Plum Spooky

“That’s scary amazin’,” Lula said.

  “I thought we might want a shot of the behind-​the-​scenes workings of a radio station,” I said to the receptionist. “Where’s your transmitter?”

  “They’re down that hallway all the way, and to the right, and out the door, but there are people working on the main. We’re on backup right now.”

  “I never saw a radio-​station transmitter before,” Lula said. And she took off down the hall, opening doors, looking inside the rooms.

  “You can’t do that!” the receptionist yelled after Lula.

  “I’ll go get her,” I said. “She’s just excited. Miss Gloria told her this was going to be her big break.”

  “Is that a real gun?” the receptionist asked Tank. “You can’t bring a gun in here.”

  “Bean counters don’t carry real guns,” I said. “They shoot blanks.”

  “Do you want to see a picture of my cats?” Tank asked the receptionist. “I’m pretty sure Applepuff is pregnant.”

  Lula got to the end of the hall and waved at me to follow. I ran after Lula, and Tank stayed behind to show the receptionist his cats. Lula and I pushed through the door marked no admittance and found the two uniformed men winching a huge machine onto the flatbed.

  “Is that a transmitter?” I asked them.

  “No hablo ingles,” the one man said.

  The flatbed engine cranked over, and the truck idled while the two men strapped the machine down and secured clamps.

  “They’re taking off with the transmitter,” I said to Lula. “We need to get Tank. We need to follow them.”

  Lula and I ran down the hall, snagged Tank, and we all ran across the street and jumped into the Rangeman SUV. The flatbed swung around in the lot and rolled to the gate. The gate opened, and the truck made a wide turn onto the street. The driver of the truck looked directly at me when he made the turn. His eyes went wide, and red spots instantly appeared on his cheeks. It was Munch.

  “That’s Munch!” I said. “That’s my man.”

  Munch put his foot to the floor and the flatbed took off down the street. Tank was close behind. Lula was in the backseat with her head out the window and her Glock in her hand.

  “Pull alongside him!” Lula yelled. “I’ll shoot out his tires. I’ll bust a cap up his ass.”

  “Got it,” Tank said, easing up beside the truck on a two-​lane city street.

  “Drop back!” I told him. “You’ll get us killed.”

  Munch swerved away from the SUV and took out three parked cars and a light post. The flatbed surged ahead, jumped the curb, and cut a corner, sending two people screaming into a Starbucks.

  “The little guy at the wheel can’t drive,” Tank said. “He’s all over the road.”

  “You’re scaring him,” I said. “Back off.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Lula said. “I got this bad boy in my sights.”

  Lula squeezed off two rounds and shattered the rear window of a parked car. The flatbed ran a light, and cars swerved to avoid it, horns blaring. Tank slowed and crept through the intersection. Six people gave him the finger.

  “He’s heading for Broad,” I said to Tank. “He’s going to the Pine Barrens.”

  Tank turned onto Broad with the flatbed in sight. Several cars were between us and the truck. The flatbed took the orange light at Hamilton, and everyone behind him stopped for the red.

  “Don’t you have no flashy lights or anything?” Lula asked Tank. “Aren’t we an emergency vehicle?”

  “Ranger doesn’t let us use them,” Tank said.

  “Ranger this and Ranger that,” Lula said. “Don’t none of you people think for yourself? I bet you can’t wipe yourself without Ranger telling you.”

  Tank looked at her in the rearview mirror. “I’m telling him you said that.”

  “I might have misspoke,” Lula said.

  We couldn’t see the truck anymore, but we could mea sure its progress by the destruction on the side of the road. Four more trashed cars, a flattened mailbox, two demolished street signs.

  We reached Bordentown and approached the Turnpike entrance.

  “I haven’t seen any wrecked cars for over a mile now,” Lula said. “Do you think he took another road?”

  “Maybe he’s learning how to drive his rig,” Tank said. “What should I do here?”

  “Take the Turnpike,” I told him.

  It was a gamble. There were three main roads going south from Bordentown. The Turnpike was the fastest. Tank took the Turnpike south, and after a few miles, I was feeling insecure. The road stretched like an endless ribbon in front of us, and I didn’t see the flatbed. We passed Burlington and Cherry Hill and came to the Atlantic City Expressway exit.

  “Now what?” Tank asked.

  “Take the exit to Atlantic City,” I told him. “We’ve gone this far. We might as well look around the Marbury area.”

  This was depressing. I’d come so close to capturing Munch, only to have him slip through my fingers. A whole bunch of what ifs was running through my head. What if I’d gone out and looked at the driver when the truck was idling at the radio station? What if I’d called Ranger for help with the car chase? What if I was smarter, faster, braver, thinner … It was endless.

  Tank drove through Marbury and doubled back along the road to the gift shop. He passed the gift shop and went north on a secondary road. It was a two-​lane, blacktop road running through pinewoods, dotted here and there with small ranch houses. Every house had a mailbox set at the edge of the road. Single-​lane gravel and dirt roads shot off the blacktop road into the outback of the Barrens.

