearshift. Carl didn’t like talk of the Jersey Dev il.

  “Are you sure we’re out of gas?” Lula asked.

  I turned the key, but the engine didn’t kick over.

  “I can’t believe you got me into a situation where we’re out of gas and there’s no restroom,” Lula said. “I’m going down this road, and I’m finding a place on my own.”

  Lula heaved herself out of the car and set off down the road.

  “That’s not a good idea,” I yelled after her. “You’ll get even more lost.”

  “Roads don’t just go nowhere. Roads go somewhere. I’m following this road.”

  I slid from behind the wheel and ran to catch up to her. I thought walking off was a dumb idea, but she had the gun with bullets in it. I didn’t get into a cold sweat over the Jersey Dev il, but I wasn’t crazy about the idea of Wulf finding me unprotected in the Jeep.

  We walked for a half hour, and we were definitely losing light. Carl was close on my heels, wide-​eyed and silent. Lula was two steps in front of me, huffing along. She suddenly stopped and cocked her head.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “That flapping sound. Like something flying through the trees.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was the Dev il,” Lula said.

  “The Jersey Dev il is folklore. It’s a bedtime story. And it’s not even scary. It’s supposed to look like a potbellied horse with wings.”

  “Yeah, but I heard that the Dev il likes to eat plus-​sized, beautiful brown-​skinned women.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Horses are herbivores.”

  “This is a dev il horse. There’s no telling what it eats. And it could stomp you with its hooves. Or it could put a spell on you.”

  The Jersey Dev il was starting to sound like Morelli’s crazy Italian grandmother.

  “What we really want to worry about is the whine of a Ferrari engine.”

  “Not gonna be a Ferrari on this road,” Lula said. “It’s full of big ruts. A Ferrari’d bottom out.”

  She was right. This was both good news and bad news. Good news because I didn’t want to get run over by Wulf. Bad news because I was on the wrong road.

  “I see something through those trees,” Lula said, heading off into a stand of pines. “I bet there’s a house over there. I bet it’s got a bathroom.”

  “Be careful. Even if it is a house, you don’t know who lives in it. It could be a crazy person.” Like Wulf.

  “I don’t care if they’re crazy so long as they have a bathroom.”

  Ten minutes later, we were still walking through the pines, following a beam of light.

  “This is like the enchanted forest,” Lula said. “I always think we’re getting somewhere, and then we get nowhere. Remember in The Wizard of Oz they had to walk through that forest and the trees were reaching out and grabbing at Dorothy? Or was that Harry Potter? Anyway, that’s how I feel. It’s like the trees got eyes and mouths, and they’re whispering about us. And their limbs are moving around like arms, and they’re clutching at us with hideous tree fingers.” Lula did a whole body shiver. “I’m telling you it’s like ghost trees. Like we’re in a ghost forest.”

  “It’s the wind!”

  “It don’t sound like wind. I know wind when I hear it. This is talkin’. The trees are watching us and saying things. I got a feeling going down the back of my neck that’s like a death crawl. If I had gonads they’d be so far up in my body they might never find their way back down.”

  I didn’t need this. I was already freaked out on my own. I didn’t want to hear about trees talking. Bad enough we were lost beyond anything I could have imagined. The road was a distant memory behind us, and I was having flashbacks of news stories involving stupid hikers and skiers who’d wandered off the trail and were never seen again. And now she had me imagining talking trees. And the worst part was that the trees really did sound like they were talking.

  Stephanie Plum 14.5 - Plum Spooky

  TWELVE

  WE SKIRTED A boggy area and stopped at the edge of a clearing. Not too far from us was a small, weathered house with a tin roof. A garden taken over by pumpkins sat to one side of the house. Beyond the house was a large caged habitat filled with monkeys. A long low shed was attached to the habitat. Carl wrapped his arms around my leg and wouldn’t let go.

  “What’s with him?” Lula asked.

  “I think he’s afraid of the monkeys.”

  “No shit. There must be twenty monkeys in there.”

  “I have a feeling this is Gail Scanlon’s latest cause. She probably rescued these monkeys from a lab or a zoo.”

  “Don’t look like anybody is here,” Lula said.

  We cautiously moved into the clearing and looked around.

  “Those monkeys are wearing hats,” Lula said.

  I moved closer and looked at the monkeys. Lula was right. They were wearing hats. Metal helmets held on by chin straps. A small antenna stuck up from the top of each helmet. They looked like some German monkey army left over from WWI.

  There were no cars in the yard. No lights on in the house. Power lines ran through the woods to the house and monkey shed. It looked like there was a road leading out of the compound, just past the caged habitat.

  “I don’t care about monkeys,” Lula said. “I care about a restroom. I don’t know who owns this place, but I’m using the facilities.”

  She knocked on the front door to the house, and when no one answered, she tried the doorknob. Unlocked. We stepped inside and looked around.

  “Anyone home?” I yelled.

  No answer.

  Lula used the bathroom, and I prowled through the kitchen and living area. The colors inside the house were bright, reminding me of Gail Scanlon’s clothes. There were lots of books lining the walls but no tele vision or phone. No computer. Basic pots and pans. Her ap
pliances were old but ser viceable. A stack of mail addressed to Gail had been placed on a small desk. Notice of her brother’s death was on a kitchen counter. I didn’t see anything that would tie her to Munch or Wulf.