  Tank stopped the SUV, and we all stared at the dirt road and pale green bungalow in front of us. The mailbox to the bungalow was demolished and heavy-​tread tire tracks were cut deep into the bungalow’s front yard. The tire tracks ran over the smashed mailbox and swung onto the single-​lane road, where they almost entirely disappeared on the hard-​packed dirt.

  “Bingo,” Lula said.

  Tank turned onto the dirt road and followed it through the forest for almost a mile into a cleared area that reminded me of a small landing strip for a plane. The flatbed was parked in front of us, but it was missing the transmitter, Munch, and his uniformed crew.

  A rutted path large enough for an ATV led into the woods at the end of the cleared strip. Tank drove to the path, and we got out to take a look.

  “I can’t get the SUV down this path,” Tank said. “Do you want me to walk it to see where it goes?”

  “We’ll all walk it,” I said.

  I had no desire to lag behind and run up against Wulf all by my lonesome. I still had his hand imprinted on my wrist. Call me chickenshit, but if I came across Wulf, I wanted to be hiding behind Tank.

  Tank led the way and Lula and I followed. It was twilight, and Tank had taken a flashlight from the SUV. The path obviously served a purpose, because the scrub had been worn away at the edge and there were some recently broken branches kicked to the side. We trudged through a thick stand of pines and stepped into a woodland fuel depot. There were rows of tanks that were the size you might use for a gas grill. Neatly placed in front of the tanks were some steel drums. Maybe twenty feet away, stacked like cordwood under the roof of a three-​sided shed, were rockets. Not BlueBec. These were smaller. From what Diesel had told me, I knew the BlueBecs were about eighteen feet long. These were closer to six and narrower in diameter.

  “You could have a barbecue here,” Lula said. “Only thing missing is the ribs.”

  It would seem logical that if fuel and some rockets were here, then the command center and Gail and Munch shouldn’t be far away. Problem was, there were no other paths. And no buildings. There was only one way in to the tank farm, and we’d just walked it. Beyond the flatbed and what looked like a landing strip, there were no roads, no buildings, no ATV trails.

  Tank tipped his head back and looked at one of the pines by the shed. “There’s a camera stuck into that tree,” he sai
d. “This area is under surveillance.” He looked around. “There are two more cameras that I can see.”

  Total panic attack. I felt like someone was squeezing my heart. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Only one way to go,” Tank said.

  We turned and started to head out, and four ATVs driven by guys in khaki uniforms powered in at us.

  “Am I getting punked?” Lula said. “Is this real? This shit don’t happen in real life.”

  My eyes were rolling around in my head, looking for an escape route.

  “Through the woods,” Tank said, grabbing my hand, shoving Lula.

  “Stop!” one of the men shouted. “Stop, or I’ll shoot.”

  And he fired off a couple rounds.

  “Damn,” Lula said. “Those are real bullets.” She pulled her Glock out of her bag and fired back. Her round missed the guy in the uniform and zinged into one of the tanks. The cylinder exploded into a fireball and flew forty feet into the air. It hit the ground and ignited every other cylinder and steel drum. Cylinders were shooting into the air like firecrackers, and the fire spread to the rockets. It was the Fourth of July, Chinese New Year, and Armageddon.

  “Oops,” Lula said. “My bad.”

  “Run!” Tank yelled in my ear. “Now! Run back to the SUV.”

  Lula and I took off, and Tank ran behind us. I went down twice, and Tank dragged me to my feet. Lula never once went down. Lula was haulin’ ass. We had the SUV in sight when there was a sound like whoosh, and BANG— the SUV was toast.

  “Rocket,” Tank said. “Ranger’s gonna hate this.”

  We turned and ran through the woods, keeping the dirt road in sight, heading for the paved road. A pickup barreled down the dirt road. The back of the pickup was filled with guys in the khaki uniforms. We crouched low until they were past, and then we ran some more. We were almost to the road when lightning cut across the sky, and it started to rain. A mist at first, and then, within minutes, we were in the middle of a torrential downpour.

  “I’m gonna drown,” Lula said. “I’ve never been in a rain like this. This is unnatural.”

  Headlights appeared on the dirt road, an SUV going slow in the rain, sliding on the road that was fast turning to mud. Tank recognized it first. It was Hal in Ranger’s Jeep Cherokee.

  We stumbled out of the woods and climbed into the Jeep.

  “Get us out of here,” Tank said to Hal. “Fast.”

  Hal threw the Jeep into reverse and ground his way through the mud to the pavement. It probably only took him five minutes, but it was the longest five minutes I could remember. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. I was in the backseat with Lula, and I had a death grip on the sleeve of her soaking-​wet, fake fur jacket. Lula was rigid alongside me, breathing like a freight train.

  The instant we were on pavement, the rain stopped. We looked back into the pine forest, and it was still raining, the rain dampening the thick, black smoke rising from the fuel depot and Ranger’s Cherokee.

  “I swear,” Hal said, “this place is like the Bermuda Triangle. It’s friggin’ spooky. I went out to feed the monkeys last night, and I saw the Easter Bunny walking down the road with Sasquatch. And now there are rockets shooting into the sky from nowhere.”

  “Don’t think you’ll be seeing any more rockets anytime soon,” Lula said.

  “What were you doing on that road?” Tank asked Hal.

  “The control room followed your blip to the Barrens and saw you parked. They told me to take a look and make sure everything was okay. I’m a couple miles away babysitting monkeys.”

  “I knew I smelled monkey” Lula said. “Now I recognize this car.”

  Stephanie Plum 14.5 - Plum Spooky

  TWENTY

  I STOOD IN front of my door and said a prayer. Please, God, don’t let Diesel be home yet. I held my breath, opened the door, and looked up at Diesel. Darn.

  Diesel grabbed the front of my wet jacket, hauled me inside, and held me three inches off the floor in front of him.

  “I told you not to go out,” he said, giving me a shake for emphasis. “I told you to keep the door locked.”

  “You were worried about me,” I said.

  “Yes. And I’m not used to worrying at that level. I had to take some of your Pepto-​Bismol. I was feeling like the fire farter.”

  He set me down and looked at me. “You’re wet again. And you smell like campfire.”

  I sniffed at my jacket. “I think it’s rocket fuel. Lula accidentally blew up Wulf’s fuel depot. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. And then it rained on us, which was a good thing because it probably put out the fire. Otherwise, the whole Barrens would have gone up in smoke.” I dropped my jacket on the floor and kicked my shoes off. “Did you find Cuddles?”

  “Yes. And Wulf hasn’t completed the deal with him yet. I’m waiting for Cuddles to call me back and let me know when the meeting will take place.”

  “Bad news. Being that we blew up all Wulf’s rockets, he might not be needing barium anytime soon. Although, it’s possible the rockets we blew up weren’t the barium carriers.”

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “Munch has his transmitter. And he absolutely can’t drive a truck.”

  “Have you eaten dinner?” Diesel asked me. “Do you want a grilled-​cheese sandwich?”

  “Yes.”

  “Make one for me, too,” he said. “Do you have bacon? I want bacon on mine.”

  “Nice try, but no. And I don’t have bacon.”

  I squished to the bedroom, took a quick shower, and dressed in dry clothes. I took the laundry basket from my closet, put my wet clothes in it, and carried it to the foyer. There was a huge pile of damp, discarded clothes in the foyer. Part mine. Part Diesel’s. I needed to do laundry.

  I left the basket by the door and went to the kitchen and watched Diesel. He was making grilled cheese. He slid one out of the pan onto a plate and handed it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “This looks great.”

  My cell phone rang, and I looked at the screen.

  “It’s all zeros,” I said to Diesel.

  “It’s Wulf,” Diesel said.

  “Ms. Plum,” Wulf said. “It has been brought to my attention that you were responsible for a fire that destroyed twenty-​three of my X-12 King rockets. I’m afraid I must demand that you replace them in twenty-​four hours, or I will have to sacrifice Gail Scanlon.”

  “Sacrifice?”

  “I’m sure you are familiar with the term. You may call this number when you are ready to deliver my rockets.”

  “It was all zeros.”

  “Just do it,” Wulf said. And he disconnected.

  “Boy, he’s kind of cranky,” I said to Diesel.

  “He’s not used to having his rockets blown up.”

  I ate some of my sandwich. “He said they were X-12 King rockets, and I had to replace them by this time tomorrow, or he’d kill Gail. Where am I going to get twenty-​three rockets?”

  Diesel finished his sandwich.

  “Cuddles might have a source. We’ll hit the mall first thing tomorrow. If the mall is open, Cuddles is there. Turns out he’s not too crazy about Mrs. Cuddles. Likes to spend as much time as possible at the office.”

  SINCE THE MALL didn’t open until ten o’clock, I took the luxury of sleeping late. I straggled into the kitchen at nine-​thirty a.m., ate a strawberry Pop-​Tart, and polished off a mug of coffee. Diesel was already up, slouched against the counter, watching.

  “Ready to rock and roll?” he asked.

  I put my coffee mug in the dishwasher, went to the foyer to grab my bag, and realized I didn’t have any clean sweatshirts. My denim jacket was in the laundry basket soaking wet. Munch’s jacket was in the laundry basket. My only remaining jacket was a black wool peacoat.

  “What?” Diesel said.

  “I haven’t got a sweatshirt to wear.”

  His backpack was sitting on the floor
in the foyer. He pulled a black sweatshirt out of the pack and tugged the sweatshirt over my head. I had an extra six inches on the sleeves, and the bottom of the sweatshirt almost came to my knees. Diesel pushed the sleeves up to my elbows.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Let’s go to the mall.”

  A half hour later, we found Cuddles in the food court sucking down a chocolate milk shake. He was in his fifties, average height, glasses, extra-​curly brown hair that blossomed out in a white man’s Afro. Bald on top. Baggy tan pants. Red plaid shirt. He was the last person in the mall I’d pick out to be selling contraband rockets and barium. He looked like Woody Allen all swollen up.